Question

Reasons for incarceration in 1942

Answer 1

http://www.janm.org/nrc/resources/accmass/

The United States Government incarcerated 120,313 Japanese Americans during World War II, placing the majority of them in 10 concentration camps run by the War Relocation Authority or in other camps or centers of detention run by the Justice Department or other government agencies.

Americans of Japanese ancestry, 70 percent Americans citizens, were forced off the West Coast or parts of Hawai'i. Most had to sell their homes and businesses at great losses and some lost everything without compensation.

Under the pretext of Japanese Americans being a threat to national security, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, giving the War Department the authority to establish areas from which any and all persons could be excluded. In 1982, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians concluded, "Executive Order 9066 was not justified by military necessity. The broad historical causes... were race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."