Not only was President Roosevelt concerned for the

national security of the United States, but he also

feared the persecution that the Japanese would

receive from unforgiving Americans. By interning

all the Japanese people, citizens and non-citizens,

Roosevelt sought to protect first, his country, and

second, the Japanese-Americans from harassment. 



California, among many other states, was leaning

toward civil strife, as Caucasian animosity began to

grow toward the Japanese. West Coast Japanese

Americans were already reeling from the blows of

economic hardship, social ostracism, and the arrest

of family and friends. Many of the Japanese 

licenses to practice law and medicine were

revoked, and even commercial fishermen were

banned from their boats. To prevent the

Japanese from receiving further persecution, the U.S.

set up War Relocation Areas. These relocation

centers served as a a temporary location for the

Japanese, who under Order 9066, "voluntarily"

relocated. Many of the Japanese lived in fear of

what would happen to them if they stayed in their

homes, so the majority of them were compliant with

the military orders placed upon them. 



Executive Order 9066 called for the evacuation of

110,000 Japanese, 70,000 of which were American

citizens. No one knew the extent to which

internment would change the life of the Japanese. Several ancillary decisions had to be made concerning the terms for evacuation: Who should be evacuated? Should ethnic Japanese along the entire West Coast be evacuated or only the people living in selected cities? Should ethnic Japanese be evacuated or only those whom the intelligence agencies considered to be high risk? Should just Japanese men be evacuated? Women and children? Entire families? These are just many of the questions that the Roosevelt administration had to consider before relocating the Japanese (Landmark, 1944). 



Because the Japanese were stigmatized as disloyal, they were ordered out of their homes. They had no understanding of what their future held or what would be expected of them. The Japanese felt betrayed by their country, and suffered feelings of shame and depression. They felt like they were prisoners in their own country, and they were bound to the restrictions placed upon them. Nonetheless, they were compliant as most of them were still in a state of shock due to the recent tragedy at Pearl Harbor. In preparation for internment, between March-June 1942, the Japanese on the West Coast were ordered to liquidate all their goods, sell their businesses, sell their homes, pull their children out of school, and report to civil control stations for processing. Some families had as little as four days to sell everything that they owned. All were faced with the anxiety of what would happen in the upcoming days and weeks. Initially, the U.S. government offered no assistance for relocation and did not offer to protect their property. Later, the government belatedly allowed the Japanese-Americans to store some of their possessions in government warehouses at their own risk. Even so, the U.S. government would not guarantee the security of their goods from being ransacked (Robinson, 2001). 



1944, the United States Supreme Court decided that the government could not continue compounding people in the West without proof of disloyalty. The army repealed the internment of the Japanese Americans on January 1, 1945. The Japanese Americans were permitted to return to the coastal areas of California, Washington, and Oregon. Upon returning home, the internees soon discovered that everything was different. Not only were the conditions different, but in many cases, any stored possessions had been stolen, even the ones placed in government warehouses. Their homes, farms and businesses were now being run by white Americans. The property losses that the Japanese Americans suffered were tremendous. In total, the Japanese lost more than 400 million dollars worth of their possessions, which translates to approximately 5 billion dollars today. 



The U.S. government refused to alleviate the concerns of the Japanese Americans. It failed to aid the Japanese in reestablishing their property and homes; the Japanese were left to fend for themselves. It was not until 1948 that Congress passed the "Evacuee Claims Act" which awarded the Japanese 37 million dollars in reparations. 37 million dollars compensation, did not even begin to compare to the losses that the Japanese had suffered. These citizens did lose their possessions, property, businesses and homes, but they lost more than that--they had lost a sense of their status in American life. Order 9066 caused them to lose a sense of their place in the U.S. This order stripped them of all their rights as American citizens. The Japanese Americans also lost a part of their heritage. Resettling became a difficult task for the Japanese, as Americans were still discriminatory against them based solely on their race (Craughwell, 2008).