Removal

Just two and a half months after Pearl Harbor, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order #9066 giving the U.S. military the authority to declare exclusion zones where people of Japanese ancestry could be forcibly removed in the name of “military necessity.” In just a few weeks, two posters appeared in neighborhoods primarily made up of people of Japanese ancestry. One was an exclusion order for the specific area that gave date and location of their removal. The other was entitled “Instructions to all Persons of Japanese Ancestry” that gave the soon to be incarcerated people instructions on how to prepare for their removal, some general instructions on what to bring, and the now infamous directive, “The size and number of packages is limited to that which can be carried by the individual….”

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Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration