On this day in 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War to classify certain areas "military zones", leading to the internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps. By declaring wide swaths of domestic territory as "military zones", the American government provided legal justification for forcibly removing people deemed a threat from them.

Using a broad interpretation of Executive Order 9066, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt issued orders declaring areas of the western United States as zones of exclusion under the Executive Order. As a result, approximately 112,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry were evicted from the West Coast of the United States and held in American concentration camps and other "confinement sites" across the country.

Americans of Italian and German ancestry were also targeted by these restrictions, including internment. 11,000 people of German ancestry were interned, as were 3,000 people of Italian ancestry, along with some Jewish refugees.

It wasn't until 1990 that surviving internees began to receive individual redress payments and a letter of apology.