Japanese Internment Camps

By: Abby Birk, Colleen Gates, Tyece Shelton, and Ruby Diffey

President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order on February 19, 1942 declaring the U.S. War Department had the power to declare any land in the United States a military zone. This also allowed the War Department to remove any people from this land that they felt threatened the well being of the U.S. President Roosevelt felt threatened by the recent attack by the Japanese. Some of the Japanese Americans were held temporarily in stables at race tracks while the internment camps were being built. Japanese Americans in the western United States were then evacuated and relocated to military style barracks until 1945 when the government began releasing the Japanese Americans.