Video: 'Japanese Internment during WW II'

(Monday, March 23, 1942, during the Internment of Japanese Americans) — The first Japanese-Americans evacuated by the U.S. Army during World War II arrived today at the internment camp in Manzanar, California; men and women who had volunteered to help build the camp.

Initially, it was a temporary “reception center,” known as the Owens Valley Reception Center. At that time, it was operated by the U.S. Army’s Wartime Civilian Control Administration (WCCA).

After the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government swiftly moved to begin solving the “Japanese Problem” on the West Coast of the United States.

In the evening hours of that same day, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested selected “enemy” aliens, including more than 5,500 Issei men. Many citizens in California were alarmed about potential activities by people of Japanese descent.

Video: 'The World At War Episode 7 HD - On Our Way: U.S.A. (1939–1942)' (internment of Japanese Americans at 22:18)

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War to designate military commanders to prescribe military areas and to exclude “any or all persons” from such areas.

The order also authorized the construction of what was later called “relocation centers” by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), to house those who were to be excluded. This order resulted in the forced relocation of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were native-born American citizens; the rest had been prevented from becoming citizens by federal law.

Over 110,000 were incarcerated in the ten concentration camps located far inland and away from the coast. Manzanar was the first of the ten concentration camps to be established in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming.