defending and protecting the West Coast. He became one of the biggest supporters of evacuating the Japanese. The FBI began investigating and arresting people along the coast who were suspected of spying for enemy countries. Not only Japanese Americans were suspected. Italians and Germans were also investigated and imprisoned (Alonso). This is one fact that shows that racism was not the reason the Japanese were evacuated. Japan was the country that attacked Pearl Harbor, not Italy or Germany. DeWitt was hearing false reports of acts of disloyalty to the U.S. and sabotage on the part of Japanese Americans including unusual radio activity caused by contacting Japanese vessels, farmers burning their fields in the shapes of markers to aid Japanese pilots, and fisherman monitoring and relaying to Japan the activity of the U.S. navy (Daniels, 29). Executive Order 9066, signed by President Roosevelt, gave the military permission to label areas "military areas"and to keep out people who were seen as threats (Daniels, Appendix). DeWitt named the west coast a military area in Proclamation 1 in March 1942. This gave him the right to remove all those who threatened the safety of the U.S. from the area. Because even 100 Japanese-Americans who were still loyal to Japan could compromise the safety of the U.S., DeWitt decided that all people of Japanese ancestry had to be evacuated and placed in temporary relocation camps. He felt, as did many others, that there was not enough time to investigate each individual person. To protect the country, DeWitt made the tough decision to take away the freedom of 120, 000 people. This was entirely legal, because in the Constitution the War Power Clause gives congress the right to make any laws needed to win a war. The evacuation and internment of the Japanese was seen as necessary because they were a potential threat to the country and the war effort. The actions may have been legal, but that does not mean that th...
