It should be noted . . . that all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect . . . [and] courts must subject them to the most rigid scrutiny . . . Exclusion of those of Japanese origin was deemed necessary because of the presence of an unascertained number of disloyal members of the group, most of whom we have no doubt were loyal to this country. It was because we could not reject the finding of the military authorities that it was impossible to bring about an immediate segregation of the disloyal from the loyal that we sustained the validity of the curfew order as applying to the whole group.Lewis, L.N. How to Get a Green Card. Berkeley: Nolo Press. Executive Order 9066 set in motion a series of events. Lieutenant General DeWitt was named the military commander of the Western Defense Command and placed in charge of executing Executive Order 9066, and he issued a Public Proclamation naming the western halves of California, Oregon, and Washington, and the southern portion of Arizona as military areas from which certain persons or classes of persons might be excluded. President Roosevelt then signed Executive Order 9102, which established the War Relocation Authority to help those people evacuated under Executive Order 9066, meaning to assure an orderly evacuation of designated persons from the restricted military areas. The new agency was given wide discretion in deciding the fate of the Japanese Americans forced to leave their homes, and Congress passed Public Law 77-503 making it a crime to violate a military order: Houston, J.W. and J.D. Houston. Farewell to Manzanar. New York: Bantam, 1973. It was soon apparent that the classification of members of the Japanese minority on the basis of citizenship made no difference, and restrictions placed in Issei were applied to the Nisei as well. Roads were watched, and many local officials arrested and detained Japanese no matter what their citizen |
