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| Establishing the War Relocation Authority in the Executive Office of the President and Defining Its Functions and Duties | |
 | |
| Type | Executive order |
|---|---|
| Number | 9102 |
| President | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Signed | March 18, 1942 (1942-03-18) |
| Summary | |
| Establishes theWar Relocation Authority | |
Executive Order 9102 is aUnited States presidentialexecutive order creating theWar Relocation Authority (WRA), the US civilian agency responsible for the forced relocation andinternment of Japanese-Americans duringWorld War II. The executive order was signed by PresidentFranklin Roosevelt on March 18, 1942, and it officially expired on June 30, 1946. The Director reported directly to the president of the United States. Like hisExecutive Order 9066, Roosevelt did not specifically mention Japanese Americans anywhere in the text, referring only to "persons whose removal is necessary". In contrast, the numerous exclusion orders signed by GeneralJohn L. DeWitt specifically stated that those to be removed were "persons of Japanese ancestry".[1]
Milton S. Eisenhower, previously an official of theUnited States Department of Agriculture, was chosen to head the WRA.[2] Eisenhower stepped down as the Director of the WRA in June 1942 to take a position asElmer Davis's deputy at theOffice of War Information,[3]: 183 andDillon S. Myer was appointed in his place. Myer asked Eisenhower if he should accept, and according to Myer, Eisenhower advised him "Dillon, if you can sleep and still carry on the job my answer would be yes. I can’t sleep and do this job. I had to get out of it."[3]: 184 [4]
When Milton said that he couldn’t sleep he meant literally that because he was very disturbed about the whole WRA concept. He found the situation that he was facing most difficult, with the antagonisms on the part of much of the American public against the Japanese because we were at war with Japan and many people did not differentiate between the Japanese Americans and the Japanese with whom we were at war. At the same time the problems of moving people from assembly centers on the West Coast into temporary relocation centers I’m sure got on his nerves very badly, and he was practically ill.
— Dillon S. Myer, 1970 interview with Helen Pryor[3]: 184
By the time Myer was appointed Director of the WRA on June 17, 1942, plans for the complete relocation of Japanese-Americans had already been announced.[3]: 187 Myer later recalled that he soon discovered after his appointment that "most of the reasons [for the evacuation andGeneral DeWitt's actions] were phony and many of the rumors which were used to justify the evacuation which came out of the attack on Hawaii were proven to be completely untrue".[3]: 185 Myer also stated that influential figures were backing the evacuation, including "Earl Warren, [who] was Attorney General of California but looking forward to being candidate for governor in the fall of 1942 which he was and he favored the evacuation" and "[Col.Karl Bendetsen] was a prime mover in recommending to General DeWitt that he carry out the evacuation. As a matter of fact after the evacuation order was issued here on the mainland he tried for weeks to get a large group of people evacuated from Hawaii with the idea I am sure of justifying their West Coast evacuation."[3]: 186
Within nine months, the WRA had opened ten facilities in seven states, and transported over 100,000 people from the WLCA facilities of whom 64 percent wereAmerican citizens.[citation needed] Over the course of the next 19 months, approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans were removed from the Pacific coast and placed in internment camps.[5]
