Instructions to All Persons of Japanese Ancestry, Western Defense Command Signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, Executive Order 9066 authorized the Secretary of War to prescribe military areas in the United States. Although it did not mention them by name, it allowed the military to declare a West Coast exclusion zone and led to the forced removal of Japanese and Japanese Americans further inland to the internment camps. This is the full text of Gen. John L. DeWitt’s relocation order, issued in his capacity as the head of the Western Defense Command. Western Defense Command and Fourth Army Wartime Civil Control Administration (Zc72 942uo). BRBL.

General John L. DeWitt’s order of forced evacuation from the West Coast