1944 – The Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision in Korematsu v. United States supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 which cleared the way for the incarceration of nearly all 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, born and raised in the United States. Originating from a proclamation of war that was signed on the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, December 7, 1941, and given the rising anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States, Executive Order 9066 was later enacted on February 19, 1942 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to strictly regulate the actions of Japanese Americans in the United States. At this point, Japanese Americans were barred from attaining American citizenship, despite having lived in the United States for generations. This proclamation would eventually lead to strict travel restrictions in the form of curfews for all people of Japanese ancestry, regardless of citizenship status, something which uniquely applied to Japanese Americans. The Order was consistent with Roosevelt's long-time racial views toward Japanese Americans. During the 1920s, for example, he had written articles in the Macon Telegraph opposing white-Japanese intermarriage for fostering "the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood" and praising California's ban on land ownership by the first-generation Japanese. In 1936, while president he privately wrote that, in regard to contacts between Japanese sailors and the local Japanese American population in the event of war, "every Japanese citizen or non-citizen on the Island of Oahu who meets these Japanese ships or has any connection with their officers or men should be secretly but definitely identified and his or her name placed on a special list of those who would be the first to be placed in a concentration camp." In addition, during the crucial period after Pearl Harbor the president had failed to speak out for the rights of Japanese Americans despite the urgings of advisors such as John Franklin Carter. During the same period, Roosevelt rejected the recommendations of Attorney General Francis Biddle and other top advisors, who opposed the incarceration of Japanese Americans.
