APM Reports "Order 9066: Chapter Two"

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, just months after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Some 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were forced from their homes on the West Coast and sent to one of ten "relocation" camps, where they were imprisoned behind barbed wire for the length of the war. Two-thirds of them were American citizens.

This episode tells the story behind FDR's decision to sign Order 9066, and Japanese Americans recall the painful process of leaving their lives and belongings — and even their family pets — behind.

Order 9066 is produced as a collaboration with the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Airs Saturday, August 11 at 10pm on WNYC AM 820 and NJPR

Airs Sunday, August 12 at 11am on WNYC AM 820 and NJPR