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The Japanese American internment refers to the forced relocation and confinement, by the United States federal government, of approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry residing on the West Coast of the United States during World War II. Authorized by Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt on 19 February 1942, the policy applied to both Japanese immigrants (issei) and their American-born children (nisei), the majority of whom were United States citizens. Detainees were held in a system of facilities administered chiefly by the War Relocation Authority, commonly called “relocation centers” or “internment camps,” located in interior states such as California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Arkansas. The characterization of these facilities and the broader policy-whether as “internment,” “incarceration,” or “concentration camps”-is itself contested; see japanese-american-internment-terminology-debate.

Historians and legal scholars broadly agree on the basic chronology and scale of the policy: its origin in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, its implementation through Executive Order 9066 and subsequent military proclamations, and its formal end following the Supreme Court's decision in Ex parte Endo and the rescission of exclusion orders in December 1944, with the last camp closing in 1946. Detailed historical background, including the role of military and political officials and the camp conditions, is addressed at Japanese American Internment - History.

Substantial disagreement remains over how to characterize the motivations behind the policy and its legal and moral status. Some accounts emphasize military necessity and wartime anxiety following Pearl Harbor; others point to longstanding anti-Asian sentiment on the West Coast and economic competition as primary drivers. The constitutionality of the program, upheld by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States (1944), remains a subject of ongoing legal and scholarly discussion notwithstanding the Court's later repudiation of that holding in dicta in Trump v. Hawaii (2018). The episode is frequently discussed in connection with broader assessments of civil liberties policy during the Roosevelt administration; see Franklin Roosevelt - Civil Liberties Viewpoint.

There is broad consensus among historians and legal scholars that the internment was not justified by demonstrated military necessity, a conclusion supported by the findings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (1980-1983) and reflected in the formal congressional apology and reparations provided under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. This consensus extends to the empirical record of espionage and sabotage by Japanese Americans, which government and independent investigations found to be negligible. The consensus does not extend to all normative or interpretive questions surrounding the policy, including how it should be weighed against other wartime measures or characterized in relation to international legal definitions. See japanese-american-internment-military-necessity-consensus.

• Necessity viewpoint - holds that the relocation, while a severe hardship, was a reasonable precaution given wartime fears of invasion, sabotage, and divided loyalty, and should be judged primarily by the information and pressures available to decision-makers in early 1942. See japanese-american-internment-necessity-viewpoint.
• Civil liberties violation viewpoint - holds that the internment constituted a grave violation of constitutional rights, particularly due process and equal protection, carried out against citizens without individualized suspicion or trial, and represents one of the principal failures of civil liberties protection in modern U.S. history. See japanese-american-internment-civil-liberties-viewpoint.
• Racial animus viewpoint - holds that the policy was driven primarily by pre-existing anti-Japanese racism and economic competition among West Coast interests rather than genuine security concerns, citing contemporaneous statements by military and political figures. See japanese-american-internment-racial-animus-viewpoint.
• Concentration camp framing viewpoint - holds that the term “internment” understates the coercive character of the policy and that “concentration camp,” a term used by Roosevelt and other contemporaneous officials, is the more historically accurate description. See japanese-american-internment-concentration-camp-framing-viewpoint.
• Limited/qualified necessity viewpoint - holds an intermediate position: that some precautionary measures against a small population were defensible in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, but that the scale, duration, and mass character of the actual policy exceeded any defensible security rationale. See japanese-american-internment-qualified-necessity-viewpoint.

• The continuing legal status of Korematsu v. United States and its relationship to subsequent national-security detention and exclusion policies remains disputed among legal scholars. See japanese-american-internment-korematsu-legacy-controversy.
• The role of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black and other justices in upholding the program, and later criticism of their reasoning, is a documented point of contention in legal historiography. See japanese-american-internment-judicial-legacy-controversy.
• Disputes over redress and the adequacy of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988's reparations, including debate among internees and their descendants over whether compensation and apology were sufficient, constitute a documented controversy. See japanese-american-internment-redress-adequacy-controversy.

• History: Japanese American Internment - History
• Debate: japanese-american-internment-terminology-debate
• Viewpoint Debate: japanese-american-internment-necessity-viewpoint-debate
• Consensus: japanese-american-internment-military-necessity-consensus
• Controversy: japanese-american-internment-korematsu-legacy-controversy
• Related Main Topic: Executive Order 9066
• Related Main Topic: korematsu-v-united-states
• Related Main Topic: civil-liberties-act-of-1988
• Related Viewpoint: Franklin Roosevelt - Civil Liberties Viewpoint

1. Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982).
2. Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
3. Roger Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II, rev. ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004).
4. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944).
5. Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U.S. 667 (2018).
6. Civil Liberties Act of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-383, 102 Stat. 903.
7. Eric L. Muller, American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).