"A Jap is a Jap."
Franklin Roosevelt didn't say that — West Coast Defense commander General John Dewitt did. But Roosevelt acted on it. On Feb. 19, 1942, two months after Pearl Harbor, the president signed into law Executive Order 9066, under which some 112,000 West Coast residents of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes and dispatched to "relocation centers" in deserts and swamplands. There, most languished until war's end. Clear evidence of their loyalty to their adopted country was disregarded. Fear was in the air, and every "Jap" was seen as a potential spy or saboteur.
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