Executive Order 9066: Internment of Japanese Americans

Audience

Executive Order 9066 is written for a limited audience. It is directed to the secretary of war—and through him—to military commanders across the country and, in particular, to DeWitt, commanding general of the Western Defense Command and Fourth Army on the West Coast, who will later oversee the removal of the Japanese population. A secondary audience consists of the congressional delegations, state governments, and newspaper editors in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, and elsewhere, who had been clamoring for the federal government to do something about the “Japanese problem.” Little suggests that the Japanese themselves, the target of the executive order, are part of the intended audience because they are not mentioned in the document.

Like all presidential proclamations and executive orders since 1936, Executive Order 9066 was first published in the Federal Register, which prints all documents from the executive branch that have legal ramifications—for example, the rules and regulations put forward by its agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service—and provides a daily record of the federal government's business.