Internment was intended to mitigate a security risk which Japanese Americans were believed to pose. The scale of the incarceration in proportion to the size of the Japanese American population far surpassed similar measures undertaken against German and Italian Americans who numbered in the millions and of whom some thousands were interned, most of these non-citizens. Following the executive order, the entire West Coast was designated a military exclusion area, and all Japanese Americans living there were taken to assembly centers before being sent to concentration camps in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arkansas. Similar actions were taken against individuals of Japanese descent in Canada. Internees were prohibited from taking more than they could carry into the camps, and many were forced to sell some or all of their property, including their homes and businesses. At the camps, which were surrounded by barbed wire fences and patrolled by armed guards, internees often lived in overcrowded barracks with minimal furnishing.
Internment was intended to mitigate a security risk which Japanese Americans were believed to pose. The scale of the incarceration in proportion to the size of the Japanese ,American population far surpassed similar measures undertaken against German and Italian Americans who numbered in the millions and of whom some thousands were interned, most of these non-citizens. Following the executive order, the entire West Coast was designated a military exclusion area and all Japanese Americans living there were taken to assembly centers before being sent to concentration camps in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arkansas. Similar actions were taken against individuals of Japanese descent in Canada. Internees were prohibited from taking more than they could carry into the camps, and many were forced to sell some or all of their property, including their homes and businesses. At the camps, which were surrounded by barbed wire fences and patrolled by armed guards, internees often lived in overcrowded barracks with minimal furnishing.