Effects of Pearl Harbor on Japanese Internment

On December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, located on the west side of Honolulu in Hawaii. The Americans were not prepared for this surprise attack. Out of the U.S. fleet, nine ships were sunk and twenty-one were damaged. This attack not only launched the United States into World War II, but it affected thousands of Japanese Americans who were largely viewed as disloyal to the American nation.


The U.S. government established internment camps throughout the western United States. Because of Executive Order 9066 issued by President Roosevelt, those Japanese Americans who lived in the western U.S. were forced to leave their homes, their jobs, and their entire livelihood to then be relocated to exclusion zones across the United States.