Today in History, February 19th
On February 19, 1942, FDR signed Executive Order 9066, leading to Japanese American incarceration. Plus Iwo Jima and Edison's phonograph patent.
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February 19 is best known for 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the forced removal and incarceration of about 122,000 people of Japanese descent. The date also saw U.S. Marines land on Iwo Jima in 1945 and Thomas Edison receive his patent for the phonograph in 1878.
The big story: Roosevelt Signs Executive Order 9066 (1942)
Ten weeks after Pearl Harbor, fear on the West Coast had turned into policy. On February 19, 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. It never mentioned Japanese Americans by name. Instead, it let the War Department draw military zones and bar anyone it chose from them. In practice, the curfews and orders that followed fell only on people of Japanese ancestry. Forced removals began in late March. People were moved first to temporary assembly centers and then to camps the government called relocation centers. About 122,000 people were confined, and nearly 70,000 of them were U.S. citizens. Some challenged the orders in court, and the Supreme Court upheld the government. The official reckoning took decades. In 1988 Congress passed a law that apologized for the incarceration and paid $20,000 to each person who had been held.
More events on February 19
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1807 | Former Vice President Aaron Burr was arrested in Alabama on charges of plotting to carve out a new nation in the West. A court later acquitted him of treason. |
| 1847 | The first rescue party reached the starving, snowbound Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada. |
| 1878 | Thomas Edison received U.S. Patent No. 200,521 for the phonograph, which recorded sound on tin foil wrapped around a cylinder. |
| 1945 | U.S. Marines landed on Iwo Jima. More than 550 of them were killed on the first day of a battle that lasted weeks. |
| 1963 | Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was published. It is often credited with starting the second wave of American feminism. |
| 1992 | At 24, John Singleton became the youngest person and the first Black director nominated for the Academy Award for best director, for Boyz n the Hood. |
| 1997 | Deng Xiaoping, the leader who opened China’s economy to market reforms, died in Beijing. |
| 2008 | Fidel Castro announced in a published letter that he was resigning as Cuba’s president after nearly 50 years in power. |
Born on February 19
- 1473: Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomer who put the Sun, not Earth, at the center of the planets.
- 1917: Carson McCullers, Georgia-born novelist of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
- 1940: Smokey Robinson, Motown singer, songwriter and leader of the Miracles.
- 1952: Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club.
Sources
- Executive Order 9066: Resulting in Japanese-American Incarceration (1942), National Archives
- This Day in History: February 19, History.com
- Marines invade Iwo Jima, History.com
- Thomas Alva Edison patents the phonograph, History.com
- Deng Xiaoping, Britannica
- Era Coming to an End in Cuba, NPR
- Nicolaus Copernicus, Britannica
- Carson McCullers, Britannica
- Smokey Robinson, Biography.com
- Amy Tan, Britannica
