Seen as necessary security measures, wartime relocations suspended the rights of the affected individual. For some, it would be years before they returned to their homes and businesses.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, relocating 117,000 Japanese Americans
Japanese Americans were targeted during World War II and detained at internment camps, including the Colorado River Relocation Center in Poston, Arizona. Learning that interned Japanese American men were required to register for selective service, George Fujii posted handbills around the camp discouraging draft-age men from cooperating. He was tried for sedition.
After the Japanese bombing at Dutch Harbor and Japanese occupation of Attu and Kiska Islands (Aleutian Islands) in June 1942, 881 Aleut Americans were relocated from the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands to 4 camps in southeast Alaska. On their return in 1944 and 1945, some Aleuts found their villages leveled, while others found their homes and property had been vandalized, looted, or destroyed by American troops.
While their men were forced to return to the Pribilof Islands to harvest seals for the Government, the Aleut women remained at the Funter Bay Evacuation Camp. They petitioned for better conditions, which were so poor that disease and other causes resulted in a 10-percent death rate.