What Bowers is talking about is Executive Order 9066 , which was signed by President Roosevelt in 1941, two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II. The order forced over 100,000 American citizens of Japanese descent into internment camps, where they remained for the next few years. Internees were forced to give up businesses, houses, schooling, jobs, and the majority of their worldly possessions. The relocation, known to history as the Japanese internment , was based on racist assumptions that Japanese-Americans were a threat to the security of the United States as it entered a state of war with Japan. Today, the internment is understood to be an enormous violation of civil rights.The comparison is especially appalling since so many of the Syrian refugees are suffering in camps at this very moment. The Guardian has reported on dehumanizing conditions in camps and the plight of refugees has repeatedly been compared to that of Jewish refugees in WWII.