Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by the United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones, clearing the way for the deportation of Japanese Americans, Italian Americans, and German Americans to internment camps. The executive order was spurred by a combination of war hysteria and reactions to Pearl Harbor and the Niihau Incident.