Executive Order 9066 was a presidential executive order. It was signed and issued during World War II by the President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones. The order cleared the way for the deportation of Japanese Americans to internment camps. As a result, tens of thousands of Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals were interned during the war. The same order was also applied to numbers of American residents of Italian or German descent.