Magic (cryptography) - Executive Order 9066

Executive Order 9066

One aspect of Magic remains controversial to this day — the amount of involvement the intercepts played in the issuing of United States Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, and subsequent Executive Order 9102 on March 18, which lead to the creation of the Wartime Relocation Authority (WRA). This is often confused with the issue of internment, which was actually handled by the Justice Department's Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and affected all citizens of countries at war with the United States in any location.

Internment of 'enemy aliens' by the U.S. government began two months prior to Executive Order 9066 on December 8, 1941, immediately after the attack at Pearl Harbor and included Germans, Italians, and Hungarians, not just the Japanese living on the U.S. West Coast.

David Lowman in his book MAGIC: the Untold Story reports that the primary justification for the Japanese-American relocations and internments was to protect against espionage and sabotage, because Magic could not be mentioned during the war. Those defending the relocation and evacuation programs, most notably author Michelle Malkin, point to Magic intercepts as being justification for EO 9066. She argues that some Magic intercepts discuss the development of a spy ring among Japanese Americans by the Japanese consulates, which raised a suspicion that some of the Japanese American community was an espionage risk. However, while Malkin offers no examples of Japanese Americans actually acting as spies, it was unnecessary since the simple possibility that one could exist is enough probable cause.

The following is the actual text of several Magic intercepts translated into English before and during the war and declassified and made public in 1978 by the U.S. government (The Magic Background of Pearl Harbor:, Government Printing Office, 8 volumes)