On February 19, 1942, Executive Order 9066 redrew the map of West Coast agriculture

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, empowering the U.S. Army to designate military areas from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” In practice, the order led to the forced removal and incarceration of more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry—roughly two-thirds of them U.S. citizens—from coastal regions of Washington, Oregon, and California, as well as southern Arizona. The measure is rightly remembered as a grave civil liberties violation. It was also a seismic event for American agriculture, instantly dislodging thousands of growers from some of the nation’s most productive fruit and vegetable regions and triggering labor and land changes that echoed for decades.

Before the order: a specialized farming backbone

By the early 1940s, Japanese American farmers were deeply embedded in West Coast food production. In California’s coastal and inland valleys, they helped build high-value “truck farming” sectors—strawberries in the Florin and Watsonville districts, celery on the Oxnard Plain, and a wide range of leafy greens, onions, and specialty vegetables around Los Angeles, the Salinas Valley, and the Santa Clara “Valley of Heart’s Delight.” In the Pacific Northwest, they raised berries, vegetables, and nursery crops around the Puget Sound and the Willamette Valley.

Barred for decades from naturalization and restricted by alien land laws that constrained ownership and long-term leases, first-generation immigrants (Issei) and their U.S.-born children (Nisei) relied on ingenuity to assemble parcels, improve soils, perfect irrigation, and master intensive cultivation. Their know-how filled city produce markets up and down the coast and supported the nation’s growing appetite for fresh fruits and vegetables year-round.

Immediate agricultural shock: land, crops, and expertise lost

Executive Order 9066 turned productive family and tenant farms into assets that had to be liquidated in days or weeks. Families were instructed to bring only what they could carry to assembly centers and later to inland camps. Property—land held under family members’ names, short-term leases, equipment, seed, crates, and even ripening fields—was sold under duress, entrusted to neighbors, or abandoned. Many leases were simply cancelled. Auction prices often fell far below market value, and planting schedules were upended at the very moment wartime demand for food was surging.

The disruptions were visible in the 1942 growing season. With skilled growers suddenly gone, some high-value acres went fallow or shifted to less labor-intensive crops. Packing sheds lost crews, market channels were scrambled, and buyers faced shortages in certain specialty items. Public agencies made scattered attempts to safeguard property or match substitute operators to vacated farms, but implementation was uneven and rarely preserved the delicate combination of land, know-how, equipment, and labor that made intensive truck farming work.

From exclusion to emergency labor programs

Within months, the agricultural labor shortfall that followed the removals collided with mobilization demands and with the migration of rural workers into defense industries. To keep harvests moving, federal and state authorities turned to extraordinary stopgaps:

• Bracero Program (1942–1964): Beginning in 1942, the United States and Mexico negotiated temporary labor agreements that brought Mexican workers—known as braceros—into U.S. fields. The program started modestly to relieve wartime shortages but grew dramatically in subsequent years, reshaping labor markets for sugar beets, cotton, fruits, and vegetables across the West and Midwest.
• U.S. Crop Corps and Women’s Land Army (1943–1945): The War Food Administration organized youth, women, and other civilian volunteers to plant, thin, and harvest crops in peak periods. Schoolchildren, college students, and homemakers filled emergency crews on everything from berry harvests to cannery lines.
• Prisoner-of-war labor (1943–1945): German and Italian POWs were contracted in some regions—especially for labor-intensive crops like sugar beets—under strict wartime rules.

These measures kept much of the nation’s produce flowing, but they were imperfect substitutes for the thousands of experienced Japanese American growers who had matched cultivars to microclimates, built irrigation systems, and organized seasonal work with precision.

Postwar return: rebuilding against headwinds

After World War II, families leaving War Relocation Authority camps confronted a changed countryside. Leases were gone or entangled in legal disputes, equipment had been sold, and credit was scarce. Some growers rebuilt—often starting with strawberries or nursery stock on small rented plots and then scaling back into diversified vegetables or orchards. Others pivoted into packing, distribution, or entirely new careers. The aggregate effect was lasting consolidation, with larger firms and new entrants absorbing acreage once farmed by Japanese American families.

Court rulings after the war weakened and then dismantled state alien land restrictions, and the federal government formally apologized decades later. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 acknowledged the injustice of the wartime incarceration and authorized redress payments to survivors. Yet the agricultural footprint that had existed on the eve of 1942 was forever altered, and irreplaceable local knowledge was lost in the transition.

How February 19 reshaped U.S. food systems

The legacy of February 19, 1942, reaches beyond the West Coast:

• Labor architecture: Emergency programs created during and after 1942—especially formalized agricultural guestworker pipelines—left a durable imprint on how seasonal farm labor is supplied and regulated.
• Crop mix and regional specialization: Short-term shifts toward less labor-intensive plantings in 1942–43 foreshadowed a long-run tilt toward mechanization where feasible, even in fruit and vegetable sectors historically dependent on hand labor.
• Market consolidation: The loss of thousands of small and mid-sized operators accelerated trends toward larger, vertically integrated firms in some crops, altering bargaining power along the supply chain.
• Land access and tenure: The episode underscored how legal status, leasing terms, and discrimination intersect with farm viability—an issue that continues to shape opportunities for beginning, immigrant, and minority farmers nationwide.

Remembering the growers behind the numbers

The agricultural dimension of Executive Order 9066 is ultimately a story of people who coaxed harvests from coastal fog belts and inland heat, who designed efficient irrigation furrows and trellises, who experimented with varieties to suit local markets, and who—overnight—were forced to leave. Many returned to rebuild; many more did not. The produce aisles and farmers markets of today owe a quiet debt to techniques and varieties refined by those prewar growers, from strawberries and celery to cut flowers and leafy greens.

Commemorations each February often focus, appropriately, on civil rights. For agriculture, the date is also a reminder that land access, stable tenure, and fair treatment are not abstract policy ideas; they are the bedrock conditions that determine what ends up on the nation’s tables, who grows it, and which communities share in the prosperity of our food economy.

Context for readers and classrooms

Educators, producers, and consumers looking at this chapter of agricultural history can draw several practical lessons:

• Resilience requires infrastructure: Safeguarding property rights, credit access, and technical assistance helps farmers weather shocks—from wars to droughts and market disruptions.
• Labor policy is food policy: Reliable, lawful, and humane labor systems are essential to sustaining specialty crop sectors that cannot fully mechanize.
• Diversity strengthens supply: A mix of small, mid-size, and larger farms improves regional adaptability and product diversity, especially for perishable produce.

Also on this date in U.S. agriculture

February 19 has anchored other developments that influenced the food system, though none reshaped farm country as profoundly as Executive Order 9066. Among them:

• 1942: In the weeks following the order, West Coast agricultural commissioners and extension agents scrambled to reassign vacated acreage and organize harvest crews—an early signal that food production itself would be tested by home-front policies.
• 2008: During this week in February, the nation grappled with the largest beef recall in U.S. history, sharpening attention on livestock handling rules and inspection protocols—an episode that reinforced how quickly public confidence in the food supply can be shaken and restored by regulatory action.

These moments, together with the events set in motion on February 19, 1942, illustrate how law, labor, and logistics intertwine in American agriculture.