January 1, 1944: The number of evacuees at relocation centers is about 93,000.

February

February 16, 1944: President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues Executive Order 9423, transferring the WRA from the Office for Emergency Management to the Department of the Interior. This transfer was in response to disturbances on November 1 through 4 at the Tule Lake segregation center. President Roosevelt felt that WRA’s placement in a Cabinet level department would strengthen its administration and enable it to better present itself to Congress and the public.

June

June 30, 1944:The first of the ten relocation centers is closed.

July

July 1, 1944: President Roosevelt signs Public Law 78-405, called the Denaturalization Act of 1944, which creates a procedure whereby American citizens may lose their citizenship in time or war by renouncing it in writing. In late 1944 and early 1945, about 5,500 evacuees at the Tule Lake segregation center made application to renounce their American citizenship under the provisions of Public Law 78-405.

November

November 21, 1944: President Roosevelt says at a press conference that “a good deal of progress has been made in scattering [evacuees] through the country, and that is going on every day…. The example I always cite…is the…county…in [which] probably half a dozen or a dozen families could be scattered around on the farms and worked into the community.”

December

December 18, 1944:The director of the WRA announces that all relocation centers will be closed by the end of 1945, and that the WRA’s operations will be ended by June 30, 1946.

December 18, 1944: The United States Supreme Court (Korematsu vs. United States) upholds the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of people from certain areas by the Secretary of War or military commanders designated by him. The court finds the Executive Order and the actions it authorizes to be a constitutional exercise of the President’s war powers. In a related decision (Ex Parte Endo), issued on the same day, the court rules that Executive Orders 9066 and 9102 cannot be construed to give the WRA “authority to subject citizens who are concededly loyal” to detention in a relocation center.