In this image Japanese American residents of Seattle wait to be processed at the civil control station at 2100 Second Avenue in preparation for exclusion. The envelope they are carrying contains the different blanks used by all of the various government agencies working on the registration. After Civilian Exclusion Order No. 17 was posted Japanese Americans were given one week to register and to prepare for departure. Those that failed to comply by remaining in the area after the appointed time would be subject to criminal penalties.

On February 19, 1942, shortly after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and United States entry into WWII, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, calling for the exclusion of all civilians of Japanese descent from "designated military areas." More than 9,000 Japanese and Japanese American people living in the Pacific Northwest were forced into incarceration camps in Idaho and California until 1945.

Caption information source: http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Civilian_exclusion_orders