NATIONAL SECURITY, NATIONAL ORIGIN, AND THE CONSTITUTION: 75 YEARS AFTER E09066.

AuthorStone, Geoffrey R.
PositionA - Symposium on the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Year of Executive Order 9066

I am honored to have the opportunity to address this issue, not only because of its importance in American history, but also because of the lessons we must learn from our own experience. It is essential for us to remember, perhaps especially at the present moment, what we as a nation are capable of. We must never forget that we are capable of doing things we might under other circumstances never imagine. We must always be vigilant and we must always remember that "it" can happen here.

As history teaches, war fever often translates into xenophobia. To some extent this is understandable, for in wartime individuals with a connection to an enemy nation are, in fact, more likely to pose risks of espionage, sabotage and subversion. But how a nation addresses these concerns speaks volumes about its values, its sense of fairness, and its willingness to judge individuals as individuals.

I

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, killed more than 2,000 Americans and destroyed much of the Pacific fleet. (1) Within the next few days, the United States declared war against Japan, Germany, and Italy. (2) Two months later, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the army "to designate the military areas from which any or all persons may be excluded." (3) Although the words "Japanese" or "Japanese American" never appeared in the order, it was understood to apply only to persons of Japanese ancestry. (4)

Over the next eight months, almost 120,000 individuals of Japanese descent were ordered to leave their homes in California, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona. (5) Two-thirds of these individuals were American citizens, representing almost 90 percent of all Japanese Americans. (6) No charges were brought against these individuals. There were no hearings. They did not know where they were going, how long they would be detained, what conditions they would face, or what fate would await them. They were ordered to bring only what they could carry, and most families lost everything. (7)

On the orders of military police, these men, women, and children were assigned to temporary detention camps, which had been set up in converted racetracks and fairgrounds. (8) Many families lived in crowded horse stalls, often in unsanitary conditions. (9) Barbed wire fences and armed guard towers surrounded the compounds. (10)

From there, the internees were transported to one of ten permanent internment camps, which were located in isolated areas in windswept deserts or vast swamplands. (11) Men, women, and children were confined in overcrowded rooms with no furniture other than cots. They once again found themselves surrounded by barbed wire and military police, and there they remained for three years. (12)

All of this was done even though there was not a single documented act of espionage, sabotage, or treasonable activity by any American of Japanese descent. (13)

Why did this happen? Certainly, the days following Pearl Harbor were dark days for the American spirit. Fear of possible Japanese sabotage and espionage was rampant, and an outraged public felt an understandable desire to lash out at those who had attacked the nation. (14) But this act was also very much an extension of more than a century of racial prejudice against what was termed the "yellow peril." (15) Laws passed in the early 1900s denied immigrants from Japan the right to become naturalized American citizens, to own land, and to marry outside of their race. (16) In 1924, immigration from Japan was halted altogether. (17)

Nonetheless, in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, there was no clamor for the mass internment of Japanese aliens or Japanese Americans. Attorney General Francis Biddle assured the nation that there would be "no indiscriminate, large-scale raids" on American citizens. (18) The military governor of Hawaii assured Japanese Americans that "there is no intention or desire on the part of federal authorities to operate mass concentration camps." (19)

Eleanor Roosevelt announced that "no law-abiding" Americans "of any nationality would be discriminated against by the government" (20) and Judge Jerome Frank--a distinguished federal judge and close friend of President Franklin Roosevelt--observed that "[i]f ever any Americans go to a concentration camp, American democracy will go with them." (21) Moreover, on December 10, three days after Pearl Harbor, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover reported that almost all the persons of foreign ancestry that the FBI had identified as possible threats to the national security had already been taken into custody. (22)

In the weeks that followed, however, a demand for the removal of all persons of Japanese ancestry reached a crescendo along the West Coast. (23) The motivations for this outburst of anxiety were many and complex. Certainly, it was fed by fears of a Japanese invasion. (24) By mid-January, California was awash in unfounded rumors of Japanese sabotage and espionage. General John DeWitt, the top army commander on the West Coast, was determined not to be caught up short as his counterpart had been in Hawaii. Several days after Pearl Harbor, DeWitt reported as fact rumors that a squadron of enemy airplanes had passed over California, that there was a planned uprising of 20,0000 Japanese Americans in San Francisco, and that Japanese Americans were aiding submarines by signaling them from the shore. (25) The FBI and other government agencies promptly debunked all of those rumors as false. (26)

On January 2, the Joint Immigration Committee of the California legislature issued a manifesto falsely charging that American citizens of Japanese descent could "be called to bear arms for their Emperor" and that Japanese-language schools were teaching students that "every Japanese, wherever born or residing," owed primary allegiance to "his Emperor and to Japan." (27)

Two days later, the newspaper columnist Damon Runyon erroneously reported that a radio transmitter had been discovered in a rooming house that catered to Japanese residents. Who could "doubt," he asked, "the continued existence of enemy agents among the Japanese population?" (28)

On January 14, Congressman Leland Ford insisted that the United States place "all Japanese, whether citizens or not," in "inland concentration camps," and the American Legion demanded the internment of all 93,000 individuals of Japanese extraction then living in California. (29)

Such demands were further ignited by the January 25 report of the Commission on Pearl Harbor, which was chaired by Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts. (30) The report, which was hastily researched and written, erroneously asserted that persons of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii had facilitated Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. (31) A few days later, a journalist, Henry McLemore, wrote a column in the San Francisco Examiner calling for "the immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast." (32) He added, "Personally, I hate the Japanese. And that goes for all of them." (33)

On February 4, California Governor Culbert Olson declared in a radio address that it was "much easier" to determine the loyalty of Italian and German aliens than of Japanese Americans. (34) "All Japanese people," he added, "will recognize this fact." (35)

In a similar vein, California's attorney general and future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, argued that whereas it was relatively easy to find out which German or Italian Americans were loyal, it was simply too difficult to determine which Americans of Japanese ancestry were loyal and which were not. (36) In Warren's words, when dealing with the Caucasian race, there were methods to test their loyalty, but the Japanese were different, because "if the Japs are free, no one will be able to tell a saboteur from any other Jap." (37)

General DeWitt initially resisted demands for "wholesale internment," insisting that "we can weed [out] the disloyal [from] the loyal and lock them up, if necessary." (38) In early January, he condemned the idea of mass internment as "damned nonsense," but as political pressure mounted, DeWitt changed his tune. (39) In late January he stated, "[t]he Japanese race is an enemy race.... [and] it makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Japanese. This was not true," he emphasized, "of Germans and Italians. To the contrary," he said, "[w]e needn't worry about the Italians [and the Germans.] But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map." After all, he added, "a Jap's a Jap." (40)

Similar sentiments and words were expressed throughout the West Coast. But throughout this period, Attorney General Francis Biddle strongly opposed internment as "ill-advised, unnecessary, and unnecessarily cruel." (41) In late January, the California congressional delegation attempted to pressure Biddle to support internment. Biddle replied that he knew of no way in which "Japanese born in this country could [constitutionally] be interned." (42)

In the first two weeks of February, Biddle...

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