Internment of Japanese Americans

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Lord Gort
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Internment of Japanese Americans

#1

Post by Lord Gort » 30 Nov 2004, 03:49

What exactly happedn to Japanese Americas, and why did they not recieve the protection of the Constitution?


regards,

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waldorf
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#2

Post by waldorf » 03 Dec 2004, 00:27

Lord Gort,

Tragically this was a mixture of paranoia and racism which placed Japanese Americans in prison-like conditions. Many of these camps they were placed in were worse than regular prisons of the times. Here is a great web site dealing with all of your questions: http://www.geocities.com

The following selections deal with the issues over constitutional rights and how these rights were flagrantly violated for Japanese Americans.
...Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command, entrusted by Roosevelt with the defense of the Pacific Coast. This elderly bureaucrat had more experience in supply than in combat and drew little respect from other army brass. He was cautious, indecisive, ...and panic stricken lest he suffer a fate similar to his Hawaiian counterpart, Lieutenant General Walter C. Short. Yet in the month after Pearl Harbor, DeWitt appeared content to leave the problem of enemy aliens to the Justice Department.
...As late as February 3, Stimson observed that "we cannot discriminate among our citizens on the ground of racial origin." These views soon became casualties in the battle for control of the issue between the War and Justice departments. In this contest DeWitt became an important pawn, a spokesman for Major Karl R. Bendetsen, chief of the Aliens Division, Provost Marshal General's Office, and the latter's superior, Allen Gullion,who strongly desired not only removal of the Japanese from the West Coast but also sought to wrest control of enemy aliens from Attorney General Francis Biddle.
...Bendetson, who with Gullion exerted strong pressure on McCloy and Stimson, felt certain that a Japanese invasion was possible... Stimson himself needed little prodding. Doubting the capacities and patriotism of brown, yellow, and black Americans, he noted in his diary on February 10 that "an invisible deadline was approaching" and the "racial characteristics" of the Nisei predisposed them to potential disloyal behavior.
Influenced by Bendetsen and Gullion, DeWitt reacted similarly. "In the war in which we are now engaged," he wrote Stimson on February 14, "racial affinities are not severed by migration. The Japanese race is an enemy race, and while many second- and third-generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become `Americanized,' the racial strains are undiluted.... It therefore follows that along the vital Pacific Coast over 112,000 potential enemies of Japanese extraction are at large today." "A Jap's a Jap," he proclaimed later, "and that's all there is to it."1

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Karl Robin Bendetsen, Colonel
WRA National Director Dillon Myer:

after the evacuation order was issued here on the mainland, he [Bendetsen] tried for weeks to get a large group of people evacuated from Hawaii with the idea, I am sure, of justifying their West Coast evacuation.2
Bendetsen and Braun drafting comments for DeWitt regarding whether efforts to determine loyalty would expose the War Department to criticism, January 22, 1943:
Braun: You had them under control [in the assembly centers] but you had not yet moved them inland -- you had not yet spent any 80 million dollars -- you had accomplished the main thing as to time and space. And at that point, if you could determine loyalty, it should then have been done.
Bendetsen: And that will have to be answered.
Braun: It will have to be answered.
Bendetsen: ...the answer may be that you could have, but that's not such a hot public relations answer.
Braun: I've just been talking that over... and I said "If you fellows were to say to me tomorrow, -- that is the big rub, what were we going to do about it? -- because we're going thru with this anyway," the best thing I had thought of up to this moment was for us to be completely honest and say "well maybe we could, though we didn't think so at the time."
Bendetsen: Right. We still don't think so [at the Western Defense Command].
Braun: No but I'm talking now about suppose we were told "you gotta' do it" and "how are we going to do it?" That's the only answer I could think of that would make any sense.
Bendetsen: Didn't think so then but we do now. Maybe our ideas on the Oriental have been all cock-eyed.5
Father Hugh T. Lavery of the Catholic Maryknoll Center in Los Angeles, protesting Bendetsen's imminent confirmation as Under Secretary of Army, September 24, 1949:
Colonel Bendetsen showed himself to be a little Hitler. I mentioned that we had an orphanage with children of Japanese ancestry, and that some of these children were half Japanese, others one-fourth or less. I asked which children should we send... Bendetsen said: "I am determined that if they have one drop of Japanese blood in them, they must go to camp."2
Major Bendetsen came up with the plan that would become Executive Order 9066, transforming the Japanese American issue under the Justice Department into a more legally-defensible military issue that made no mention of race. He was given two promotions in ten days and was made Director of the WCCA.2


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Francis Biddle, Attorney General
To Roosevelt, February 17, 1942:

For several weeks there have been increasing demands for evacuation of all Japanese, aliens and citizens alike, from the West Coast states. A great many West Coast people distrust the Japanese, various special interests would welcome their removal from good farm land and the elimination of their competition... My last advice from the War Department is that there is no evidence of imminent attack and from the F.B.I. that there is no evidence of planned sabotage.5
Recalling February 18, 1942, autobiography:
Rowe and Ennis argued strongly against [the Exective Order]. But the decision had been made by the President. It was, he said, a matter of military judgment. I did not think I should oppose it any further. The Department of Justice, as I had made it clear to him from the beginning, was opposed to and would have nothing to do with the evacuation.5
To Roosevelt, February 20, 1942, the day after 9066:
I thought that you might have questions asked you with reference to the Order at a press conference and that this memorandum would therefore, be convenient... The order is not limited to aliens but includes citizens so that it can be exercised with respect to Japanese, irrespective of their citizenship... The President is authorized in acting under his general war powers without further legislation.2
To Roosevelt, April 17, 1942:
1. Whatever the military do, as Attorney General I should decide what criminal cases to bring and what not to bring. I shall not institute criminal proceedings on exclusion orders which seem to me unconstitutional.
2. You signed the original Executive Order permitting the exclusions so the Army could handle the Japs. It was never intended to apply to Italians and Germans. Your order was based on "protection against espionage and against sabotage." There is absolutely no evidence in the case of ADRIANO, who has been a leading citizen of San Francisco for thiry years, that he ever had anything to do either with espionage or sabotage. He was merely pro-Mussolini before the war. He is harmless, and I understand is now living in the country outside of San Francisco.
3. KRAUS was connected before Pearl Harbor with German propaganda in this country. She turned state's evidence. The order of exclusion is so broad that I am of the opinion the courts would not sustain it. As I have said before to you, such a decision might well throw doubt on your powers as Commander in Chief.2
To Roosevelt, December 30, 1943:
The present procedure of keeping loyal American citizens in concentration camps on the basis of race for longer than is absolutely necessary is dangerous and repugnant to the principles of our Government. It is also necessary to act now so that the agitation against these citizens does not continue after the war.2
Recalling the Cabinet meeting of May 26, 1944:
The Secretary of War raised the question of whether it was appropriate for the War Department, at this time, to cancel the Japanese Exclusion Orders and let the Japs go home. War, Interior, and Justice had all agreed that this could be done without danger to defense considerations but doubted the wisdom of doing it at this time before the election.5
Postwar memoirs:
American citizens of Japanese origin were not even handled like aliens of the other enemy nationalities -- Germans and Italians -- on a selective basis, but as untouchables, a group who could not be trusted and had to be shut up only because they were of Japanese descent...
Their constitutional rights were the same as those of the men who were responsible for the program: President Roosevelt, Secretary of War Stimson, and the Assistant Secretary of War, John J. McCloy, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, commanding officer of the Pacific Coast area, and Colonel Karl Robin Bendetsen of the General Staff...2
Despite his department's seizure of Issei without cause and ever increasing restrictions of the rights of Japanese Americans, Biddle was critized for being too soft in his handling of enemy aliens. Although his aides such as Edward Ennis suggested that exclusion was illegal and unconstitutional, Biddle was not prepared to argue against the War Department.5 J.M. Burns wrote, "Only a great outcry of protest on the highest moral grounds would have stopped the drift toward evacuation, and Biddle was neither temperamentally nor politically capable of it." He eventually gave up control of enemy aliens to the War Department. On February 17, two days before it was issued, a draft of 9066 was given to Biddle at his home by Gullion. Biddle's aides were surprised when he accepted it without a fight.2


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Tom Clark, Coordinator of Alien Enemy Control and later Attorney General
Harold Ickes, December 2, 1947:


What the country demands from the Attorney General [Clark] is less self-serving lip-service and more action...
The Attoney General, in the fashion of the Russian Secret Police, maintains a top-secret list of individuals and organizations supposed to be subversive or disloyal. What are the criteria for judging whether a person is disloyal?...
I cannot begin... even to call the role of our maimed, mutilated, and missing civil liberties, but the United States, more than two years after the war, is holding in internment camps some 293 naturalized Peruvians of Japanese descent, who were taken by force by our State and Justice Departments from their homes in Peru.2
After retiring as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, 1966:

I have made a lot of mistakes in my life... One is my part in the evacuation of the Japanese from California in 1942... I don't think that served any purpose at all... We picked them up and put them in concentration camps. That's the truth of the matter. And as I look back on it -- although at the time I argued the case -- I am amazed that the Supreme Court ever approved it.2
As Biddle's aide, Clark was sent to convince California officials that not all Japanese Americans needed to be evacuated. However, Earl Warren and others managed instead to convince Clark that it was impossible tell who was loyal and who was not. Biddle wrote in his memoirs, "The choice of Clark under the circumstances was not a fortunate one." After Roosevelt's death, Clark was appointed Attorney General by Truman on September 27, 1945. He oversaw the Justice Department's attempts at deportatation to Japan of both Nisei and Japanese Peruvians.2


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John L. DeWitt, Lieutenant General

To General Gullion, December 26, 1941:

If we go ahead and arrest the 93,000 Japanese, native born and foreign born, we are going to have an awful job on our hands and are very liable to alienate the loyal Japanese from disloyal... I'm very doubtful that it would be common sense procedure to try and intern or to intern 117,000 Japanese in this theater... rather than try to intern all those people, men, women, and children, and hold them under military control and under guard. I don't think it's a sensible thing to do... An American citizen, after all, is an American citizen. And while they all may not be loyal, I think we can weed the disloyal out of the loyal and lock them up if necessary.4
Bendetsen to McCloy, May 11, 1942:
direct the Commanding General [DeWitt]... to rescind his curfew against German and Italian aliens as soon as Japanese evacuation is complete...2
McCloy to DeWitt, May 20, 1942, after DeWitt continued to insist on a follow-up evacuation of German and Italian Americans:
I want to explain to you personally that in approving this program, both the President and the Secretary of War did so with the expectation that the exclusions would not reach such numbers... We want, if at all possible, to avoid the necessity of establishing additional relocation settlements...2
Testifying before the House Naval Affairs Subcommittee, April 13, 1943:
You needn't worry about the Italians at all except in certain cases. Also, the same for the Germans except in individual cases. But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map...5
Washington Post, responding to DeWitt's declaration "a Jap is a Jap," April 15, 1943:
The general should be told that American democracy and the Constitution of the United States are too vital to be ignored and flouted by any military zealot. The panic of Pearl Harbor is now past. There has been ample time for the investigation of these people and the determination of their loyalty to this country on an individual basis. Whatever excuse there once was for evacuating and holding them indiscriminately no longer exists.5
On February 2, 1942, DeWitt and Olson agreed to carry out only a partial evacuation of Japanese Americans, on a purely local basis. This decision alarmed Provost Marshal General Gullion, who was strongly in favor of a hard-line approach, and quickly led to Bendetsen's formulation of a mass detention plan. DeWitt was at first unenthusiastic with what he thought would be an administrative nightmare. However, after 9066 he would vigorously carry out the policy given to him.2


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Martin Dies, Texas Congressmember

[Washington is] lax, tolerant, and soft toward the Japanese who have violated American hospitality; Shinto Temples still operate; propaganda outlets still disseminate propaganda material; and Japanese, both alien and American citizens, still spy for the Japanese government.1
Dies was the conservative chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee.1


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Milton S. Eisenhower, National Director of the WRA

To Agriculture Secretary Claude Wickard, April 1, 1942:

I feel most deeply that when the war is over... we as Americans are going to regret the avoidable injustices that may have been done.2
To Roosevelt's secretary, May 15, 1942:
As you know, quite a little mail is being received by the President from liberal groups and kindhearted people protesting the evacuation. Much of it questions the military necessity of the programs... Since this Authority cannot appropriately speak on military questions, we have been forwarding it to the Assistant Secretary of War, John McCloy. May I suggest that such mail be sent directly to Mr. McCloy?2
Interior Secretary Ickes to Roosevelt, June 15, 1942:
I have it from several sources that Eisenhauer is sick of the job.2
To Roosevelt, April 22, 1943:
...My friends in the War Relocation Authority, like Secretary Ickes, are deeply distressed over the effects of the entire evacuation and relocation program upon the Japanese-Americans, particularly upon the young citizen group. Persons in this group find themselves living in an atmosphere for which their public school and democratic teachings have not prepared them. It is hard for them to escape a conviction that their plight is due more to racial discrimination, economic motivations, and wartime prejudices than to any real necessity from the military point of view for evacuation from the West Coast.
Life in a relocation center cannot possibly be pleasant. The evacuees are surrounded by barbed wire fences under the eyes of armed military police. They have suffered heavily in property losses; they have lost their businesses and their means of support. The State Legislatures, Members of the Congress, and local groups, by their actions and statements bring home to them almost constantly that as a people they are not really welcome anywhere. States in which they are now located have enacted restrictive legislation forbidding permanent resettlement, for example. The American Legion, many local groups, and city councils have approved discriminatory resolutions, going so far in some instances as to advocate confiscation of their property. Bills have been introduced which would deprive them of citizenship...
Furthermore, in the opinion of the evacuees the Government may not be excused for not having attempted to distinguish between the loyal and the disloyal in carrying out the evacuation.
Under such circumstances it would be amazing if extreme bitterness did not develop.
...The director of the Authority is striving to avoid, if possible, creation of a racial minority problem after the war which might result in something akin to Indian reservations. It is for these reasons primarily, I think, that he advocates the maximum individual relocation as against the maintenance of all ten relocation centers...2
Youngest brother of Dwight D. Eisenhower, he was appointed as the first Director of the WRA. He described conditions in the Arizona camps to be "as high as 130 degrees in summertime." Amid increasing doubts about the internment policy he was appointed to carry out, he resigned in June of 1942, telling his successor, Dillon Myer, "I can't sleep and do this job. I had to get out of it."2


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Leland Ford, California Congressmember

Recalling his February conversation with Biddle, September 26, 1942:

I phoned the Attorney General's office and told them to stop fucking around. I gave them twenty four hours notice that unless they would issue a mass evacuation notice I would drag the whole matter out on the floor of the House and of the Senate and give the bastards everything we could with both barrels. I told them they had given us the run around long enough... and that if they would not take immediate action, we would clean the god damned office out in one sweep. I cussed at the Attorney General and his staff himself just like I'm cussing to you now and he knew damn well I meant business.5
A month after attacking Mississippi Congressmember John Rankin for calling for the deportation of all Japanese Americans, Ford reversed his position and asked Stimson to put "all Japanese, whether citizens or not... in inland concentration camps."1


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Allen W. Gullion, Provost Marshal General

To General Mark Clark, describing a meeting between the War and Justice Departments, February 4, 1942:

[The Justice officials] said there is too much hysteria about this thing; said these Western Congressmen are just nuts about it and the people getting hysterical and there is no evidence whatsoever of any reason for disturbing citizens, and the Department of Justice, Rowe started it and Biddle finished it -- The Department of Justice will having [sic] nothing whatsoever to do with any interference with citizens, whether they are Japanese or not. They made me a little sore and I said, well listen Mr. Biddle, do you mean to tell me that if the Army, the men on the ground, determine it is a military necessity to move citizens, Jap citizens, that you won't help me. He didn't give a direct answer, he said the Department of Justice would be through if we interfered with citizens and write [sic] of habeas corpus, etc.5
As Major Bendetsen's superior, Gullion pushed the exclusion policy and eventually convinced Stimson and McCloy.


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J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director

Memo to Tolson, Tamm, and Ladd, December 17, 1941:

...although the situation was critical, there was no sense in the Army losing their heads as they did in the Booneville Dam affair, where the power lines were sabotaged by cattle scratching their backs on the wires, or the "arrows of fire" near Seattle, which was only a farmer burning brush as he had done for years.5
Memo to the Attorney General, February 2, 1942:
The necessity for mass evacuation is based primarily upon public and political pressure rather than on factual data. Public hysteria and in some instances, the comments of the press and radio announcers, have resulted in a tremendous amount of pressure being brought to bear on Governor Olson and Earl Warren, Attorney General of the State, and on the military authorities...
Local officials, press and citizens have started widespread movement demanding complete evacuation of all Japanese, citizen and alien alike.5
Hoover criticized the Army's Military Intelligence Division as untrained, disorganized, hysterical, and lacking in judgment.5 He felt the FBI had already identified possible Japanese agents and had eliminated the threat. He opposed mass removal of Japanese Americans, but nevertheless ordered the seizure of contraband.1


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Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of Interior
To Roosevelt, April 13, 1943:

Information that has come to me from several sources is to the effect that the situation in at least some of the Japanese internment camps is bad and is becoming worse rapidly. Native-born Japanese who first accepted with philosophical understanding the decision of their Government to round up and take far inland all of the Japanese along the Pacific Coast, regardless of their degree of loyalty, have pretty generally been disappointed with the treatment that they have been accorded. Even the minimum plans that had been formulated and announced with respect to them have been disregarded in large measure, or, at least, have not been carried out. The result has been the gradual turning of thousands of well-meaning and loyal Japanese into angry prisoners. I do not think that we can disregard, as of no official concern, the unnecessary creating of a hostile group right in our own territory consisting of people who are engendering a bitterness and hostility that bodes no good for the future.2
To Roosevelt, June 2, 1944:
I again call your attention to the urgent necessity of arriving at a determination with respect to revocation of the orders excluding Japanese Americans from the West Coast...
1. I have been informally advised by officials of the War Department who are in charge of this problem that there is no substantial justification for continuation of the ban from the standpoint of military security.
2. The continued exclusion of American citizens of Japanese ancestry from the affected areas is clearly unconstitutional in the present circumstances. I expect that a case squarely raising this issue will reach the Supreme Court at its next term. I understand that the Department of Justice agrees that there is little doubt as to the decision which the Supreme Court will reach in a case squarely presenting the issue.
3. The continuation of the exclusion orders in the West Coast areas is adversely affecting our efforts to relocate Japanese Americans elsewhere in the country. State and local officials are saying, with some justification, that if these people are too dangerous for the West Coast, they do not want them to resettle in their localities.
4. The psychology of the Japanese Americans in the relocation centers becomes progressively worse. The difficulty which will confront these people in readjusting to ordinary life becomes greater as they spend more time in the centers.
5. The children in the centers are exposed solely to the influence of persons of Japanese ancestry. They are becoming a hopelessly maladjusted generation, apprehensive of the outside world and divorced from the possibility of associating -- or even seeing to any considerable extent -- Amercians of other races.
6. The retention of Japanese Americans in the relocation centers impairs the efforts which are being made to secure better treatment for American prisoners-of-war and civilians who are held by the Japanese. In many localities American nationals were not interned by the Japanese government until after the West Coast evacuation; and the Japanese government has recently responded to the State Department complaints concerning treament of American nationals by citing, among other things, the circumstances of the evacuation and detention of the West Coast Japanese Americans.
I will not comment at this time on the justification or lack thereof for the original evacuation order. But I do say that the continued retention of these innocent people in the relocation centers would be a blot upon the history of this country.2
In the New York Post, (as reported in the Pacific Citizen, June 29, 1946):

...the immediate problem is one of halting the brutal deportation of alien Japanese who have suffered so much at the hands of "free and democratic" America.2
In the Washington Evening Star, September 23, 1946:

As a member of President Roosevelt's administration, I saw the United States Army give way to mass hysteria over the Japanese... it lost its self-control and, egged on by public clamor, some of it from greedy Americans who sought an opportunity to possess themselves of Japanese rights and property, it began to round up indiscriminately the Japanese who had been born in Japan, as well as those born here. Crowded into cars like cattle, these hapless people were hurried away to hastily constructed and thoroughly inadequate concentration camps, with soldiers with nervous muskets on guard, in the great American desert. We gave the fancy name of "relocation centers" to these dust bowls, but they were concentration camps nonetheless...2
On February 16, 1944, Executive Order 9423 transferred jurisdiction of the WRA to the Interior Department. Both Ickes and Myer often spoke out against the administration's unjust treatment of Japanese Americans.2


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John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War
To DeWitt, February 3, 1942:

...in spite of the Constitution you can eliminate from any military reservation, or any place that is declared to be in substance a military reservation, anyone -- any American citizen, and we could exclude everyone and then by a system of permits and licenses permitting those to come back into that area who were necessary to enable that area to function as a living community. Everyone but the Japs... you can do that on a military reservation without suspending writs of habeas corpus and without getting into very important legal complications...2
To Bendetsen, shortly before 9066, February, 1942:
We have carte blanche to do what we want to as far as the President is concerned.2
State Department memo, Harold B. Hoskins to Adolph Berle, April 6, 1942:
Mr. McCloy advised that every effort is being made to handle this problem as a "regional" one, and is anxious to have as little publicity or instructions emanate from this end as possible.2
Memo, Bendetsen to DeWitt, May 3, 1943:
After an extended discussion, Mr. McCloy stated his conclusion to be that there no longer existed any military necessity for the continued exclusion of all Japanese from the evacuated zone. He stated that the War Department, of its own motion, would not take any action to direct or require the revision or revocation of present restrictions in this regard.5
To Bendetsen, July 10, 1943:
I want to give you another strong warning... I certainly don't want to have the Chief's [Roosevelt's] name in any way tied up with this whole business out there.2
Letter to Gen. Delos Emmons (who replaced DeWitt in the fall of 1943 at the Western Defense Command), November 5, 1943:
The situation in California is not the same [as in Hawaii]. You have no doubt become aware of the existence of active and powerful minority groups in California whose main interest in the war seems to take the form of a desire for permanent exclusion of all Japanese, loyal or disloyal, citizen or alien, from the West Coast or, at least, from California.... This means that considerations other than of mere military necessity enter into any proposal for removal of the present restrictions.5
McCloy was given direct authority over the West coast "situation" by Stimson.


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Dillon S. Myer, National Director of the WRA
One year anniversary statement of the WRA, March, 1943:

Life in a relocation center is an unnatural and un-American sort of life. Keep in mind that the evacuees were charged with nothing except having Japanese ancestors; yet the very fact of their confinement in relocation centers fosters suspicion of their loyalties and adds to their discouragement. It has added weight to the contention of the enemy that we are fighting a race war; that this nation preaches democracy and practices racial discrimination...
It is not the American way to have children growing up behind barbed wire and under the scrutiny of armed guards. Living conditions in the centers almost preclude privacy for individuals, and family life is disrupted. Family meals are almost impossible in the dining halls, and children lack the normal routine home duties which help to build good discipline. One of the major worries of parents in the relocation centers is the way the children are "getting out of hand" as a result of the decrease in parental influence and the absence of the normal regimen of family economy and family life.6
At a Los Angeles luncheon meeting, January 21, 1944:
During the question-and-answer period a gentleman arose and rather belligerently said, "Mr. Myer, if the things that happened at Tule Lake had happened in Japan, what do you think the Japs would have done with the troublemakers?" I replied that they would have shot them, but that I thanked God we were living in a country that does not believe we should shoot people for what we think they are thinking. I received a hand on my reply, and the tensions eased.6
Testifying on the Evacuation Claims bill:
The loss of hundreds of property leases and the disappearance of a number of equities in land and buildings which had been built up over the major portion of a lifetime were among the most regrettable and least justifiable of all the many costs of the wartime evacuation.5
After becoming WRA Director following Milton Eisenhower's resignation, Myer had to walk the line between anti-Japanese congressmen on the outside and anti-establishment resisters on the inside. In January, 1944, 22 of 33 West Coast congressmen petitioned FDR to fire him.6


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Culbert L. Olson, California Governor
To Roosevelt, requesting federal subsidies for Nisei whose education had been terminated, April 25, 1942: (His request was ignored.)

if any financial payment is to be made to individuals who are to be moved, would it not be possible, and wise, to allow the payment of like amounts to students of college and university standing who wish to enter institutions who will accept them?2
Stimson to Roosevelt, July 7, 1942:
Now Governor Olson has discovered that the harvesting season is coming for some of the California fruits and that it may be profitable for Californians to keep these Japanese huddled up in these assembly camps to be used cheaply on this harvesting.2
Before the Pearl Harbor attack, Olson, a liberal, insisted that even in case of war, Japanese Californians must be given constitutional equal protection. The day after the attack, Olson suggested that Japanese Californians observe house arrest "to avoid riot and disturbance." A few weeks later, he approved the firing of Nisei from hundreds of civil service jobs and called for evacuation. Earl Warren, running on an anti-Japanese American platform, defeated Olson and became the next California Governor.
Similar views were shared by other "liberals" such as Earl Warren, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, and Michigan Congressmember John Dingell (who, before Pearl Harbor, had suggested incarcerating 10,000 Japanese Hawaiians as hostages to ensure Tokyo's behavior).1



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John Rankin, Mississippi Congressmember

Once a Jap always a Jap. You cannot change him. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.1
The white man's civilization has come into conflict with Japanese barbarism [and] one of them must be destroyed.1

Congressional Record, December 15, 1941:
I'm for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska, and Hawaii, now and putting them in concentration camps... Damn them! Let's get rid of them now!2
Tennessee Senator Tom Stewart and Congressmembers William F. Norrell (Arkansas), Jennings Randolph (West Virginia), Schuyler O. Bland (Virginia), and Martin Dies (Texas) shared Rankin's opinions. Rankin, a conservative, was known since the 1930s for holding views against Jewish and African Americans.1


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Owen J. Roberts, Supreme Court Justice

Dissenting in Korematsu v. U.S.:

...a cleverly designed trap to accomplish the real purpose of military authority, which was to lock him [Korematsu] in a concentration camp.2
Roberts led an official committee of inquiry shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor and filed a report that included unfounded accusations that Japanese secret agents had facilitated the attack. The Roberts Commission report also suggested that the FBI had been hampered because it was too concerned with civil liberties.1


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Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President

[The Japanese] whose skull pattern being less developed than that of the Caucasians, might be responsible for their aggressive behavior.1
To Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau:
...you either have to castrate the German people or you have to treat them in a manner that they can't just go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past.1
On military service, February 1, 1943, two days before the WRA began processing the loyalty questionaire:
No loyal citizen of the United States should be denied the democratic right to exercise the responsibilities of his citizenship, regardless of his ancestry... Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry.5
To New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman, June 3, 1943:
...please be assured that I am keenly aware of the anxiety that German and Italian aliens living in the United States must feel as the result of the Japanese evacuation from the West Coast.
Will you assure Mr. Antonini that no collective evacuation of German and Italian aliens is contemplated at this time?2
Memo, J. L. Burling to Edward Ennis, July 18, 1944:
[McCloy remarked] it was curious how the two major cases in which the Army had interfered with civilians had started out for serious military reasons and had ended being required by wholly non-military considerations. For example, the Japanese were evacuated back in the dark days before Midway when an attack on the Pacific Coast was feared. Now the exclusion is being continued by the President for social reasons.5
In a press conference soon after reelection, November 21, 1944:
...it is felt by a great many lawyers that under the Constitution they can't be kept locked up in concentration camps.
Roosevelt was known to share in a joke against Jews with the anti-Semitic Undersecretary of State Breckinridge Long. Roosevelt had asked Dr. Ales Hrdlicka (a Smithsonian anthropoligist with some extreme racial views) to study the possibility of crossbreeding Asian and European stocks in order to eliminate the aggressive characteristics of the Japanese. D.W. Brogan observed, "in the years between the wars, the United States was only outdistanced by Germany as a market for race theories, some of them crude enough to have suited Hitler." On one occasion, Roosevelt joked that the Puerto Rican birthrate could be solved with "the methods which Hitler used effectively," an electric current, "very simple and painless," which would "sterilize subjects in about twenty seconds."1 In the fall of of 1942, he dismissed Italian Americans as "a lot of opera singers".5
While public opinion called on Roosevelt to concentrate on the war in the Pacific before the one in Europe, his alliance with Churchill necessitated a Europe-first policy. Nevertheless, in order to strike symbolically at Japan, he sent supplies to Chiang Kai-shek, bombers to Tokyo, and MacArthur to Australia. Four days after the fall of Singapore, Executive Order 9066 was signed, but he warned the army "to be as reasonable as you can." He knew it would be a popular election-year move and help placate "Asia Firsters."1



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Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War

Their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese.2
Recalling his attempt to persuade Archibald MacLeish not to speak out against the Army's discrimination against blacks, diary, January 24, 1942:
I pointed out that what these foolish leaders of the colored race are seeking is at the bottom social equality, and I pointed out the basic impossibility of social equality because of the impossibility of race mixture by marriage. He listened in silence and thanked me, but I am not sure how far he is convinced.5
February 3, 1942:
If we base our evacuations upon the ground of removing enemy aliens, it will not get rid of the Nisei who are the second generation naturalized Japanese, and as I said, the more dangerous ones. If on the other hand we evactuate everybody including citizens, we must base it as far as I can see upon solely the protection of specified plants. We cannot discriminate among our citizens on the ground of racial origin.5
To Secretary of State Cordell Hull, February 5, 1942:
General MacArthur has reported... that American and British civilians in areas of the Philippines occupied by the Japanese are being subjected to extremely harsh treatment. The unnecessary harsh and rigid measures imposed, in sharp contrast to the moderate treatment of metropolitan Filipinos, are unquestionably designed to discredit the white race.
I request that you strongly protest this unjustified treatment of civilians, and suggest that you present a threat of reprisals against the many Japanese nationals now enjoying negligible restrictions in the United States...2
Diary, April 7, 1942:
As the thing stands at present, a number of them have been arrested in Hawaii without very much evidence of disloyalty, have been shipped to the United States, and are interned there. McCloy and I are both agreed that this was contrary to law, that while we have a perfect right to move them away from defenses for the purpose of protecting our war effor, that does not carry with it the right to imprison them without convincing evidence.5
To Roosevelt, July 7, 1942:
These assembly centers are merely improvised structures where there is considerable danger of overcrowding and epidemics. I do not think that he [Olson] should be allowed to blow first hot and then cold without any reference to the safety or welfare of these unfortunate people... I suggest that you keep this situation in mind in case the Governor approaches you on the subject.2
To Roosevelt, March 31, 1943:
The Attorney General should not be permitted to thwart the military commanders... I request that you direct the Attorney General to enforce these orders in accordance with the provisions of Public Law 503...2
Myer reacting to Stimson's May 10, 1943 refusal of Myer's request to end exclusion:
In view of previous developments and the condescending tone of the secretary's reply, we always had a feeling that the secretary relied rather heavily on the Western Defense Command for preparation of the reply. We also felt that the secretary, in view of his excellent record as a statesman and public servant over many years, would have used a somewhat different approach if he had been as close to the problem as some of the rest of us were.6
To Cordell Hull, January 18, 1944:
Japanese in the stockade, so-called, are not being inhumanely treated... No person in the stockade or elsewhere has been forced to labor at the point of a gun... No internee in the stockade or elsewhere has been brutally beaten by any representative of the United States Government.2
As head of the War Department, Stimson was a staunch defender of his department's internment policy, despite initial doubts.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Geoffrey S. Smith, "Racial Nativism and Origins of Japanese American Relocation" in: Ed. by Roger Daniels, Sandra Taylor, and Harry Kitano; Japanese Americans, from Relocation to Redress; University of Utah Press; Salt Lake City, Utah; ©1986; 79-85.
2 Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy, Morrow Quill Paperbacks, New York, ©1976.
4 Stetson Conn, The Decision to Evacuate the Japanese from the Pacific Coast, ©1994, p. 128.
5 Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians; Joan Z. Bernstein, Chair; Personal Justice Denied; Washington, D.C.; ©1982.
6 Dillon S. Myer, Uprooted Americans, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona, ©1971.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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W.


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#3

Post by David Thompson » 03 Dec 2004, 00:57

The US decision to evacuate Japanese-Americans in 1942
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=51352
Japanese internment
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=45851
Concentration Camps - In the USA...
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=15305
American Concentration Camps in WWII...
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=51935
Concentration camps in USA during WW2
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=50048
American concentration camps
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=34967

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#4

Post by Delta Tank » 15 Dec 2004, 19:24

I have been told that not only Japanese Americans were interned but also Italians and Germans. I have not seen anything about this in writing, but apparently Michelle Malkin discusses it in her recent book "In defence of Internment".

Mike

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#5

Post by Delta Tank » 15 Dec 2004, 19:52

This is to add to my previous post. This is a review of Michelle Malkin's book from Amazon.com.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher
Everything you've been taught about the World War II "internment camps" in America is wrong: - They were not created primarily because of racism or wartime hysteria
- They did not target only those of Japanese descent
- They were not Nazi-style death camps In her latest investigative tour-de-force, New York Times best-selling author Michelle Malkin sets the historical record straight-and debunks radical ethnic alarmists who distort history to undermine common-sense, national security profiling. The need for this myth-shattering book is vital. President Bush's opponents have attacked every homeland defense policy as tantamount to the "racist" and "unjustified" World War II internment. Bush's own transportation secretary, Norm Mineta, continues to milk his childhood experience at a relocation camp as an excuse to ban profiling at airports. Misguided guilt about the past continues to hamper our ability to prevent future terrorist attacks. In Defense of Internment shows that the detention of enemy aliens, and the mass evacuation and relocation of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast were not the result of irrational hatred or conspiratorial bigotry. This document-packed book highlights the vast amount of intelligence, including top-secret "MAGIC" messages, which revealed the Japanese espionage threat on the West Coast. Malkin also tells the truth about:
- who resided in enemy alien internment camps (nearly half were of European ancestry)
- what the West Coast relocation centers were really like (tens of thousands of ethnic Japanese were allowed to leave; hundreds voluntarily chose to move in)
- why the $1.65 billion federal reparations law for Japanese internees and evacuees
was a bipartisan disaster
- and how both Japanese American and Arab/Muslim American leaders have united

to undermine America's safety. With trademark fearlessness, Malkin adds desperately needed perspective to the ongoing debate about the balance between civil liberties and national security. In Defense of Internment will outrage, enlighten, and radically change the way you view the past-and the present.

Product Description:
This diligently documented book shows that neither the internment of ethnic Japanese--not to mention ethnic Germans and Italians--nor the relocation and evacuation of Japanese Americans from the West Coast were the result of war hysteria or race prejudice as historians have taught us.

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#6

Post by waldorf » 19 Dec 2004, 18:42

I disagree with the editor on Amazon's review of Malkin's book. The vast majority of people interned in these camps were Japanese. The articles I posted came from primary source information. I strongly urge anyone b/f passing judgment on this topic take a look at the following web site: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8420/main.html

I also did not compare these camps to concentration camp styles found in Europe. These camps were however, worse than most jails in the U.S. at the time which speaks for itself. I also disagree with the editors denial that racism was not involved in imprisoning Japanese Americans. That is just a load of hog wash.

If the editor was correct than the U.S. Army in WWII would have been sharply reduced if every Italian American, German American, along with descendents from other European Axis countries families would have been imprisoned. I know my grandfather was only a second generation German American and he still served in the military and his family was free for the entire war. Same with my grandmas familly who happened to have moved from Italy during the early 1920's. Her brother served in the Marine Corp and once again her family was not interned for the war. The bottom line some European Americans were interned sure, but not to the extent of Japanese Americans. I would like to see Ms. Malkins "facts" and figures to back up her argument.

With Ms. Malkin the following quote is highly suspicious:
"The need for this myth-shattering book is vital. President Bush's opponents have attacked every homeland defense policy as tantamount to the "racist" and "unjustified" World War II internment. Bush's own transportation secretary, Norm Mineta, continues to milk his childhood experience at a relocation camp as an excuse to ban profiling at airports.


Number one, I always pause when someone's work is described as "myth shattering". Number two, the book sounds to me instead of offering an unbiased historical analysis on the subject, it instead is another political rant. It really amazes me how seemingly anyone can be published. You don't have to be well informed just full of hot air and be able to use buzz words to attract attention.

W.

P.S. Delta Tank this is not an attack on you, it's just my opinion. If you get a chance though check out the web site or search on the internet for the topic.

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#7

Post by Delta Tank » 19 Dec 2004, 19:44

Waldorf,

I have not read her book, just spreading the word. I think I read that 50% of the internees were Japanese Americans, and the other 50% were Italian and Germans. I don't know if the Germans and the Italians that were interned were Americans or not. I think the British also locked up foreigners during World War II, but I don't know to what extent. I have a friend named Masorti and he told me over a beer one night that the US Govt locked up Italians during World War II. I never knew about it until he told me and I started keeping an eye out for anything on the subject. Masorti's father "came over on the boat" and could not read or write english, but he did serve in World War I in France!

Mike

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#8

Post by waldorf » 20 Dec 2004, 03:24

Masorti's father "came over on the boat" and could not read or write english, but he did serve in World War I in France!
Delta Tank,

Was his dad imprisoned during WWII? I'll do some research tonight on the subject and get back to you tommorow evening.

Waldorf

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#9

Post by Delta Tank » 20 Dec 2004, 13:46

No, his father was not imprisioned. I will ask him about Italian internment of local area residents when I see him this week.

Mike

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#10

Post by waldorf » 21 Dec 2004, 07:22

Delta Tank:

Heres some information I found on the internet:
Time Line
1918 Codification of Alien Enemy Act of 1798, 50 USC 21-24, permitting apprehension and internment of aliens of "enemy ancestry" by US government upon declaration of war or threat of invasion. The President is given blanket authority as to "enemy alien" treatment. Civil liberties may be completely ignored because enemy aliens have no protection under this 202- year-old law. Government oppression is likely during wartime.



1939-1941 Various governmental bodies, such as the FBI, special intelligence agencies of the Justice Department, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Army's Military Intelligence Division compile lists of dangerous "enemy aliens" and citizens, including the FBI's Custodial Detention Index (the "CDI").



1940 The census includes specific listings and location of persons based on their ethnicity, which may have assisted the US Government in later identification of "suspect" individuals of "enemy ancestry."



1940 Alien Registration Act of 1940 passed requiring all aliens 14 and older to register with the US government.



Dec. 7, 1941 Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. Pursuant to the Alien Enemy Act of 1798, Roosevelt issued identical Presidential Proclamations 2525, 2526 and 2527 branding German, Italian and Japanese nationals as enemy aliens, authorizing internment and travel and property ownership restrictions. A blanket presidential warrant authorized U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle to have the FBI arrest a large number of "dangerous enemy aliens" based on the CDI. Hundreds of German aliens were arrested by the end of the day. The FBI raids many homes and hundreds more are detained before war even declared on Germany.



Dec. 11, 1941 US declares war on Germany and Italy.



Jan. 1942 Pursuant to Presidential Proclamation 2525-2527 and 2537 (issued Jan.14, 1942), the Attorney General issues regulations requiring application for and issuance of certificates of identification to all "enemy aliens" aged 14 and older and outlining restrictions on their movement and property ownership rights. Approximately one million enemy aliens reregister, including 300,000 German-born aliens, the 2nd largest immigrant group at that time. Applications are forwarded to the Department of Justice's Alien Registration Division and the FBI. Any change of address, employment or name must be reported to the FBI. Enemy aliens may not enter federally designated restricted areas. If enemy aliens violate these or other applicable regulations, they are subject to "arrest, detention and internment for the duration of the war."



Jan.- Feb. 1942 In cooperation with the military, the DOJ establishes numerous, small prohibited zones strictly forbidden to all enemy aliens. DOJ also establishes extensive "restricted areas" in which enemy aliens are subject to stringent curfew and travel restrictions, particularly on the West Coast.



Feb. 19, 1942 Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066 authorizing the Secretary of War to define military areas in which "the right of any person to enter, remain in or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions" are deemed necessary or desirable. This order applies to all "enemy" nationalities.



March 11, 1942 Executive Order 9095 creates the Office of the Alien Property Custodian which gives the Custodian discretionary, plenary authority over all alien property interests. Many internee assets were frozen creating immediate financial catastrophe for affected families.



Feb.-April 1942 Congress ratifies Executive Order 9066 authorizing the imposition of sanctions for violations of the order. Extensive military zones established on the east and west coasts, significantly expanding upon those originally created by DOJ, and in certain areas around the Great Lakes. Gen. John DeWitt issues a series of Public Proclamations creating Western Defense Command military areas and outlining curfews, travel restrictions and exclusion provisions, among other things, applicable to German, Japanese and Italian aliens, as well as Japanese American citizens. By military order, thousands of German, Japanese and Italian aliens required leave military areas on the West Coast. Later, approximately 100,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans are relocated from the West Coast to camps administered by the Wartime Relocation Authority. On an individual basis, "potentially dangerous" US citizens of German ancestry are also ordered out of military zones and forced to establish new lives with little or no government assistance.



October 1942 Wartime restrictions on Italian Americans terminated.



1942 – 1943 Internment camps administered by the military and the DOJ are established throughout the country. The INS operated the DOJ camps. The largest were located at Crystal City and Seagoville, Texas and Ft. Lincoln, ND. There were at least 50 temporary detention and long-term internment facilities. Internees are transferred from camp to camp under armed guard, further disrupting their lives and making it even more difficult for their families to find them.



1942 US Government initiated exchanges of approximately 2,000 internees for Americans held in Germany. Six exchange voyages carried many families to Germany, including American-born children and US citizen spouses of German alien internees. As the war progressed, travel across the Atlantic was increasing hazardous. Upon arrival in war-ravaged Germany, exchangees were unexpected and unwanted by their families. Many are suspected of being spies. Families with young children, some even born during the trip to Germany, had to make their own way to family homes through hazardous countryside, frequently in winter, carrying all their worldly belongings. Some men were beaten and arrested by the Gestapo as spies and put in camps, leaving families destitute again.



1942 The US initiated a cooperative program whereby Latin American countries at US direction captured German Latin Americans, including German and Austrian Jews who had fled persecution. Under US military guard, prisoners were shipped to the US in the dark, dank holds of boats and rarely permitted on deck. Open bucket latrines were placed among the prisoners. No one told them what was happening to them. They were interned and many forcibly shipped to Germany. General George Marshall stated in a 12/12/42 memo to the Caribbean Defense Command: "These interned nationals are to be used for exchange with interned American civilian nationals." By the end of the war, over 4,050 German Latin Americans were brought to American internment camps.



1942 – 1945 Thousands of German aliens and German Americans are arrested, interned, excluded, paroled, exchanged and generally harassed by a suspicious country. Few know why they are interned or for how long. Internees try to make lives in camps, attempting to ignore the psychological and physical upheaval to which they have been subjected. Mental anguish, anger, guilt and shame are common. Armed guards and guard dogs watch over internees living in huts or dorms in barren parts of the country surrounded by barbed wire, observed from guard towers. All mail is censored. Contact with the outside world is severely limited. Many continually appeal their internment orders. DOJ generally ignores their requests, requiring unobtainable "new evidence" for consideration of appeals. Some are granted rehearings, pursuant to which an even smaller number are released. Internees who are released do not know why, nor do they ever learn why they were interned. Those released are generally subject to parole restrictions. Internees are pressured to repatriate. Hopeless and bitter, many agree and are readily used for exchange. There were six exchanges with Germany, primarily of civilians, but also of POWs. One trip of the SS Gripsholm in January 1945 involves 1,000 exchangees. The government arranges for "trustworthy" able-bodied men to work outside camps. One group works on the Northern Pacific Railroad in North Dakota repairing the railroad tracks and living in boxcars with coal stoves throughout the winter. Others work for the Forest Service and 3M.



May 7, 1945 Germany surrenders.



July 1945 Truman issues a Presidential Proclamation 2655 authorizing the US to deport all enemy aliens deemed "to be dangerous to the public peace and safety of the United States." This affects hundreds, if not thousands, of internees who remain imprisoned indefinitely.



Aug. 14, 1945 Japan surrenders.



November 1945 Many internees released from camps. Parole limitations for most persons terminated. Internment camps progressively closed and remaining internees eventually consolidated at Crystal City and Ellis Island.



Late 1947 Crystal City family camp closed. Those still imprisoned, exclusively German internees and their families, transferred to cramped Ellis Island where others are held. Virtually all are of German ancestry. Over the next year, many additional persons are returned to Germany. Others are paroled or unconditionally released to return to their homes. The barbed wire exercise cages overlook the Statute of Liberty. The captives contest repatriation and deportation by pooling their limited funds to finance appeals in court. They finally find a voice in Congress—Senator William Langer of North Dakota.



August 1948 Due in large part to Senator Langer's efforts, among others, the last person, a German American, is finally released from Ellis Island, three years after cessation of hostilities with Germany. No internee was ever convicted of a war-related crime against the United States. Upon release, most adult internees sign secrecy oaths, many are threatened with deportation with no prospect of return if they speak of their ordeal. Many internees, always fearful, take the secret to their graves. Reportedly, camp employees also sign oath of secrecy. The secret is well kept. Few today know of selective internment.





Aftermath

Internees and excludees return home to suspicious communities, some have been interned 6-7 years. Children do not remember life without barbed wire. Homes and livelihoods are lost. Reputations destroyed. No safety net protects them. They confront feelings of confusion, anger, resentment, bitterness, guilt and shame. They try to understand what happened and repair broken lives. The experience scarred families forever. Those exchanged to Germany struggled to survive in the extremely difficult postwar years. Some exchangees returned to the US years later. Frequently, American-born children left their families behind in order to do so. Many never were allowed to return. Others, embittered by what they perceived as America's betrayal, never wanted to come back.



1980 Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians ("CWRIC") created. Focusing primarily on the relocation of Japanese and Japanese Americans, the CWRIC did not allow German Americans or other European Americans to testify or offer written testimony on their wartime experiences. The final report, Personal Justice Denied, focuses primarily on German American individual and group exclusion issues under Executive Order 9066. It identifies only 4 internment camps. The tribulations of German internment are covered in only four paragraphs primarily discussing the hearing process. The CWRIC asserts that this process afforded sufficient "rough fairness" under the circumstances. The CWRIC is wrong. Lacking sufficient due process protections, this "rough fairness" frequently resulted in unjustified, painful years of captivity, exchange and property loss for thousands.



1988-present Civil Liberties Act of 1988 passed solely giving redress to and acknowledging injustices to Japanese Americans and Aleuts. No German American or other affected European American allowed to give oral or written testimony on their wartime experience during congressional hearings. Civil Liberties Education Fund established to fund projects relating to public education regarding the Japanese American experience. National Park Service study funded to designate Japanese relocation camps as national historic landmarks. In January 1999, the US settles Mochizuki class action agreeing to monetary redress of $5,000 and a presidential apology for Japanese Latin Americans. In November 2000, the Wartime Violations of Italian American Civil Liberties Act signed into law recognizing only the government's wrongful denial of Italian American civil liberties. In February 2001, Wartime Parity and Justice Act of 2001 introduced to provide for the inclusion of Japanese Latin Americans in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, among other things.



Nov. 19, 1999 Congressman Matt Salmon placed a statement on Proclamation 2526 in the Extension of Remarks section of the Congressional Record. In this statement, Congressman Salmon urged the members of the House "...to pursue a full historical accounting of the experiences of all Americans [German, Italian, as well as Japanese] who suffered discrimination during the Second World War as expeditiously as possible."



Aug. 3, 2001 Senators Russell Feingold (D-WI) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) introduced the European Americans and Refugees Wartime Treatment Study Act, joined by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT). Reported favorably by the Senate Judiciary Committee to the Senate in March 2002, amended and renamed as the Wartime Treatment Study Act.



Feb. 5, 2003 Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) introduced H. Res. 56 calling for National Day of Remembrance on February 19 and supporting the goal of the German, Japanese and Italian American communities to increase public awareness of the World War II violations of civil liberties by the US government.



Conclusion

Thanks to federal legislation and effective activism by their ethnic group, US government mistreatment of Japanese Americans is well known. After almost 60 years, the German American experience remains buried. The few surviving, aged internees remember their experiences well, despite years of trying to forget. Their memories haunt them. Mostly, because they are Americans who revere freedom, they want the dreadful saga of their wartime mistreatment told so it will never happen again. The CWRIC reviewed a significant portion of government's discriminatory wartime policies. Another commission should be established immediately to complete the study of these policies as they affected European Americans, particularly German Americans.



Karen E. Ebel

February 24, 2003
W.

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#11

Post by Delta Tank » 21 Jan 2005, 17:00

I have not read her book, just spreading the word. I think I read that 50% of the internees were Japanese Americans, and the other 50% were Italian and Germans. I don't know if the Germans and the Italians that were interned were Americans or not. I think the British also locked up foreigners during World War II, but I don't know to what extent. I have a friend named Masorti and he told me over a beer one night that the US Govt locked up Italians during World War II. I never knew about it until he told me and I started keeping an eye out for anything on the subject. Masorti's father "came over on the boat" and could not read or write english, but he did serve in World War I in France!
No, his father was not imprisioned. I will ask him about Italian internment of local area residents when I see him this week.
I finally saw him and this is what he told me. After Germany and Italy declared war on us, the FBI came around to question all resident aliens. His father at the time had become an American citizen and they did not have any problem, and his dad also had served in World War I, so I am sure that didn't hurt. The people that were not citizens were questioned, their radios were taken away and put under survaillance. I asked him who was doing the survaillance and he said the local police and other people in the community. But, nobody was deported or placed in an internment camp.

Mike

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#12

Post by Christian W. » 24 Jan 2005, 06:51

Those paranoid Americans. Jees, there were even Japanese Americans serving in US Army for Petes sakes.

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#13

Post by Delta Tank » 24 Jan 2005, 15:16

Christain W.
Those paranoid Americans. Jees, there were even Japanese Americans serving in US Army for Petes sakes
.

If I recall correctley (IIRC) the 442 Infantry Regt. was the most or one of the most decorated Infantry Regt. in the US Army during World War II!

442d Infantry Regiment (Nisei) (Separate)

Mike

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#14

Post by R.M. Schultz » 16 Nov 2006, 23:56

Delta Tank wrote:I have not read her book, just spreading the word. I think I read that 50% of the internees were Japanese Americans, and the other 50% were Italian and Germans.
Okay, I've got figures of 110,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans (62 percent of whom were United States citizens) locked up in camps, and 11,000 persons of German ancestry, including many American-born children, interned.

So — that's damn near all Japanese and Japanese Americans (only 10,000 were allowed to re-locate to East of the Rockies), but only a fraction of German-Americans and, unless there were some 99,000 Italians hiding in camps somewhere, then the vast bulk were Japanese, not 50% European.

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#15

Post by Delta Tank » 17 Nov 2006, 01:29

R. M. Schultz'

I found this:http://www.serve.com/shea/germusa/itintern.htm

After Silence, Italians Recall the Internment

Missoula, Mont.
By JAMES BROOKE

MISSOULA, Mont. -- For decades, Italian immigrant families who lived through World War II in the United States did not want to talk about the curfews, confiscations of fishing boats, forced moves from seacoast towns, police searches of their homes and internments here at Fort Missoula. But researchers are fleshing out this obscure footnote to American history: the treatment of 600,000 Italian citizens in the United States who were classified as "enemy aliens" after World War II began. And that is stirring memories among those who lived through it.

In 1942, when this old frontier Army post served as one of the nation's largest internment camps, the most widely spoken language at the post was not Japanese or English, but Italian. One of the internees was Alfredo Cipolato, a native Venetian who went from a job as a waiter at the Italian Pavilion of the 1939 World's Fair in New York to a barracks bunk in this once-remote town in western Montana.

"One day I come home," said Cipolato, now an American citizen living here, "the FBI are there, and they just put me in jail."

In the recent past, fading family memories have been jogged by a documentary film, "Bella Vista," a book, "An Alien Place," by Carol Bulger Van Valkenburg, and an exhibit that has toured 21 American cities and is expected to go to Washington in September.

According to the latest research, dozens of Italians lost their fishing boats and hundreds more -- largely bakers, restaurant workers and garbage men -- had to give up jobs because of curfews. About 1,600 Italian citizens were interned, all of them here, and about 10,000 Italian-Americans were forced to move from their houses in California coastal communities to inland homes.

And the 600,000 legal Italian immigrants who had not become U.S. citizens were put under travel restrictions. Dozens of American citizens of Italian origin who had shown sympathy for Mussolini were temporarily banished from California.

"The majority of Italian-Americans still don't know that this happened," said Lawrence DiStasi, director of the traveling exhibit, "Storia Segreta," or Secret History. "There are people who come to our exhibit who suddenly remember that it happened in their families, too.

The Italian immigrants were caught up, to a milder degree, in the hysteria that swept the West Coast after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. While all the interned Italians were citizens of Italy, about two-thirds of the interned Japanese were American citizens. The anti-Japanese measures lasted the length of the war, while the anti-Italian restrictions mostly ended after less than a year.

I will look further!

Mike

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