Some Facts on the Relocation of Japanese During WWII

Please forgive the length of this post, but the topic of forced evacuations of persons of Japanese heritage from exclusion areas during WWII is one subject to much distortion and fantasy. In order to make an honest appraisal of the events one must open their mind to the historical record, not a version sanitized for other causes. Please, do us both a favor and read the whole post before you comment. Also, to all you PM's out there, don't try and ascribe thoughts and motivations that do not exist in my text. If you do, you will most likely find your contributions to the ensuing debate unceremoniously ignored in this small portion of cyberspace.

Instapundit links to Eric Muller with the exaggeration that Eric has been "fact-checking Howard Coble's ass." Actually, Eric needs to do some SERIOUS research.

I really don't care about the "supposed" controversy over comments made by U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, R-NC agreeing with FDR's exclusion order (here) and that he felt that FDR acted to protect the Japanese from angry Americans. What I do care about is the integrity of the historical record and zeitgeist. Eric is being sensationalist to say the least, and needs to take a deep breath.

First, folks, let's get some real history into this subject. There is a lot of mistaken usage of terms from FDR's Executive Order 9066. Go read it; I'll wait.

OK, class, done? Good. Now did anyone notice something peculiar? "Uh, there's no mention of any race or nationality?" That's correct! Executive Order 9066 allows the creation of Military areas from which:

Secretary of War... or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded... The order also directs the Secretary of War:

...to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded there from, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary. This is not internment, folks, it's an evacuation or relocation.

The terms "internment" and "relocation" are often confused and used interchangeably. By law (an over 100-year-old Federal statute), no U.S. citizen could be "interned." That term applies only to detention of enemy aliens. When interned, enemy aliens were placed in Department of Justice camps under Army control. The people who were interned were considered threats to national security, subject to judicial review, and were allowed to have their families accompany them on a voluntary basis. Only some 11,229 Japanese (plus 5,620 Nisei who renounced their U.S. citizenship) were interned, along with 14,426 Germans, Italians, and other enemy aliens.

Evacuees were altogether different: those that were relocated were allowed, at least initially, to go anywhere they wanted in the interior. Note, also, that those of Japanese heritage who lived outside the Military exclusion area (California, the western half of Washington and Oregon, and southern Arizona) were not sent to relocation centers, although many of Japanese heritage living outside the exclusion area did request to be allowed to move into a center.

Why did Japanese evacuees usually choose the relocation centers run by the War Relocation Authority? More often than not, a Japanese immigrant didn't have relatives in NY like one of the 10,000 Italian evacuees might. Also, given the anti-Japanese hysteria of the time, is it too unreasonable that they might feel safer in choosing to go to a relocation center? (I think that this is where the Hon. Howard Coble gets into trouble with the literalists; he’s conflated evacuee personal choice with the Presidential action that forced the decision.) The WRA made every effort to make the camps as comfortable as possible given wartime shortages of materials of every sort. The centers had a post office, schools, banks, stores, medical facilities, and churches all provided at government expense.

Most of those evacuated, of course, were Japanese, of whom about 60% of the adults were Japanese nationals (enemy aliens); and most of the remaining 40% of the adults were dual-citizens (U.S. & Japanese). The remaining evacuees were children, U.S. citizens by birth. What you have to understand is that by law (U.S., and international convention) enemy aliens had no right whatsoever to even be in the United States after December 7th 1941. Also understand that Japan considered ALL persons of Japanese heritage living outside the Empire to be subjects of the Emperor. More on this later.

Did the evacuations place an undue hardship on thousands of patriotic Americans? They most certainly did. The government's efforts at leasing business properties, and warehousing and protecting of evacuee property fell well short of ideal. Millions of dollars worth of property and business that hard working Americans honestly earned were lost, and under the 1948 Evacuation Claims Act the Federal Government paid over 26,000 claims that totaled well into the millions. A word of disclosure, in 1988 I supported the Civil Liberties Act. I have since grown up and recognized my error. Mr. Cobel should be praised for his principled stand against the bill. Certainly there's a case for specific families to be reimbursed for losses, but that should not translate to a wholesale raid on the U.S. Treasury to assuage the "white guilt" of the post-modernist intellectual elite.

However, to suggest that 120,000 people were "locked up" as Mr. Floyd Mori suggests is, to use his own words, "outrageous and uneducated" and "patently incorrect."

But why did FDR create the Military exclusion areas in the first place? This is where Eric really got my ire up. Eric has written over 1800 words, and like the sources he cites¹ doesn't even mention the single most important catalyst propelling the evacuation order: The American Magic.

It was the decrypts of Japanese diplomatic traffic that convinced FDR, his cabinet, and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court that drastic action had to be taken.

...We have already established contacts with absolutely reliable Japanese in the San Pedro and San Diego area, who will keep a close watch on all shipments of airplanes and other war materials, and report the amounts and destinations of such shipments. The same steps have been taken with regard to traffic across the U.S.--Mexican border.

We shall maintain connection with our second-generations who are at present in the (U.S.) Army, to keep us informed of various developments in the Army. We also have connections with our second generations working in airplane plants for intelligence purposes... You can look at the complete message here and two more here and here.

The last message is particularly interesting because it reveals why southern Arizona was included in the exclusion area (hint, the safe houses to Mexico were through Arizona).

The Magic decrypts show message after message outlining the intelligence network Japan was developing within the Japanese immigrant population of the United States. This was no conspiracy theory by the tin-foil hat crowd, but a historical fact revealed by the meticulous documentation of intelligence work by a hostile power. For good or bad, hate it or praise it, the evacuation order accomplished its number one goal, the total obliteration of Japan's ability to gather useful and timely intelligence from within the contenental United States. It should also be noted that Japanese loyal to the Emperor attempted to infiltrate the relocation centers and intimidate Americans (usage: Americans of Japanese heritage). One estimate, by a source sympathetic to the Japanese community in America, estimated that 1 in 5 of that community was an agent or active sympathizer of Japan. This Naval Intelligence Officer was against evacuation, but he didn't have any Magic to go on.

None of the characters (Carter and Munson, Hoover, and Biddle; opponents of the evacuation order) in the Greek tragedy Eric writes as "what happened," had any access to or knowledge of the Magic decrypts. If you don't have all the information, you can't see the whole picture. Dr. Greg Robinson's distortion of the historical record "By Order of the President" is a bit like this. He discounts the influence of Magic with a wand of revisionism while disregarding that all the participants state emphatically that Magic is what drove the decisions leading to Executive Order 9066.

Were there racist vultures just ready to take advantage of the innocent? You betcha, but those idiots' racism does not translate into the decision or the decision process being racist. Today, merely pointing out the historical fact that the government of Japan successfully recruited among the Japanese community and expected that their loyalty would be de facto Japanese is enough to be labeled racist. The doctrine that it is OK to expose the errors of one community, but not the errors of another, is the very essence and basis of racism. Transparency, not politically correct obfuscation, is truly healing and binding.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear here, it was the policy of Imperial Japan to weaponize expatriate Japanese against their host countries (that Magic documents) which eventually lead to the evacuation order. Remember that telling statistic I gave earlier, that 5,620 Nisei had renounced their U.S. citizenship? That there is ample evidence of this Japanese policy. The fault for the evacuations lies not with any racism (as Robinson shrills) from the people of the United States but with the harsh, brutal, Militaristic government of Imperial Japan whose policies created much (not unmerited) suspicion.

The truly egregious ill-treatment toward those of Japanese heritage began after an unannounced visit to Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy. That treatment was a direct result of policies set in Tokyo to consider all Japanese on foreign soil as tools to be exploited for Imperial gain at the expense of the host country. It's a lesson in the process of post-modernistic interpretation where outcome is more important than the truth.

FDR signed the evacuation order because he felt he had to for the sake of national security; because Japanese intelligence services had so infiltrated the Japanese community within the U.S., FDR felt obligated to evacuate certain aliens from certain areas of the country. The evacuation did result in the destruction of the Japanese intelligence operation within the U.S., and theirby shortened the war. So, Mr. Muller, I argue that ultimately FDR did feel that the evacuation was "to protect the Japanese Americans themselves", not from their fellow Americans, but from the first evil Empire, The Empire of Japan. And you ain't ever, ever, going to get an apology from me for that.

Many Americans gave their lives in WWII fighting against those of their own heritage. The largest immigrant group in the U.S. is German. Look at a list of WWII Medal of Honor winners; you'll see lots of German sounding names (awarded usually posthumously) that were drafted to fight against kinsmen. Is that really so different for the evacuees? Remember, the Germans willingly accepted the requirements of the draft, the Japanese willingly accepted the requirements of forced relocation. That their sacrifice was different, it was no less war winning. They sacrificed, property, livelihoods, and freedom of assembly to root out a pernicious cancer in their midst, all in the cause to destroy that militaristic evil then called the Empire of Japan. Waging war takes more than just weapons and armies, it takes dedicated people. That is the gift the evacuees gave us, a truly heroic and patriotic sacrifice. We should honor that sacrifice, not patronize it.

Are you Dusko Popof's son? Dusko was a British double-agent. Hoover called him an "immoral decadent." "Look at the man's goddam code-name, Tricycle. It means he likes to go to bed with two girls at once." Hoover, at times, was an ass. Alan Hynd (p.285)describes a 3/4 mile tunnel under Wilshire Blvd. (haven't checked this out but sounds highly improbable. (Ch.7,p.119)Hynd writes about a yellowish blob of some kind of acid that adhered to ships...checked this out with chemistry prof. at Univ. Washington. He knew of no caustic material with such properties as Hynd describes.

Sheesh, let it rest, man. Reagan apologised. Most of the Go For Broke guys came from camp. The Sadao Munemitsu interchange (405 and 105 freeways in L.A.) is named for a J.A. G.I. who took a German grenade for his platoon in Italy. Query--Why were there no German or Italian internment camps?

I'm sorry, I misspoke-- the Japanese who were here long before any troubles occurred lived on meager portions of rice, fish, and whatever they could manage at rattlesnake island. They contributed to making this nation exactly what makes America great. My father landed at green beach, IWO JIMA, 5th Marine Division, Pioneer, and he never overtly held a grudge, to the point he would dislike even this conversation.

I'm not sure if this answers your question, but I do not see the level of patriotism among the current American Muslims rising to that of the Japanese/Americans--Like I said "Apples and Oranges"

I afraid I have to disagree with some of the things you said about the Japanese Americans during WWII.

For example it should be known that in Strangers From A Different Shore by Ronald Takaki (pages 397-404), it states at least 33,000 Japanese-Americans served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

You can also get more details and information about Japanese American history and combat experience by reading the book Honor By Fire by Lyn Crost.

It tells about the various accounts of Japanese-American military veterans who served with U.S. forces (pages 311-315) in Italy, Western Europe, Southeast Asia and in the Pacific during WWII.

On pages 311-315 the book shows that they served in the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Military Intelligence Service, various U.S. Marine divisions, United States Navy, and etc.

This book also shows on pages 31-33 that in September, 1942, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur actually had started to recruit Japanese Americans from DETENTION CAMPS and Hawaii to serve in the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) to perform various intelligence duties.

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