Magic: The Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of Japanese Residents From the West Coast During World War II

When I looked at the back of the book and read the blurb there I became concerned. The premise of this book is that the U.S. government had intercepted messages from Japan which proved that there was an active espionage movement among Japanese-Americans on the West Coast, and that this is what led to the interment program.

What was bothersome about was that, by the time I got to this book, I'd been through maybe twenty others or so, plus various articles and every single one of those sources agreed that there was no active espionage program, that there was no sabotage, and that intercepted telegrams had nothing to do with the relocation; rather, it was a product of racial hatred and prejudice, fear, and military and political pressure.

I started checking on the net to find out about the book and the author and found various sources which said that this man's writings were not considered reliable, to put a nice tone on it, and that his statements had been refuted.

I am not an expert on the subject of the internment. All I have been doing is consulting a number of sources and reviewing/summarizing them. I will do the same with this book but with this warning: it is very possible that at least some of what is in this book is distorted/revisionist history and not reliable.

He starts right off saying :The cumulative total of this intelligence revealed to the President and his key advisers the specter of subversive nets up and down the West Coast, controlled by the Japanese government, utilizing large number of local Japanese residents, and designed to operate in a wartime environment."

This is what he says led to the internment camps. Again, I will point out that I have not read one other single source, from 1946 to 2005, which supports this allegation. I am not saying it is false; all I'm saying is that I have found no one else who agrees with it. The author of one of the books I have reviewed, "By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans", writes on a web page analysis of a book by someone else, but concerning the same concept that Magic makes:

"First, an examination of the MAGIC cables provided by the author does not provide any case for implicating the Japanese Americans in espionage activities. Most of the cables discussed (a tiny handful of the thousands of messages decrypted) come from Tokyo or Mexico City and refer to areas outside the United States. Those cables that do speak of the United States detail various efforts by Japan to build networks, and list hopes or intentions rather than actions or results. For example, the author quotes (p. 41) from a January 31, 1941 cable from Tokyo which orders agents to establish espionage and to recruit second generations. It does not say that such recruitment took place, and furthermore that recruitment was to take place even more among non-Japanese. Similarly, the author cites excerpts listing census data transmitted on the Japanese population of various cities--hardly secret information. The author relies most strongly on a memo from the Los Angeles consulate to Tokyo from May 1941. The author claims "the message stated that the network had Nisei spies in the U.S. Army" (p. 44). In fact, the message states "We shall maintain connection with our second generations who are at present in the U.S. Army." This speaks again of agents to be recruited. There is no evidence that any individuals had been recruited as agents, still less that they were actively giving information. Replies back from Los Angeles and Seattle state that they had established connections with Japanese and with "second generations." The rest of the cables she cites recount information given to Japan in fall 1941, long after any discussion of recruiting Japanese Americans had ceased, with no clue as to the source of the information given. The sum total of the information is that Japan unquestionably tried to build a spy network in the US during 1941. It is also clear that the Japanese wished to recruit Japanese Americans, as well as non-Japanese."

"Even assuming for the sake of argument that the MAGIC excerpts did show some credible risk of disloyal activity by Nisei on the West Coast, those who made the case for internment did not rely on them. The author herself notes that access to the MAGIC encrypts was limited to a dozen people outside the decrypters, and notably says that President Roosevelt, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy had access to the MAGIC cables. This leaves her in the position of asserting that the essential reflection and decision was made by those three figures, and the reasons or motivations of all other actors were irrelevant. However, the record amply demonstrates that West Coast Defense Commander General John DeWitt (and his assistant Karl Bendetsen) were largely responsible for making the case for evacuation, and that their judgment of the situation and their recommendation for mass evacuation overcame the initial opposition of McCloy and Stimson. DeWitt's motivations for urging evacuation--notably his comment to McCloy that "a Jap is a Jap," and his reliance on arguments about the "racial strains" of the Japanese in his Final Report--indicate that his conduct was informed by racism."

"Finally, there is no direct evidence to support the contention that the MAGIC excerpts played a decisive role in the decision of the figures who did have access to them to authorize mass evacuation, and considerable evidence that leads to a contrary inference. Throughout all the confidential memoranda and conversations taking place within the War Department at the time of the decision on evacuation, transcripts which show people speaking extremely freely, the MAGIC excerpts are not mentioned a single time. In particular, there is no evidence that President Roosevelt ever saw or was briefed on the MAGIC excerpts the author mentions, let alone that he was decisively influenced by them. As I detail at great length in my book "By Order of the President," throughout the 1930s Roosevelt expressed suspicions of Japanese Americans, irrespective of citizenship, and sought to keep the community under surveillance. As early as 1936, he already approved plans to arrest suspicious Japanese Americans in Hawaii if war broke out. As of early 1941, before FDR could have received any MAGIC excerpts, the Justice Department and the military had already put together lists of aliens to be taken into custody (the so-called ABC lists). These were not based on suspicion of individual activities, but of the suspected individuals' position in Japanese communities. Roosevelt continued to believe in a threat despite receiving reports of overwhelming community loyalty from the FBI and his own agents, reports he called "nothing much new."

One interesting thing about the book is that it contains no bibliography, no reference to other published books on the subject.

One more thing. Before I started going over the book I thought the sheer number of messages presented would be hard to refute. It turns out that the majority of the messages, indeed the vast majority of the messages, either have absolutely nothing whatever to do with the author's main premise of West Coast sabotage/espionage, or they are simply messages containing information that could have been obtained by consulate workers without the use of spies. In other words, much of the book is actually totally irrelevant to the author's own arguments.

Ok. So much for warnings. Now on to the review/synopsis.

The author starts right off criticizing the payments made to those of Japanese ancestry who were involved in the internment camps, due to a bill signed by Ronald Reagan.

Chapter 1: The author recounts a little the history of Japanese immigration. He criticizes Japanese schools as indoctrinating Japanese students with strongly pro-Japan ideology (without citing any other sources); he notes they worked long hours for low pay (true); the tended to form communities of their own (true, just the same as all other immigrant groups did initially); the Japanese settled in areas near airfields, etc. (did they do that, or did they settle in areas and after they settled the airfields were built?); he sites Terminal Island (fishermen) as a hotbed of espionage as well as various Japanese local organizations, says 25% of all Japanese Americans were of doubtful loyalty (without saying how that 25% figure was arrived at); 3,500 could be expected to act as agents and saboteurs (again, how was that number arrived at?); the Kibei, Japanese Americans born here, sent to Japan for education and returned here, were considered especially problematic (that, at least, is true; they were considered problematic); Japanese Americans were watching ports, military bases, etc. (proof?) and Japanese Americans in the armed forces, at least some of them, were there for subversive purpose (proof?).

He states that, within a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, "...the U.S. had taken several thousand enemy aliens into custody about whom there was evidence of disloyalty..." . Not a single source I have read agrees with this; all other sources I have consulted says the people were arrested and held without charge or trial. If, as the author says, there was "evidence of disloyalty," then, surely, the people would have been at least charged if not actually tried and found guilty. He says such a thing wasn't possible because it was too monumental an effort to undertake and would have required revealing how the information against the people was found out.

He notes that the Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not shipped en masse back to the U.S. largely because of the need for workers and because martial law had been declared and the military was in command. (Yet the Japanese-Americans formed a very large portion of the population of Hawaii, about a third, if I remember correctly, and the Japanese-American population in the U.S. -Hawaii was not a state at the time- was less than 2%. Even if the military was in control in Hawaii, how could they guarantee controlling 1/3 of the population if the Japanese American population was so treacherous, full of sabotage and spying?)

Next in the book are some pictures of assembly centers (good pics); and relocation centers (good pics, but almost entirely tied in to arts/crafts and leisure activities, none showing the latrines, showers, barbed wire, guard towers or things like that, thus showing only the good things and none of the bad.)

Chapter 2: This chapter goes into the history of the decryption of the Japanese intelligence code. Other than a brief aside claiming the messages were showing major efforts on the part of the Japanese government to recruit spies the entire chapter is simply a recounting of historical events.

Chapter 3: More history of the decryption program.

Chapter 4: The author writes, relating to the post-war period, "The unflattering wartime caricatures of the Japanese enemy, which had unfairly tainted the public perception of the Issei and Nisei, completely disappeared." (This utterly ignores the considerable opposition to resettlement of Japanese-Americans in California and other areas. Various state governors had stated they didn't want any of the Issei or Nisei to be resettled in their states. The prejudice did not end automatically with the end of the war as the author tries to claim.)

The author notes two trials of Japanese Americans that did occur. The thing he doesn't point out is that neither of these two was in the U.S. during the war! Then he goes into the history of reparation efforts.

Chapter 5: The author uses the term "...the powerful Japanese-American juggernaut..." in relating to the efforts to review the original cases from the time (Hirabayashi, Komatsu, etc) and have the original convictions overturned or set aside. Further, he claims the government did not lie in the original trials, but that the lawyers for the accused were the ones who did the lying. That gives you an idea of what the chapter is like.

Chapter 6: Goes into the history of Congressional action in relation to reparations.

Part II: The Magic Messages

Chapter 7: Japan Organizes for Intelligence: He refers to the Japanese effort "...to activate fully the already-in-place Japanese military agents previously placed in the U.S. by the Third Bureau..." which were largely language school students. Japanese Consulates were also being used for spying, according to the author. That consulates might have been used for spying is reasonable; the part about the language students being spies again is not proven.

The author then summarizes messages. Message #44 is interesting in that it supposedly said "In the event of U.S. participation in the war, our intelligence setup will be moved to Mexico." (Why would you move your intelligence setup to Mexico if you were going to use the Japanese-Americans, who happened to be in America, as the main spying group? Further, the message was from January 30 of 1941, so it seems it would actually work against the author's claims of massive spying operations in the U.S.)

Message #239 from February 5 of 1941 is summarized as having plans for fallback spying setups in Central and South America and to organize Japanese residents in those areas for espionage. (Thus moving the intelligence setup even further from the U.S. and organization non-U.S. Japanese residents, thus again working against the author's premise of U.S. spy operations.)

Message #287, from June 11, 1941, is about investigating "...the possibilities of using Negroes for subversive purposes." (Now, unless my knowledge of biology and history is utterly wrong there was not exactly a large number of black Japanese-Americans! Investigating the use of blacks for subversive purposes has nothing at all to do with Issei or Nissei, and further it says "investigate" the "possibilities" which is rather different from having had something settled upon and in place.)

Chapter 8: Japanese Intelligence Requirements: The author notes that Japan's efforts to use dissident groups in the U.S. for their purposes failed because they didn't understand the realm of diversity in the U.S. among its people and groups. All the messages cited refer to the type of information any government would want on a country it was considering going to war against, but there is absolutely no discussion whatever of where that information was actually supposed to come from. The author does not say it was going to come from spies or consulate workers or just plain information researches, so the entire chapter does absolutely nothing to forward the author's claims of massive Japanese spying and sabotage planning on the West Coast.

Chapter 9: Issei and Nisei: The author does not seem to consider the possibility that much of the content of the messages relating to efforts to do this or that and programs to do this or that might have just been empty words; to say that things were being done and to really have those things being done are two different things. People sending messages would be subject to various political and personal pressures and they would tend to make things sound better than they actually were, something which is obviously still done today as "spin doctors" exemplify.

Again, some of the messages have nothing to do with the West Coast. Message #319 relates to the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C. Message #93 concerns Mexico again. Message #1265 again involved the use of blacks, not Issei or Nisei. (It seems to me that the author is using an approach that by using a large number of messages it would impress the reader, whether or not the messages had anything to do with his basic premise not being that important. There's an old saying about "If you can't dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullshit.)

Chapter 10: Special Interest Message: Messages that don't neatly fall into other categories such as message #247 talking about trying to start a revolution in Guatemala. Message #278 relates to Japanese nationals living in Mexico. Message #500 has to do with Japanese residents in the Philippines. Those are just a few messages that have, again, nothing to do at all with the author's premise of U.S. espionage. Most of the other messages he cites are of the kind that would naturally be expected under the conditions at the time.

Chapter 11: West Coast: Instead of summaries the author just has the various messages. One thing from reading the messages came immediately to me; a lot of the information in the messages, which the author is basically using to claim there was a vast spy network, contain the type of information that one could pick up from local newspapers and radio reports. All of the messages in this chapter are before Pearl Harbor and hence before any major censorship on the part of the government to keep information away from the Japanese. In short, any consulate workers who had access to local newspapers could have found most if not all of this information on their own; a vast spy network was not necessary.

Chapter 12: Panama. First, all of the messages are prior to Pearl Harbor. Second, unless my knowledge of world geography is totally wonky, Panama is NOT a part of the continental U.S. much less than a part of the West Coast. Thus, there again is an entire chapter which has absolutely nothing at all to do with the author's premise about West Coast spy and sabotage networks.

Chapter 13: Manila. Same comments as for Chapter 12 exactly, except this time for Manila.

Chapter 14: Honolulu. The chapter deals with one single espionage agent in Hawaii. One.

Part III: The Intelligence Reports

Chapter 15: The F.B.I. Document summary 214 is about the Japanese planning to strengthen its intelligence network in the U.S. according to a "highly confidential and reliable source" (and how many times have we heard that argument and seen it prove totally false). Now, if a nation is even considering a war with another nation, wouldn't it be reasonable for it to try to strengthen its spy network? This message is not surprising at all.

Then, what's worse, if you read the actual material rather than the author's summary of it you find the message refers to using "citizens of foreign extraction, Communists, Negroes, labor union members, anti_Semitism and men having access to government departments..." etc. In other words, non-Japanese-Americans. A reference is made to using Japanese nationals, but warns that if they are caught they will be subject to "considerable persecution." So the plan is to use non-Issei and Nisei, mainly.

The next document the author sites, page 216, again notes a "thoroughly reliable and highly confidential source", notes they will be using whites and blacks along with Japanese in their efforts, again showing emphasis on non-Japanese Americans being used.

I'm not going to go into every single page noted, but the pattern is obvious; the author's summary of the page makes it sound terribly significant and dangerous; the actual page usually contains information which relates to "reliable sources" (which are never named), or has to do with people other than Issei and Nisei, deals with consular personnel and not average on-the-street Nisei and Issei, etc. One part originally had a list attached of specific names but the author has left it off; in addition, many of the names, by the author's own admission, were Caucasians and Blacks. Finally, all but three of the messages are pre-Pearl Harbor.

Chapter 16: The Army Military Intelligence Division. 7 document pages noted, three of which are prior to Pearl Harbor. One concerns efforts in Latin American and Peru in particular (which, again, has absolutely nothing to do with the U.S. West Coast); one message has to do with setting up restricted areas in California; one message deals with reports of Japanese submarines off Alaska and California, etc, not tying any of it in to actual persons from the Issei or Nisei on the West Coast.

Chapter 17: The Office of Naval Intelligence: 7 pages cited, 2 of which are prior to Pearl Harbor. (One note here about my attention to pre-Pearl Harbor messages. To me, pre-Pearl Harbor proves nothing in relation to actual West Coast spying and espionage. It concerns possibilities and plans. What is needed to support the author's premise of massive sabotage and espionage is proof provided that such things actually did exist, not that they were planned or being worked on.)

One of the messages again concerns Latin America and Mexico. One message concerns something called the Tokyo Club which was apparently a gangster-ish organization involved in gambling. There's a number of specific people mentioned and their relationship to the club or to someone in the club. (Now, if they had specific information on specific people (and remember, this is gambling organization) then why not just pick up those people and not be concerned with clearing out all Japanese-Americans?)

(Actually, I'd sum up this rather long passage in Shakespearean terms: "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.")

One message concerns an incident that happened on the Hawaiian islands with a downed Japanese pilot.

One very long reference is to a report that has such interesting things as: "The alien menage is no loner paramount, and is becoming of less importance almost daily, as the original alien immigrants grow older and die..." It refers to the Nisei and says at "...lest seventy five percent are loyal to the United States." It adds that the total number who could act as saboteurs or agents was less than three percent of the total Issei and Nisei population, about 3,500 persons. It notes that the most dangerous of those are either already in custody or members of groups that are already being watched.

That ends the author's portion of the book. The publisher included some other documents. One is Executive Order 9066. The rest of the memos are pretty much again irrelevant to the author's main premise.

So, what we have is a book which purports to prove that the internment of Japanese Americans was due to translated Japanese coded documents showing the existence of a massive espionage and sabotage effort on the West Coast.

What we actually have is a book filled with documents that either directly contradict the author's main premise or are utterly irrelevant to that same premise (such as messages dealing with Japanese efforts in Latin America) or contain information from "unnamed sources." Many of the messages are even from the time period before Pearl Harbor and again not directly related to any espionage/sabotage organizations existing at the time of the war. The summaries of the documents try to make them look intimidating and ominous, but when one reads the documents one finds that most of them are not at all that way. It's a physically imposing book, it looks nice, it has some good photos in it, but as far as actually proving its premise it (in my opinion, of course) fails miserably.



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