At Issue in History: Japanese American Internment Camps

This book is one of a series of books that examine both sides of an issue, presenting material from both views.

The book opens with basic information about the number of Japanese in the U.S. at the time and the reasons officially given for the internment and other possible reasons.

One statistic I didn't see anywhere else was that, in 1941, three-quarters of the Nisei (second generation in the U.S.) were under the age of 25.

The rest of the introduction is a recapping of the history of the internments from just prior to until after the war.

The first chapter contains Earl Warren's (later Supreme Court Justice Warren) views supporting internment as given in his testimony before the House Select Committee Investigating National Defense.

His reasoning is most interesting. He starts out saying the military should be the group to handle whatever is done and that another Pearl Harbor but on the west coast is possible. He says a "wave of sabotage" could happen in California. He thinks that the "fifth column" has already planned such activities for California.

He says that the fact that there has been no sabotage at all is an "...ominous sign..." (In other words, it hasn't happened yet so that proves it will happen.) He holds that the sabotage has obviously been planned for a later date. He also said there is more danger from the Nisei (Japanese-Americans born here), than from the Issei, the original Japanese inhabitants. (Which was proven totally wrong as the Nisei had been "Americanized" so much that many of them no longer even spoke Japanese.)

He also testifies that the fact that the Japanese Americans own a lot of farms, and that those farms are often near aircraft factories shows a prior planning of sabotage on their part.

The next chapter is someone testifying that the evacuations are not needed. His view was that only a few hundred of the Japanese-Americans might not be loyal and they should be investigated on an individual basis.

The third chapter is testimony by DeWitt, the chief military person behind all the evacuations and an avowed hater of the Japanese. He sites almost every possible type of Japanese business as being near this or that potential target all the way up to Japanese business being near wooded areas. His testimony is absurd in its statements. This guy was not firing on all thrusters by any means.

The fourth chapter is an editorial from the San Francisco News asking all Japanese to cooperate with the evacuation plan. It has a really important argument in it: "Real danger would exist for all Japanese if they remained in the combat area. The least act of sabotage might provoke angry reprisals that easily could balloon into bloody race riots."

The next chapter examines the role of racial prejudice in the relocation movement. It quotes a congressman from Mississippi as saying: ""once a Jap, always a Jap. You cannot change him. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. ...The white man's civilization has come into conflict with Japanese barbarism and one of them must be destroyed."

Apparently FDR himself held some rather odd racist views, including the idea that if the Japanese could be driven back to their own islands their aggressive characteristics might be bred out of them. The rest of the chapter is filled with similar statements about him and from other congressmen.

The next chapter is one that was written by an attorney who says that the evacuation was not racist or shameful, either. He refers to the treatment of the Japanese-Americans as "...so tender-hearted that it actually endangered the security of the United States during a desperate war."

He further argues that the Japanese-Americans were not really "interned" since some were allowed to leave for work in other places from time to time. He argues that the fences and guards were really to protect the Japanese-Americans from other Americans. He argues that the Japanese-Americans in Hawaii were not relocated since Hawaii was under martial law. Italians and Germans were not subject to relocation since those groups had already become assimilated, and the Japanese, due to their different culture, were not assimilated. (Note: I'm just noting his arguments; the entire chapter is filled with statements like that.)

The next section deals with Constitutional questions raised by the relocation program. The Korematsu decision presents material from judges who agreed and those who disagreed with the decision. The section goes on with more material on the legal aspects of relocation.

The third section of the book is entitled "Legacies and Lingering Disputes Concerning the Internment of Japanese Americans.

The first portion deals with whether or not the camps should be called concentration camps with the writer saying they should be called that. An opposing view follows by a different writer. The third article in the section is about attempts at redress over the relocation movement.

The fourth article is about divisions among the Japanese-Americans over the issue of being willing to serve in the American armed forces when they were drafted or refusing to serve. Resisters to the draft were arrested, tried and sent to prison. Those divisions continue even today in spite of the fact that most of the people involved are in their seventies or eighties.

The fifth section is about historical revisionists in the U.S. who are trying to say the camps weren't that bad after all, the whole process was ok, things like that. A couple of there more absurd arguments: the barbed wire around the camps was to keep out wandering cows and most Japanese Americans were not forced to go to the camps but went voluntarily.

Their actions are not limited to words, either. Vandalism at Manzanar and shooting at a state historical landmark have also been undertaken, along with the usual Nazi swastikas and racial slurs. The rest of the section goes into more specifics about what these revisionists are saying.

This is another of the books that is absolutely filled with interesting information and information covering both sides of the issue. Worth taking a look at.



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