In the spring of 1942, we in the United States placed some 110,000 persons of Japanese descent in protective custody. Two out of every three of these were American citizens by birth; one-third were aliens forbidden by law to be citizens. Included were three generations: Issei, or first-generation immigrants (aliens); Nisei, or second-generation (American-born citizens); and Sansei, or third-generation (American-born children of American-born parents).
Within three months after removal from the west coast had been ordered, this entire group of men,women, and children had been lodged in temporary assembly centers, under military guard, awaiting transfer from the area. No charges had been filed against these people nor had any hearing been held. Evacuation was on racial, or, perhaps more accurately, on ancestral grounds. Germans and other enemy aliens were not removed. Nor were Chinese and Koreans, who belong to the same race as the Japanese. But all persons having any Japanese blood, however slight, were forced out.
In the excitement of the moment, the evacuation of the Japanese seemed merely a minor incident of the war. But as the shock of finding ourselves at war gradually abated, the nation began to be uneasy about many aspects of the evacuation. They began to ask whether it squared with our democratic ideals. If the issues were unclear at the outset, they became increasingly involved with each new step of the program. As the danger of an invasion of the west coast receded, measures were taken which no one had urged at the height of the excitement.
Internment, for example, had not been planned originally by the authorities: merely removal from the area. And rather to our amazement, we discovered that after every person of Japanese ancestry had been removed from the west coast and placed in protective custody, agitation against them increased instead of subsided. The evacuation was seized upon as proof of disloyalty and used to justify further measures against the west-coast Japanese group. Each step in the program began to involve entirely unforeseen consequences.
Now in the third year of war, it is possible to review the entire proceeding and to ask a number of questions, such as: Why were these people removed from the west coast? Are the measures which have been taken against them actually related to the reasons advanced for their removal? What has happened to this group of 100,000 men, women, and children? What are the likely consequences of this program? Within this rather narrow orbit, the Japanese had done reasonably well. Their farm lands and buildings, in California alone, were valued at $65,781,000.
In 1941, the Japanese turned out 42 per cent of the crops raised in California, and their production was valued at $30,000,000. In the same year, the thousand or more Japanese-operated fruit and vegetable stores in Los Angeles employed nearly five thousand people (mostly Japanese) and did an annual business of about $25,000,000. Not only were the Japanese a late immigrant group, but they were racially different from the others and were also set apart by sharp cultural differences.
Noting that the rate of assimilation for the Japanese was somewhat slower than for other immigrant groups, west-coast residents hastily concluded that the cultural difference was to be accounted for in terms of race. It must be remembered, however, that the American-born or Nisei generation had not, by December 7, 1941, assumed the leadership of the Japanese communities, although they would clearly have done so in another decade. In 1930, slightly more than half of the Japanese in America were foreign born; but in 1940 the ratio had declined to slightly more than one-third.
In other words, the war struck the west-coast communities just at the moment when the American-born and American-educated generation was beginning to displace the alien generation in positions of social and economic leadership. Thus there existed on the west coast, on December 7, 1941, a deep fissure in the social structure of the region. This fissure the relatively small Japanese minority from the rest of the population. Like the earthquake that separated fissures that run along the Pacific Coast, this particular fissure was deeper in some areas than in others; it had been dormant for some years, but it was still potentially active.
As fifty years of prior social history had shown, almost any jar or shock was capable of disturbing it. The attack on Pearl Harbor was more than a jar; it was a thunderous blow, an earthquake, that sent tremors throughout the area in which the fissure existed. The resident Japanese were the victims of this social earthquake. This is the root-fact, the basic social fact, which precipitated the mass evacuation of the west-coast Japanese—which has been accurately described as “the largest single forced migration in American history. ”
Before discussing why evacuation was ordered, it may help to give a brief log-of-events. On December 11, 1941, the Western Defense Command was established and the west coast was declared a theater of war. General J. L. DeWitt was designated as military commander of the area. On December 7 and 8, 1941, the Department of Justice arrested, on presidential warrants, all known “dangerous enemy aliens. ” Subsequently, by a series of orders, the Department of Justice ordered the removal of all “enemy aliens” from certain designated zones or so-called “spot” strategic installations, such as harbors, airports, and power lines.
The deadline fixed for this “dress rehearsal” of the larger evacuation to follow was February 24, 1942. Following the appearance of the Roberts Report on Pearl Harbor, the public temper on the west coast noticeably changed and by the end of January, 1942, a considerable press demand appeared for the evacuation of all Japanese. In the excitement of the moment, it was not generally noted that the Roberts Report referred to espionage activities in Hawaii but was silent on the question of sabotage.
For months after the release of the Roberts Report it was generally assumed, on the west coast, that acts of sabotage had been committed in Hawaii, despite absolutely conclusive proof from the most authoritative sources that no such acts had been committed. The moment this press campaign for evacuation was launched, the west-coast delegation in Congress held a meeting in the offices of Senator Hiram Johnson and, on February 13, 1942, recommended to the President “the immediate evacuation of all persons of Japanese lineage. The report suggested that this might be accomplished without the necessity of a declaration of martial law such as had been proclaimed in Hawaii on December 7. On February 19, the President signed Executive Order No. 9066 authorizing the War Department to set up military areas and to exclude any or all persons from these areas.
The next day Mr. Stimson delegated this responsibility to General DeWitt. On March 2, General DeWitt, by proclamation, established Military Areas Nos. and 2, and on March 27 he prohibited all persons of Japanese ancestry from leaving these areas. Then by a series of 108 separate orders, General DeWitt ordered all Japanese removed from Military Areas No. 1 and No. 2 (embracing all of Washington, Oregon, and California, and a portion of Arizona). By June 5, 1942, all persons of Japanese ancestry had been removed from Military Area No. 1 (the coastal area), and by August 7, 1942, Military Area No. 2 (the eastern part of the three west-coast states) had likewise been cleared of all Japanese.
It will be noted that it was General DeWitt and the west-coast congressional delegation who recommended mass evacuation. The President and the Secretary of War naturally relied upon General DeWitt’s appraisal of the situation. In the last analysis, it was General DeWitt who had to make the decision since the responsibility generally was vested in him. Now why did he order mass evacuation? Our Japanese-Americans were not treated very well during the 2nd World War. But in the end I really only have one question… Was it really a military necessity?
