<Begin Segment 13>

AI: Of course, it's difficult to speculate, but given the tremendous hostility...

BH: Yes.

AI: ...toward people of Japanese ancestry, if there had been some group of Nisei who had protested the -- as a group or in a more organized fashion, what do you think the reaction or response would have been?

BH: I gathered some quotes here. Milton Eisenhower, who was the head of the -- first head of the WRA, General Eisenhower's brother, he said, "My judgment is that had there been mass opposition, there would have been horrible consequences for the country, where people had been whipped into a frenzy by not very nice folks in the mass communications business and even some in the military. And in view of the hostility already existing, if there had been opposition..." -- and he failed to complete the sentence.

Secretary of War Henry Stimson, in his autobiography says, "Japanese raids on the West Coast seemed not only possible but probable in the first, first months of the war. And it was quite impossible to be sure the raiders would not receive important help from individuals of Japanese origin. More than that, anti-Japanese feeling on the West Coast had reached a level which endangered the lives of all such individuals. Incidents of extra-legal violence were increasingly frequent. And the redress commission found that the violence against ethnic Japanese on the West Coast cannot be dismissed lightly. Between Pearl Harbor and February 15th, five murders and twenty-five other crimes: rapes, assaults, shootings, property damage, robbery, or extor-, extortion, were reported against ethnic Japanese."

And sociologist Jacobus tenBroek who made quite a study of this, says, "On April 13th at Del Rey, California, five evacuees were in a brawl with a local constable, following which a crowd of white residents, some armed with shotguns, threatened violence to a nearby camp of Japanese Americans. In northern Tulare County, a group known as the Bald Eagles, described by one observer as a guerilla army of nearly 1,000 farmers, armed themselves for the announced purpose of quote, 'guarding,' unquote, the Japanese in case of emergency. A similar organization was formed in the southeast part of the county.

In Seattle, Mayor Earl Millikin announced a horse-mounted patrol was ready to escort local Japs over the mountains into Eastern Washington in case of emergency. In Wyoming, Governor Nels Smith warned there would be Japs hanging from every tree if they moved into his state. And Colonel Karl Bendet-, Bendetson told the Commonwealth Club that in San Francisco sometime later that he was prepared to remove 100,000 Japanese in 24 hours."

Now, you can imagine what would have happened if he had called out the military. And the Nisei, especially the JACL leaders, could not take on the responsibility of urging the type of resistance that would lead to bloodshed.

AI: So it sounds like, given this kind of situation and hostility, that there was a very real fear of physical violence...

BH: Indeed, there was, yes.

AI: ...against, against Japanese Americans, and the reality that there was physical violence in some cases.

BH: Yes. And it would have been terrible if... there had been mass violence, it would have made the Kent State shootings look like a picnic. Here were these green troops, young troops, with rifles, itchy fingers. "Shoot the damn Japs."

AI: So that was a very widespread attitude?

BH: Yes, it was. Great -- and I think well-justified fear of violence if the Japanese Americans had resisted in any substantial way.

AI: So for yourself, individually, it sounds like you briefly may have considered raising some voice of protest...

BH: Yes.

AI: ...against this injustice, but then...

BH: Well, yeah. The voice or voices were raised, indeed in the Tolan Committee hearings, in the Seattle hearings. Jimmie Sakamoto was the spokesman, and he said -- no, what I'm trying to recall is Mike Masaoka's testimony in San Francisco. He said, "If this is a national, indeed a national defense need, we, as loyal Americans, must cooperate. But if this is a political maneuver or a way to hurt us economically, or if race prejudice is involved, we must protest this kind of treatment."

AI: And, and likewise, when the Tolan Committee did come here to Seattle to have hearings, there was testimony given by Japanese Americans.

BH: Yes.

AI: And you wrote some about this, that you did not realize at the time that you were giving this testimony, that the decision had already been made...

BH: Right.

AI: ...to exclude you.

BH: Yeah. And I've never said this before, but I think that we made a mistake here in the Seattle hearings by failing to emphasize the legal aspects of the evacuation, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and that sort of thing. We concentrated on the economic impact that our removal would have on the economy here. And the reason we did that was that so many people who were hostile toward us were saying, "Oh, we don't need these Japs. We can raise all the food we want here, and they're only a small part of the economy. And so get 'em out of here." And we tried to respond to that sort of attack instead of taking the higher ground of the legal consequences involved here. Of course, it's quite likely that, that constitutional rights would not have meant anything to the people who wanted to get rid of us anyway. Now, there were a few people, the Quakers and the civil rights people, who raised the constitutional issues. But their voices were not heard.

AI: Right. And so despite these voices that were raised against the injustice, the so-called "evacuation" did proceed.

BH: Yes.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2001 Densho. All Rights Reserved.