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Q: Could you give us a bit of a summary of the events that led up to Executive Order 9066?

PI: The decision to authorize the evacuation in Executive Order 9066 was, came about ten weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. During that time, though, there wasn't any coordinated planning. It wasn't like a military operation where you have an objective, you formulate plans, implement the plans. It was really chaotic. A lot of people were involved in that decision within the military who had no business dealing at all with Japanese Americans or with civilians. General DeWitt, who was the commander on the West Coast, was pushed and pulled between various forces that wanted him to take a strong position or a weaker position. His own feeling was that, of course he distrusted Japanese Americans, his racist attitudes affected that, but he wasn't sure until near the end of that period that it was something that had to be done. Some of the people who became involved, General Gullion, for example, who was in charge of the army's law enforcement office, had no direct responsibility. They simply took over. Gullion's assistant, Col. Bendetsen, became the influential person between the War Department in Washington and the military on the West Coast. What Bendetsen did, in a sense, was to coordinate the political drive for internment, members of Congress in Washington, to help establish that as a force and factor, and then bring that pressure to bear on DeWitt, so that DeWitt couldn't resist it. Bendetsen framed the basic recommendation himself. Assistant Secretary McCloy, who had been delegated this responsibility by the secretary of war, really allowed his subordinate officers, Gullion and Bendetsen in particular, to assume control of a decision that was not their responsibility. At the same time, the Justice Department was in a bind. Lawyers in the Justice Department objected to evacuation on constitutional grounds. They also didn't think it was necessary as a practical thing, but they deferred to the military instead of asserting their own jurisdiction that they were charged with enforcing the laws. They simply gave it over to the army. They allowed the army to take the heat for evacuation because they were unwilling to do that themselves.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1983, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.