Densho Digital Archive - Roger Daniels Interview (denshovh-droger-01-0007)

<Begin Segment 7>

FA: You mentioned the Japanese American Citizens League, under the leadership of Mike Masaoka, you've talked about that in terms of the "dirty underside of loyalty."

RD: Uh-huh.

FA: Can you expand on that?

RD: Well, you see when... loyalty is very, very complex proposition, particularly when you're deciding this not as a very, very complex continuum, but as a simple heads/tails, loyal/disloyal proposition. And if you're engaged in a struggle to prove your loyalty, one of the ways that you tend to do it, unfortunately, and this is a human trait, is by denigrating the non-loyalty, in your terms, of certain others. This happens all the time, it happens in lots of immigrant groups, this is not just a Japanese American phenomenon. My mentor, Theodore Saloutos, who is an immigration historian generally but a specialist in Greek Americans, used to say, "Boy, when an immigrant becomes a patriot he usually becomes a 200 percent patriot." Well, we know what 100 percent Americans do, 200 percent Americans do even worse. And I think this was one of the problems of many of the JACL leaders, that they were trying to be 200 percent Americans, and at the same time were ready to denounce anyone who had a different definition of Americanism than they did.

I don't say that people have to agree with one another, but certainly one of the, one of the most important distinctions between American democracy and many other societies is that we have at least a tradition of tolerating dissent. In fact, when the crunch gets down, whether it's in a hot war or a cold war, certain of those traditions go by the board. We are not that tolerant in times of crisis, and that's not surprising that that's so.

FA: In your opinion, did the Japanese American Citizens League inform on the community prior to Pearl Harbor and after Pearl Harbor? Did they act as informants?

RD: Well, "did the Japanese American Citizens League," now that's, when you phrase a question that way, "Did the Japanese American Citizens League inform on people?" I think you're... I think you've got to be more specific than that. I mean, you have to talk about certain individuals informing at certain times. It is quite clear that from the prewar period, immediate prewar period on, that there were individual Japanese Americans certainly associated with the JACL, some of 'em, who were informing on persons who they thought were subversive and ought to be locked up, to the FBI. The Freedom of Information Act allows us to discover this, but it does not allow us to discover the names of those particular individuals. We get a, we get a blacked-out document. I'm sure there were people inside the Japanese American Citizens League and in its leadership who never informed on anyone. I'm sure there are others who did. But in general, the policy of the JACL was to collaborate with the government, to collaborate with some of the chief oppressors of the Japanese American people. And you can certainly justify this as a political tactic. It's very difficult to justify it as a moral position.

FA: Can you elaborate on that?

RD: Well, I think it's, I don't think it's, it's... I don't think it's proper for people to make denunciations in secret of other people. I think that in the -- but, I mean, this is what happens in wartime situations, in cold war situations, in FBI files, etcetera. My own notion is that accusations made against people should be made in open court and people should be able to face their accusers, etcetera. And there are people who clearly were involved. There was a widespread belief in the Japanese American community, for instance, that Kibei tended to be disloyal, Japanese Americans who'd had some of their education in Japan. And there were general denunciations of Kibei as a group, which were really very reminiscent of denunciations by non-Japanese Americans of Japanese Americans as a group, so that, and in crisis situations, people, a lot of people tend to behave badly. We have to remember that. But despite anything that one can say, you have to keep the main perspective that the Japanese American people as a whole were victims, that there were certainly... within that community there were individuals of the JACL persuasion, some of those who were Communists, who felt it was much more important to denounce those they thought were against the war effort. On the other hand, there were people within the community, within the Japanese American community in the camps, who felt so strongly about this that they committed physical assaults on other kinds of people, and there was great division, and we had the situation in Manzanar, for instance, of young Americans shooting other young Americans, a situation we had later at Kent State and at some of the, at some of the southern colleges during the Civil Rights movement, so all of these things happened, and I think the Japanese American experience must always be seen as a part of the American experience generally, not as some isolated special ethnic thing.