Title: "Some Japs Sent to Outside Jobs," Seattle Times, 12/18/1942, (ddr-densho-56-870)
Densho ID: ddr-densho-56-870

SOME JAPS SENT TO OUTSIDE JOBS

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 -- (AP) -- Approximately 200 of the 110,000 West Coast Japanese who were sent to war relocation centers after Pearl Harbor have been released to resume normal activity in American life.

Statisticians of the War Relocation Authority estimated today that others are emerging at the rate of about 10 a day, after being investigated for character and loyalty to the United States. They leave voluntarily to take regular jobs outside the prescribed areas of California, Western Washington and Oregon, and Southern Arizona.

The W.R.A. said it was fostering this method of dispesring [dispersing] some of the Japanese, about two-third of whom are native United States citizens, as one means of solving the crowded relocation problem now centered in ten camps.

More than 9,000 were allowed to go out on temporary leave to help harvest sugar-beet crops in the West, but most of them have returned to the centers.

No one is allowed to displace another worker or cut under the prevailing wage for his type of work.

John Baker, director of the W.R.A.'s office of reports, said there are "very few" pro-Axis sympathizers among those remaining in the centers.

They include temperaments ranging from the gentle to the rough -- and tensions resulting "normally" from a mass of persons living together, Baker said, account largely for recent troubles in the centers at Manzanar, Calif., and near Parker, Ariz.