Continued agitation about the Japanese-American problem is in keeping with our American way of doing things. Having once made up our minds what to do with all the Japanese formerly resident along this coast, and having done it, we must listen to a perpetual rehash of the question from those who now think we should do something else.

No one will deny the problem is perplexing. As Mrs. Roosevelt points out, there are those educated the American way, those who were taught to be loyal to their ancestral country and some who came to the United States before Pearl Harbor to avoid fighting for either country.

Among the considerations involved, the first must be to safeguard the nation's interests, for we happen to be a war. Only secondary to this come considerations of humanity to the loyal Japanese, their welfare, present and future. We need not, of course, be much concerned with the future of Japs who are loyal to Japan. They deserve none.

The first of these considerations is military, and the governing policy in this policy in this respect must be left to military authorities. The second consideration is social and economic, and out of the province of the military. It is also over the heads of most laymen.

Some who keep harping about it think a congressional committee should investigate and a committee of California congressmen now has worked out a program which indeed seems to be a step in the right direction. Theirs certainly appears to be a more realistic approach than has been sounded by some who make the subject a favorite topic for interviews, public harangues and press conferences.

However, if congressmen fail to settle the question, let us turn it over to some group of competent, high-minded, qualified and realistic persons, of unquestioned probity -- some such committee as that which was asked to make a survey of the nation's rubber problem.

This continued agitation by soft-hearted sentimentalists of high or low degree, is becoming wearisome.