Biddle Suggests Revocation Of Disloyal Japs' Citizenship

By Associated Press.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9.--Attorney-General Francis Biddle today told a Dies subcommittee investigating War Relocation Authority activities that he had the "gravest doubt" concerning the constitutionality of action removing American citizens from their homes because of their race.

At a continuation of hearings into disturbances last month at the Tulelake (Calif.) Japanese Relocation Center, Biddle asserted "the W.R.A. has no legal technical right of interning any American citizen. ... They (the centers) were set up to afford these people a place they could go before they found some place to live."

"I know of no authority in any executive order," the attorney-general stated, "to hold a citizen in a center."

"Biddle suggested that one way to end present difficulties with American citizens of Japanese ancestry who have declared loyalty to Japan would be to deprive them of the United States citizenship.

On a suggestion that the Tulelake center be transferred permanently to Army supervision, Biddle warned it might bring retaliation by Japan by placement of American citizens in the Far East under Japanese army rather than the military police which now supervises them.

Biddle said no writs of habeas corpus had been brought by Japanese in the centers to test the authority of W.R.A. to hold them because they were afraid to do so.

The essence of the W.R.A. program, Biddle said, was a "social service" to the Japanese.

Expanding his views concerning possible international repercussions, Biddle said there was "no doubt that the Japanese were watching American actions closely and would model their treatment of American internees accordingly.

Japanese treatment of American citizens abroad, the attorney-general said had been "good." He said he based this statement on conversations with repatriates who landed recently on the exchange ship Gripsholm.

Most trouble in this country with Japanese in relocation centers, Biddle said, was with those American citizens who had been sent to Japan to be educated and had been inculcated with Japanese ideology.

Biddle told the committee it should act on the question of Japanese relocation with cool and level heads.