The Japanese American Relocation Reviewed
The Earl Warren Oral History Project. 1969.
(For permission to quote for publication:
Regional Oral History Office
486 Library
U. of California, Berkeley)
VOLUME I: DECISION & EXODUS
James Rowe - The Japanese Evacuation Decision
Percy Heckendorff - Planning of the Evacuation
Tom Clark - Comments on the Japanese American Relocation
Edward Ennis - A Justice Department Attorney Comments on the Japanese
American Relocation
Herbert Wenig - The Calif. Attorney General's Office, the Judge Advocate
General Corps, and the Relocation
VOLUME II: THE INTERNMENT
Robert Cozzens - Assistant National Director of the WRA
Dillon S. Myer - WRA: The Director's Account
Ruth Kingman - The Fair Play Committee & Citizen Participation
Introduction by Mike Masaoka
These volumes are available at Loyola's Cudahy Memorial Library.
Contact librarian ROY FRY.
INTRODUCTION
SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF, AND REFLECTIONS ON, 1942
Mike M. Masaoka
It is difficult more than three decades after the fact and with the advantage of hindsight to try to accurately reconstruct what happened--and why--to more than 110,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry residing on the West Coast of the United States after the outbreak of World War II on December 7, 1941.
And yet, as the National Secretary and Field Executive of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) at that time and later, after service with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in the European Theater, as the Washington JACL Representative for some 25 years, terminating on July 1, 1972, certain recollections remain quite vivid even today.
One is that probably more than any single person--in my judgment at least--Earl Warren influenced the Executive decision to authorize and carry out the mass military evacuation and exclusion of all persons of Japanese origin from all of California and the western halves of Arizona, Oregon, and Washington, without trial or hearing of any kind, at a time when all of our courts were functioning, early in 1942.
This remains my view toady, even though Warren testified in San Francisco to the so-called Tolan Committee (Select House Committee on National Defense Migration) on February 21, 1942, two days after the President had signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing "any military areas" and to exclude therefrom "any and all persons".
To set the stage, it is to be recalled that immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor and for several weeks thereafter, then Attorney Gen
For about a month, there was no serious demand for the mass evacuation of those of Japanese descent from the Pacific Slope. And the initial calls for evacuation were only for "aliens", and not native born citizens, even though alien Japanese could not become citizens of the United States through naturalization because of the prohibitions in federal statutes. Then, early in February, it seemed that an organized campaign was mounted by the pseudo patriots, the "yellow perilists" and the warmongers, and those who saw "profit" and economic gain for themselves in the total evacuation of all of Japanese race, without regard to citizenship, age, health, wealth, or reputation.
But, it was not until the likes of Earl Warren, a moderate and highly regarded lawyer, then the Attorney General of the State and a popular choice to be Governor of California in the 1942 election, urged the President, the War Department, and the Congress to conduct a mass evacuation of all of Japanese ancestry as "a measure of national security and military necessity" that the President and his associates accepted the recommendation, with the resulting Executive Order being issued on February 19, 1942.
In a lengthy prepared statement to the Tolan Committee, Warren submitted maps prepared by the various county district attorneys purporting to show that the Japanese owned, occupied, or controlled land adjacent to military installations, observing that such locations could not be "coincidence". He also identified alleged Japanese organizations, which included prefectural,
In testimony to the Committee, Warren claimed that Japan had planned "fifth column activities, or sabotage, or war behind the lines upon civilians" for California. "For us to believe to the contrary is just not realistic," he said, adding that "Unfortunately, however, many of our people and some of our authorities and, I am afraid, many of our people in other parts of the country are of the opinion that because we have no sabotage and no fifth column activities since the beginning of the war, that means that none have been planned for us. But I take the view that that is the most ominous sign in our whole situation. It convinces me more than perhaps any other factor that the sabotage that we are to get, the fifth column activities that we are to get, are timed just like Pearl Harbor was timed and just like the invasion of France, and of Denmark, and of Norway, and all of those other countries.
"I believe that we are being lulled into a false sense of security and that the only reason we haven't had a disaster in California is because it has been timed for a different date, and when that time comes if we don't do something about it, it is going to mean disaster both to California and to our Nation. When, nobody knows, of course, but we are approaching an invisible deadline."
Subsequently, Warren testified that "I want to say that the consensus of opinion among the law-enforcement officers of this State is that there is more potential danger among the group of Japanese who are born in this country than from the alien Japanese who were born in Japan. That might seem an anomaly to some people, but the fact is that, in the first place, there are twice as many of them. There are 33,000 aliens and there are 66,000 born in this country....
"While I do not cast a reflection on every Japanese who is born in this country--of course we will have loyal ones--I do say that the consensus of opinion is that taking the groups by and large, there is more potential danger to this State from this group that is born here than from the group that is born is Japan."
When Congressman Arnold of Illinois asked, "Do you have any way of knowing whether any one of this group is loyal to this country or loyal to Japan?", Warren responded, "Congressman, there is no way that we can establish that fact. We believe that when we are dealing with the Caucasian race we have methods that will test the loyalty of them, and we believe that we can, in dealing with Germans and Italians, arrive at some fairly sound conclusions because of our knowledge of the way they live in the community and have lived for many years. But when we deal with the Japanese, we are in an entirely different field and we cannot form any opinion that we believe to be sound. Their method of living, their language, make for this difficulty. Many of them who show you a birth certificate stating that they are born in this State, perhaps, or born in Honolulu, can hardly speak the English language because, although they were born here, when they were four or five years of age they were sent over to
While we know that Warren testified in this vein to this Congressional committee after the President had issued the evacuation and exclusion order, at that time there were reports rampant that comments similar to his testimony and his prepared statement had been sent to members of the California delegation in the Congress, to the President, to the Secretary of War, and to the Attorney General of the United States, among others, in Washington.
In addition, Warren had expressed these same sentiments to newspaper and radio reporters, as well as to other public officials and civic leaders not only in California but elsewhere. Thus, others of reputation began to echo his explanations as if they were their own.
For instance, Walter Lippman, even then a revered columnist, wrote an article that is said to have made a great impression on many Washington officials. He repeated, and expanded on, the Warren theory that, since there had been no espionage or sabotage by the Japanese on the West Coast, this was a danger sign that those of Japanese ancestry were so well organized and disciplined that they were waiting for the invasion by the Japanese military before becoming active in planned sabotage activities.
In any event, from time to time, this recollection, that Earl Warren more than any other individual was responsible for the evacuation decision, has been confirmed. From some who were in the War Department, and others who were in the White House and in the Justice Department, at the time when the President was considering his decision on the subject, we have learned that what we suspected was fact.
Because the President and his civilian advisers were aware of the military's proclivities toward "over-reactions" in cases presumably involving "national security" and "military necessity", and because some of them suspected that during his tour of duty in the Philippines years earlier then-Commanding General of the Western Defense Command John L. DeWitt might have developed a "prejudice" against the Japanese, there was a tendency not to take the recommendations of the Army too seriously at first, especially since both Navy Intelligence and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had informed the President that, in their judgments, total evacuation of the West Coast Japanese was not necessary for "security" reasons.
Moreover, there was this same tendency to discount the demands from West Coast members of Congress, public officials, and most others because of their backgrounds and motivations.
When the "reasoned and documented" recommendations of Earl Warren, however reached the highest levels of government decision-making in Washington, much of the confusion and controversy ceased and the President made his reluctant decision to authorize the evacuation and exclusion of citizen and alien Japanese alike from their homes and associations on the Pacific Coast.
It may be said that perhaps Warren to this day is unaware of the decisive role which he played in the Presidential order. In any event, it may be noteworthy to this date that Warren has not explained the reasons for his wartime views on Japanese Americans. Many of the others who had significant roles at that time have expressed regret over their attitudes then and confessed that they misjudged the loyalty and allegiance of those of Japanese ancestry to the United States.
Be that as it may, some commentators on the Supreme Court of the United States have indicated their belief that the World War II experience of Earl Warren with the Japanese may have contributed to the leadership he gave as Chief Justice to cases involving individual liberties and civil rights that have justly designated his stewardship of the nation's highest tribunal as the Warren Court.
Mike M. Masaoka
Former National Secretary and Washington Representative
Japanese American Citizens League
10 August 1973
Washington, D.C.