NATIONAL W.R.A. HEAD RATES ISLAND EVACUEES 'EXCELLENT', ASKS DRAFT

The national director of the War Relocation Authority, making an official visit to Bainbridge Island Sunday, said that the Island's Japanese-American and Japanese evacuees have made an "excellent" record.

Dillon S. Myer, who inspected evacuee property here managed by the W.R.A., paid particular praise to the manner in which Island evacuees avoided participation in the riot while they were at the Manzanar, Calif., relocation center.

"The Bainbridge group, living in one block by themselves, simply posted guards around the block and wouldn't permit anybody to enter or leave until the trouble was over," Mr. Myer said.

Most Island evacuees since have been moved to the center at Hunt, Ida. Mr. Myer said he was pleased to learn that the Island group was happier there among other Northwest evacuees.

The director, in the Northwest for only a few days, was taken to the Island at his specific request.

Mr. Myer told The Review that his organization would "push just as hard as we can" for the application of the Selective Service Act to all Japanese-Americans. Some nisei were permitted to volunteer in the armed forces, but after Pearl Harbor the Army barred the draft to them. Later, the W.R.A. succeeded in winning approval for the formation of a volunteer combat unit, now in training in Mississippi, of Japanese-Americans.

"It is best for the future welfare of this nation and for their own welfare that they be treated as other citizens in the draft," Mr. Myer said. "Every American citizen ought to have the opportunity to fight for his country."

Other points in the W.R.A. program, Mr. Myer said, are the segregation of disloyal Japanese and the removal from centers into the armed forces of war industries or agriculture of the loyal should be permitted to leave as soon as possible," Mr. Myer declared.

He said he was leaving to the military the decision as to whether released evacuees should be permitted to return to the West Coast during the war.

He was accompanied here by R.B. Cozzens, San Francisco, field assistant director, and by Capt. Edward M. Joyce, Seattle, district W.R.A. supervisor. They conferred with V.E. Uhrich, Winslow, commander of Colin Hyde Post, No. 172, American Legion, on the legion's use of the Japanese Hall for a youth recreation center.