RACE BAITING

Highly indignant, we were about to give hot answer to Lieut.-Gen. John L. DeWitt when we came upon an editorial in the Minidoka Irrigator, newspaper published at the relocation center in Idaho where our Bainbridge Island Japanese colony is now stationed.

The general, in a statement about nisei loyalty which sounded like something out of a dictator nation and not from free America, will draw the protests of the Japanese-Americans "who have volunteered to serve as front-line shooting fighters in the same army to which the General belongs," the Irrigator editorial said. Then, in better words than we could have chosen, it concludes:

"There is no point in disputing here the General's plainly off-center allegation that we are a "dangerous element, whether loyal or not." It would be a waste of time and space to comment lengthily upon the utterly ludicrous absence of sense, discretion and logic in the statement. Even the loyal may be "a dangerous element" to the General but the War Department knows different.

"General DeWitt is a thoroughly efficient and capable military commander, as the evacuees well know--but as a commentator on Japanese American loyalty, he is something less than admirable. It shouldn't be necessary, but somebody ought to tell the General that most Americans accept the word of the President that this war is being fought for the Four Freedoms and is not a race war."