CHAIRMAN STATES EVACUATION VIEW

Sakamoto Thinks Young Can Be of Greater Service Helping in Defense

Taking notice of a dispatch from the national capital in regard to evacuating all Japanese from the West Coast. James Y. Sakamoto, chairman of the Emergency Defense Council of the Seattle JACL said:

According to an Associated Press news report from Washington, D.C., on January 21, Representative Leland M. Ford, Republican, California, states that he is taking up with government officials "the seriousness of the Japanese situation on the West Coast" and advocating moving all Japanese, American-born and alien, to concentration camps.

We realize that Congressman Ford bears the welfare of the United States foremost in his mind, and we understand his concern regarding the position of Americans of Japanese descent and their alien parents resident in this country.

We Also Seek Safety

We hasten to declare that the safety of the United States and all her institutions are also the primary concern of all Americans of Japanese parentage, and of the vast majority of their foreign-born mothers and fathers.

This is our country. We were born and reared here; we have made our homes here, and now in this greatest of emergencies we are ready to give our lives if necessary to defend the United States. Already some of our number have paid the supreme sacrifice in defense of our homes during that first treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor. We shall not forget.

Ready for Sacrafice [Sacrifice]

Many thousands of our boys are now serving in the United States armed forces. Others, in various calling of American civil life, are making their contribution to the defense of this country. No sacrifice is too great to make for our homeland, the United States.

But we do not believe the best interests of the nation are to be served by such drastic measures as suggested by Congressman Ford. We have a task cut out for us in civil life -- that of preventing disruption of the normal course of activity -- and we intend to do our part in carrying it out. Shops, hotels, stores and farms must be attended. We desire to continue to do so, especially now when there is such a shortage of labor due to the demands of defense industries, and every willing hand is a national asset.

We do not want to become charges of the government, draining its energies by being forced to receive relief in concentration camps. When the time comes -- as we know it will come -- we shall be able to render a service no other racial group can in leading the offensive against the Japanese Empire.

We have faith in America. Drastic measures now would destroy all that we have built up for more than a half century. The processes of Americanization, so carefully and successfully nurture, would be blighted almost irreparably.

We realize that much suspicion naturally falls on the foreign-born. We are actively co-operating now with the authorities to uncover all subversive activity in our midst, and if need be we are ready to stand as protective custodians for our parent generation to guard against danger to the United States arising from among them.

As all good Americans we stand ready to do the bidding of the President of the United States to defend this, our country and our home, and the American principles we cherish.