Internment Essay, Research Paper

One of the military+s largest undertakings during WWII was the mass evacuation of people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast of the United States. This stretched from Washington to Oregon and down to southern California. The decision to evacuate the Japanese was one made at the highest level by the President of the United States, who was acting as Commander in Chief.[3 pp.6] What military plans and recommend-

ations lay behind this decision? What alternatives was the President presented? To what extent was his decision based on military considerations?

Initial plans for evacuation of suspected people from strategic areas along the West Coast concerned enemy aliens of all three Axis nations: Germany, Italy, and Japan rather than people of Japanese ancestry alone. The census in 1940 showed that out of a total of 126,947in the United States, 112,353 Japanese were living in the three Pacific states. California had 93,717 Japanese, or nearly three fourths of the national total. Out of the west coast Japanese, 40,869 were aliens (called Issei) ineligible for citizenship through naturalization proceedings, and 71,484 were American-born (called Nisei) and therefore U.S. citizens. For several decades the Japanese population had been the target of hostility and restrictive action and the bombing of Pearl Harbor just added fuel to the fire. [6 pp.20-25]

During the first few days after the Pearl Harbor attack the west coast was alarmed by a number of reports (all false) about enemy ships off shore. It was in the midst of this atmosphere that the first proposal for a mass evacuation of the Japanese developed. On December 1, a treasury agent reported to Army authorities that “an estimated 20,000 Japanese in the San Francisco area were ready for organized action.” Without checking the authenticity of the report, the Ninth Corps Area staff worked on a plan for evacuation, which was then approved by the corps area commander. [6 pp.20-25]

The Army commander on the Pacific coast, Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt was acting not only as commanding general of the Fourth Army and Western Defense Command, but also as commander of the Western Theater of Operations. He was then firmly opposed to an evacuation of citizens. During a telephone conversation between Maj. Gen. Allen W. Gullion, the War Department+s Provost Marshal General, and Gen. DeWitt on December 26,1941, Gen. Gullion remarked that he had just been visited by a representative of the Los Angeles Chamber of commerce, who asked for a roundup of all Japanese in the L.A. area. [8 pp.66]

In any event, all planning for mass evacuation of either aliens or citizens from strategic areas was deferred pending new arrangements that were in the making with the Department of Justice for more effective control of enemy aliens. While these arrang-

ements were being worked out; the Provost marshal Gen. proposed that responsibility for the alien program be transferred from the Justice to the War Department in all theaters of operations. He amended his proposal so that, in the U.S. it would apply only to the Western Defense Command. DeWitt opposed the transfer until it became evident that the Department of Justice through the FBI couldn+t control the situation on the west coast. [5 pp.123]

Gen. DeWitt also thought that civil control of the evacuation was better than military control of it. Gen. Gullion therefore decided to hold up his proposal until there was better evidence of its necessity. What Gen. DeWitt wanted at this time was the insurance of clear instructions of FBI agents on the west coast that would enable them to take more positive steps to prevent sabotage and espionage. At his urging Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson had conferred with the Attorney General Francis Biddle, which speeded up the implementation of the Presidental proclamations of December 7th and 8th. In late December the Department of Justice announced regulations requiring enemy aliens in the Western Defense Command to surrender radio transmitters, short-wave radio receivers, and certain types of cameras by January 5, 1942. [3 pp.85]

On December 30th Gen. DeWitt was informed that the Attorney General had also authorized the issuance of warrants for search and arrest in any house where an enemy alien lived upon representation by an FBI agent. This was if they thought that they had reasonable cause to believe that there was contraband on the premises. The Department of Justice arranged to send representatives to San Francisco to confer with gen. DeWitt in order to work out more specific arrangements for controlling enemy aliens. [4 pp.157]

The S.F. conference took place January 4-5, 1942. Before these meetings took place, the War Department+s representative Maj. Karl R. Bendetsen, chief of the Aliens Division, recommended that gen. DeWitt insist on several measures beyond those already ordered by the Attorney General. He urged that strategic areas from which all enemy aliens were to be excluded and that authority to prescribe such areas be vested in the Army. In the opening of the conference Gen. DeWitt emphatically declared his serious concern over the alien situation and his distrust in the Japanese population both aliens and citizens. However, Assistant Attorney General James Rowe, Jr. expressed strong opposition to a mass evacuation of the Japanese. He wanted a full implementation of the President+s proclamations.

Rowe wanted the FBI to “search, enter, and arrest” at the homes and business premises of all suspected individuals. Gen. DeWitt expressed some apprehensions that they would prove to be inadequate, but further discussions led to an exchange of identical memorandums on the following day representing a plan of action agreeable to Gen. DeWitt, to Mr. Rowe, and to Mr. N.J.L. Pieper, the chief FBI agent on the Pacific coast who had attended the meetings. [1 pp.53]

The arrangements at the S.F. meetings tool much longer to put into effect than either Gen. DeWitt or the Justice Department had anticipated. The registration of enemy aliens was finally taken between February 2 and 9. Gen. DeWitt had anticipated that he could fix the boundaries of the restricted areas by January 9, but it didn+t happen until January 21. Here he sent the first of his lists (for California only) to Washington, D.C. for transmission to the Attorney General. One of his principal difficulties was to reconcile the recommendations of the Navy, which by agreement were to be made through. The Navy commanders wanted to exclude not only enemy aliens but also all American born Japanese who could not show “actual severance of all allegiance to the Japanese government.” [7 pp. 132-135]

Gen. DeWitt+s recommendation on January 21st dealing with California called for the exclusion of enemy aliens from eighty-six “Category A” restricted zones and their close control by a pass and permit system in eight “Category B” zones. Many of the Category A areas, in the vicinity of strategic installations were uninhabited or had no alien population, but the execution of the recommendation. Nevertheless it would have required the evacuation of more than 7,000 people. Only 40 percent of these would have been Japanese aliens; the majority being Italians. [2 pp.13-14]

A mass evacuation of the Japanese didn+t reach significant dimensions until more than a month after the outbreak of the war. Then beginning in mid-January of 1942, public and private demands for federal and state action increased rapidly in volume. Behind these demands laid a profound suspicion of the Japanese population, due to Japan+s early success in the Pacific. An intelligence bulletin on January 21st concluded that there was an “espionage net containing Japanese aliens, first and second generation Japanese and other nationals thoroughly organized and working underground.” Gen. DeWitt thought that any enemy raid on the west coast would probably be accompanied by “violent outbursts of coordinated and controlled sabotage” among the Japanese population. [8 pp. 79]

In talking with Gen. Gullion on January 24, Gen. DeWitt stated what was to become one of the principal arguments for evacuation. “The fact that nothing has happened so far is more or less. . . ominous,” he said, “in that I feel that in view of the fact that we have had no sporadic attempts at sabotage. There is control being exercised and when we have it it will be on a mass basis.” [2 pp.46] But in this same conversation he also said that he was still opposed to any move to transfer authority from Justice to the War Department because he thought there was every indication that the arrangements made with the Department of Justice and its FBI were going to prove satisfactory.

The Department of Justice had agreed informally to accept Gen. DeWitt+s initial recommendation for restricted areas in California, and it was preparing to carry out this and other aspects of the alien control program. On January 28 it announced that the appointment of Thomas C. Clark as C0-ordinator of the Alien Enemy Control program within the Western Defense Command. The next day the Justice made its first public announcement about the restricted Category A areas that were to be cleared of enemy aliens by February 24.

As a result of the congressional recommendations and other developments, Attorney General Biddle asked War Department representatives to attend a meeting in his office on Febuary 1st. There he presented them with the draft of a press release to be issued jointly by the Justice and War Departments indicating agreement on all alien control measures taken to date and including the statement: “The Department of War and the Department of Justice are in agreement that the present military situation does not at this time require the removal of American citizens of the Japanese race.” [6 pp.108]

The war department representatives agreed to the wording of the press release except for the sentence quoted. The meeting then adjourned, the War Department representatives withholding approval of any press release until Gen.DeWitt+s views could be obtained. The federal and state offical Major Bendesten informed the Chief of Staff+s office that the Justice Department+s proposal had been held up because Gen. DeWitt in telephone conversations had been provisionally recommending the evacuation of the whole Japanese population on the Pacific coast. During this time the Provost Marshal General+s office had been formulating plans for mass evacuation and had already located sufficient nontroop shelter to provide for substantially all of the west coast Japanese. [5 pp.167]

In other exchanges on this and succeeding days Gen. DeWitt explained that what the California authorities proposed to do was to move both citizen and alien Japanese from urban areas and from along the seacoast to agricultural areas within the state. They wanted to this in particular in order to avoid having to replace the Japanese with Mexican and Negro laborers who might otherwise have to be brought into California in considerable numbers. The California officials felt they needed about ten days to study the problem and come up with a workable plan. By February it appeared they could produce a plan that would be satisfactory from the standpoint defense.

On February 4, the federal government+s office of Facts and Figures Completed an analysis of a hasty survey of public opinion in California and concluded: “Even with such a small sample one can infer that the situation in California is serious. That it is loaded with potential dynamite, but that it is not as desperate as some people believe.” [2 pp.118] A contemporary Navy report described what was happening to the Japanese population in the L.A. area in these words: “loss of employment and income due to anti-Japanese agitation by and among Caucasian Americans. Continued racial attacks, denial relief funds to desperalty needy cases, cancellation of licenses for markets, produce houses, stores, by the California State authorities discharges from jobs by the wholesale, unnecessarily harsh restrictions on travel including discriminatory regulations against all Nisei. Which is preventing them from engaging in commercial fishing.” [3 pp.62]

While expressing opposition to any mass evacuation of the Japanese, the report concluded that if practices such as those described continued there would most certainly be outbreaks of sabotage, riots, and other civil strife in the not too distant future. In fact no proved instances of sabotage or of espionage after Pearl Harbor among the west coast Japanese population were even uncovered. The most damaging tangible evidence turned up against the Japanese was that produced by the intensive searches of their premises by the FBI from early February onward. By May it had seized 2,592 guns of various kinds. Over 199,000 rounds of ammunition, 1,652 sticks of dynamite, 1,458 radio receivers, 2,914 cameras, 37 motion picture cameras, and numerous other articles that the alien Japanese had been ordered to turn in at the beginning in January. A major portion of the guns and ammunition was picked up in a raid of a sporting goods store. [6 pp.78-83]

In the meantime the War and Justice Departments had been approaching over the area evacuations contemplated under the enemy alien control program. After agreeing informally to accept Gen. DeWitt+s initial California recommendation, Justice officials balked at accepting the very large size Category A areas he recommended for Washington and Oregon. Since they included the entire cities of Seatle, Tacoma, and Portland. The execution of this recommendation would have required the evacuation of about 10,700 additional enemy aliens and as in the case of California, only about 40 percent of these would have been Japanese. [8 pp.22]

The Department of Justice would have found it extremely difficult to supply either the manpower or the internment facilities that accompany the evacuation of seventeen or eighteen thousand enemy alien would have required. By February 4 Washington representatives were considering putting the whole L.A. area into Category A because DeWitt+s air commander had recommended Category A zones around 220 different installations, that when plotted on the map covered the whole area. Also for the same reasons Gen. DeWitt believed that he might have to put all of San Diego in Category A too. He ended up recommending a coverage of the two cities, and did the same for the San Francisco Bay area be put in Category A. [5 pp.101-103]

The President told the war Department secretaries to go ahead and do anything they thought necessary under their circumstances. “We have carte blanche to do what we want to do as far as the President+s concerned,” Mr. McCloy informed Colonel Bendetsen immediately after the White House conference. The President specifically authorized the evacuation of citizens. In doing so he observed that there probably would be some repercussions to such action, but said that what was to be done had to be dictated by the military. Mr. McCloy also told Colonel Bendesten that he thought the President was prepared to sigh an executive order giving the War Department the authority to carry out whatever action it decided upon. [7 pp.96]

The President+s decisions gave an understandable impetus to the so-called final recommendation being prepared by Gen. DeWitt, who had begun to draft on February 10. His recommendations differed from those he had already submitted under the enemy alien control program in only that he recommended that the evacuation be enforced by federal authority of the American born Japanese from the Category A areas already recommended by him in previous letters to the Secretary of War. His memorandum reached GHQ at 1:00 P.M., February 18. The next day it was decided at the a GHQ staff conference not to concur in Gen. DeWitt+s recommendations, and instead to recommend to Gen. Clark that only enemy alien leaders be arrested and interned.

Gen. Clark being aware of developments in the War Department realized the futility of a GHQ nonconcurrence. On February 20th the GHQ sent Gen. DeWitt+s memorandums to the War Department through normal channels with an endorsement that they were being “transmitted in view of the proposed action already decided upon by the War Department.” A letter was sent that explained that 100,000 enemy aliens would be involved. Over 60,000 of whom would be women and children and that all were to be interned east of the Western Defense Command. There were three reasons for the intention of removing the pacific coast Japanese to areas east of the Western Defense Command. Gen. DeWitt insisted that internment of enemy aliens ought to be outside his theater of operations. Some of the governments of the intermountain states had already indicated that they would not countenance any free settlement of the west coast Japanese within their borders. Lastly, an Army survey of existing facilities for internment in the five exterior states of the Ninth Corps Area disclosed that they could not accommodate more than 2,500 people. [4 pp.78]

On February 17, McCloy, Gullion, and Bendetsen met with Justice representatives at the home of Attorney General Biddle. After some preliminary discussions, Gen. Gullion pulled from his pocket and proceeded to read the draft of a proposed Presidential executive order that would authorize the Secretary of War to remove both citizens and aliens from areas that he might designate. The executive order was presented to the President and signed by him late on February 19. Mr. McCloy, Gen. Gullion, and Col. Bendesten drafted the instructions for Gen. DeWitt to guide is execution of the evacuation plan. [1 pp.9]

On February 21 the Secretary of War, in accordance with the President+s request, answered the Congressional letter of February 13, byassuring the west coast delegation that plans for the partial or complete evacuation of the Japanese from the Pacific coast were being formulated. In consultation with the Department of Justice the War Department officials at this time also prepared a draft of legislation that would put teeth into the enforcement of the new evacuation program. However it wasn+t submitted to congress until May 9th. This draft as a bill became Public Law 503 after brief debate it was passed by a voice in both houses on March 19 and was signed by the President on March 21. Only three days later the Western Defense Command issued its first compulsory exclusion order. [6 pp.67]

The plan for evacuation presented in the war Department differed materially from the plan recommended by Gen. DeWitt in his memorandum of February 13. The central objective of the DeWitt plan was to move enemy aliens and American born Japanese out of all Category A areas in California, Oregon, and Washington that the general had recommended. Although Gen. DeWitt had repeatedly described the Japanese as the most dangerous element of the west coast population. He also made it clear as late as February 17 that he was “opposed to any preferential treatment to any alien irrespective of race.” [8 pp.54]

Therefore he also wanted German and Italian aliens as well as all Japanese evacuated from Category A areas. His plan assumed that all enemy aliens would be interned under guard outside the Western Defense Command, at least until arrangements could be made for their resettlement. Citizen evacuees would either accept internment voluntarily or relocate themselves with such assistance as state and federal agencies may offer. Although this group would be permitted to resettle in Category B areas within the coastal zone. Gen. DeWitt clearly preferred that they move inland. [3 pp.89] The central objective of the War Department plan was to move all Japanese out of the California A areas first and they were not to be permitted to resettle within Category B areas or within a larger Military Area No. 1 to be established along the coast. There was to be no evacuation of Italians without the express permission of the Secretary of war except on an individual basis.

The War Department said that German aliens were to be treated in the same manner as the Japanese. It qualified this attention by providing for the exemption of bone fide German refugees. This qualification automatically stayed the evacuation of German aliens until Gen. DeWitt could discover who among them were genuine refugees. The War Department plan contemplated voluntary relocation of all types of evacuees to the maximum extent possible, with internment as necessary outside the Western Defense Command. Another major difference between the two plans was related to Gen. DeWitt+s recommendation of a licensing system for Category A. The President+s executive order of February 19th did not require the application of the licensing plan, and licensing was not embodied in the War Department+s directives.

There was other lesser differences between the two plans. Gen. DeWitt had recommended that before any evacuation all preparations should be complete, including the “selection and establishment of internment facilities in the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Corps Areas.” As already noted, the War Department at this time was also planning to put all internees east of the Ninth Corps area, but did not contemplate postponement of evacuation until internment of all enemy alien males over fourteen years of age until family units could be established in internment camps. [2 pp.36-43]

The number of people to be involved contained an estimated 133,000 people would have to be evacuated either voluntarily or by compulsion. A breakdown of the figure discloses that his plan would have involved 69,000 Japanese (25,000 aliens and 44,000 American citizens), about 44,000 Italians, and about 20,000 Germans. The War Department planners apparently made no estimate of the numbers that their directives would involve, but eventually they did involve more than 110,000 Japanese residents-citizens and aliens of the west coast. [7 pp.139]

Would the courts conclusion have been the same in the light of the present knowledge? Considering the evidence now available the reasonable deductions seem to be that Gen. DeWitt+s recommendation of February 13, 1942 was not used in drafting the War Department directives for a mass evacuation of the Japanese people, and that the only responsible commander who backed the War Department+s plan as a measure required by military necessity was the President himself, as Commander in Chief. [6 pp.42]