[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 37 (Friday, March 7, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E407-E408]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           JAPANESE AMERICANS

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. MICHAEL M. HONDA

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 6, 2003

  Mr. HONDA. Mr. Speaker, one of the most concise rebuttals that I have 
read to the notion that Japanese Americans were placed in the camps 
because they either posed a national security threat or for their own 
safety comes from a law professor from the University of North 
Carolina, Chapel Hill in a letter dated February 7, 2003. 1 would like 
to submit this letter at this point in the Record.


               The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

                    Chapel Hill, North Carolina, February 7, 2003.
     Hon. Howard Coble,
     U.S. House of Representatives, Rayburn House Office Building, 
         Washington, DC.
       Dear Representative Coble: I am a professor of law at the 
     University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill. My 
     areas of expertise include constitutional law and especially 
     the story of the internment of Japanese Americans during 
     World War II. My book on the subject, Free to Die for their 
     Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters 
     in World War 11 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001), was named one 
     of the Washington Post's Top Nonfiction Titles for 2001.
       I have followed with interest and concern the story about 
     your comments on the radio on Tuesday morning to the effect 
     that you support the internment of Japanese Americans during 
     World War II, and that the Roosevelt administration interned 
     Japanese Americans to protect them.
       I note that you were quoted in the High Point Enterprise as 
     saying the following: ``I still stand by what I said . . . 
     that, in no small part, it (internment) was done to protect 
     the Japanese-Americans themselves.'' The article further 
     states that you said that if it were proven to you that 
     protecting Japanese Americans was not one of FDR's 
     motivations, you will apologize.
       Here is the proof.
       Just after the Pearl Harbor attack, FDR, asked Navy 
     Secretary Frank Knox to investigate the possibility, that 
     Fifth Column work by people of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii 
     had contributed to the success of the Japanese sneak attack. 
     Knox reported his conclusions to FDR by December 15, and on 
     that day, said to reporters that he thought ``the most 
     effective Fifth Column work of the entire war was done in 
     Hawaii with the possible exception of Norway.'' J. Edgar 
     Hoover immediately registered his strong disagreement with 
     Knox's conclusions, and it turns out that Knox was wrong and 
     Hoover was right. But it was Knox's views that were made 
     public, and they triggered hysteria on the West Coast.
       Well before the war, FDR, anticipating a possible war with 
     Japan, had commissioned his own secret intelligence 
     investigation of Japanese aliens and their loyalties. Leading 
     this effort were John Franklin Carter (an author and 
     columnist) and Curtis Munson (a prominent Republican 
     businessman). And the Office of Naval Intelligence (``ONI'') 
     and the FBI were for quite some time before Pearl Harbor, 
     gathering names of Japanese aliens who might need to be 
     apprehended in the event of war. ONI and the FBI actually 
     compiled a list of such aliens which came to be called the 
     ``ABC'' list--so named because the list presented three 
     categories (Category A, Category B, and Category C) of 
     potentially dangerous aliens. (In the days after Pearl 
     Harbor, all of the aliens in these three categories were in 
     fact arrested--a total of some 1500.)
       Carter and Munson's investigations had led them to conclude 
     that the overwhelming majority of Japanese aliens and an even 
     greater percentage of American citizens of Japanese ancestry 
     were in fact loyal to the United States, and that of those 
     whose loyalty was even questionable, few could be expected 
     even to consider actually doing something to support Japan or 
     undermine the United States. Carter and Munson grew alarmed 
     by Knox's report and the anti-Japanese outcry that followed 
     it.
       Carter and Munson quickly put together a plan for FDR's 
     consideration that was designed to bolster the Japanese 
     American communities of Hawaii and the West Coast. Their plan 
     called for a number of things: FDR was urged to go on record 
     as believing in the loyalty of American citizens of Japanese 
     ancestry (the ``Nisei''). The Nisei should be invited to 
     volunteer (and then should be accepted) for patriotic service 
     in the Red Cross and civilian defense. The Nisei should be 
     encouraged to take control of their alien parents' property. 
     Once investigated, the Nisei should be allowed to take jobs 
     in defense plants. Carter and Munson also urged the 
     government to work closely with the Japanese American 
     Citizens League, which had indicated its willingness to serve 
     as a loyal liaison with the Japanese American community.
       The goals of the Carter-Munson plan were many, but they 
     included the discouragement of vigilante violence against 
     Japanese Americans and Japanese aliens. The hope was that if 
     FDR came out quickly and loudly in support of people of 
     Japanese ancestry, and involved them quickly in activities 
     that would permit their loyalty and patriotism to shine 
     through, others would not see them as a threat.
       The Carter-Munson plan was submitted to Roosevelt before 
     Christmas. By mid-January, it was completely forgotten--
     suspended by other pressures that I'll detail in a moment. 
     And here's the important point: the Carter-Munson plan was 
     the only plan for dealing with Japanese Americans that 
     took their security into account in any way. It never got 
     off the ground.
       Why didn't it get off the ground? For four main reasons.
       First, by late January 1942, General John DeWitt (the 
     commanding officer of the West Coast Defense Command) and his 
     advisor Karl Bendetsen had become persuaded that mass action 
     to remove all people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast 
     was necessary for military reasons. Their viewpoint was fed 
     largely by outrageous rumors of Japanese American subversion, 
     none of which ever panned out.
       Second, by mid-January, a rabidly racist press along the 
     Coast had begun campaigning for the eviction of all ``Japs'' 
     from the area--not for their protection, but because they 
     could not be trusted.

[[Page E408]]

       Third, white farmers in California began lobbying 
     ferociously for the removal of all people of Japanese 
     ancestry--not to protect them, and not even really for 
     national security reasons, but to drive the very successful 
     Japanese farming industry out of business.
       And fourth, their lobbying, and the voices of the 
     editorialists, succeeded in pushing most of the congressional 
     delegations of the West Coast states to demand mass 
     exclusion.
       As Professor Greg Robinson says in his authoritative 
     treatment of the subject, ``By Order of the President; FDR, 
     and the Internment of Japanese Americans'' (Harvard U. Press, 
     2001). ``the binding factor among these disparate social, 
     economic, and military forces was racial animosity toward 
     Japanese Americans.'' (p.90)
       Through late January and early February, Attorney General 
     Francis Biddle, and his staff fought with the military to 
     prevent mass action against Japanese Americans. But it was 
     too late. On February 11, 1942, Secretary of War Henry 
     Stimson sent FDR a memo asking whether he'd be willing to 
     support ``mov[ing] Japanese citizens as well as aliens from 
     restricted areas.'' Getting no response, Stimson phoned FDR 
     on February 15 to ask for a meeting on the memo. FDR said he 
     was too busy for a meeting, but in ``very vigourous'' tones 
     told Stimson that the military should do whatever they 
     thought best. FDR predicted that ``there would probably be 
     some repercussions but it has got to be dictated by military 
     necessity.''
       On February 19, 1942, FDR signed Executive Order 9066, 
     which gave the military cart blanche to do what they wished 
     with Japanese, aliens and American citizens of Japanese 
     ancestry along the West Coast.
       There is the proof. A concern for protecting Japanese 
     Americans had nothing whatsoever to do with the decision to 
     force Japanese Americans behind barbed wire. Nothing.
       (My sources for this account include Greg Robinson's book, 
     Peter Irons's Justice at War, and Personal Justice Denied, 
     the report of Congress's Commission on the Wartime Internment 
     and Relocation of Civilians. This, you'll recall, was the 
     fact-finding Commission that Congress created in the early 
     1980s to investigate the internment. Their report, condemning 
     the internment, led to the passage of the Civil Liberties Act 
     of 1988, signed into law by President Reagan, which 
     apologized to surviving internees for the internment, and 
     authorized the payment to each of them of a token $20,000 
     redress payment. You will also recall that you spoke and 
     voted against this bill.
       I hope that you will take this opportunity to admit the 
     mistake in your comments of Tuesday morning and apologize for 
     them.
       Thank you for considering this.
           Sincerely,
                                                   Eric L. Muller,
     Professor of Law.

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