◆ SpookStack

' Have We Forgotten Justice? : . : . By CALEB FOOTE+ i I’ Armny plans materialize, before this article is in print 112,000 persons, a majority of whom ac: American } citizens, will have been evacuated from their homes on the * WestCoast! j Obviously this compulsory evacuation of those whose : only crime is their Japanese ancestry is a flagrant violation of the Sth and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, and j $0 2 perversion of democracy itself. Obviously, too, it denies the Christian doctrine of the supr-me worth of the individual. It is creating untold human suifering. both physical and psychological, and it is a scrious blow at inter- racial understanding and Japancse assimilation into Amer- ican life. , _ Even more serious than these, however, is the fact that © the evacuation heaps fuel on the fires of racial distrust, and lends authenticity to Japan's claims that this is a racial war. By putting many of our native-born citizens into “assembly” and “réception™ centers—which, allowing for some differences, are virtually concentration camps—purely because of their race, our Government has aped the totsli- tarianism it is supposedly fighting. The peace that will follow the war is being made during the war and this treat- ment of innocent persons will not facilitate the creation of the state of mind necessary for gaining a good peace. . Background of Race Hatred The background of what Life calls a “great and unprece- dented migestion” has been a vicious campaign of race hatred conducted in the Pacific Coast states. The anti- Japanese feeling that gave rise to it goes back forty years to a time when Japanese immigration into California was at its height. At first, these immigrants had been en- couraged to come. They furnished cheap al on ~ were useful in breaking strikes and for field work. But these very “advantages” caused labor and small farming Groups to resent their competition bitterly, and as time went on and the new racial group became more Americanized and acquired some economic power, the big economic Groups who first welcomed them joined in opposing them.- They were charged with destroying our standard of living, > bringing in discase, being un-American and anti-Christian, and endangcring our control by their own high birth-rate. All of this resulted in the “Gentlemen's Agreement’ restricting emigration from Japan, a serics of land faws preventing Japancse aliéns from owning or renting land, andthe passage of the Exclusion Act in 1924. It is this latent race prejudice that has been whipped up anew since Pearl Harbor. Newspapers and politicians who just before the wae commented on the “loyalty of the great majority” of Niseit and isteis.’ tod the parade of intolerance a month or two Sater. The city of Los Angeles fired all of its American-born Japanese cinployces, and oth St against citizen as welt as alien Japanese, and the Amer- ican Legion, County Boards of Supervisors, California Con- gressmen and others, joined newspaper editorial writers _and columnists in utging complete evacuation. Eacly in January, job discrimination against aliens had become so _ severe that Presidcat Roosevelt called the firing of “honest cities ~ and loyal people who, except for accident of birth, are sin cerély patriotic’ as “playing into the hands of the encmies of American democracy-” Meanwhile, anti-Japancse rumors and storics ran rife, purporsing that “every Jap is a damned Jap,” that they were poisoning vegetables and engaging in sit-down strikes, that there had been much sabotage in Hawaii, that all the Japanese in California were part of 2 well-organized fifth column. There is every rcason to believe that persons or groups who hoped to gain from the evacuation had a major part in stirring up these irrational forces of racial prejudice. Big land-holding groups, laundries? and plant nurseries, who felt the competition of the Japanese, had a stake in the “internment,” as did those who hoped to gain cheap, forced labor, The defeats in the Far East, the shelling of an oil field near Senta Barbara, and the supposed air raid over Los Angeles, had much to do with a rise in anti-Japanese fecl- ing that just preceded the evacuation order, sAgainst this Pressure were arrayed the efforts of the Japanese com- munity to prove its loyalty, evidenced in the vigorous pa- triotism of the Japanese-American Citizens’ League and heavy Japanese contributions to the Red Cross, U.S.O., Defense Bonds, etc. Some white groups made a notable effort to calm public opinion, and during the first two and one half months of war the Federal Government kept the h in bounds. "On February 19, 2 sweeping proclamation by the Presi- dent gave the Ware Department the power “to prescribe military areas from which any or all petsons may be ex- cluded." On March 3,:General DeWitt issued the first of a sweeping serics of proclamations resulting im curfews, travel bans, and evacuation from an extensive area rcach- ing weil inland from the Pacitic Coast. In most of these actions, Japanese-American citizens were considered more dangerous than German of Italian alicns! The “Need” for Evacuation Explanations for the military necessity of the evacua- tion have assumed that sabotage was committed, that the Japancse as a racial group were a potential fifth column, of that the evacuation was necessary for the protection of the Japanese themselvts. Not until late in March were the widespread rumors of Japanese sabotage at Pearl Harbor disproved by the, statement of the Honolulu Chicf of Police, confirmed froin other sources, that “there were mo acts of sabota mitted in the city and county of Honolulu on Dev parted since, This erat ab at wi