Americans Betrayed

Morton Grodzins, 1949

The author starts out stating why he wrote the book. He wanted to examine the effect of public opinion, the relationship between the states and the Federal government, policy-making roles of the government, civil and military agencies, the political status of minority groups and how all these was involved in the decision to intern the Japanese Americans.

The author notes: "It was the first event in which danger to the nation's welfare was determined by group characteristics rather than by individual guilt. It was the first program in which race alone determined whither an American would remain free or become incarcerated."

The author then goes into the history of how California regarded the Japanese living there, including the attitudes of the farmers, and how their attitude changed as the Japanese farmers became more and more successful. He then discusses specific groups (like various grower's associations) and how they felt about the Japanese in their midst. I've commented about this in other reviews; I'll just add here that the author goes into very considerable detail on these groups, more than in any other book I've seen so far.

Next the author discusses Pacific Coast Congressional Delegations examines specific congressmen and various congressional groups in their growing demands for the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Again, there is a great deal of detail in this chapter about this topic, more than in other books I have looked at.

Continuing the look at the politics of the situation, the author next examines state and local political leaders and their views on what to do about the Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. One of the first examined is Earl Warren and his virulently anti-Japanese statements. Again, as with the other chapters, this one is filled with in-depth information.

"Cogency of the Regional Demand" is the title of the next chapter. The author starts out showing that the various rumors of Japanese sabotage in Pearl Harbor were totally false. Apparently seven Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor on the West Coast, all killed without provocation. There was also a variety of assaults. However, the numbers were not that high that it, by itself, would have justified the evacuation program on the basis of possible threats to the Issei and Nisei.

The author also examines other arguments used in favor of the evacuation and shows how the evidence does not support the rumors and reasons used for the evacuation program.

He gives a lot of attention to the idea that had been presented that the Japanese owned lots of land near military facilities, and shows how this argument wasn't backed up by good evidence and even involved some stretching of the truth on the part of the government. This is a very important part of the book since it absolutely demolishes the "Japs were near military areas" argument that appears in most books on the subject as a reason given for the evacuation program.

Next the author examines the racial arguments used against the Japanese Americans of the time. Of particular interest is the material dealing with the question of why the Japanese were evacuated but the Italians and Germans weren't.

The next chapter deals with opposition to the evacuation program. Again, there's a wealth of information in this book and I think it's another case where a book written right after the events will contain information that books written much later generally won't contain.

The next chapter deals with the extent of demand for evacuation and shows that public opinion in favor of the evacuation was not as strong as commonly believed, and that certain organizations were the ones responsible for the common belief that there was widespread desire to have the Japanese Americans moved elsewhere.

The book then moves on to the formation of national policy, starting with the administration, specifically the justice and war departments. The Justice Department had already done a lot of work on potential Japanese-American trouble-makers, for lack of a better term, and were prepared to deal with them on an individual basis. In other words, they already had a program ready which did not involve the necessity for relocating everyone; just arresting those specific persons who they were concerned about.

It was the Army that was pushing for much tighter controls on the Japanese-American population. Executive Order 9066 gave control of the situation to the military. One of the most bizarre arguments used against the Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor was that "There has been no substantial evidence of manifestation of nationalistic fervor exhibited by any Japanese group in the United States since the outbreak of the war. Even on the Emperor's birthday there was no visible evidence that the day was remembered in evacuee center." This was a statement by someone from the U.S. military and is interesting in its argument; since the Japanese-Americans were not showing any patriotic fervor for Japan, and since they weren't celebrating the Emperor's birthday, then were therefore dangerous people. Obviously a nonsensical conclusion.

The author points out that the various FBI raids on peoples homes, looking for contraband, resulted in no trials or convictions. There simply wasn't any contraband worth anything. J.Edgar Hoover denied that there was any evidence indicating any Japanese-Americans trying to communicate with Japanese ships. There was one incident of a submarine-carried Japanese plane bombing some forests trying to start forest fires; and a useless shelling by a submarine at Astoria, Oregon. The thing is both incidents occurred after the Japanese-Americans in the area had already been evacuated; thus, they could not have caused the incidents to happen.

The author then discusses why there was no mass evacuation in Hawaii but there was on the West Coast and this is another area of the book that contains quite fascinating information. Another point is the list of governors who opposed resettling Japanese Americans in their states unless they were confined to "concentration camps under military guard." The list included the governors of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and other states. This helped to contribute to the failure of voluntary evacuation.

What basically happened was that racial prejudice on the part of special interest groups (farmers, certain newspapers, etc), resulted in the false perception that there was a wide-spread desire for evacuation of all the Japanese-Americans which gave the military the room they needed to maneuver in and get their program for evacuation of everyone put into place rather than the Justice Departments original program of simply rounded up a particular group of individuals and keeping an eye on the rest.

The involvement of the U.S. Congress is the next subject to be covered in the book, and then the role of the Supreme Court is covered. An extensive Appendix section provides even more information.

This is one of the most detailed books that one can find on the subject of what led up to the evacuations, containing information not generally covered in other books, especially not to this length of detail.



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