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May 31, 2005
On the other hand, it's not exactly rocket science ...
Now that's high praise "indeed."
Posted by Eric at 8:47 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Recipe for a Civil Liberties Disaster
2. Mix in the memory of this similar story about American citizens.
3. Sift with the memory of this similar story about American citizens.
4. Add some sort of terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
5. Wait about 24 hours. No need to bake. It will heat itself.
Posted by Eric at 8:18 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Voicemail Mystery.
Hey! Don't go to Critter's. Don't go to Critter's! Go away. Run wherever you can go. Don't go home, take a taxi, go to Big's. Don't go home. There's something like fifteen cop cars sitting there for you. Don't go home! Go to Big'un's house.Now there's a wrong number I bet you can't top.
Posted by Eric at 12:12 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 30, 2005
An Airline Bleg
My wife and I feel they're approaching an age where this might be OK, but we're wondering what airlines do for unaccompanied minors in the unlikely event of a water landing in the event that the plane (due to severe weather or what have you) gets diverted to a different airport or some such thing. The airlines' websites don't address this. Does anyone know? If so, leave a comment.
Posted by Eric at 9:01 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
May 28, 2005
Why I Write.
I've been in academia for eleven years now, and today's answer is very different from the answer I would have given ten years ago.
One reason for writing hasn't changed a bit: I've always gotten a charge from it. This was true long before I became an academic; I can remember joy in writing as far back as elementary school. Turning a phrase just the way I want to turn it feels good.
But at the beginning of my academic career, beyond liking to write, I had two pressing reasons for needing to write. And I'll let you guess them. (Hint: I was an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming College of Law.)
Yes, yes, of course, one of them was tenure. But it was the lesser of the two, because I was pretty cocky about tenure and never really doubted I'd get it. The bigger reason was location. I'm a New Jersey boy, and my wife grew up in Queens, and we had a brand new baby, and we were in Laramie, Wyoming—a couple thousand miles from the world we knew. We came to love Laramie deeply in the four years we were there, but I knew that if I wanted to stay in academia and leave Laramie, I was going to have to write my way out.
So I wrote. Fast. I wrote one article in my first summer (on race and gender discrimination in criminal jury selection), and then another in my second (on inconsistent criminal jury verdicts). I scored big with both pieces: the first was published in the Yale Law Journal; the second in the Harvard Law Review. As an employment strategy, my writing worked pretty well: here I am, very happy, at the University of North Carolina.
I remain proud of those first two big pieces, but I look back on them now and see a certain emptiness. Both grew from problems I'd encountered while briefing criminal appeals at the U.S. Attorney's Office. Both were situations in which the law as I found it made no sense to me. So both pieces were, in large measure, my efforts to explain that the law was all wrong, and that I had it figured out better. Oh yes, there was more than a dash of "look how smart I am!" to those two pieces. Not in their tone, I hope, but I can assure you that that's part of what was behind them. About a decade later, I still think I was onto something in both pieces (especially in the inconsistent verdicts piece), but despite their highbrow pedigrees, the articles have had about as noticeable an impact on the law as liposuction on a sumo wrestler. And that is probably as it should be, because I really didn't care a wink about whether the law should change. The problems I was addressing in both pieces were just intellectual puzzles for me. That's why they look a bit empty to me in retrospect.
Since around 1997 I have written mostly about the legal history of the Japanese American internment. Many of the pieces have been narrative histories drawn from research in primary sources; some have been more general policy pieces that use the internment as a backdrop. Right now I'm working on two new internment-related studies. One examines the methods the government developed for determining whether interned Japanese Americans were loyal or disloyal. The other looks at the roles played by lawyers in designing and implementing the government's detention program.
Why do I write now? As best I can tell, the reasons have to do with memory, and with trying to take the measure of the impact that injustice has had on human lives. I write because I am captivated by the story of how a humane government came to design such an inhumane policy, and by the many human stories that are intertwined with it. I want to transmit those stories, in as rich and as accurate a way as I can, to the future—to a time when there will be no internees left to tell the stories themselves. And naturally I want to do my little part in helping to see that such a thing never happens again.
So at the outset, I wrote to have fun and to advance my career. At this point in my life, I write to have fun and to tell stories about the law that I think are important, that outrage me, and that move me.
Looking back over this post, I see that it might look as though I've moved from writing-as-obligation to writing-as-fulfillment, from emptiness to happiness, and there's more than a grain of truth to that, but it's nowhere near that linear, or that simple. While I am more satisfied in my writing today than I was ten years ago, I'm also (by conventional measures) a good deal less successful: I haven't landed a piece in a very-top-tier law review in about seven years, and don't anticipate I'll do so anytime soon. As a white man (and a non-crit to boot) writing ethnic legal history, I am not exactly in one of academia's major growth industries. I see people with publication records no more accomplished than my own juggling handfuls of lateral offers and conference and symposium invitations, and lament the comparative silence of my telephone. Sometimes, I confess, I am gripped by envy, and lose sight of why I write what I write. In those jealous moments I ask myself why I couldn't have just kept writing the nifty constitutional criminal procedure stuff that got me my start.
A pointless question: I just couldn't. I admire enormously the people whose passion lies in those places, but mine doesn't. So I write where mine lie. And fortunately, as time goes on, the jealous moments seem to come less frequently.
UPDATE: Sally Greene explains why she writes here.
Posted by Eric at 9:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Look Back.
I've been driving around playing it--loud--all week. And having a blast.
This morning my eight-year-old daughter and I were out and about, with "Don't Look Back" cranked up to eleven.
"Is this stuff new?" she asked.
"God no," I said. "This was popular when I was in high school."
"Did you like it back then?"
"God no," I said. "I hated it! I would flip the station every time it came on the radio."
"Why?" she asked. "Because it was too loud and rambunctious?" (She likes that word.)
"Something like that," I said. "Back then I thought that people who listened to Boston were freaks and losers."
She thought for a second. "But now it makes you feel young, right?"
Yeah. Something like that.
Posted by Eric at 11:58 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
May 26, 2005
The Klan Lives On.
Three of them. Big ones. In separate incidents.
Utterly horrifying.
Posted by Eric at 7:43 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
May 25, 2005
Ka-boom!
Posted by Eric at 1:10 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Trading A Legal Reason for an Illegal One?
The chairman of the Chatham County Board of Commissioners will not reappoint a planning board member who often voted against major subdivisions, including [a new proposed] 2,400 home [subdivision].In Chatham County, members of the Planning Board are appointed by the elected members of the County Commission.Caroline Siverson's three-year term expires June 30. It was her first term, and members can serve two terms successively.
But commissioners Chairman Bunkey Morgan said he plans to replace Siverson with a black man to increase the board's racial diversity.
Morgan denied he was replacing Siverson because of how she voted.
So in this case, the chairman of the commission is declining to reappoint a member of the planning board not because he disagrees with how she has voted, but because he wants to replace her with a black man.
I would imagine that unless local law forbids it, a commissioner would be well within his rights to replace a planning board member due to disagreement with her position on planning matters.
But I can't imagine that it's permissible for a commissioner to replace a planning board member simply because of her race. Or to commit at the outset of the search for a replacement that he is seeking a candidate of a particular race.
The ordinance creating the planning board does say that "[a]ppointments shall be made in such a manner that Planning Board members shall represent insofar as practical, the geographical, socioeconomic, sexual and racial makeup of the county."
I appreciate the wisdom of racial and other sorts of balance on local government boards. I doubt seriously, though, that the county's interest in racial balance on its planning board would be strong enough to support a commissioner's commitment from the get-go to decline to reappoint a member on account of her race and to appoint someone of a specific race and gender.
Posted by Eric at 10:58 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 24, 2005
"Drive Thru"
Posted by Eric at 7:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
It must be something in the (holy) water.
(The first one was this one.)
Posted by Eric at 5:55 PM | TrackBack
Why Do You Write?
I'll post my own answer in the next couple of days, probably. If you're a prof, why not consider posting your own answer?
UPDATE: Orin Kerr answers the question.
Posted by Eric at 1:01 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
They were right: Time doesn't wait for me. It keeps on rollin'.
Posted by Eric at 11:54 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
May 22, 2005
Contemporaneous Hindsight?
Revisionists of the Japanese American internment like to argue that "back then" people generally understood the military necessity of the internment, and that the claim that the internment was racist is the creation of today's leftists who look at the episode with the benefit of hindsight.
Consider this entry from the minutes of a meeting of the War Department's Japanese American Joint Board, September 2, 1943 (National Archives Record Group 380, Entry 480, Box 1725). The subject under discussion was the question of whether Japanese Americans should be allowed to return to the areas from which they had been evicted along the West Coast:
The attention of the Board was called to the last edition of the [newspaper] PACIFIC CITIZEN which is fully in accord with the subject of removing the restrictions from the evacuated areas on the West Coast. It was reported that General DeWitt said we have [the Japanese] on the run; there are no Japanese in the Aleutians and now is the time for the War Department to show those people that the original evacuation wasn't based on bias and prejudice.Plenty of people saw the internment for what it was even at the time.
Incidentally, the policy of excluding Japanese Americans from the West Coast continued for well over a year after this comment by General DeWitt.
Posted by Eric at 12:50 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
"BigTrunk" Indeed.
Posted by Eric at 10:07 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Now That's Depressing.
Posted by Eric at 9:59 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 21, 2005
Any Port In A Storm.
Posted by Eric at 8:00 AM | TrackBack
May 20, 2005
These Mistake's Drive Me Nut's
City schools will allow fliers; county's won't
Yes. That's right. Should have been "school's" and "flier's." Duh.
Posted by Eric at 6:02 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
May 19, 2005
"Citizenship . . . Bears No Relationship To . . . Loyalty."
Here is the concluding statement from the training session for U.S. military personnel who were about to be sent out to investigate the loyalty of interned Japanese Americans in 1943:
This concludes your indoctrination in the Japanese-American branch of your work. As you have seen, this segment of our population is so completely disassociated from the way of life which is normally considered American that it can be profitably aproached by the investigator only after considerable preparation and study of its peculiar culture and philosophy. . . .Nationatl Archives, Record Group 389, Records of the Office of the Provost Marshall General, Entry 480, Box 1725.You have been admonished that, in this class of cases, [U.S.] citizenship bears no relationship to the Subject's loyalty. . . .
In conducting investigations of Japanese, you may rest assured that you are dealing with one member of a race which has on many occasions demonstrated its capacity for deceit. You can also be assured that far too great a number of the members of that race present in this country are admittedly, and in many cases, actively disloyal. You are justified therefore, in being suspicious, and your investigations must be scrupulously detailed and painstakingly thorough."
Posted by Eric at 10:26 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
May 18, 2005
It's Not Just Newsweek
. . .
Posted by Eric at 2:00 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Nine Months Later, Michelle Malkin Retracts and Apologizes
Malkin told me to go scratch, and broadened her smear of Irons.
Several months ago, Peter Irons emailed Malkin and asked for a retraction and apology.
Malkin ignored him.
A few days ago, Irons renewed his demand and threatened legal action.
Today, finally, after a couple more days of foot-dragging, Malkin retracts and apologizes to Irons and Herzig-Yoshinaga.
Note also that she is explictly retracting her supposed "refutation" of my original charge.
I said this the other day, but it bears repeating: the method of Malkin's reckless and baseless charges against Irons and Herzig-Yoshinaga is the method of her entire book about the Japanese American internment.
What she did to Irons and Herzig-Yoshinaga is, for example, precisely what she did in her book to Seattle attorney Kenji Ito and to Richard Kotoshirodo. Malkin made both men out to be monsters--Ito a Japanese spy and Kotoshirodo the Mohammad Atta of his day--when just down the street from her home, hundreds of pages of documents in the National Archives proved these allegations and characterizations false. Malkin never took the fifteen-minute drive over to the Archives to look for any documents about Ito or Kotoshirodo before smearing them.
Make no mistake: today's retraction and apology is a confession of the bankruptcy of Malkin's entire project.
UPDATE: Dave Neiwert is, as you would expect, quite good on all this.
Posted by Eric at 7:11 AM | Comments (38) | TrackBack
May 17, 2005
Snow Pornographers Safe Again In Laramie
"Our police have made mistakes in the past," said Deputy County Attorney Meri Ramsey, "but this one was a really big boner!"
(Well, OK. Actually ... she didn't say anything like that at all. But it would have been very funny, in a sixth-grade-boy kind of way, if she had!)
Posted by Eric at 11:10 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
"All Japanese Are Not Bad"
"One of the greatest barriers to a smooth operating [national] security program was the fact that our own Constitution extended certain protection to American-born citizens [of Japanese ancestry] who are not morally entitled to that benefit."Racism underlying the Japanese American internment? Nah. Don't think so."On the other hand there emerged from the Japanese population several thousand loyal American-born citizens who lost blood, limb, and life on European battle fields and were in imminent danger of death by torture while serving as intelligence agents on Pacific battle fronts. These persons are proof, both in life and death, that all Japanese are not bad."
Posted by Eric at 2:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Able To Leap Barbed Wire Fences In A Single Bound!
One of the most offensive distortions of Japanese American internment revisionism is the claim that the government's "relocation centers" for Japanese Americans were not places of confinement. (It's a claim that, for example, Michelle Malkin makes: "In truth," says Malkin on pages 97-98 of "In Defense of Internment," "the evacuees who populated the relocation centers . . . were . . . free to leave . . .")
Alas! Somebody should have told Superman! In these comic strips from late June and early July 1943, the Man of Steel is under the tragic misimpression that those in the relocation centers were confined.
Posted by Eric at 11:20 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Three Guys Sittin' Around Talkin' (And Makin' Sense)
Posted by Eric at 8:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 16, 2005
Koran Desecration: Does It Happen?
¶Copies of the Koran tossed in a pile and stepped on.¶Throwing copies of the Koran down on the floor and into a prisoner's cell.
¶Prison guard stood on copy of Koran during interrogation. (Allegation of Abdulaziz Sayer Owain Al Shammari)
Posted by Eric at 9:02 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Defamation: The How-To Guide
I hope that folks will notice two things:
First, Fujita-Rony's article does not support Malkin's cloak-and-dagger charges.
Second, Malkin did not do what any beat reporter would do before printing damning allegations about two well-respected people: investigate. She did not contact Irons, a prominent and easily located academic. She did not contact Herzig, who lives in the DC area where Malkin herself lives, and whom she could have found by looking in the white pages.
The research "strategy" here, if it can be called that, is by now familiar. It is the precise method that she used for her entire book about Japanese Americans and the internment.
What she has done to Peter Irons and Aiko Herzig is, for example, precisely what she does in the book to Seattle attorney Kenji Ito and to Richard Kotoshirodo. She makes both out to be monsters--Ito a Japanese spy and Kotoshirodo the Mohammad Atta of his day--when just down the street from her home, hundreds of pages of documents in the National Archives refute her characterizations. With Ito and Kotoshirodo, as with Irons and Herzig, Malkin could not be bothered to take the most basic of investigative steps to research her scandalous allegations before trumpeting them to a national audience.
Posted by Eric at 8:26 AM | TrackBack
May 15, 2005
Malkin Concedes Error ... Though You Have To Hunt To Find It.
Malkin's response was to dig in her heels and repeat the false allegation, upping the ante by labelling Irons's acts "shenanigans" and further impugning Irons's reputation in connection with other research and publication activities of his.
Several months ago, Irons emailed Malkin and asked her to retract these falsehoods. She did not reply.
Last week, Irons emailed her again with the same request, this time noting that he (correctly) viewed her comments as defamatory and potentially actionable.
Sometime in the last few days, with nary an apology (nor even a mention) on her blog, Malkin tucked the following item away on the book's "errata" page:
page 123: I wrote that Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga "surreptitiously shared confidential documents with" attorney Peter Irons. The word "surreptitiously" was erroneous and will be excised in future editions.
This isn't over, though: she has not yet corrected the false claim that these public records were "confidential." Nor has she retracted or apologized for accusing Irons of "shenanigans" in this and other contexts.
I expect that in the next day or two she will post something pointing the finger at some third party for the information "substantiating" her allegations, but what she won't mention is that the one thing she did not do before publicly smearing the reputations of Irons and Herzig was contact them and ask them about the episode in question.
More, and broader, thoughts on all this to follow, probably tomorrow.
UPDATE: This morning (5/16) Malkin cryptically announces on her blog that "the errata page to her book has been updated." She doesn't actually say what the update is, though. Classy.
Posted by Eric at 8:55 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
May 13, 2005
Philadelphia, May 13, 1985
Or isn't that what he's saying?
(Link via Instapundit.)
Posted by Eric at 1:15 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
And Here You Thought Athens Was A City In Greece.
(Thanks, Ruth!)
Posted by Eric at 12:38 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 11, 2005
A la recherche des miettes perdues
Listening to the NPR magazine program "Day to Day" just now, I learned that madeleine cookies do not crumble when dropped into tea.
Yes, that's right: no crumbs to be picked up in a spoon. No flood of sensation-induced memories.
This is way bigger than the CBS memo. Fire Marcel Proust!
Posted by Eric at 2:14 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Cliopatria Takes Another Step Toward World Domination
Chris, to what address can Commander Hopwood send the floral bouquet?
Posted by Eric at 8:14 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Further Reflection on the New Pope
Romano presses a good bit deeper than I did into the new pope's memories of his wartime youth, and also looks at his service on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (modern-day descendant of the Inquisition). The whole piece is worth reading.
The story of this new pope remains troubling.
(Thanks to Jonathan Dresner of Cliopatria for the pointer.)
Posted by Eric at 8:03 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
May 10, 2005
Locked Out And Logged On.
Too bad Jenny is a Mac user. With a PC she could have just gotten in through the Windows.
Posted by Eric at 9:00 PM | TrackBack
You Only Go Around Once...
Think about it.
And read this.
Posted by Eric at 8:53 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
She Knows Whereof She Speaks.
Posted by Eric at 8:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
"Liberals In The Hands Of An Angry God"
Now there's some preaching I'd be keen to hear.
Posted by Eric at 8:23 AM | TrackBack
May 9, 2005
What A Way To Go.
But its headline is.
Posted by Eric at 9:53 PM | TrackBack
May It Blog The Court...
Posted by Eric at 1:29 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
The Palindrome of Bolton Would Be ...
(Extra credit to those who can identify the source of this post's title.)
Posted by Eric at 1:23 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 7, 2005
The Malkin Goon Squad Is Back.
As one example, consider the cogent argument I got this evening from an attorney, David Gearhart, of the "Advantage Law Group":
"I see why you can't handle opposing ideas like Defense of Internment. From your faculty picture YOU LOOK LIKE A PUSSY!"
This from a lawyer.
UPDATE: This post has triggered discussion.
Posted by Eric at 10:47 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Highly Obtuse
"An action of East Waynesville Baptist Church pastor Chan Chandler to require from his members written agreement with his personal political viewpoint would be 'highly irregular' if it is true as reported, said Jim Royston, executive director-treasurer of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (BSCNC).""Highly irregular."
"Wrong" is such a hard word to say, isn't it? So, well, judgmental and all that.
A savvy statement by the Baptist State Convention, though: it leaves options open. After all, if more Baptist churches purged people on account of their membership in political parties, then it wouldn't be so highly irregular anymore, would it?
Posted by Eric at 12:58 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Excommunicated on a Technicality
"[The minister] had a quorum, but this was supposed to be a deacon meeting, not a business meeting," explains a 30-year-member of the church. "They're not legally terminated."
So this means, I guess, that the heathen Democrats are still welcome to pray at the church. How lovely.
Posted by Eric at 8:29 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 6, 2005
One Ringy Dingy...
If you're a friend or relative of mine, and you've got it, drop me a line and tell me. I'm downloading it and eager to give it a whirl.
Posted by Eric at 7:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Baptist Minister: Democrats Out!
One of those churches is the East Waynesville Baptist Church. Its spiritual leader, Reverend Chan Chandler, has just excommunicated nine parishioners for being Democrats.
OK, I'll give you a second to clean your glasses.
Yes, you read right. Reverend Chandler has excommunicated the Democrats. He told his flock that "if they didn't support George Bush, they needed to resign their positions and get out of the church, or go to the altar, repent and agree to vote for Bush."
Nine refused, and he identified them publicly and tossed them out.
According to the news report, some church members were upset--not because he excommunicated them, apparently, but because he named them publicly. Reverend Chandler explained in his sermon last week that he'd do it again. The word of God requires it, he said.
Forty members have left the church in protest.
I have nothing witty or interesting to say about this story. It speaks for itself.
Posted by Eric at 4:31 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Libertarian On The Outside--But What's On The Inside?
It's good reading. Unfortunately, it's not yet up on Reason online. So if you want to read it, you'll have to find it at a newsstand. When it's available online, I'll post a link here.
Posted by Eric at 8:57 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 5, 2005
Yom Hashoah 2005
Sixty-three years and eight days ago, on April 26, 1942, my great-uncle Leopold Müller and his wife Irene were marched on a roundabout route from a Gestapo gathering point in a small park in Würzburg through the city's streets to a train depot. There they left their luggage on the platform and boarded a train to the East. To their deaths.
The Nazis scrupulously documented this deportation. Dozens of photographs were taken, like the one you see here. My great-uncle and his wife are in this group. Somewhere.
(You can find many more pictures here. Type "wuerzburg" into the search field.")
But photographs were apparently not enough. The Nazis also hired someone to make a movie of the event. You can see the movie camera in this picture.
The photographs were discovered at war's end in a barracks, arranged in some Gestapo officer's photo album like so many vacation pictures.
The movie, however, has never been located.
I hope it will turn up someday. I would like to see it. Perhaps it would bring me a little closer to my great uncle, a man I have no way of remembering, and no way of forgetting.
Today I'm a bit more optimistic than usual that the movie might someday turn up. Pieces of this history continue to turn up, sixty-plus years later, in unexpected places.
Like this photograph, for example. A reader of this blog recently offered me this photo and about a dozen others that he pulled from a box of many hundreds of images that his father captured as a young ambulance driver in the U.S. military at the close of World War II. They were taken at a concentration camp believed to be Dachau.
The rest of the images are below the fold. Most of them are quite disturbing. They are not for the faint of heart. That's why you have to click to get to them.
They have never been published; they appear here for the first time. Most are self-explanatory; those that are not are followed by a brief explanation.
I publish them in the memory of my great uncle, who died like this, in the memory of the many millions of other victims of Nazi atrocities, and in honor of people like my reader's father, who liberated the camps, and who aided in the process of remembering in ways they could never have envisioned.
May such horror never befall any people again.
"Bodies loaded on railroad cars," explains the reader who sent me these—the son of the photographer. "Dad said that it looked like they were trying to dispose of the evidence, but that the American advance was too fast to allow them to do that. Prisoners told them that the SS had left several days before liberation, leaving only those who were ordered to stay to guard the camp."
"The dog kennels. They used German Shepherds, Rotweillers and Dobermans -- all extremely bright dogs and easy to train. You know what they were trained to do. What a waste. The kennels were empty when Dad's unit arrived."
"Not sure about this one," says the photographer's son. "This room definitely has a pile of bodies in it. Maybe a gas chamber? That would certainly go with the oven [above]."
"A guard giving himself up."
"Dead guards. Note how their boots have been stripped off by POWs."
"Soviet POWs celebrating their liberation with a drawing of Stalin," explains the photographer's son. "If they only realized what awaited them when they were repatriated."
Posted by Eric at 12:13 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
May 4, 2005
Or Maybe It Was Those Vicious Kamikaze Attacks on Mystic Seaport.
"Which of these alien groups do you think is most dangerous -- Japanese, Germans, or Italians?"
Remember, this is the East Coast we're talking about here.
The answer: The Japanese! Forty-five percent identified Japanese aliens as the most dangerous, compared to forty percent who singled out the Germans.
I guess folks from Philly through Boston were worried about the Japanese navy crossing the South Pacific, rounding the Tierra del Fuego, sneaking up the eastern coast of South America past the Caribbean, and landing an invasion force on Martha's Vineyard--and then getting support from the tiny handful of Japanese aliens who lived along the East Coast.
Yup, those dastardly East-Coast Japanese. Much, much scarier to East Coasters than these folks, or these, who lived in their midst.
UPDATE: The trap was opened, and Terry was the first commenter to tumble into it. (And smugly, no less.) He said:
"Gee, I wonder if the attack on Pearl Harbor had anything to do with the numbers, or was it just RACISM?"Funny you should ask, Terry.
In the survey of 500 East Coast citizens that the same government office did a few months earlier, in February of 1942, the respondents said that Germans were the more threatening aliens, by a wide margin!
So much for the Pearl Harbor effect.
The Office of Facts and Figures, which did the surveys and prepared the reports, noted this shift in East Coast opinion between February and June of 1942, and guess what they thought was the primary reason for it? They thought they primary reason was that between February and June of 1942, the government had very publicly rounded up all Japanese Americans and locked them up in "assembly centers." It was, in other words, the government's action against Japanese Americans that persuaded people on the East Coast (who had little contact or experience with Japanese Americans) that they were dangerous. ("They must be dangerous, right? Why else would they be behind barbed wire?")
Posted by Eric at 4:44 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
May 3, 2005
"A Bad Effect on Morale..."
It is often maintained by those who defend the Japanese American internment that the decision to take mass action against Japanese Americans regardless of their citizenship, while taking no such mass action against Italian and German Americans, was grounded in military necessity.
Check out this nifty little note that FDR himself dashed off to Secretary of War Henry Stimson on May 5, 1942, shortly after the commanding General of the Eastern Defense Command designated a strip along the East Coast of the United States as a "military area":
I have been hearing some complaints from [Capitol] Hill and from New York about General Drum's statement creating a "military area" along the East Coast. From what I hear, the German and Italian people up there are in a state of confusion and believe this means another evacuation like that on the West Coast. American citizens with German and Italian names are also worried. I am inclined to think this may have a bad effect on morale.
As I remember the discussion in the Cabinet, the Order was intended primarily to give General Drum authority over the dimming of lights along the Eastern seaboard and not over alien enemies. The control of alien enemies seems to me to be primarily a civilian matter except of course in the case of the Japanese mass evacuation on the Pacific Coast.
Will you make sure that no action is taken by General Drum under this Executive Order in relation to alien enemies without talking to me first?
I hear the evacuation program on the West Coast is working well.
F.D.R.
Indeed it was. And having a good effect on morale, too--except among Japanese Americans.
Posted by Eric at 5:20 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBack
May 2, 2005
The Miller Test ... Warren Miller, That Is.
Interestingly, Wyoming law does not define "obscenity" precisely; most judges simply say they "know it when they ski it."
Posted by Eric at 11:29 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
"The Guise of Security"
Well, I'm at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, for some quick research today. And I happened across this lovely little excerpt from a telephone conversation on February 4, 1943, between the top executive to Assistant War Secretary John J. McCloy and a top assistant to the Provost Marshall General. They are talking about the huge wave of hostile telegrams pouring in to the War Department after the government announced a program of screening the loyalty of Japanese American internees so that they could leave camp for the military or for jobs:
Col. Scobey: You know what's back of that. The protest will come from the West Coast, of course.Contemporaneous evidence, refreshingly blunt.Col. Miller: Yes, that's right.
Col. Scobey: And there's a lot back of that and part of it is economic. The West Coast saw a way to get rid of the Japs, they got rid of them, now they don't want them out there, they want to take the property over. It isn't all patriotic, by any means.
Col. Miller: That's right.
Col. Scobey: Of course, they couch their protests under the guise of security and patriotism.
Posted by Eric at 4:44 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack