Is That Legal?

What is the purpose of this archival research?

Just curious.

Glen, I'm writing a history of the Japanese American Joint Board -- the agency in the military that was tasked with the responsibility of determining the loyalty of internees.

Prof. Muller writes:

"Consider this entry from the minutes of a meeting of the War Department's Japanese American Joint Board, September 2, 1943...

'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."

Am I missing something, Professor? Your source has the PACIFIC CITIZEN (house organ of the JACL)
calling for lifting the West Coast restrictions (no surprise there). Then it even has General DeWitt (whom so many folks of your ideological persuasion consider was the chief "racist" and master architect of the evacuation) now calling for the lifting of restrictions because the military situation had improved. So,how does this prove that the "internment" was seen as anything but what it was at the time--a military decision for military reasons, now no longer believed necessary by DeWitt and others? (Incidentally, your source is completely at odds with the rendition of DeWitt's views at the time as outlined in "Personal Justice Denied"--the report of the Comission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC).

"Incidentally, the policy of excluding Japanese Americans from the West Coast continued for well over a year after this comment by General DeWitt."

Sure it did, but you are ignoring the fact that only a month after the Sept. 1943 meeting you describe above, Dillon Myer, head of the WRA, recommended that steps be taken to lift the exclusion orders but General Emmons (about whom there were no implications of "racism") who had by then replaced DeWitt, recommended that because of the November 1943 violent uprising by disloyal Japanese-American militants at Tule Lake (in which several Americans were killed), the blanket lifting of restrictions should be delayed until public hostilities had cooled.

Accordingly, lifting the restrictions was slowed by the Tule Lake uprising but there was a gradual movement in that direction. In early 1944 General Emmons began issuing special examptions for evacuees to return to the West Coast but applications to do so by camp residents were very few in number. Indeed, when it was announced that the final exclusionary restrictions were to be lifted and the camps closed, there was a great uproar among the camp residents who WANTED THE CAMPS TO REMAIN OPEN. Residents organized and sent delegates from the camps to a conference in Salt Lake City in February 1945. The result was presentation to the government of a petition with 21 recommendations pertaining to matters they wanted the government to agree to before the camps would be closed.

Which brings to question: If the relocation centers were the horrible "concentration camps" in which Japanese nationals and their American-born children were "incarcerated" and ill-treated(as so many of today's leftist ideologues contend), why was it that so many people didn't want to leave them?

Many Issei, were broken, confused and ashamed, and had nowhere else to go. And that is only one part of a complicated answer.

Writes paul yamada:

"Many Issei, were broken, confused and ashamed, and had nowhere else to go...."

Many were ashamed that Japan was not winning the war as they had hoped for and firmly believed in the triumph of their homeland. But, on the other hand, to them the relocation centers, as UC historian Page Smith observed: "had become, inadvertently, retirement communities...There were security guards in the form of kindly military police, assured incomes, numerous recreational activities, good hospital and nursing care, just about everything an older couple might desire..." ["Democracy on Trial"--
Simon and Schuster--1995]

Oh yeah, they were just like nice little country clubs. Keep fooling yourself, Hopwood, Malkin, etc. I'd like you see you tell that to someone I know who's father and family were interned (yes, I said interned, not "so-called") as a little boy. His parent's home and property were taken away and auctioned off. And no, his parent's weren't spies. They were upstanding citizens that happened to be of Japanese descent living on the West Coast.
But then again, they did get to live in a nice over-crowded holding facility, complete with barbed wire fencing and your friendly armed security guards. That doesn't sound like any retirement community that I know of. And according to Malkin, Hopwood, etc. "most" or the "majority" were free to go. Right. Go back to what??

Writes WJHOPWOOD:
"Many were ashamed that Japan was not winning the war as they had hoped for and firmly believed in the triumph of their homeland." I'd think you were being sarcastic but I've read some of the other nonsense you have written on this topic, most Issei had left 'their homeland' seeking a better opportunity for themselves and their families in America. They were fleeing an economic crisis in Japan as well as conscription into the Imperial Army, which was busy trying to build it's own Empire, one to rival that of the Europeans and Americans. Once here they found out about being 'non-white' and having laws passed specifically to deny them the basic rights white people take as their natural birthright, such as owning property, voting and living peacefully while working hard to provide for their families.
Most Issei would have loved to be welcomed as citizens in their adopted country, instead they were ostracized and denied the simple privilege of citizenship, then in camp they were required to denounce the Emperor and Japan (their only place of sanctuary, since the U.S. wouldn't welcome them as full members of society) placing them in the position of having NO country. Then their citizens sons are drafted into the Army, which had discharged most Nisei after 12/6, to fight for a country that questioned their loyalty enough to force them to sign a loyalty pledge.
By the way if your in Northern California on Monday, May 30, at 10:00 AM you might want to attend the Memorial Service for Nisei Veterans at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California. Both the 442nd and the MIS will be represented there. If you'd like to send a donation the address is Nisei VFW Post 9879, C/O
Michio Iwahashi, 1305 Everett St, El Cerrito, Ca. 94530-2404

Jduff writes:

"Writes WJHOPWOOD:'Many were ashamed that Japan was not winning the war as they had hoped for and firmly believed in the triumph of their homeland.'"

Jduff continues:
"I'd think you were being sarcastic but I've read some of the other nonsense you have written on this topic..."

Sorry, but you seem to be in a state of denial. As historian Page Smith notes in "Democracy on Trial," "...most Japanese nationalists clung stubbornly to their conviction that Japan would win the war. For a time those Issei who had come to suspect that Japan might actually lose the war did not dare say so aloud."

And then there was this report by historian, John J. Stephan in his "Hawaii Under the Rising Sun."
"...to say that they wanted America to win the war would be a grevious misrepresentation. Issei were after all Japanese, not American citizens. Two postwar Japanese historians (Nobuhiro Adachi and Hidehiko Ushijima)...affirm that in their innermost hearts most Issei remained loyal to Japan...and hoped for an ultimate Japanese victory...Japan's unconditional surrender came as a traumatic blow...issei woman wept. The men heard the news, eyes downcast, in stony silence...many issei stayed indoors, mortified by shame and grief..."

John Stephan's work is much more illuminating if you read all of it, instead of ellipsized quotations. p. 171 "A significant number of Hawaii issei accepted postwar realities far less readily than did Japanese intellectuals." Stephen goes on for a few pages after this about the kachigumi -- perhaps, based on Stephan's numbers, as much as 3-4% of the Hawaii issei community -- which believed for a time that Japan's defeat was American propaganda (Brazilian Japanese community had the same problem). But first he continues, "No quantitative data exist tabulating issei wartime views, nor would polls have illuminated the complexity of this generation's innermost feelings. Hawaii issei were not anti-American and they did nothing overtly against the United States, but to say that they wanted America to win the war would be a grievous misrepresentation." [bold emphasis added]

What I love about Stephan's work, and I admit that Hawaii Under the Rising Sun was eye-opening, is the unflinching and honest use of sources. Mr. Hopwood, you would benefit from a careful rereading of that text.

And some on the victor's side would blind themselves to others to the fact that some of their country's acts in that war were shameful. Decades of clutching onto musty racial attitudes, familiar reliance on dubious sources and hearsay. We have an American mirror image of the Japanese soldiers who remained in their caves for decades.

Jonathan Dresner writes:

"What I love about Stephan's work, and I admit that Hawaii Under the Rising Sun was eye-opening, is the unflinching and honest use of sources. Mr. Hopwood, you would benefit from a careful rereading of that text."

Mr.Dresner, your point seems to be to insinuate that I misrepresented Stephan's work by not including this Stephan paragraph in full from p. 171 of "Hawaii Under the Rising Sun."
"A significant number of Hawaii issei accepted postwar realities far less readily than did Japanese intellectuals. No quantitative data exist tabulating issei wartime views, nor would polls have illuminated the complexity of this generation's innermost feelings. Hawaii issei were not anti-American and they did nothing overtly against the United States, but to say that they wanted America to win the war would be a grievous misrepresentation."

I fail to see where the inclusion of your emphasized portion detracts from the meaning of Stephan's concluding sentence, which was what I quoted, i.e.:
"...to say that they wanted America to win the war would be a grievious misrepresentation. Issei were after all Japanese,not American citizens."

Furthermore, Stephan goes on to say (p.172) "A sizeable proportion of the issei in Hawaii
psychologically refused to accept the events of August 1945 as reality. Rumors gave their delusion sustenance. Japan, it was said, had actually won the war. The Americans were trying desperately to hide this fact. President Truman had sent General MacArthur to Japan to apologize to the emperor for the 'indidscriminate' bombing of Hiroshima. In Hilo (on the island of Hawaii), it was whispered that the Combined Fleet lay at anchor off Pearl Harbor, waiting for the Americans to clear the entrande channel of mines."

I can quote further but those who have read Stephan will, I believe, agree that in his chapter titled "The Persistence of Illusion" he clearly points out that most Issei in Hawaii had hoped for a Japanese victory and were saddened when this did not occur. To suggest otherwise, is, in my view, disingenuous.

Japan is awesome!!! xP Sorry, you all sound so intelligent, so I must be the one dumbass here.