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Michael Eppolito

Korematsu v. United States - 4 views

  • In doing so, we are not unmindful of the hardships imposed by it upon a large group of American citizens. Cf. Ex parte Kawato, 317 U.S. 69, 73. But hardships are part of war, and war is an aggregation of hardships. All citizens alike, both in and out of uniform, feel the impact of war in greater or lesser measure. Citizenship has its responsibilities, as well as its privileges, and, in time of war, the burden is always heavier. Compulsory [p220] exclusion of large groups of citizens from their homes, except under circumstances of direst emergency and peril, is inconsistent with our basic governmental institutions. But when, under conditions of modern warfare, our shores are threatened by hostile forces, the power to protect must be commensurate with the threatened danger.
  • Like curfew, exclusion of those of Japanese origin was deemed necessary because of the presence of an unascertained number of disloyal members of the group, most of [p219] whom we have no doubt were loyal to this country. It was because we could not reject the finding of the military authorities that it was impossible to bring about an immediate segregation of the disloyal from the loyal that we sustained the validity of the curfew order as applying to the whole group. In the instant case, temporary exclusion of the entire group was rested by the military on the same ground. The judgment that exclusion of the whole group was, for the same reason, a military imperative answers the contention that the exclusion was in the nature of group punishment based on antagonism to those of Japanese origin. That there were members of the group who retained loyalties to Japan has been confirmed by investigations made subsequent to the exclusion. Approximately five thousand American citizens of Japanese ancestry refused to swear unqualified allegiance to the United States and to renounce allegiance to the Japanese Emperor, and several thousand evacuees requested repatriation to Japan
Michael Eppolito

San Francisco's mayor wants exclusion act to bar the Japs. Eugene E. Schmitz, labor champion, regards them as a far greater menace than the Chinese. By E. C. Leffingwell. Special correspondence of the Newspaper enterprise association. - 6 views

  • San Francisco's labor mayor, the Hon. Eugene E. Schmitz,
  • "The Japanese are far more dangerous to us than the Chinese,"
  • Japs are to be feared more than the Chinese, primarily because of the cheapness of their labor.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Where a Chinese will work upon a farm at starvation wages, a Japanese has the ability to acquire the property itself. The Chinese are dangerous enough, but the Japanese would drive all competition out of business. It is the stern duty of the American citizen, and particularly of those of us upon this western coast, to scrutinise this evil and then suppress it with appropriate legislation."
  • "I would sooner see the bars of civilization let down on this western borderland to the heathen Chinese, and meet all of the grave dangers incidental to their coming, than to witness an unrestricted Japanese immigration, fraught with the many great evils that would at once beset our industrial welfare if the brown toilers of the mikado's realm were permitted to swarm through our gates unhindered."
    • Michael Eppolito
       
      See how the mayor of San Francisco compares Chinese to Japanese. Also "mikado's realm" refers to Japan.
  •  
    This newspaper article gives you a good idea about US attitudes about Japanese workers in San Francisco in 1900, 42 years before internment.
Michael Eppolito

Google Image Result for http://home.comcast.net/~eo9066/Images/NEWS09.jpg - 2 views

  •  
    The Western Defense Command yesterday ordered the evacuation of 2,000 more Japanese from Seattle. The upper sketch shows two new areas to be cleared. They are indicated in black on the map of Seattle (lower). The area marked in diagonals already has been evacuated, leaving only the areas in gray where Japanese still may live.
Michael Eppolito

Outcasts! : the story of America's treatment of her Japanese-American minority - 18 views

  • Four explanations have been advanced for the evacuation: military necessity, the protection of those evacuated, political and economic pressures, and racial prejudice.
  • Briefly, the justification of the evacuation as military necessity is as follows:
  • suggesting immediate removal of those of Japanese lineage as a racial group
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Protection against sabotage and fifth-columnism were the announced military reasons for the exclusion of those of Japanese ancestry
  • On April 13, 1943, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, the man who ordered the evacuation, told a House Committee: "It makes no difference whether the Japanese is theoretically a citizen. He is still a Japanese. Giving him a scrap of paper won't change him. I don't care what they do with the Japs so long as they don't send them back here. A Jap is a Jap."
  • "There are in the United States many persons of Japanese extraction whose loyalty to the country, even in the present emergency, is unquestioned. It would therefore be a serious mistake to take any action against these people"—San Francisco Chronicle, December 9, 1941.
  • Thus during the first weeks of the war the dominant tenor of news stories was for fairness and tolerance, restrictions applied equally to all enemy aliens, and there was no mention of total evacuation! If the military had sound reasons for it, they were not apparent nor put forward in the weeks immediately following Pearl Harbor.
  • On January 22, 1942, Congressman Leland Ford of California launched the campaign "to move all Japanese, native born and alien, to concentration camps."
  • Why treat the Japs well here? They take the parking positions. They get ahead of you in the stamp line at the post office. They have their share of seats on the bus and streetcar lines... I am for immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior. I don't mean a nice part of the interior, either... Let 'em be pinched, hurt, hungry, and dead up against it... Personally I hate the Japanese. And that goes for all of them."
  • The "Protection" Reason for Evacuation
  • Salinas Vegetable Grower's Association
  • "We're charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for selfish reasons. We might as well be honest. We do. It's a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown man...and we don't want them back when the war ends, either."
  • he Japanese-American group in California alone controlled farm acreage valued at some $72,000,000; played a part in fishing; owned and operated many hotels, laundries, and restaurants; dominated Los Angeles fresh fruit and vegetable distribution, and captured some of the best bazaar trade in San Francisco's Chinatown. Their commercial interests along the Coast were valued at from $55,000,000 to $75,000,000.
  • "The reason for evacuation considered most valid by many persons is that of 'protective custody'--the Japanese must be taken into camps and guarded for their own protection. But what a breakdown of the Anglo-Saxon conception of justice in a democracy such thinking betokens... The very words 'protective custody' (Schutzhaft) were 'made in Germany,' not here. How could it accord with American justice that if a man were dangerous to his neighbors they should be put into custody rather than he?" --Fellowship, July, 1942.
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