Read Online The Air-Raid Warden Was a Spy: And Other Tales From Home-Front America in World War II by William B. Breuer - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: William B. Breuer
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for the air armada.
Americans reacted with a gut impulse for revenge, and erupted in a rage against General Hideki Tojo, the warlord, and the Japanese nation as a whole. In their fury, American civilians turned on some of their own neighbors and fellow citizens—the 125,000 men, women, and children of Japanese birth or descent who lived in the continental United States. Nearly all of them resided on the West Coast, mainly in California. Some 70,000 had been born on U.S. soil, a fact that made them bona fide citizens.
In the shock and terror that followed the debacle at Pearl Harbor, General John DeWitt, in charge of West Coast defenses (which were virtually nonexistent), snapped: “A Jap’s a Jap! It makes no difference if he is an American or not!”
DeWitt had plenty of company. Milkmen refused to deliver their products to Japanese Americans (known as Nisei); grocers refused to sell them food; insurance companies cancelled their policies. The state of California revoked their licenses to practice law or medicine.
At first, the Japanese Americans were encouraged to leave California voluntarily and go inland to other states. Some eight thousand Japanese Americans followed the suggestion, thereby triggering angry voices from politicians and the media.
“If the Japs are dangerous in California, they are likewise dangerous in Nevada,” declared the Nevada Bar Association. Said Governor Chase Clark of Idaho, “I don’t want them taking seats in our universities.”
“Japs are not wanted or welcome in Kansas,” said Governor Payne Ratner, who ordered the state patrol to bar them from using the highways.
The thousands of wandering Japanese Americans were harassed at every turn. Many restaurants refused to serve them and ordered them out. Some eating places hung signs in their windows that read: “We poison rats and Japs.” Gas station employees wouldn’t fill their tanks with fuel. Small town cops threw some of the refugees in jail for “loitering” or as “suspicious subjects” before releasing them the next day.
In the weeks ahead, angry voices were raised across the United States, a resounding chorus demanding that every man, woman, and child of Japanese descent be evacuated from the West Coast. Perhaps the most powerful voice was that of Walter Lippmann, whose syndicated columns on politics and foreign affairs were carried in hundreds of newspapers.
Harvard-educated Lippmann may well have been the nation’s most influential journalist. It was said that Washington politicians read his columns as though Moses had brought them down from the mountain. Among Lippmann’s most ardent fans was President Franklin Roosevelt.
In those confused early days of the war, Lippmann wrote a strident column:
It is a fact that the Japanese navy has been reconnoitering the
Pacific Coast. . . . It is a fact that communication takes place
between the enemy at sea and enemy agents on land.
I submit that Washington [meaning President Roosevelt] is not
defining the problem on the Pacific Coast correctly and that it is
failing to deal with the practical issues.
The Pacific Coast is officially a combat zone; some part of it
may at any moment be a battlefield. Nobody’s constitutional rights
include the right to reside and do business on the battlefield.
Lippmann had substituted rumor and theory for facts. Never had there been any known incident of anyone on the Pacific Coast signaling Japanese submarines offshore.
Other influential voices joined the evacuation cacophony, including California Attorney General Earl Warren and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau.
J. Edgar Hoover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation chief, strongly opposed the mass upheaval, describing any such action as being “a capitulation to public hysteria.” Hoover told Morgenthau that arrests should not be made “unless there are sufficient fact [probable cause] upon which to justify the arrests”; that the rights of American citizens should
Americans reacted with a gut impulse for revenge, and erupted in a rage against General Hideki Tojo, the warlord, and the Japanese nation as a whole. In their fury, American civilians turned on some of their own neighbors and fellow citizens—the 125,000 men, women, and children of Japanese birth or descent who lived in the continental United States. Nearly all of them resided on the West Coast, mainly in California. Some 70,000 had been born on U.S. soil, a fact that made them bona fide citizens.
In the shock and terror that followed the debacle at Pearl Harbor, General John DeWitt, in charge of West Coast defenses (which were virtually nonexistent), snapped: “A Jap’s a Jap! It makes no difference if he is an American or not!”
DeWitt had plenty of company. Milkmen refused to deliver their products to Japanese Americans (known as Nisei); grocers refused to sell them food; insurance companies cancelled their policies. The state of California revoked their licenses to practice law or medicine.
At first, the Japanese Americans were encouraged to leave California voluntarily and go inland to other states. Some eight thousand Japanese Americans followed the suggestion, thereby triggering angry voices from politicians and the media.
“If the Japs are dangerous in California, they are likewise dangerous in Nevada,” declared the Nevada Bar Association. Said Governor Chase Clark of Idaho, “I don’t want them taking seats in our universities.”
“Japs are not wanted or welcome in Kansas,” said Governor Payne Ratner, who ordered the state patrol to bar them from using the highways.
The thousands of wandering Japanese Americans were harassed at every turn. Many restaurants refused to serve them and ordered them out. Some eating places hung signs in their windows that read: “We poison rats and Japs.” Gas station employees wouldn’t fill their tanks with fuel. Small town cops threw some of the refugees in jail for “loitering” or as “suspicious subjects” before releasing them the next day.
In the weeks ahead, angry voices were raised across the United States, a resounding chorus demanding that every man, woman, and child of Japanese descent be evacuated from the West Coast. Perhaps the most powerful voice was that of Walter Lippmann, whose syndicated columns on politics and foreign affairs were carried in hundreds of newspapers.
Harvard-educated Lippmann may well have been the nation’s most influential journalist. It was said that Washington politicians read his columns as though Moses had brought them down from the mountain. Among Lippmann’s most ardent fans was President Franklin Roosevelt.
In those confused early days of the war, Lippmann wrote a strident column:
It is a fact that the Japanese navy has been reconnoitering the
Pacific Coast. . . . It is a fact that communication takes place
between the enemy at sea and enemy agents on land.
I submit that Washington [meaning President Roosevelt] is not
defining the problem on the Pacific Coast correctly and that it is
failing to deal with the practical issues.
The Pacific Coast is officially a combat zone; some part of it
may at any moment be a battlefield. Nobody’s constitutional rights
include the right to reside and do business on the battlefield.
Lippmann had substituted rumor and theory for facts. Never had there been any known incident of anyone on the Pacific Coast signaling Japanese submarines offshore.
Other influential voices joined the evacuation cacophony, including California Attorney General Earl Warren and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau.
J. Edgar Hoover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation chief, strongly opposed the mass upheaval, describing any such action as being “a capitulation to public hysteria.” Hoover told Morgenthau that arrests should not be made “unless there are sufficient fact [probable cause] upon which to justify the arrests”; that the rights of American citizens should
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