[The following text is taken from a recent letter to the State Board of Education by B. Rice Aston, editor of the Education -Texas Style website regarding a "history" textbook by Joy Hakim. A file containing this letter, approximately ten pages, can be downloaded here. Zipped MS Word format, 22kb.]
A History of U.S., Joy Hakim, is not factually correct and is not suitable for the school children of Texas.
A History of US, Book 9, Joy Hakim, Oxford University Press, Chapter 33, Forgetting the Constitution, describes the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as motivated solely by racial hatred for the Japanese-Americans and greed to seize their property. The book states:
The war provides an opportunity for the racists, and for the greedy, too. They can get rid of the Japanese Americans and grab their land and possessions. They can scream and accuse, and, because of the war, some people - some very good people - will believe the lies they tell. An [unidentified] Army general who is in charge of the defense of the West Coast makes up [undescribed] stories of treason and treachery in the Japanese community.
Much of the "history" is anecdotal, it makes an appeal to the emotions, and eschews lower order learning skills, such as knowledge, and higher order learning skills, such as analysis and reason. Hakim's work reveals more about her than it does about America. In her pellmell rush to establish that America is racist, hypocritical, violent, and corrupt, she displays an ignorance of our constitution, federal courts, the war powers of Congress and the President, WW II and its aftermath, that is both vast and deep. Although it is a well-kept secret as far as Hakim is concerned, the constitution was there all the time. Whenever there is a choice between a high road or a low road, Ms. Hakim's internal compass unerringly directs her to the low road. The book should be renamed "Low Road Through America" and made Exhibit 1 in "Chasing the Almighty Dollar: Discovering Profit and Power in Racism". Her vision of America is that of a land of thieves, rogues, and racists, and to further that end she submits facts to the rack, the thumbscrew, and the carving knife to a degree that is unacceptable in a textbook destined for Texas school children.
Background of the Internment
The story begins with a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on a warm Sunday afternoon of December 7, 1941. America had notified Japan that it would not continue to supply oil and scrap metal needed by Japan to continue its conquest of China, and Japan had decided to drive America, Britain, and Holland out of the Pacific, and take over the region's resources. The attack, aided by Japanese espionage, was a total surprise and resulted in the loss of seven battleships and nearly all airplanes in Hawaii. What followed is aptly described in Hirabayashi v. U.S. 300 U.S. 81, 94 (1942).
On December 13th Guam was taken. Wake Island was captured on December 24th and Hong Kong occupied on December 25th. Manila fell on January 2, 1942, and on February 19th, Singapore, Britain's great naval base in the East was taken. On February 27th the battle of the Java Sea resulted in a disastrous naval defeat to the United Nations. By the 9th of March Japanese forces had the Netherlands East Indies, Rangoon, and Burma under control; Bataan and Corregidor were under attack...the Japanese by their successes had gained a naval superiority over our forces in the Pacific which might enable them to seize Pearl Harbor, our largest naval base and the last stronghold of defense lying between Japan and the West Coast.
A resident of California, now a resident of Texas, recalls the following:
Things were a little grim -- even panicky in Southern California on Monday following the Pearl Harbor bombing. Schools were called off, the radio and newspapers were full of it. Rumors flew. One was that Douglas Aircraft plant in Long Beach had been bombed...There were sightings of submarines in Los Angeles harbor....We know for sure, now, that Japanese in Hawaii provided valuable information to Japan before, during, and after the bombing...they were influential in recommending Sunday morning for the attack when we would be most vulnerable.
Japan secured victories all over the Pacific assuring itself oil, rubber and other vital resources necessary to prosecute its conquest of China. Japanese espionage had penetrated conversations between Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt in January 1942. Japan delivered $100,000.00 to its spy master in Mexico City and designated it to be used in bribing the President of Mexico. Japan planned to take Midway, the Hawaii Islands, and some Aleutian Islands. An attack on the West Coast was feared. "The Japanese [believed they] were a master race, and it was their destiny to rule Asia, the Pacific, and perhaps the world." Japan's War, Hoyt, p. 280.
Japan's attitude toward non-Japanese had always been hostile and jingoistic, but there is scant record of its mistreatment of civilians and POWs in the Russo-Japanese War. WW II, however, was to be different. Japan's need to dominate Asia, the Pacific, their resources and peoples, made it necessary to humiliate the Dutch, British, Americans, and Australians, and any non-whites who sided with them. A policy of brutality to all who fell into their hands was required. "Bushido", the code of the Samurai warrior, was deliberately perverted. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the Geneva Conventions setting minimum standards for the protection of the wounded, civilians and POWs were to be ignored. POWs and civilians, Americans, Dutch, British, Australians, and their Asian allies, were despised, treated as slaves, and beheaded, raped, shot, starved, tortured, strangled, drowned, torn apart, suffocated, burned, chloroformed, and dissected alive. Women were dragged through the streets naked behind trucks and torn apart. In 1937 the whole world saw the Rape of Nanking in newsreels - babies on the end of bayonets, two hundred thousand (200,000) people slaughtered, and concluded the Japanese had gone mad. In 1942 the Rape of Nanking was repeated at St. Stephens College in Hong Kong, at a hospital in Alexandra - patients were bayoneted on the operating table, and in Asia and the Pacific. After the fall of Corregidor, thousands of American and Philippine soldiers, many of them wounded, died during the Bataan Death March from officially encouraged brutality, by the bullet, the club, and the bayonet. Colonel Tsuji had five thousand Chinese executed for "supporting British colonialism" and convinced other officers that this was a racial war and that all prisoners in the Philippines should be executed, Americans because they were white colonists and Filipinos because they had betrayed their fellow Asians. . . . 17,000 Allied POWs and 90,000 natives died in slavery building the 250 mile Burma Railway for Japan. In April 1942, American planes bombed Tokyo and landed or crashed in China. Over two hundred thousand (200,000) Chinese who lived in the areas where the planes may have crashed, were slaughtered in revenge and as a warning. Nefarious experiments were conducted on unwilling subjects to further Japan's zeal to lead the world in biological warfare research . . . its goal was to introduce anthrax, cholera, and bubonic plague in the United States. In the few POW camps to which the International Red Cross was permitted access, Red Cross employees who did their work well were often beaten, imprisoned, or killed. The mortality rate in German POW camps was 1%, in Japanese POW camps it was 33%. Two hundred thousand (200,000) women from the Netherlands, Korea, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia were confined, raped, beaten, starved, and their babies threatened with death, in order to force them into being prostitutes to the Japanese army; later they were denied treatment for rampant venereal disease. White civilians found in the Pacific were no problem - "starvation would take care of the situation." Later in the war, Field Marshall Terauchi would order that all 400,000 POWs and civilian detainees in Japan's custody be executed as soon as the invasion of the Japan had began. Even after the Emperor announced surrender, the atrocities continued: in one final indulgence of hatred for white westerners and their Asian allies, hundreds of POWs were chopped to death, strangled, shot, beheaded, and chloroformed. In all 17,000,000 soldiers and civilians died at the hands of the Japanese. Such events were unknown to civilian detainees and POWs in America.
In 1942 representatives of countries attacked by Japan and Germany met in the U.K. for the purpose of forming a unified strategy to prosecute war criminals.
At the end of the war, records in Japanese POW camps were destroyed, and the soldiers told: "if you believe you did anything to POWs that can get you in trouble - disappear - hide."
A review of these events is instructive for those who may not understand why Americans concluded that there was something different about the Japanese enemy, and why the fear and hatred of this enemy far exceeded any animus toward Nazi Germany.
The first call to intern the Japanese-Americans came in January 1942 from John B. Hughes, a prominent Mutual Broadcasting Company commentator; Henry McLemore, a syndicated columnist of the Hearst newspapers followed; so did Walter Lippman, the most influential liberal columnist with an article entitled: "The Fifth Column on the Coast.". In February, a delegation of West Coast Congressmen sent a letter to the President calling for the "immediate evacuation of all persons of Japanese lineage." Mayor of Los Angeles, Fletcher Brown, Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, Asst. Secretary of War, John J. McCloy, a man known for his liberal proclivities, Tom Clark, who later became an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and Earl Warren, then Attorney General of California and later Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court and a vigorous supporter of minority rights, all vigorously supported internment. Opposition to the evacuation was almost nonexistent, however, there were a few dissenters: J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI believed the internment was unnecessary because the FBI was fully capable of handling the small number of suspects then under surveillance. Norman Thomas, leader of the American Socialist Party, was the only personality of national stature to vigorously oppose the internment.
Most Japanese-Americans lived on the West Coast, an area containing much of America's shipbuilding and airplane factories. There was grave concern that the resident Japanese population had not assimilated, had close ties to Japan, and posed a sabotage threat to West Coast war production and an espionage threat in support of a Japanese invasion. The Japanese in America were of three general types: the Issei, mostly elderly Japanese citizens residing in America with close emotional ties to Japan; the Nisei, U.S. Citizens of Japanese origin, who had both a Japanese and American attitude and cultural heritage; and the Kibei, U.S. citizens, some of whom spent considerable time with their Issei parents in Japan or were sent to Japan to live with their relatives to be educated there. The Kibei were closer in attitude and cultural heritage to native Japanese than the Nisei. Upon returning to the U.S., many Kibei found they did not fit in with the Niesi or the Issei, they spoke English poorly and with a Japanese accent and the Niesi regarded them as "too Japanese". The Kibei had least assimilated, had the closest cultural and family ties with Japan, and were believed to be the greatest threat to national security.
Lt. General John DeWitt, commander of the Western Defense Command (WDC), designated the western half of Washington, Oregon, California and the southern half of Arizona as Military Area Number One. People of Japanese ancestry were encouraged to "voluntarily" move out of this area. Not surprisingly, the Japanese-Americans declined to accept the invitation. On February 13, 1942 General DeWitt recommended to the War Department and President Roosevelt that military necessity required that persons of Japanese ancestry be removed from the West Coast. On February 19, 1942 President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which gave the military authority to exclude any person from designated areas to prevent sabotage and espionage.
On March 21, 1942, Congress ratified and confirmed Executive Order No. 9066, which applied to persons of Japanese ancestry, alien and non-alien. The order authorized the Secretary of War and the Military Commander of the Western Defense Command to issue an order excluding persons of Japanese ancestry from certain designated areas of military importance, and to issue curfew orders requiring person of Japanese ancestry in certain designated areas of military importance to be in their homes during specified hours, i.e., 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.
On March 18, 1942 President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9102 creating the War Relocation Authority ("WRA") whose job was to maintain Relocation Centers as interim places of residence for persons excluded from areas of military importance, segregate loyal from disloyal evacuees, retain the disloyal, and, to the extent possible, relocate the loyal in selected communities. A meeting of intermountain governors and federal officials was held April 7, 1942 to discuss the relocation of evacuees. Federal officials were told that the states were opposed to unsupervised relocation and uncontrolled migration, and that the federal government must assume responsibility for maintaining law and order.
The WRA then established Government operated centers to accommodate the entire evacuee population. The army and the Wartime Civil Control Administration, the civilian branch of the WDC headed by Milton Eisenhower, brother of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, began notifying and rounding up all persons on the West Coast for placement in ten internment camps.
Hirabayashi, at p. 96 describes the situation:
In the critical days of March 1942, the danger to our war production by sabotage and espionage in this area seems obvious. The German invasion of the Western European countries had given ample warning to the world of the menace of the "fifth column." Espionage by persons in sympathy with the Japanese Government had been found to have been particularly effective in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. At a time of threatened Japanese attack upon this country, the nature of our inhabitants' attachments to the Japanese enemy consequently was of grave concern.
Of the 126,000 persons of Japanese descent in the United States, citizens and non-citizens, approximately 112,000 resided in California, Oregon, and Washington. . . Of these approximately two-thirds are citizens because they were born in the United States . . .they were concentrated in or near three of the large cities, Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles, all in Military Area No. 1.
There is support for the view that social, economic and political conditions which have prevailed. . . since . . . the Japanese began to come to this country . . . have intensified their solidarity and in large measure have prevented their assimilation . . . Children born in the United States before December 1, 1924, are under many circumstances deemed, by Japanese law, to be citizens of Japan.
The extent of that danger could be definitely known only after the event and after it was too late to meet it. Whatever view we may entertain regarding the loyalty to this country of the citizens of Japanese ancestry, we cannot reject as unfounded the judgment of the military authorities and of Congress that there were disloyal member of that population, whose number and strength could not be precisely and quickly ascertained.
The Canadians also determined that military necessity require that Canadians of Japanese ancestry be removed from Canada's West Coast. On January 14, 1942 all males of Japanese ancestry between the ages of 18 and 45.8 were ordered evacuated. Twenty-two thousand had been relocated by October 1942 to eastern Canada. Unlike interred Japanese-Americans interned Canadian Americans were expected to support themselves. It is undisputed that living conditions in both America and Canadian internment camps were difficult and spartan and that the internees in Canada and America lost much of their property while interned.
In February 1943 teams of Army officers visited relocation camps in America to register draft age men for military service and others for non-military duty such as the Nurse corps. A questionnaire sought background information but questions 27 and 28 were difficult for some to answer; question 27 asked draft age males: "are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the U.S. on combat duty, wherever ordered?". Question 28 asked: "will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States and faithfully defend the United States?" The Kibei who had acquaintances, friends, and relatives in Japan had difficulty answering Question 27 and twenty-six percent, for various reasons, answered Question 27 unsatisfactorily. Thirteen percent of the Nisei and Kibei, again for various reasons, answered Question 28 unsatisfactorily.
Hirabayashi Case
Hirabayashi was convicted in U.S. District Court of the misdemeanor of knowingly failing to remain in his place of residence in a designated military area between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. Hirabayashi did not deny he failed to obey the curfew order, but contended the order was not lawfully made and that the order violated the Fifth Amendment because it unlawfully discriminated against persons of Japanese descent. The Supreme Court found that the statute was within the "war powers" of Congress and did not violate the Fifth Amendment. Justices Murphy and Jackson wrote separate concurring opinions, there was no dissent. The concurring opinion of Justice Douglas stated.
After the disastrous bombing of Pearl Harbor the military had a grave problem on their hands. The threat of Japanese invasion of the west coast was not fanciful but real. The presence of many thousands of aliens and citizens of Japanese ancestry in or near to the key points along the coast line aroused special concern in those charged with the defense of the country. They believed that not only among aliens but also among citizens of Japanese ancestry there were those who would give aid and comfort to the Japanese invader and act as a fifth column before and during the invasion. If the military were right in their belief that among citizens of Japanese ancestry there was an actual or incipient fifth column, we were indeed faced with the imminent threat of a dire emergency. We must credit the military with as much good faith in that belief as we would any other public official acting pursuant to his duties. We cannot possibly know all the facts which lay behind that decision. . . the point is that we cannot sit in judgment on military requirements of that hour. Where the orders under the present Act have some relation to "protection against espionage and against sabotage," our task is at an end.
. . . where the peril is great and the time is short, temporary treatment on a group basis may be the only practicable expedient whether the ultimate percentage of those who are detained for cause. Nor should the military be required to wait until espionage or sabotage become effective before it moves.
Since we cannot override the military judgment which lay behind these orders, it seems to me necessary to concede that the army had the power to delay temporarily with these people on a group basis. Petitioner therefore was not justified in disobeying the order.
Korematsu Case
Korematsu was convicted of violating on order which excluded him from a certain West Coast military area. In 1944 the Supreme Court again found the Act of March 21, 1942 constitutional, Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 216 (1944). Justices Roberts, Murphy, and Jackson now dissented. The majority opinion by Justice Black stated:
. . . all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect . . .
[however] in light of the principles announced in the Hirabyashi case, we are unable to conclude that it was beyond the war power of Congress and the Executive to exclude those of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast war area at the time they did.
Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him and his race. He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire, because the properly constituted military authorities feared an invasion of our West Coast and felt constrained to take proper security measures, because they decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast temporarily...there was evidence of disloyalty on the part of some, the military authorities considered that the need for action was great, and time was short. We cannot - by availing ourselves of the calm perspective of hindsight - now say that at that time these actions were unjustified.
Justice Jackson's dissenting opinion stated:
It [the majority opinion] argues that we are bound to uphold the conviction of Korematsu because we upheld one in Hirabayashi v. U.S.. . . when we sustained these orders in so far as they applied to a curfew requirement to a citizen of Japanese ancestry. I think we should learn something from that experience . . . I would reverse the judgment and discharge the prisoner.
Endo Case
In February 1943 the military began to conduct loyalty review programs, and to provide for release of individuals of established loyalty, however, those released had to abide by the curfew and exclusions laws discussed in Hirabayashi and Korematsu. Hohri v. U.S., 782 F.2d 227, 232 (D.C. Cir. 1986). After the threat of invasion had passed and the federal government had time to inquire individually into the loyalty of the evacuees but had not done so on a large scale, the Supreme Court became more critical. In 1944 the United States Supreme Court held in Ex Parte Endo, 323 U.S. 282 (1944), that under the facts then existing, the exclusion laws could not be applied to a Japanese-American whose loyalty was not questioned. Justices Jackson and Murphy wrote separate concurring opinions, there was no dissent. The majority opinion stated:
The necessity for the legislation [detention statute] arose from the fact that the safe conduct of the war requires the fullest possible protection against either espionage or sabotage to national defense material. . . . A citizen who is concededly loyal presents no problem of espionage or sabotage. Loyalty is a matter of the heart and mind, not of race, creed, or color. . . Miss Endo is entitled to unconditional release by the War Relocation Authority. Endo, at pp. 300, 304.
The only Japanese-American convicted of treason, known to this writer, was Iva Ikuda Toguri, a graduate of UCLA with a degree in zoology. She was visiting a sick aunt in Tokyo when the war started. She agreed to engage in propaganda broadcasting for the Japanese for the sum of $6.60 per month in order to avoid working in a Japanese munitions factory. She referred to herself on the air as "Orphan Annie, your favorite enemy," but Americans called her "Tokyo Rose." A typical broadcast went as follows:
I've got some recording for you, just in from the States . . . enjoy them while your can, because tomorrow at oh-six hundred you're hitting Saipan...and we are ready for you. So while you are still alive, let's listen to . . .
After the war, Tokyo Rose was convicted of treason and received a ten year prison sentence. It is only fair to note at this point that some writers contend she did not receive a fair trial.
Executive Detention of Germans and Italians in WW II
American citizens of German and Italian descent were subjected to exclusion or detention orders, but the actions were much more individualized and selective than those imposed on ethnic Japanese. Jacob v. Barr, 959 F.2d 313 (D.C. Cir. 1992).
Executive Detention in Wartime Generally
America was not the only country to detain its citizens without a trial. Every ally and every enemy in WW II plus some neutral countries, detained some of its own citizens without the formality of criminal charges or a trial. See: Executive Detention in Time of War, 92 Michigan Law Review 1674.
The Ending
Over 33,000 Nisei soldiers served in the American Army during WW II, the principal units being the 100th Infantry Battalion formed in Hawaii, the 442d Regimental Combat Team formed from volunteers from the internment camps, and the secret Nisei Military Intelligence Service whose members served with army and navy units from the Aleutians to the South Pacific. The Nisei solders were noted for their bravery and were awarded many individual medals, unit citations, and one posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor.
On July 2, 1948 Congress passed the American-Japanese Evacuation Claims Act giving the Attorney General power to compromise, settle, and make awards to interned citizens of Japanese ancestry. 50 U.S.C. 1981, et. seq.
In 1976 President Gerald Ford issue Proclamation No. 4417, 41 Fed. Reg. 1741 (1976) which stated in part:
We now know what we should have known then - not only was that evacuation wrong, but Japanese-Americans were and are loyal Americans...
In 1980 Congress established a Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians to investigate and document the impact of Order 9066 on Japanese American citizens and permanent resident Aliens to make its report. The report entitled, "Personal Justice Denied", was delivered in December 1982. Its conclusions: the internment of Japanese-Americans was not based upon sufficient evidence; General DeWitt's report to the War Department containing references to the use of illegal radio transmitter and to shore-to-ship signaling by persons of Japanese ancestry was in conflict with information in possession of the Justice Department; and that the mass detention was wrong.
In 1983 Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi, and Minoru Yasui challenged the constitutionality of the internment and sought to reopen their cases through writs of error coram nobis, and their wartime convictions for defying the internment policy were vacated. Korematsu v. U.S., 584 F. Supp 1406 (N.D. Cal. 1984); Hirabayashi v. U.S, 627 Fed. Supp 1445 (W.D. Ash. 1986), affd. in part and rev'd. in part 828 F. 2d 591, (9th Cir. 19897); Yashui v. U.S., 881-BE (D. Or. 1984), remanded 772 F.2d 1496 (9th Cir. 1985).
On August 10, 1988 Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, 50 App. U.S. Sec. 1989, et seq. which provided:
The purposes of this Act . . . are to--acknowledge the fundamental injustice of the evacuation, relocation, and internment of United States citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry during World War II . . . to apologize on behalf of the people of the United States for the evacuation, relocation, internment of such citizens and permanent aliens . . . make restitution . . . make more credible and sincere any declaration of concern by the United States over violations of human rights committed by other nations.
The Act provided compensation to the interned Japanese-Americans.
Conclusion
What can be concluded from the Hirabayashi, Korematsu, and the Endo cases? First it is clear that the Congress, the President, and the military have the duty to conduct war and insure national survival, and that the Supreme Court is uniquely unsuited to that task. It is not surprising that the Supreme Court gave great deference to the actions of Congress, the President, and the military in 1942, and held that temporarily dealing with Japanese-Americans as a group may have been the only practical solution and did not offend the constitution. Two years later, the situation had changed: the threat of invasion had receded, America was winning the war in the Pacific, there had been adequate time to investigate the loyalty of the evacuees, and Ms. Endo's loyalty was not challenged. The Supreme Court now held that it was not constitutionally permissible under the existing facts to apply the exclusion laws to Ms. Endo just because she was a Japanese-American.
After the war, America began to review the treatment of the Japanese-Americans from a perspective many years removed from the events and exigencies of 1942 and concluded that the internment was unnecessary and a mistake. The real story is not that the threat of national survival and fear of an enemy gone mad, rendered unsound the judgments of the Congress, the President, the press, the military, many liberal and sincere Americans, and their Canadian allies, or that what appeared reasonable and necessary in 1942 appeared otherwise in 1982. Nor is the real story that in time of war all belligerent and many neutral nations found it necessary to detain their citizens without criminal charges or trial; that racism existed both in America and Japan; that Japan's sins far exceeded any sins of the West; nor is it simply of man's inhumanity to man. The story which Ms. Hakim does not tell is of the bravery of Japanese-Americans on the battlefield and the ultimate triumph of the internees in the Congress and Courts of the United States; that America had a unique western heritage which made this possible - a democratic congress, an independent judiciary, and the rule of law. Also untold is that this heritage also made it impossible for America to enslave and brutalize the enemy POWs as did the Japanese. These western traditions are the "high road" which Ms. Hakim has carefully avoided.
Another facet of the untold story is of the difference between the Japanese military state and the American democratic state. The untold millions of civilians from Korea, China, Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, the United States, Netherlands, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and France, Burma, and from innumerable islands in the Pacific, who endured Japanese atrocities and slavery, and the families of those civilians who perished from such atrocities, had no democratic Congress, no writ of habeas corpus or coram nobis, no rule of law, no constitution, and no independent judiciary to appeal to for their redress of the atrocities.
After the war, General MacArthur required the Japanese to adopt women's suffrage, unionization of labor, and collective bargaining. The public schools were required to teach that government was the servant, not the master of the people. Secret inquisition, the feudal aristocracy, and monopolies were ended. Personal liberties were guaranteed and the voting age was reduced to twenty. Three separate branches of government were established...and it became known as the MacArthur constitution; it was observed by the Japanese in every particular and enabled Japan to become a powerful industrial nation. The MacArthur constitution, however, came after World II and provided no recourse to those persons who were subjected to Japanese brutality, nor to their survivors.
Germany readily admitted its guilt in WW II and has made amends for its past, but Japan fifty one years after the end of WW II has admitted no responsibility, given no apologies, and paid no compensation to any victim of its atrocities. The atrocities have been excised from most Japanese textbooks, the rape of Nanking is described merely as an "incident", and to a large extent Japanese of the 1990s are unaware of the aggressive war Japan waged to seize Asia and the Pacific, of the perversion of code of Bushido, and of the millions of civilians who endured slavery or perished from Japanese atrocities. Japan's failure to admit to and atone for its past remains a very disturbing matter to Korea, China, Taiwan, Philippines, Maylasia, and Indonesia, and other Asian countries it conquered. America's world leadership is universally recognized, and Japan is a mighty industrial nation, but Japan's Asian neighbors severely question its moral authority to lead.
There is a final story - the importance of teaching our children that America is one nation and one people, and the folly of teaching our children the multiethnic dogma that America is composed of separate ethnic groups with ineradicable ethnic lines, because in doing so we promote separatism, tribalism, and worst of all - hostility and aggression toward people who are different, which is where this story began on a warm Sunday afternoon in December of 1941.
Sources
Books:
The Rising Sun, John Toland, Random House, N.Y., 1970
December 7, 1941, Gordon W. Prange, et al., 1991 ed, Wings Books, N.Y.
Prisoners of the Japanese, Gavan Daws, Quill Edition, William Monroe, pub., N.Y. 1994.
At Dawn We Slept, Gordon W. Prange, McGraw-Hill, N.Y, 1981.
Santo Tomas Internment Camp, Frederic H. Stein, Limited Private Edition.
Japan's War, Edwin P. Hoyt, Da Capo Press, 1986.
The Two Ocean War, Samuel Eliot Morison, Little Brown & Co, Boston, Seventh Printing.
Michigan Law Review, Vol. 92 beg. at p. 1674.
God's Samurai, Gordon Prange.
The Pacific Campaign, Dan Van der Vat, Simon & Shcuster, N.Y. 1991
American Caesar, Dell Publishing Company, N.Y. 1983.
Newspaper Articles:
"Should Our Schools Be More Like Japan's", Nicholas D. Kristoff, The Wall Street Journal.
Letter to the Editor, Wall Street Journal March 27, 1996, Sang Kyu Lee, Counsellor Republic of Korea, Permanment Mission to the United Nations.
Letter to the Editor, The Wall Street Journal March 27, 1996. Chin-Tai-Kim, President International Society for Korean Studies in the Americas, Professor of Philosophy, Case Western University.
Letter to the Editor, Wall Street Journal March 27, 1996, Jiho Kim, Seoul, South Korea.
Sex slaves' choice: Either do it or die, The Houston Chronicle, November 27, 1994.
Rescue of POWs at infamous camp recalled, Bob Tutt, The Houston Chronicle, January 21, 1995.
Japan Should Accept Resonsibility, Stephen Green, The Houston Post, March 21, 1995.
Internet Articles:
Historical Background on the Kibei -
www.kent.wedet.edu/KSD/SJ/Nikkei/The_Kibei.html
The Japanese Camps in California
- www.kaiwan.com/~ihrgreg/jhr/v02p-45_Weber.html
Historical Background on the Canadian Nikkei -
www.kent.wednet.edu/KSD/SJ/Nikkei/Canadian_Nikkei.html
Historical Background on the Nisei
www.kent.wednet.edu/KSD/SJ/Nikkei/The_Nisei.html.
Tokyo Rose - www.halcyon.com/dyar/orpahn_ann/orpahnan.htm.
Cases:
Hirabayashi v. U.S. 300 U.S. 81, 94 (1942).
Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 216 (1944).
Jacob v. Barr, 959 F.2d 313 (D.C. Cir. 1992).
Hohri v. U.S., 782 F.2d 227, 232 (D.C. Cir. 1986).
Ex Parte Endo, 323 U.S. 282 (1944)
Korematsu v. U.S., 584 F. Supp 1406 (N.D. Cal. 1984)
Hirabayashi v. U.S, 627 Fed. Supp 1445 (W.D. Ash. 1986), affd. in part and rev'd. in part 828 F. 2d 591, (9th Cir. 19897)
Yashui v. U.S., 881-BE (D. Or. 1984), remanded 772 F.2d 1496 (9th Cir. 1985).
Hopwood v. Texas, 861 F.Supp 551 (W.D. Tex. 1994), opinion of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, No. 94-50569, March 18, 1996, and U.S. S.C's. refusal of writ of certiorari, No. 95-1773, July 1, 1996.
Statutes:
50 U.S.C. 1981, et seq.
50 App. U.S. Sec. 1989 et seq
Act of March 21, 1942 ratifying Executive Order 9066, 56 Stat. 173
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