National JACL Emergency Meeting

              INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS
In reading again, after some 28 years, the official minutes of the special emergency meetings held by the National JACL
Board and National Council in San Francisco in early March 1942,
I am reminded again of those grim and trying days when it was up
to a youthful, inadequately prepared, financed, and staffed organization to try to keep watch and ward over the welfare and
destiny of more than 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry mostly
on the West Coast of the United States during the period of their
greatest travail.
While I am aware that some students, researchers, and critics may now be able to question the correctness and validity of
certain decisions and actions taken by the JACL in those hectic
and challenging times with the advantages that hindsight and lack
of responsibility then may provide, I continue nevertheless to
wonder at the remarkable perception and vision that JACL officers
and members demonstrated in that era under the greatest and most
unfair pressures ever placed on any nationality minority in American history.
That those of Japanese ancestry today, not only in the United
States but also in Japan, are generally held in such high repute
by most Americans is clear and solid evidence — as far as I am
concerned — that JACL's decisions and actions in the main were
most appropriate and proper to those times and those situations.
Had JACL reacted differently, it is quite conceivable that
the relatively favorable status enjoyed by most Japanese Americans
today would not have been possible.  Corrective  and remedial laws
have been enacted on the national, state, and local levels; litigation has resulted in the nullification of most, if not all, discriminatory statutes and practices; economic, educational, employment, housing, political, social, and recreational opportunities
not even dreamed of in pre-World War II days are now available to
those of Japanese origin; Hawaii, with its relatively large percentage of Japanese Americans, is now a State in the Federal Union;
United States-Japan relations are closer and more mutually profitable and advantageous than ever before.
The official minutes of the special emergency meetings unfortunately do not present enough of the background of those times
to enable present day readers to fully understand and appreciate
the reasons for the many difficult decisions and actions that
were voted by the officers and delegates to that JACL conclave.
To begin with, it should be kept in mind that the Commanding
General of the Western Defense Command, with the approval of the
President, the Secretary of War, and the Attorney General, had
already announced his exclusion and evacuation orders.  Moreover*
there was much more known about the Army's plans and the Government's program than could be revealed and recorded in any official
minutes of any meeting of JACL officers and members.
And, language cannot begin to describe the hostile attitude
of the public and of government against those who by accident of
birth happened to look like the enemy who had recently attacked
American territory at Pearl Harbor, or the personal emotions of
those involved, or the heavy responsibility that the JACL and its
officers and members had to assume for the short-range and longtime well-being of those of Japanese ancestry.
The words of then National JACL President Saburo Kido perhaps are the best indicator of the awful feelings then felt by
most of those who attended the emergency gathering.
The official minutes are only summaries of what was said
by the delegates and of the decisions and actions agreed upon.
But, if one reads "between the lines" with an understanding and
sympathetic eye, one may be able to better comprehend some of what
was involved in those dark and gloomy days for those of Japanese
"race" in this country.
In a sense, history has more than vindicated the judgments
of the JACL officers and delegates to that now historic special
(over)