June 22, 1983

              United States
of America
Congressional Hecord
PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE  98      CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION
Senate
June 22, 1983
WORLD WAR II CIVIL LIBERTIES VIOLATIONS
REDRESS ACT
Mr. CRANSTON. Mr. President, my
involvement in opposing the relocation
of Japanese Americans dates back to
the very beginning.
I have always believed that our Government's action in this case was a terrible affront to the Ideals for which
our Nation stands.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, I was assigned to the Office of War Information. There I worked closely with Eleanor Roosevelt and Archibald MacLeish
trying to dissuade President Roosevelt
from forcefully evacuating Japanese
Americans from the west coast and Interning them in so-called relocation
camps.
Unfortunately for 120,000 Japanese
Americans—and for the good name of
our Nation—military authorities prevailed, and the orders for internment
were issued.
More than two-thirds of the internees were American citizens. The rest
were legal U.S. residents.
After the internment process began,
I visited two of the camps, Tule Lake
in California and Heart Mountain,
Wyo.
For 4 days in the cold, snow-covered
camp at Heart Mountain, I spent my
time round-the-clock inside the
barbed-wire camp, talking to interen-
ees and visiting with a number of my
boyhood friends from Los Altos.
We ate meals together, talked over
old times, walked around In the bit-
ingly cold weather, played poker—in
wanton violation of camp rules—and
cheered at a football rally.
My friends and former classmates
justifiably felt themselves robbed of
their citizenship. They were distressed
at the racial prejudice behind their Internment. They were anxious for their
Government to prove Its own adherence to democracy and to the very
Ideals for which we were then at war.
President Roosevelt himself proclaimed:
In vindication of the very ideals for which
we are fighting thus war it is important to us
to maintain a high standard of fair, considerate, and equal treatment for the people of
this minority as for all other minorities.
But this standard was not upheld.
The   mere   presence   of   Japanese
• blood in loyal American citizens was
believed to be enough to warrant removal and exclusion from places they
otherwise had a right to go.
The argument that they were removed for their own good, because of
possible vigilante attacks, was not persuasive. Most, If not all, Japanese
Americans would rather have faced
the risk of being killed by Individuals
than deprived of their liberties by
their own American Government. And
given the choice to remain interned or
fight in the war, most enlisted and
served.
One of my most poignant memories
Is of an intelligent and progressive-
minded mother who was still managing—with much difficulty—to conceal
from her 4:year-old that they were
prisoners in what most inmates consid--
ered a racial internment campv
It was ironic to see American Nisei
soldiers, home on furlough and clad In
uniform, wandering around inside a
fenced-in camp. These Nisei soldiers
returned   from   the   battlefields   of
Europe as the most distinguished and
decorated combat unit of the war, and
from the Pacific theater as loyal soldiers and as officers in military intelligence. I have never forgotten these
impressions.
In 1980,1 was cosponsor of the legislation establishing the Relocation
Commission. The Commission report
issued this year amounted to our Government's official apology—41 years
overdue—to the internees and their
families.
It confirms what a great many conscientious Americans have long believed: These Americans of Japanese
descent were clearly mistreated, and
their basic civil liberties violated.
The ACLU singled out the internment and related abuses at the time as
"the worst single wholesale violation
of civil rights of American citizens In
our history."
As one commentator on the period
said,
Japanese Americans were the immediate
victims of the evacuation. But larger consequences are carried by the American people
as a whole. Their legacy is the lasting one of
precedent and constitutional sanctity for a
policy of mass incarceration under military
auspices. This is a result of the process by
which the evacuation was made. That process betrayed all Americans.
Since those tragic events took place,
a number of the participants have had
changed hearts and minds. Henry L.
Stimson, who was Secretary of War,
realized that "to loyal citizens this
forced evacuation was a personal injustice." Former Attorney General
Francis Biddle reiterated his belief
that "the program was ill-advised, unnecessary, and unnecessarily cruel."
Justice William O. Douglas, one of the
Supreme Court majority in the Kore-
matsu decision holding the evacuation
constitutionally permissible, later said
the case "was ever on my conscience."
And Chief Justice Earl Warren, who
as California's attorney general had
urged evacuation, afterwards said, "I
have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because It was not In keeping
with our American concept of freedom
and the rights of citizens."
On February 17, 1942, Attorney
General Francis Biddle wrote to Secretary Stimson opposing the' proposed
exclusion order, stating that the War
Department and the FBI had found
no danger of imminent attack or evidence of planned sabotage. Biddle especially objected to removal from
their homes of 60,000 American citizens who happened to be of Japanese
descent. He refused to let the Justice
Department participate in any way
with the exclusion policy.
Not a single documented act of espionage, sabotage, or fifth column activity was committed by the Nisei or by
resident Japanese aliens on the west
coast. Yet their lives were disrupted,
fortunes were lost, and loyal citizens
and legal residents incarcerated.
The victims of this policy' were held
collectively guilty, and collectively
punished.
Moreover, the Government's attitude toward these innocent people fostered suspicions that often led to violence against them. Many were attacked when they attempted to return
to their homes 3 years later.
Today I am introducing in the
Senate legislation to redress this mass
violation of civil liberties and to compensate internees for their suffering.
Mike Lowry of Seattle, Wash., will be
offering a vtry similar companion bill
in the House.
While the loss of liberty and the personal stigma attached to internment
can never be erased. Federal reparations are a justifiable response to the
legitimate financial losses incurred. An
independent study done for the Commission found the economic losses
alone to evacuees between $2.5 and
$6.2 billion in today's dollar values, including interest for the past 40 years.
Many consider this a conservative estimate of the real economic losses of
homes and other property, stores and
businesses. And these estimates do not
begin to measure the personal hard
ships suffered.
The Commission found the cause of
the exclusion and internment policies
to be "race prejudice, war hysteria,
and a failure of political leadership."
On February 19, 1942, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. Shortly afterward, all
American citizens of Japanese descent
were barred from living, working, or
traveling on the west coast. The same
exclusion applied to a whole genera
don of Japanese immigrants residing
at that time in the United States who,
because of Federal law, were not permitted to become U.S. citizens.
After the initial plan for voluntary
exclusion failed, these American citizens or legal residents were forcibly removed by the Army, first to assembly
centers—makeshift quarters in fair
grounds and racetracks—and then to
relocation centers. These latter camps.
located in desolate Western areas,
were surrounded by barbed wire and
guarded by military police.
The U.S. Government carried out its
policy without reviewing individual
cases or providing due process of law,
and continued its policy virtually without regard for individuals who demonstrated loyalty to the United States.
Congress made it a crime to violate
Executive Order 9066. The U.S. Supreme Court—in one of its most agonizing decisions—held the removal
constitutionally permissible because of
the war. Interestingly, since that deci
sion a number of Justices from the
majority—enough to have reversed the
5 to 4 decision—have written that on
hindsight, they would have voted differently. The Supreme Court in a related case struck down imprisonment
of these admittedly loyal American
citizens. But long after the fact.
The Commission found that the
main impetus leading to the exclusion
order was the mistaken notion that individuals of Japanese descent would be
loyal to Japan, not to the United
States, and groundless fears of fifth
column activity even though no evidence of such activities could be uncovered. The Commission stated that:
The record does not permit the conclusion
that military necessity warranted the exclusion of the ethnic Japanese from the west
coast.
After exclusion became official
policy, the War Relocation Authority