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American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II

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Contrary to the first review, I believe that Eric Muller's book is an important and timely study of the Japanese American internment, and while narrowly focused on the question of "loyalty," this question and how it was determined and the racial prejudices that were exhibited by the various military agencies and WRA point to the ways in which the line between those deemed "loyal" and "disloyal" were arbitrarily drawn, largely by the prejudices of those involved (DeWitt being foremost among those who has been documented as saying that the internment was revenge for Pearl Harbor--a troubled and flawed and revealing comment if ever there was one since it demonstrated that DeWitt, like to many others during WWII could not distinguish between Japanese nationals, Japanese miltitary, Japanese in America of the first generation unable to apply for citizenship due to racist immigration/citizenship laws, and Japanese Americans whose cultural influences included Mickey Mouse, the Boyscouts, and American jazz, as well as Akido, Sushi, and Buddhist practices).

The work that Muller has done will resonate with the questions we are currently facing as a society living in a post-9/11 world; Muslim and Arabs living in America are at risk in a similar way currently. We need to remember the lesson of internment and this question of "loyalty" as not being commensurate with race or religion.

This book is well researched and written in a manner that, although scholarly, is very readable and full of information of facts not previously known to me. In the light of the current state of afairs in our country, this book points out how we have previously acted under the stress of war.

There were many inaccuracies in this book regarding Dr. George Ochikubo. Much data was gathered from the national archives written by persons that did not care for Dr. Ochikubo due to the fact that he embarassed them in the courts. One of the discrepancy was that he did not speak the Japanese language. The fact is that he was fluent in the language because his grandparents only spoke Japanese. That was his only method to communicate with his parents.

This is a book which primarily concentrates on only one superficial aspect of the World War II program which evacuated persons of Japanese ancestry from West Coast military zones. That aspect was the loyalty screening of such persons for release from relocation camps. Unfortunately, the book, as it relates to the overall evacuation program itself, contains a number of errors, omissions, and misrepresentations which negatively affect its historical credibility.

Specifically, the book incorrectly describes the legal status of the evacuated Japanese during WWII and completely ignores the intelligence reasons for their exclusion from West Coast military areas. The author refers to such persons as all being " American citizens of Japanese ancestry" and the book as "a study of the Japanese American internment as a system of legalized racial oppression." The problem here is that those about whom he writes were not all American citizens, they were not "interned" (as he himself admits in a footnote) nor was their evacuation based on race. The author confuses national origin with race. We were at war with Japan as a nation, not with the Japanese as a race.

As for citizenship, the book does not reveal that the majority of the ADULTS among those evacuated were Japanese nationals, enemy aliens subjcct to detention under long-standing law. Furthermore, the vast majority of the U.S. citizens among the evacuees were minor children at the time. Those of them over age 17 for the most part held dual citizenship status, being also citizens of Japan, thousands having been educated in Japan. Among such Japanese-educated dual citizens were reservists in the Japanese Army and more than 5,000 who renounced their U.S. citizenship to support the Japanese war effort. None of this is covered in this book. Nor is it mentioned that during the war more than 33,000 evacuees were cleared for loyalty and left the camps, some were citizens, some were Japanese nationals.

At several other places, figures in the book do not add up or disagree with their source as cited in the footnote. At one point in Chapter 9, the author cites a source which does not account for some 20,000 evacuees and misquotes the source (Robinson) at the same time. In several instances the author cites himself as a reliable source.

In summary, this book should be read primarily for its entertainment value rather than as faithful reproduction of the wartime historical record.

One is immediately forced to judge this book by its title. The author's choice of words betray his intentions -- to once again prove the United States government's failures (in this study, he calls it a "disaster"). The choice of "Inquisition" shows the author's bias, choosing to equate the government's actions with those of the Roman Catholic Church's Inquisition of examination and extermination. Other authors use similar tactics when they use such terms, e.g. "concentration camps," revealing an attitude of disgust and distrust of our Government.

Muller continues his theme in this recent work of his: Look how bad our Government was to the Nikkei. He closes his book with the warning: We'd better watch out because the Government might do it again, i.e. the "unfettered deployment of military power against American civilians on American territory."

Basically, Muller tries to point out that the US military and US Govt. were out to get the Nikkei, that the WDC and Provost Marshal's Office were guilty of thinking the Nikkei were guilty of disloyalty simply by association, that they had the idea that no Japanese could ever be loyal to the US, so they had to lock them up. I quote:

"...a very different view led to the mass exclusion of the Nisei from the West Coast. That view saw the Nisei as an unassimilable group of native-born foreigners, individuals whose 'racial traits' and family bonds prevented them from forming true loyalty to the United States... They were the /only/ group of American citizens who were presumed to be disloyal."

With these results:

"The consequences of the army's presumption of disloyalty were severe. The presumption led all of the Nisei in General DeWitt's exclusion zone -- more than 70,000 American citizens, of whom nearly 40,000 were over the age of eighteen -- into so-called assembly centers. Without charges, without proof, without hearings, and with only a few days' to a few weeks' notice, they were herded into makeshift barracks at racetracks and fairgrounds in and near the major West coast cities."

Notice again Muller's use of "all" -- this comes out a lot in similar works and articles, even to the extent that insinuates all the Nikkei were American citizens!

He brings out the fact that out of 38,449 Nisei who were interviewed, 12,404 were found to be of questionable loyalty. What Muller fails to mention is that nearly 90% of the Nikkei answered "Yes" to Question 28 of the Questionnaire of 1943. They were proof of trust and were not counted disloyal.

The other District Commands did not put the 15,000 Nikkei who were living outside of the West Coast military zones into camps. That was proof of trust, even though among them were enemy aliens.

There were 4,000 Nikkei who voluntarily evacuated and relocated outside of the military zones. They were trusted.

There were 1,000 Nikkei being released from the centers each week. That was proof of trust.

The real issue is this: Why did thousands want to remain in the relocation centers when they could have left. Muller does not address this. Nor does he discuss the groups of Issei and Kibei who were intimidating and threatening the majority of the evacuees with yakuza-like tactics -- that citizens should not volunteer or do anything to help the United States, that Japan was their real country, and that no Japanese should swear allegiance to the United States as required on the registration forms. This egregious display of disloyalty was ignored by Muller.

More than a matter of loyalty or trust, however, it was preservation, and the US Government did a marvelous job of it in not only protecting the Nikkei but sustaining them in a very generous way, even those who were very much anti-America and pro-Japan. No other ethnic group in the history of the US had had such treatment. In reality, the US Government did succeed in weeding out the disloyal, to the joy and relief of thousands of Nikkei.

Muller would do well to investigate those 20,000 Nikkei who never were in relocation centers, or the 6,000 Nisei who were in Japan, during WWII. They certainly had no questionnaire given them to fill out, yet they were obviously trusted, the latter amazingly by the Imperial Japanese Government as being "loyal" to their ancestral motherland. Their Caucasian fellow Americans did not receive such a welcome, but were thrown into real internment camps.

With his special affinity for dissenters and resisters, Muller has found a few sole court cases which took on the US Government for its unjust and tyrannical actions. To the author, these dissenters are also real heroes of democracy and loyalty. He portrays one Kiyoshi Okamoto as an "excellent example" of the War Relocation Authority's abuse. Okamoto was the chief organizer of the draft resistance movement at Heart Mountain Relocation Center, for which he had "stunning success." He and others were convicted for conspiracy to evade the draft and counsel others to do the same.

It is difficult to discover in books of this nature what the real message is. I perceive it to be this: That the Nikkei in the US before and during WWII had nothing in them that deserved to be distrusted, that they were all loyal, that they were all discriminated against and treated unfairly. In other words, it matters not there was a war between the two countries -- all the Issei were to be naturalized and left alone, with their Nisei families; "alien enemy" must never be used to describe the Issei during WWII.

In his "Conclusion," Muller's theories unravel -- the US Government may not necessarily have been unfair. He uses numerous words such as "probably," "perhaps," and "maybe," revealing his own inconclusiveness over all the research he has done. "Perhaps" there is hope, then, that this was not a "sorry chapter in the history of the government's treatment of its citizens" after all.

Anyone interested in this period of history then has hope Muller will expend his research skills in something more definitive, rather than "prejudice, misjudgment, and mistake." We welcome a true and balanced story from the keyboard of Muller -- a book on the Japanese Americans who never knew evacuation and relocation under the US government, or, something more closely related, a book on the people of German ancestry in the US during WWII who were "rounded up" and interned.