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Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese-American Internment Cases

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Peter Irons' book titled JUSTICE AT WAR is an important book regarding the forced internment of Americans of Japanese Ancestry (AJAs)during World War II. His book is an important work as Irons shows the "inner workings" of the "Jusitce Department" and the U.S. Supreme Court. Irons investigation of of these events demonstrates just unfair and unjust the "legal" system can when dealing with innocent victims whose only crime was their ancestry.

Irons does a good job in exposing the "evidence" to sustain Executive Order 9066 which Pres. Roosevelt issue early in 1942 to place AJA's in concentration camps stretching from California to Arkansas. When this order was challenged in court, government witnesses were so stupid that they initially used race as a legal reason for this unjust action. However, they soon had to change their lying as race is not a legal consideration in arrest and detention.

One example of such government witness lying included DeWitt who claimed that the concentration camps were necessary as there must have been shore to ship signalling on the Pacific Coast soon after the Pearl Harbor attack. However, the FCC lads undermined this lying by stating that no such radio or visual signals were ever given. Readers should note that J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was clear that the AJA's were not any threat to the United States and were remarkably loyal to the U.S.

A facinating if disturbing section of this book involves the Supreme Court Justices some of whom refuted the judicial canon of ethics regarding civil liberties, rules of due process, and rules of evidence. The inscription of one of the chapters was that the Supreme Court blew up. One should note that Supreme Court Justice, Robert Jackson, ruled against the placing of AJAs in concentration camps, and this was a well reasoned articulate opinion which compares to his opinion in the Supreme Court Case titled THE WEST VIRGINIA STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION VS. BARNETTE (1943). Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black who became something of a libertarian upheld Excutive Order 9066. While this reviewer disagrees with Black's decision, Justice Black at least had the honesty to admit that he could not tell one Japanese from another. While this was not a good response, this was better than the hyocrisy shown by others who avoided the obvious racism in these cases.

One reviewer correctly commented that Peter Irons involved himself too much in this book. This reviewer thinks this may have been a plus in this book. While one may argue that Irons may have reduced his "objectivity," sometimes a passionate presentation can embellish the book.

A few minor criticisms of this book are in order. For example, Peter Irons could have exploited the "Munson Report" which was issued on November 7, 1941. This report was based on years of U.S. Government spying on AJAs by federal agenceis and military intelligence snooping. The report stated that the AJAs were remarkably loyal to the United States. Yet, this report was never offered at the legal hearings, and Mr. Irons could have used this report to bolster his case. Another criticism of Irons' book was his lack of material on the rare courage of all AJA units during World War II which would have further enhance his work.

Peter Irons' book is well written and informative. Companion volumes that should be read are Michi Weylyn's YEARS OF INFAMY and Harrington's YANKEE SAMURAI. These two books bolster Irons' thesis, and perhaps some historian will take advantage and write a more comprehensive book.

Peter Irons' book, "Justice at War" is not the most balanced piece of scholarship. Nor does Irons separate himself from the topic. Indeed, Irons interjects himself at every turn even to the point in his "Justice Delayed" (his follow-up book on the coram nobis proceedings of Korematsu and Hirabayashi) of self-aggradanizement.

Yet, Irons also has a knack for bringing out the personalities of the historical actors he writes about. Gordon Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu, Mitsuye Endo - names that are merely captions for the Supreme Court cases dealing with the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II - become humanized people with their own distinct personalities.

When one reads this book, one is immediately confronted with Irons' "rah-rah" approach. If one can get through that unscathed, one is left with a highly accessible piece of scholarship that is both breathtaking and maddening at the same time.

On February 19, 1942, due to the pending war against Japan, FDR developed "camps" west of the Mississippi River. A year later, on April 23, 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt who did his legwork "visited" the lovely children who'd been born in America, who now lived in the miserably hot Gila, Arizona. It was the only "humane" camp with no barbed-wire fence or manned watchtower as was needed to contain the inhabitants of the other nine detention camps. The children walked miles to swim in the River; the men and older boys walked the same distance to fish for food. "We had to walk everywhere."

Ten WRA locations housed 120,000 people where each family had to live in one room of cheaply-constructed barracks which looked like those in the new town of Oak Ridge, not far from my hometown. Each family had a number appointed to them instead of using their real names.

Classified "a historical event," these concentration camps contained Americans whose sin was "looking like the enemy"; like in Germany they were herded into trains with blackened windows with only a week's notice. They were allowed one suitcase per person; Hitler denied the Jews any possessions and they were transported in boxcars to their deaths. The American equivalent was not to kill these peace-loving people but to contain them until World War II was over. President Roosevelt used the excuse: the Japanese proclivity to espionage."

At the other locations, barbed wire was used and the watchtowers complete with armed guards pointing their guns toward the imprisoned who were enclosed on the premises. In effect, these Americans long the target of racial hatred, were prisoners of the country where they were born. I know a person who was born on a military reservation in Japan. When he gets me too upset, I ask him "How would you like to live where you were forn?" Four years ago, I wrote about a movie I did not understand that "the characters did not fit their voices which upset some Californians. I, like Earl Warren did, feel the need to apologize. I'd love to sound like them. I was almost killed for looking like a Polock; my brother was call that sneer in school. And we're part-Cherokee.

If you want to visit the memorial in Arizona at the Gila River to see Canal and Butte, there is a minimum entry fee of $100 as it is located on an Indian reservation. Visitors without bona fide business at this location are discouraged and subject to arrest by the NA Security officer and must appear before the tribal court. At Cherokee one evening, I trespassed (didn't ask permission) to take photos of their strange monument, army tank, and other military accoutred equipment. I was closely observed but not approached. I didn't look like a spy.

Earl Warren, attorney general of California then (later chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) admitted that he was wrong to react so impulsively without proof of disloyalty, and regretted the government's get-touch military psycholoty, propaganda and racial antagonism. He was conscience-striken (like me about the actors in B.L.T.) for the government misconduct. Our government had lied about the military necessity of relocation, and now the record has been set straight.

At the Fresno camp, the youth recited Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," as their heart's cry. They revered Abraham Lincoln and what he stood up for almost a hundred years earlier when the North and South killed each other in the Civil War. The Japanese-Americans suffered the humiliation of imprisonment and need reparation. Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii showed us on television what a gentle, intelligent human being they are (as the ticket taker at Regal theater in Knoxville Center), just like a Southern gentleman. We owe them for what FDR did out of ignorance and fear. Now, 65 years later, it's time for more than an apology.

Justice At War could be renamed "The Battle of the Lawyers" in three well-known cases dealing with curfew and evacuation resisters. Much contention can be seen among the multitude of lawyers on both sides of the arguments. The Endo case dealt with a different matter, and the case was dismissed, due to the exclusion order being rescinded.

In the end, little can be said about the results other than that the convictions against the three men -- Yasui, Hirabayashi, and Korematsu -- were later "vacated," which is to say, their sentence was set aside; the decision, however, still stands constitutionally. The victory remains with the US Government, not the dissenter.

The reason for the conviction being vacated was that supposed evidence was initially withheld, namely the original of DeWitt's Report, which claimed that separating the loyal from the disloyal Japanese Americans was impossible and that there was insufficient time to even do so. These claims were considered racist, and so a substitute version was sent out that said "no ready means existed for determining the loyal from the disloyal with any degree of safety" -- "impossible" becoming "no ready means existed." The alleged hiding of the original "racist" Report, therefore, was construed as falsifying evidence.

Additionally, Irons thinks that the Ringle Report held the authoritative view of Navy Intelligence at the time, which he believes DeWitt ignored and ordered the evacuation even though the ONI opposed it.

The charges then? The Ringle Report with all its "truth" was suppressed, and the original DeWitt Report concealed. Much, much weight was placed, then, upon these two Reports.

However, unfortunate for Irons, the Ringle Report was not the official view of the Office of Naval Intelligence. In fact, the ONI, Army G-2 and FBI all had intelligence that were pivotal in the military decisions then. Even Ringle made remarks regarding the Nisei and Kibei and dangers associated with them. For some reason, Irons chose not to submit this valuable intelligence information, and very extensive intelligence data at that. So who is suppressing and concealing what now?

Furthermore, the DeWitt Report was not the deciding factor behind the evacuation order -- it was a Presidential decision. The Report simply stated the reason for the evacuation based on military necessity. To say a Harper Magazine article by Ringle represented all our best intelligence at the time and was purposely ignored by DeWitt when he drew up his Report, is a very embarrassing stretch, especially for chameleon Edward Ennis, who once was on the side of the Department of Justice.

In the end, the Supreme Court comes out on top -- the decisions made in 1943 and 1944 were held as constitutionally legal. No civil rights were violated. Korematsu was in love and disobeyed the evacuation order so he could be with his girlfriend. Hirabayashi simply refused to obey the curfew order and didn't want to report to an assembly center. Yasui, who should have known better during wartime, similarly disobeyed a military curfew order multiple times; oddly, he demanded to be arrested. Yasui, incidentally, had not only dual citizenship, but dual employers -- the US Army Reserve, and the Government of Japan as a paid agent.

Justice was never at war, only the lawyers.