38 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Use with extreme caution, June 12, 2002
This review is from: Magic: The Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of Japanese Residents from the West Coast During Ww II (Paperback)
Anyone approaching this book and the topic in general should be aware that there is a sharp division in opinion on the subject. As with anything critical of the U.S. government, and particularly its conduct during World War II, the debate is emotionally charged.
Readers should be aware of the background of Lowman's involvement in this debate. In the early 1980s, the US Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians conducted an inquiry into the causes and consequences of the evacuation of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast in 1942. As part of this process, hearings were held amidst significant publicity in several cities, particularly on the West Coast and in Hawaii. By 1983, the CWRIC had finished its investigation and published a historical summary and recommendations for government action, including financial redress, in Personal Justice Denied.
Later in 1983, David Lowman and others published articles in a variety of newspapers attacking the CWRIC and its conclusions for having not considered intelligence gathered through the MAGIC program. While it is true that the CWRIC did not consider MAGIC in its investigation, they did hear testimony from a variety of officials of the period, including John McCloy, the Assistant Secretary of War most directly concerned with the issue. McCloy had access to at least the intelligence resulting from MAGIC but chose not to mention it in his testimony. Lowman also did not avail himself of the opportunity to testify at the Honolulu CWRIC hearings.
As the Publisher's Weekly review notes, this work suffers from a loss of focus. There are other and better sources on the MAGIC program as a whole. And the attack on redress and compensation is tedious at best. Lowman's narrative style is grating at times and the book could have been better edited.
The primary difficulty with the work is that the source material does not support Lowman's central thesis. In particular, none of the officials involved in the decision to evacuate cited MAGIC as a source of intelligence that influenced them, even in classified documents where such mention would have been allowable. Even the President does not appear to have relied on information from MAGIC but instead upon his own understanding of the situation, preconceptions and biased information emanating from the Pacific Coast.
Where Lowman does refer to material directly from the MAGIC decryptions, he either misquotes, misrepresents or misinterprets what was written. In particular, he implies that information on armaments and industrial production were gathered through espionage, when in fact that precise information had been gleaned from newspaper stories.
In general, Lowman's claims are refuted in John Herzig's "Japanese Americans and MAGIC," Amerasia Journal 11:2 (1984). A more recent discussion of this subject can be found in Greg Robinson's "By Order of the President," Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0674006399.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
19 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A historical reference book marred by inaccuracies Updated, April 20, 2004
This review is from: Magic: The Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of Japanese Residents from the West Coast During Ww II (Paperback)
In this book the author Mr. David Lowman presents the general history of MAGIC, the secret U.S. intelligence project run by U.S. cryptanalysts. In 1940 they were able to break the Japanese government's code and ciphers and read the encrypted diplomatic messages. Mr. Lowman tries to show that the MAGIC code played a major role in the U.S. government decision to incarcerate the entire West Coast Japanese-American community in 1942 because of U.S. military and security concerns of Japanese-American espionage & sabotage.
In 1980 Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to investigate the World War II incident. In 1983 the Commission's findings were presented to Congress without any reference to MAGIC and its relationship to the evacuation.
Unfortunately Mr. Lowman's book should only be read to get more information and details about the MAGIC intelligent project. The notion that the MAGIC code was the reason why the West Coast Japanese Community was detained is refuted in an article by John Herzig ("Japanese Americans and MAGIC" from the AMERASIA Journal, Fall/Winter 1984 issue, pages 47-65). Mr. Herzig is a retired lieutenant colonel who served as a counterintelligence officer for the U.S. Department of the Army in Japan and Europe.
Here are just SOME of the inaccuracies and inconsistencies that Mr. Herzig points out in Mr. Lowman's book:
* U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 set up his OWN personal intelligence and research apparatus outside existing departmental intelligence machinery and employed his OWN investigators, which included Curtis B. Munson. Mr. Munson sent a report entitled Japanese on the West Coast on November 7, 1941, and stated that Japanese Americans would be NO more disloyal than any other racial group with whom we went to war! These investigators' reports fill 18 boxes in the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidential library in Hyde Park, New York.
* Some information in MAGIC messages was also reported in newspapers such as the LOS ANGELES TIMES, so anyone could JUST read the newspapers and send the information back to the German or Japanese governments.
* Statement before CWRIC by former government officials, who in 1942 were responsible for creating and implementing the Japanese-American exclusion and incarceration program, indicate that the MAGIC intercepts did NOT play a role in the government's decision to take the drastic action that it did against this minority group.
* Testimony by representatives of the Department of Army, Navy, State, and Justice shows that there was NO evidence of espionage, sabotage, sedition, fifth column activities, other subversive acts on the part of Japanese Americans, and that NO such information appeared in MAGIC intercepts, in finished intelligence or counterintelligence reports.
* Mr. Lowman claims the FBI Director Edgar Hoover was NEVER informed about the MAGIC evidence even though President Roosevelt in 1939 AUTHORIZED the FBI with the responsibility of investigating espionage and sabotage by U.S. civilians. Was there a good reason for the FBI Director to be NOT informed about MAGIC?
* It is true that between February-May 1942 the FBI raided homes and businesses of Japanese-Americans and found guns, ammunition, dynamite, cameras, etc.
However it is NOT mentioned that Francis Biddle, U.S. Attorney General during World War II, states in his autobiography In Brief Authority (pages 215-221) that he sent a memorandum, May 1942, about the FBI raids to President Roosevelt: "We have not uncovered through these searches any dangerous persons that we could not otherwise have known about.. We have not found among all the sticks of dynamite and gunpowder any evidence that any of it was to be used in a manner helpful to our enemies. We have not found a camera which we have reason to believe was for use in espionage."
So the confiscated items were NOT considered evidence of sabotage or espionage because they were USED for personal or business tasks (e.g. guns used for hunting and self-protection, dynamite used on farms to destroy tree stumps, etc.)
* As for the assertion that Japanese Americans were sending radio messages to Japanese submarines and ships before and after the Pearl Harbor attack, Mr. Biddle states in his book, pages 221-222, that the FBI Director Hoover could NOT find any evidence to confirm this allegation.
And there is another IMPORTANT fact that is also not mentioned:
Interned Japanese Americans did volunteer to serve in 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442d Regimental Combat Team during World War II. If you read the book Strangers From A Different Shore by Ronald Takaki, pages 379-405, it tells about the bravery of one of the MOST decorated combat unit in the U.S. Army. At least 600 of them were killed in action in Italy and Western Europe. At least 1200 came from mainland U.S. concentration camps and rest came from Hawaii, where Executive Order 9066 to intern the West Coast Japanese-American community did not apply.
And Mr. Takaki's book states at least 33,000 Japanese-Americans served in the U.S. Armed Forces.
They also served in the Pacific front as translators, reconnaissance, etc. and General Charles Willoughby, chief of intelligence in the Pacific, estimated that Japanese-American intelligence work help shorten the Pacific war by 2 years.
So if the MAGIC information is suppose to show that Japanese-Americans were involved with espionage, then why were they allowed to join the U.S. Armed Forces?
Well in Mr. Takaki's book on page 397 it states that President Roosevelt wanted to neutralize Japanese propaganda about WW II being a race war, and so Japanese-Americans, including those INTERNED in detention camps such as Tule Lake in California, were allowed to register for the draft by signing loyalty questionnaires in which they simply answer "yes" to unqualified allegiance to the U.S.
President Roosevelt in February 1943 authorized the draft even though the Selective Service in 1942 had classified ALL Japanese-Americans as IV-C - enemy aliens - because there was no sure way to verify their true LOYALTY and therefore were ALL barred or segregated from the ranks of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
11 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Posthumous work with too many holes, March 28, 2007
This review is from: Magic: The Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of Japanese Residents from the West Coast During Ww II (Paperback)
Most historians will agree...
David Lowman (d. 1999) was the National Security Agency executive responsible for the declassification of the MAGIC intercepts and the author of the posthumously published book Magic: The Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of Japanese Residents from the West Coast during WWII.. Lowman disagreed with the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, in which the U.S. government apologized for the forced internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans and provided financial reparations to the surviving ethnic Japanese American internees.
His book, two-thirds of which Lowman claimed to have been declassified documents, provides a compelling argument that disloyalty was widespread among ethnic Japanese and Japanese Americans during WWII. However, few if any historians agree with this conclusion. One of the bases for this disagreement is the lack of any substantiating evidence, which would include records of actions taken as a result of the intelligence which Lowman's book claims to have been developed. None of the records which would be associated with arrest, detention, trial, verdict, penalty or the logistics which would have surrounded these events has come to light. While Lowman's supporters may claim that these records are still classified, this argument requires the belief that Quartermaster Corps and Army personnel records are more sensitive than MAGIC transcripts.
According to his official biography, Lowman himself was in the South Pacific during the war, not associated with MAGIC. At the time that the book was published, no person directly involved with MAGIC was known to be still living.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
