Customer Reviews

Magic: The Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of Japanese Residents from the West Coast During Ww II

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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.

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.

In recent years the history of the evacuation and relocation of persons of Japanese ancestry from West Coast war zones shortly after Pearl Harbor has been turned on its head by propagandists concerned more with political correctness than a concern with the truth. As a result, the conventional wisdom with regard to this wartime subject has been that those evacuated were all loyal American citizens deprived of their civil rights by unconstitutional means for no other reason than "racism, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership." This excellent book lays such myths to rest. The author, David D. Lowman, a career intelligence officer and recipient of numerous commendations, was a retired Special Assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency. As such during the 1970s he served as consultant to that agency in the declassification of thousands of pre-World War II Japanese diplomatic messages intercepted and decoded by U.S. intelligence forces. One of the most secret intelligence triumphs of the war, the decoding of such Japanese messages was conducted by U.S.Army and Navy Communciations Intelligence units under the cover-name "MAGIC." Lowman describes how, in the months before Pearl Harbor, such messages and other intelligence revealed the existence of espionage networks on the U.S. West Coast directed from Japanese consulates and employing resident Japanese as well as Japanese-Americans to gather military information and plan for sabotage in the event of war between Japan and the United States. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, such intelligence information led to the issuance of President Roosevelts Executive Order 9066 authorizing the evacuation of persons of Japanese descent from the West Coast as a prudent military measure. Following an enlightening Preface and Introduction, the book is divided into three parts: 1. Background of the Japanese evacuation and its later ramifications; 2. The MAGIC messages and what they revealed; and 3. Intelligence reports from the FBI, the Army Intelligence Division, and the Office of Naval Intelligence. Throughout the book and its Appendices, photocopies of original letters, memoranda and other documentation of the time support the evidence outlined in the text. Numerous photographs from the National Achives are also presented, including those showing "Banzai" demonstrations of loyalty to the Japanese government by anti-Amrican Japanese at the Tule Lake Segregation center in California, to which over 18,000 resident Japanese enemy aliens and Japanese-Americans considered the most dangerous to U.S. security had been relocated. This book has long been needed to offset the revisionist history of the wartime West Coast Japanese evacuation written and reported by those with philosophical agendas or vested interests in suppressing the historical evidence. The information contained therein is authentic, voluminous, and convincing in its support of the actions of our wartime leaders to evacuate persons of Japanese descent from West Coast military areas . As stated in the final sentence of the Publisher's Preface, this is a book "that will interest those who never could quite believe the worst that was said about our wartime leaders and the motivations of our country." William J. Hopwood, CDR USNR (Ret.) Veteran--World War II

May 9, 1941
From Japanese Consulate in Los Angeles
To Tokyo

...."We have already established contacts with absolutely reliable Japanese in the San Pedro and San Diego area, who will keep a close watch on all shipments of airplanes and other war materials, and report the amounts and destinations of such shipments.

... "We shall maintain connection with our second generations who are at present in the (U.S.) Army, to keep us informed of various developments in the Army. We also have connections with our second generations working in airplane plants for intelligence purposes."

-- MAGIC decoded message #067

Until I found this little gem, I, as most Americans, thought the Japanese relocation had been one a great blot on our democratic tradition, and our civilian and military leaders. I accepted this premise without question. This book opened my eyes---not only on what happened in 1942, but what happened later, and who benefited and why. The author does an outstanding job of laying out the proof that has been hidden all these years. The truth the author shows very clearly that the US had ample reason to fear a fifth column in the US. A very real threat existed and this book documents, reference by reference, and day by day, describes the threat, how it was created, and why it was necessary to take action. Documentation is superb as is the accompanying explanation. A detailed analysis of an important subject and the only one that tells, for the first time, the real story behind the relocation. A definite must for any library.

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.

In the May 5, 2004, book review Bob said "I'm still waiting for the concrete evidence that led to the CWIRC's conclusions of "racism, wartime hysteria and lack of political will".

Well here is one example:

If you read the book Strangers From A Different Shore by Ronald Takaki, page 397, it states that in February 1943, President Roosevelt actually AUTHORIZED that INTERNED Japanese Americans be allowed to register for the draft by just answering "yes" to serving in combat and swearing to unqualified allegiance to the U.S. on loyalty questionnaires.

President Roosevelt did this in order to neutralize Japanese propaganda that tried to insist that WW II was a race war, so his was ACTUALLY willing to allow these interned Japanese American men to sign up for the draft JUST because it made great publicity and counter propaganda for the U.S. war effort!

The loyalty questionnaires were handed out in the detention camps even though military commanders like General John Dewitt, one of the major planners of the Japanese-American evacuation and commander of the Western Defense Command, tried to oppose it.

As the author Ms. Ellen Levine points out in her book A Fence Away From Freedom, on page 117 and 133, that General Dewitt made it VERY clear his opinion of allowing ANY of these Japanese Americans to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces:

"A Jap's a Jap. They are a dangerous element, whether loyal or not. There is no way to determine their loyalty...It makes no difference whether he is an American. Theoretically he is still a Japanese, and you can't change him."

Ms. Levine on page 133 of her book noted that General Dewitt and his associates WERE afraid that drafting these young Japanese-American internees would UNDERMINE the justification for putting in detention camps: If the President of the U.S. actually APPROVE of the recruiting of these internees, then why did the U.S. government spend all that time and effort putting them INTO detention camps to begin with?

If the internees are suppose to be disloyal, then how would the U.S. government know exactly WHICH one of them is suppose to be trustworthy enough to be drafted into the U.S. Armed Forces?

They ONLY had to answer "yes" to serving in combat in and to unqualified allegiance to the U.S. on the loyalty questionnaire in order to be ELIGIBLE for the draft!

Another sad example is listed in page 403 of Mr. Takaki's book that points out that Captain Daniel Inouye, who served with the Japanese-American 100th Battalion and 442nd Regiment and who lost his RIGHT arm when it was torn off by a German rifle grenade, was trying to get a hair cut in San Francisco.

Entering the barbershop with his empty right sleeve pinned to his army jacket covered with ribbons and medals for his military heroism , Captain Inouye was told: "We don't serve Japs here."

And to show how inconsistent the U.S. Government was in dealing with the Japanese Americans, here is another fact you should know:

If you read the book A Fence Away from Freedom by Ellen Levine (pages 134-137, 231-240), the author notes that in February 1943, President Roosevelt authorized to allow Japanese-American men to register for the draft by signing loyalty documents.

Several young Japanese-American men at the Tule Lake detention center protested about the unfairness of being interned inside detention centers AND being asked to register for the draft by NOT showing up for Army physical exams.

These Tule Lake internees were actually INDICTED for trying to resist the draft registration!

But on July 29, 1944, Federal Judge Louis E. Goodman dismissed indictments against 26 Tule Lake draft resisters and declared: "It is shocking to the conscience that an American citizen be confined on the ground of disloyalty, and then, while so under duress and restraint, be compelled to serve in the armed forces, or be prosecuted for not yielding to such compulsion."

One should keep all of the above information in mind when people try to claim that Japanese Americans were treated "fairly" before, during, and after the war.

You can also read other books like Strangers From A Different Shore by Ronald Takaki, Years Of Infamy by Michi Weglyn, Personal Justice Denied and etc. that lists MANY other examples of racial prejudice and discrimination that Japanese Americans had to deal with before World War II.

Can anyone truly say that racial prejudice toward Japanese Americans did NOT influence the way they were treated?

When President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 innocent and loyal Americans' rights were taken away along with those not so innocent and loyal. Since WWII many have vilified Roosevelt and described the Order as racist.

Before reading this book I had no problem with the Japanese-Americans receiving compensation for their internment. This book has not changed my opinion-and this comes from someone who was interned for over three years by the Japanese, however I now look at the internment with new insight.

The book reveals intelligence data considered by Roosevelt, heretofore not available to the general public. Roosevelt made his decision under extreme pressure, war hysteria and uncertainty. I do not agree that the decision to intern was the best choice, but after reading the book I can understand that internment was an option. The Magic intercepts revealed that some Japanese-Americans did, or were willing to aid the Japanese war effort. Historians who study this event must consider the role of Magic; this book is an excellent resource.

I wonder why Lowman doesn't mention in his book about his testimony under cross examination under oath in Federal Court in the early 80's pertaining to Hirabishi & Korematsu Coram Nobus cases that MAGIC decrypts didn't really provide any real evidence of Japanese Americans providing intelligence to the Japanese in Tokyo?

This book is a must read for every U.S. citizen. It is a scholarly work that was written for the average person. It tells an Orwellian story of how in the 1980s special interests falsified history for monetary gain.

In MAGIC, the late Dr. Lowman presents the text of official Japanese diplomatic messages decoded by U.S. cryptanalysts documenting the espionage network operated by Japan in the United States before and after Pearl Harbor.

This espionage consisted of an interlocking network of Japanese individuals and Japanese clubs, associations, societies, labor organizations, and businesses.

Japanese consulates were able to report to Tokyo (1) undercover Japanese naval officers were working with local Japanese on the West Coast; (2) Japanese residents had been recruited to spy on U.S. military installations and the movement of ships, airplanes, and troops; and (3) Japanese Americans were employed in factories, airplane plants and the armed forces for subversive purposes.

This intelligence was so secret knowledge of its existence was restricted to key members of the Roosevelt Administration.

Only in 1977 did the Department of Defense finally release over 5,000 MAGIC messages pertaining just to the attack on Pearl Harbor in an eight volume study, "The MAGIC Background of Pearl Harbor".

President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 evacuating Japanese residents from the West Coast was issued in response to what MAGIC revealed. The January 21, 1942 report stated "Their espionage net containing Japanese aliens, first and second generation Japanese and other nationals is now thoroughly organized and working underground."

The cracking of Japan's diplomatic code by U.S. cryptanalysts was dubbed MAGIC by a director of Naval Intelligence because he thought only magic could account for their success.

In additon, to providing the Roosevelt Administration with intelligence on the Japanese espionage network operating on the West Coast, the intelligence MAGIC deciphered was responsible for the U.S. victories at the Coral Sea and at Midway in the Pacifc, and the success of the Normandy landing in Europe. According to General Marshall, U.S. Army Chief of Staff, MAGIC was "the finest intelligence in our history". It "guided our actions in both the Pacific and in Europe", "shortened the war", and "saved thousands of lives".

Dr. Lowman takes the reader on an exciting journey of espionage and counter-espionage that surpasses the fictional exploits of James Bond. The story begins when the United States first entered the code-breaking business in 1917. From there the reader learns of subsequent successes, like the Washington Arms Conference 1921-22, and embarrassments, like the Yardley fiasco.

This background enables the reader to fully appreciate the success of the Army's Signal Intelligence Service in breaking the Japanese diplomatic codes and ciphers in 1940. For sandwiched between the regular diplomatic messages between Tokyo and her embassy and consulates in the United States were these espionage reports.

This intelligence, so vital to understanding Executive Order 9066, was unknown to the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians which had been authorized by Congress to investigate the allegations of various special interest groups that the order was unjustified, illegal, and racist.

Remarkably, this Commission also never knew what constituted the U.S. intelligence community in World War II. This complete lack of familiarity with the subject it was "investigating" did not stop the Commission from releasing its official findings in "Personal Justice Denied".

In this 1983 report, the Commission, whose numerous scandals revealed its lack of integrity and objectivity, falsely claimed there was no evidence of Japanese espionage on the West Coast and consurred with the special interst groups that Executive Order 9066 was the result of "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership".

"Personal Justice Denied", with its politically correct revisionism, was immediately discredited.

In testimony before Congress, Dr. David Trask, chief historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, said of "Personal Justice Denied", "I am simply unable to certify this brief as a credible piece of history".

In his congressional testimony, Dr. Ken Masugi, a son of evacuees, described "Personal Justice Denied" as "having three major characteristics: intellectual dishonesty, moral posturing, and political opportunism".

Strong rebuke came from overseas as well. Kiyoaki Murata, former editor of the Japan Times in Tokyo and himself an evacuee, wrote an editorial declaring "Personal Justice Denied" was "a falsification of history".

But these criticisms as well as the intelligence obtained by MAGIC were ignored by a Congress intent on enacting discriminary legislation, Public Law 100-383, that awarded financial compensation only to Japanese who were interned or relocated by the U.S. government during World War II -- ignoring the thousands of Germans, Italians, and other Europeans similarly interned or relocated.

This and more is explored in detail by Dr. Lowman including the U.S. Supreme Court 1944 decision in "Hirabayashi v. United States" upholding the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, the thousands of Japanese Americans who officially renounced their U.S. citizenship, the National Student Council Relocation Program which provided scholarships to students of Japanese ancestry to more than 500 colleges and universities outside the exclusionary zone but not to students of German or Italian ancestry similarly relocated, and Public Law 886 of 1948 which provide financial compensation for wartime relocation to those of Japanese ancestry but not to those of German or Italain ancestry.

The strongest feature of this book are the pages of MAGIC text that Dr. Lowman includes to allow readers to decide for themselves whether there were grounds for Executive Order 9066.

I encourage everyone to buy this fascinating book and judge for yourself.