The Charlotte News

Tuesday, December 30, 1941

FIVE EDITORIALS

Now, their fortunes had turned, and 3% of the world's oil reserves would soon be theirs to further their ambitions. The fall of the Philippines, the fall of Singapore and Malay, the fall of the East Indies to the Japanese are now becoming recognized as an imminent reality necessitating a long and harsh war ahead. The rosy predictions earlier in the fall by the editorial column and others that a war with Japan would be over in a few weeks were as misplaced as those of the Nazis with respect to the Russian campaign.

And with that recognition was creeping in a bitterness toward the Japanese, evident in ordinary reporting, evident in the editorials.

The fervor of "Prisoners" combines with that of the earlier Time piece, combining further with the public anger generated by the stealth of the attack, to evidence and explain the increasing national distrust of the Japanese at the time. It was that distrust combined with ease of identification which led FDR to take the extraordinary and unprecedented step of interning some 112,000 Japanese-Americans on the West Coast by executive orders issued February 19 and March 18, 1942.

Initially, curfews were imposed by military commanders from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. on all persons of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, pursuant to the authority granted by the President to establish military districts which could in turn exclude civilians. The subsequent order of the President on March 18, 1942 established the War Relocation Authority which permitted the internment of persons found within these military districts.

Both Mr. Hirabayashi and Mr. Korematsu were native born Americans and chose to violate the orders, Mr. Hirabayashi violating the curfew order and the order to report to a relocation center, Mr. Korematsu violating the order not to remain at his home in San Leandro, California within the designated military district, and also the order not to move from that location. Both were under general orders to report to a relocation center from which there would be assignment to an internment camp. The relocated and interned Japanese-Americans lost their property rights in the process.

There were a small number of Italians and Germans interned also during the war, but the identifiable physical characteristics of Japanese citizens made them much easier targets. Whether that amounted to racism or was simply the product of expedience is probably determinable only in degrees and based on who was issuing and executing orders. The result, however, was plainly racially discriminatory. The episode remains deplorable.

That said, it is also hard to judge too harshly a population enduring the kind of stress generally that the American public underwent during World War II, especially after Pearl Harbor. The unremitting daily news of war speaks for itself in this regard. It was a time like no other save the Civil War when President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Still, it is difficult not to believe that there was a better method of insuring against sabotage than by sweeping up all members of a racially identifiable group and placing them in internment camps. There was no more reason to suspect Japanese-Americans of some inherent tendency to aid Japan in the war than there was to suspect German-Americans or Italian-Americans to the same end. But had the same standards been applied to the West Coast population, few but the Chinese, Hispanics, and the pure Irish and Scotch would have remained outside internment camps. It was a different time in the United States and it was a different time in the world. Sensitivity to race, avoidance of racial discrimination, was for most little more than an afterthought in 1941, one which would take another two and a half decades to begin fully to mature.

The episode serves to highlight the fact, however, that racism and racial discrimination were never confined only to the South or applied solely to African-Americans.

Page two tells of the half-hour blackout test in Wilmington, and precisely how tire rationing would work. Remember, no hoarding. Run 'em to the threads and park it--or spark it.

Page ten provides a brief biograph of the 74-year old Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the first such Secretary during wartime since before the Civil War to have ever served in uniform. A Republican appointed to the post by FDR in 1940, he served as Secretary throughout the war until September, 1945 and died in 1950.