Taking Aim at Japanese Relocation (Fortune Magazine, April 1944)

[Anon.] "Fortune Magazine reviews the program of the War Relocation Authority and the problems created by the evacuation from the West Coast of 110,000 people of Japanese descent." Reprint from Fortune Magazine, April 1944. 8 3/8 in x 5 3/8 in; 21.2725 cm x 13.6525 cm, 20pp.

Provenance: Library of Congress, with their tiny “pamphlet collections” stamp on the front upper cover and a 6mm perforated “LC” on the front cover bottom. Very nice copy, with one short half-inch tear in the front wrapper (repaired with Japanese paper tape). Scarce.  $200

From the opening of the pamphlet:

“When the facts about Japanese brutality to the soldier prisoners from Bataan were made known, Americans were more outraged than they had been since December 7, 1941.  Instinctively they contrasted that frightfulness with our treatment of Japanese held in this country; and, without being told, Americans knew that prisoners in the U.S. were fed three meals a day and had not been clubbed or kicked or otherwise brutalized.  Too few, however, realize what persistent and effective use Japan has been able to make, throughout the entire Far East, of U.S. imprisonment of persons of Japanese descent.  This propaganda concerns itself less with how the U.S. treats the people imprisoned than who was imprisoned.  By pointing out again and again, that the U.S. put behind fences well over 100,000 people of Japanese blood, the majority of them citizens of the U.S., Japan describes to her Far Eastern radio audiences one more instance of American racial discrimination.  To convince all Orientals that the war in the Pacific is a Crusade against the white man's racial oppression, the enemy shrewdly notes every occurrence in the U.S. that suggests injustice to racial minorities, form the Negroes to the Mexicans and Japanese.”

And the closing paragraph, which takes a very direct stab at the “relocation program”:

“The longer the Army permits California and the rest of Pacific Coast to be closed to everyone of Japanese descent the more time is given the Hearst papers and their allies to convince Californians that they will indeed yield to lawlessness if the unwanted minority is permitted to return.  By continuing to keep American citizens in "protective custody," the U.S. is holding to a policy as ominous as it is new.  The American custom in the past has been to lock up the citizens who commits violence, not the victim of his threats and blows.  The doctrine of "protective custody" could prove altogether too convenient a weapon in many other situations.  In California, a state with a long history of race hatred and vigilantism, antagonism is already building against the Negroes, who have come in for war jobs.  What is to prevent their removal to jails, to "protect them" from riots? Or Negroes in Detroit, Jews in Boston, Mexicans in Texas? The possibilities of "protective custody" are endless, as the Nazis have amply proved.”

“The reprint of Fortune Magazine’s “Issei, Nisei, Kibei”, which reviewed the war relocation program, reached a wide swathe of the United States and confronted Americans with the severe social issues taking place on the home front. Awareness of the prejudicial treatment of these specific citizens was widespread, yet, it took years until the internment system was dismantled and Japanese Americans were left to reassemble their lives.”--National Museum of American History

“(The) article provides a contemporary description of the panic and ensuing incarceration of Japanese including the suggestions of "coddling," politics, "registration and segregation," "relocation," "military necessity," and "protective custody," and discusses what future generations may think of the incarceration and U.S. policies.”--Calisphere, Japanese Relocation Collection, University of California