This is a race war

Pde, CG CON wi wR a Oe errr"

"THIS IS A RACE WARs " "(c) (c) oe se 0 6 @ yen*

May Sf de

Though racism has entered into the picture in relation to the treatment

of Japanese both alien and citizens on the west coast, it took a conference of -_

the Governors, Attorney Generale, and other officials of ten western states, meet-

ing in Salt Lake City, Utah, recently, really to state the issue of white supremacy.

The statement of Attorney General Burt Miller of Idaho, as revealed in

the confidential minutes of the conference, that the "Japs" should be placed in

concentration camps and should not be allowed to do any work, "since we want to

keep this a white man's war," set the tone for the general attitude displayed by

this gathering of public officials to discuss the evacuation of the Japanese.

The minutes show that the general feeling at the conference was one of

not wanting Japansse Americans to buy land or settle in communities in the inland |

states. There was a general refusal to recognize that Japanese Americans md any

citizenship richts. They felt that the Federal government should remove at the

end of the war any Japanese who had been moved into their states under the execu-

tive order of the President. Most of the state officials expressed the belief that

.the Japenese should be put into concentration camps and farmed out to private emplo~

yers under armed cuard.

Governor Hubert B. Maw of Utah said that the Army and the War Relocation

Authority, which now has supervision of the evacuees, were "too concerned about

the constitutional richts of Japanese Americans."

P. Hetherton--representing Governor Langlie of Washinston--did break

with the general attitude of the conference by declaring that Washington "would

be gla to have the Japanese return at the end of the war.(R)

After many false starts, wholesale impoverishment and practically no

planning, the eventual disposition of the 100,000-odd Japanese Americans and aliens

is now beginning to take shape. Three camps have now been designated which are now

filling up. They are Owens Valley, Galifomia for 10,000; Gila Reservation in -

Arizona for 20,000, and the Colorado River Indian Reservation to hold 20,000,

Aray regulations covering the evacuation provided that the evacuees could

take with them only what they could carry, but must take clothing, bedding, linens,

cutlery, china and cooking utensils. The government provides storage for the rest

of their belongings, but at "the owner's sole risk."

The type and conditions of work for evacuees is not completely settled.

In Washington, officials of th War Relocation Authority now say that the origiml

announcenent of work at WPA wages was premature. What they don't say is that tie

forces opposed to treating citizens as citizens succeeded in getting a change.

Now that tens of thousands of people, a large number of them citizens,

have been uprooted from their homes, have lost jobs and possessions and have had

hopes and plans destroyed, the work arrangements which are now proposed are hailed

as "generous and fair treatment." With three reception center filling up, a

decision has been made to turn Owens Valley and the other two centers into perman-

ent homese Provision for the -- to pick up peacetime living now cones

-_ to two main proposals:

(1) Citizens and some aliens will be permitted to go into private employ-

ment at prevailing waces if employers will pay transportation charges from the

Teception centers. But an examination of opportunities for private employment

around the reception centers reveals small likelihood that any number can secure

such wrk, : :

(2) Evacuees will be permitted "volumtarily" to enlist in the "War Relo-

cation Work Corps" which will engage in work on goverment projectse They will

be paid at wages not exceeding the minimum paid to soldiers. In addition, they -

will be given army rations, clothing and shelter. (At the Colorado Indian Reser

vation, families are forced to build their om partitions in the dwelling mits

provided for them.) No provision has been made for these "deportees" who, through

no fault of their om, are unable to find private employment or those who refuse

to be coerced into "voluntary employment." If this programa is carried thr ough,

_ the reception centers become little more than "voluntary" concentration camps,

guarded by military police. - :

With lawyers in federal agencies and the Tolan Committee divided on the

constitutionality of the President's executive order, an exemination of General De

Witt's orders shows that the only authority he has used for enforcement of his

curfew and other regulations is the Costello Act, passed a month after the Presi-

dent's' executive omer. Of this act, precise and legalistic Senator Robert A.

Taft of Ohio camented on the floor of the Senate: "I think it the sloppiest

criminal law I have ever read or seen anywhere, I have no doubt that in peace

`time no person could be convicted under it. It could not be enforced under the

Constitution." =

Two pertinent items from the Tolan Committee's hearings in San Francisco

turn some iicht on the Japanese Americans` "Americanism and on the source of the

arive directed against this croup of our citizens. The first item of. testimony

came from Mr. Michio Kummitani, who represented before the Committee for the

Young Democratic Club of Berkeley, Califomia. He pointed out that many of the

Nisei, or second generation Japanese Americans, did not even know the Japanese _

language, and that the "Army md to hire Japanese students to teach Japanese enrollees the Japanese languages"

The secomi item, dealing with the forces behind the drive against the

Japanese, also provides a clue to the attitude of many persons on the war. Ina

letter to the Tolan Committee, Mr. Te Me Burn, of the Salinas Valley Vegetable

Exchange of Salinas, California, said: "Unless we can use Oriental help we can-

not farm these lands economically and efficiently. We are fighting thise war to

hold and secure cheap labor. So if we can't secure it in California, we will....

look elsewhere."

| | But it requires a trip from California and this bit of white imperialism

to Washington and the halls of Congress for the worst bit of all, It was not

Father Coughlin in Social Justice but Representative Rankin of Mississippi in the .

Congressional Record (February 18) who is the source of this remark: -

"This is a race war, as far as the Pacific side of this conflict is con-

cernedseesesthe White Man's civilization has came into conflict with Japanese bar~

barism, One of them must be destroyed. You cannot regenerate a Jap, convert

hin, change him and make him the same as a white man any more than you can reverse

the laws of naturesece.sI am in favor ofeeceseestopping all this interracial non-

sense by which we have been petting the Jap for the last quarter of a century.

Dam them Let us get rid of then navi"

Then again on Febe 25-24, Rankin told the House of Representatives, "In

Sigs

my opinion, they (the Japanese) are behind the drive to stir

the whites and the Negroes by trying to foree Negroes into the hotels, restaurants,

`Picture shows and other public places."

=

up trouble between

sina