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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative
92.1  
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June, 2005
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Book Review



The Colonel and the Pacifist: Karl Bendetsen, Perry Saito, and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. By Klancy Clark de Nevers. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2004. xvi, 382 pp. Cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-87480-788-3. Paper, $21.95, ISBN 0-87480-789-1.)

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed his infamous Executive Order 9066, leading to the forced evacuation of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry to "relocation camps" for most, if not all, of the war (p. ix). The injustice of this unprecedented action has been considered with various sources and from various perspectives since the end of World War II. Klancy Clark de Nevers has broken new ground by using new sources and new perspectives to contrast the vastly different wartime experiences of two men caught up in a truly national tragedy. 1
      Ironically, Col. Karl Bendetsen and the pacifist Perry Saito grew up in the same West Coast town and experienced various degrees of social alienation as members of minority Jewish and Japanese populations. But this is where their similarities end. 2
      From the outset of the war, Bendetsen was instrumental in the drive to isolate all Japanese Americans from strategic West Coast regions to prevent possible spying, sabotage, and collaboration in the event of a Japanese military invasion. Using Bendetsen's largely unexplored papers at Stanford University, de Nevers documents Bendetsen's direct influence in shaping the legal and military rationale for blanket Japanese internment based on race alone. . . .

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