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Book Review
| Eric L. Muller, American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Pp. 197. $27.50 (ISBN 978-0-8078-3173-1).
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| The story of how Japanese Americans were corralled into internment camps is tragic and familiar; less known is the story of how they were released from camps. Eric Muller helps fill this void by carefully describing how government bureaucracies determined the "loyalty" of Japanese Americans in order to decide who could leave. Along the way, he provides revealing glimpses of how racism and politics, more than military necessity, guided their incremental and inevitable release. |
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The first five chapters summarize familiar history about the internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. Muller's true contribution comes afterwards, where he describes how loyalty was administratively processed by the Japanese American Joint Board (JAJB) (chapter 6), the Provost Marshal General's Office (PMGO) (chapter 7), the War Relocation Authority (WRA) (chapter 8), and finally the Western Defense Command (WDC) (chapter 9). Here we see fascinating attempts to create an administrable, if not fair, program for determining loyalty. |
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An abstract definition of loyalty—and it was loyalty, not dangerousness that was the driver—does not help answer concrete questions. So repeatedly, as Muller describes, government bureaucracies quantized loyalty through some mechanical measure. For example, the JAJB was created in January 1943, with representation of the WRA (which administered the ten internment camps), various intelligence agencies, the War Department, and the PMGO. This board was charged with making recommendations for indefinite leave and clearing employment in sensitive positions, such as war plants. |
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How did the JAJB get the personal information it needed? The major source was the Civil Affairs Division of the WDC, which had accumulated quite the Orwellian database. Muller explains that it had generated a comprehensive list of every Japanese who had arrived by ship from Japan between 1930 and 1941; every Japanese mentioned in the ethnic press as having connections with any substantial Japanese organization; every Japanese organization mentioned in books and magazines; and every financial deposit to an American branch of a Japanese bank. All this produced more than 250,000 datums, regarding 50,000 persons of Japanese descent (42). |
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But how could one translate such data into a loyalty determination? Calvert L. Dedrick, chief of the Census Bureau's Statistical Research Division, was tasked with this challenge (44). Dedrick first designed an elaborate point system, with plusses and minuses for various aspects of cultural assimilation (+2 if boy scout; –2 if "subject reads, writes and speaks Japanese good [sic]") (47). Of course, this scoring system was suffused with racist assumptions about loyalty. |
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Dedrick soon realized that even this point-like process would be inadministrable. Thus he adopted a tranche system, in which individuals would be classified "white" if loyal, "black" if disloyal, and "brown" (not "grey" as Muller notes) if in between (49). Interestingly, when information supporting a "white" classification combined with that supporting "brown," the darker color won. This is reminiscent of the principle of hypodescent, or the "one drop of black blood" rule. |
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Muller provides this level of detail on the other agencies' fumbling attempts to operationalize "loyalty." Along the way, Muller reveals historical gems. One example of racism comes from the JAJB's attempt to create good press about released Nisei (Japanese born in the United States) working productively at war plants. The Army had found that because of Nisei labor, the Cleveland Steel Products Company had "caught up to production schedule" and that the Nisei had "stimulate[d] the white people to real production" (58). It turned out, however, that many of the Nisei had never been specifically cleared to work in war plants. Worse, the work ethic of these model minorities caused a backlash from the white workers, and the Nisei had to intentionally throttle their productivity (59). There was no press release, and in the end, two of the Nisei workers were fired for security reasons. |
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We also see raw politics, not military necessity, driving the release process. At the bureaucratic level, Muller discloses a "stunning document" used by the WRA at the Gila River, Arizona camp (81). The interview form included highly granular options on various questions. For example, on the subject of loyalty, the options included not only "loyal" and "disloyal" but choices such as "a-loyal," "straddling," and "interested only in 'his rights.'" The penultimate question required choosing a justification for the final decision. Among them was "I consider the issuance of leave for the applicant ... Not advantageous or advisable for public relations" (82, emphasis added). At the policy level, Muller documents President Roosevelt's clear preference to delay any repeal of mass exclusion until he won reelection (96). |
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There's much more worth mentioning, such as Muller's discussion of the Ochikubo v. Bonesteel case, which reveals bad-faith delay by government lawyers and outright perjury by military officials. But space does not permit anything more. |
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In the end, Eric Muller usefully excavates the micromechanics of a racist apparatus. They are ugly and telling. |
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