Item No: #361708 Final Report, Japanese Evacuation From the West Coast, 1942. J. L. DeWitt.
Final Report, Japanese Evacuation From the West Coast, 1942
Final Report, Japanese Evacuation From the West Coast, 1942
Final Report, Japanese Evacuation From the West Coast, 1942

The US Military Explains the Japanese Internment

Final Report, Japanese Evacuation From the West Coast, 1942

Notes: An extensively illustrated account of the legal background for the Japanese internment along with an account of the military's considerable efforts to relocate more than 100,000 persons of Japanese descent from the West Coast of the United States during the first half of 1942. The book (xxiii, 618 pages) is illustrated with three folding maps, 14 one-page color maps, and many hundreds of black-and-white photographs.

One of the ways to approach this book is to read it for what isn't there. The opening pages offer an explanation of the laws that were passed immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor to intern enemy aliens (citizens of the Axis nations that the US was suddenly at war with). While the laws applied equally to Japanese, Italian, and German aliens, the latter groups are not mentioned at all in this book. Most (according to the report, two-thirds; see p. 9) of the people of Japanese descent in the US were American citizens. But, DeWitt claims, "the ties of race, the intense feeling of filial piety and the strong bonds of common tradition, culture, and customs" required the US government to intern Japanese Americans as well as Japanese citizens. There are also many claims of Japanese collaboration with the Japanese military, most of which are vague and almost all of which were eventually shown to be false.

This is in direct opposition to German citizens, where well documented cases of spying and espionage in the US were known when the United States joined the Second World War. In fact, 33 German members of the Duquesne spy ring were convicted just six days after Pearl Harbor, and yet the US did not use that as justification for interning most German-born residents and certainly not their American-born children.

Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing). Previous owner's stamp on endpapers and title page, else very good. Folding maps near fine.

Publication: Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1943.

Item No: #361708

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