by Kai Bird
84. Ibid., p. 256.
85. Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York: Free Press, 1987), p. 255; Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Congress, 1982), p. 62.
86. Anthony Cave Brown, Wild Bill Donovan: The Last Hero (New York: Times Books, 1982), p. 193.
87. McCloy interviews, May 26, 1983, June 23, 1983; Ladislas Farago, The Game of the Foxes: The Untold Story of German Espionage in the United States and Great Britain During World War II (New York: David McKay, 1971), p. 552; Ronald Lewin, The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers and the Defeat of Japan (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1982), p. 67; Thomas Parrish, The Ultra Americans: The U.S. Role in Breaking the Nazi Codes (New York: Stein & Day, 1986), p. 70.
88. For a thorough discussion of the role of Magic intercepts in the Pearl Harbor attack, see David Kahn’s seminal book, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 1–67. Magic is also extensively discussed in the U.S. 79th Congress’s multivolume Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack.
89. Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 81
90. Ibid., pp. 249–50; McCloy interview, May 26,1983. The early revisionist historian Charles Beard published a book after the war charging that Roosevelt consciously provoked the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. (Charles A. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948.]) More recently, John Toland, in his book Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982), argues a similar thesis. Stimson’s diary notes, the Magic intercepts, and many other sources make it clear that Roosevelt, Stimson, McCloy, and other high-ranking administration officials were convinced that war with Japan was a very near-term prospect. But the evidence suggests that they were indeed caught unawares by the attack on Pearl Harbor. Stimson’s Nov. 25 diary comment actually lends credence to this balanced view: “. . . the Japs are notorious for making an attack without warning. . . . The question was how we should maneuver them into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.” A surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, resulting in the severe crippling of the Pacific fleet, was certainly not a price Stimson was willing to pay.
91. Prange, At Dawn We Slept, pp. 402–4.
92. Memorandum for the chief of staff from Miles, 11/25/41, ASW 371.1, General, RG 107, box 34, NA.
93. Leonard Mosley, Marshall: Hero for Our Times (New York: Hearst Books, 1982), p. 156.
94. Henry Stimson diary, 12/4/41, LOC.
95. Dean Rusk interview, Nov. 17, 1982; Farago, Game of the Foxes, pp. 556–58. The Potsdam Club officers were probably as anti-British as they were pro-German, an attitude that often stemmed from their distrust of British imperial policies, particularly in the Pacific, where they believed American political and commercial interests were impeded by British colonial interests. Ironically, McCloy himself had been accused of “pro-Nazi” views upon his return from Germany in 1936. (See McCloy to Clark, 8/14/41, ASW 014.3, Civil Status and Relations [Public Relations], box 6, RG 107, NA.)
96. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports, p. 21; Albert C. Wedemeyer interview, Nov. 11, 1983.
97. Albert C. Wedemeyer interview, Nov. 11, 1983.
98. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports, p. 27; Mosley, Marshall, p. 157.
99. Wedemeyer,
Wedemeyer Reports, p. 6.
100. John Toland,
in Infamy, credits an Army Air Corps captain as the source of the leak. So too does Ladislas Farago in The Game of the Foxes. Both authors say the captain, who worked with Wedemeyer and attended some of the same social gatherings hosted by Captain Truman Smith, gave the Victory Plan to Senator Burton Wheeler, who turned it over to the Chicago Tribune. Yet another source, William Stevenson, the biographer of Sir William Stephenson, otherwise known as “Intrepid,” asserts that British intelligence fabricated a fake set of plans which were leaked through Senator Wheeler in the hope that they might provoke Hitler into declaring war on the United States. This latter thesis is certainly wrong. (See Toland, Infamy, p. 288; Farago, Game of the Foxes, p. 562; William Stevenson, A Man Called Intrepid, p. 328.)
101. Mosley, Marshall, p. 157; Toland, Infamy, p. 293.
102. McCloy interview, May 26, 1983.
103. Toland, Infamy, p. 305; U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Hearings, 79th Cong., pt. 7, p. 4517; McCloy diary, 12/7/41, DY box 3, folder 3, JJM.
104. Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 486.
105. Ibid., pp. 491–95; Richard Collier, The Road to Pearl Harbor (New York: Atheneum, 1981), pp. 232–33; Toland, Infamy, p. 310.
106. McCloy interview, May 26, 1983; Irons, Justice at War, pp. 5–6.
107. McCloy interview, May 26, 1983.
108. Irons, Justice at War, p. 6.
109. Henry Stimson diary, 12/7/41, LOC.
110. Ibid.
111. Brown, Wild Bill Donovan, p. 194.
112. Ibid., p. 200; Henry Stimson diary, 1/19/41.
113. Henry Stimson diary, 12/16/41, LOC.
114. Henry Stimson diary, 12/8/41, LOC.
115. Irons, Justice at War, p. 19.
116. Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972), p. 35; Irons, Justice at War, p. 6.
117. General Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell wrote in his diary on Dec. 11, “Had the Japs only known, they could have landed anywhere on the coast, and after our handful of ammunition was gone, they could have shot us like pigs in a pen.” (Joseph W. Stilwell, The Stilwell Papers, ed. Theodore H. White [New York: William Sloane Associates, 1948], p. 4.)
118. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), vol. VI, p. 2.
119. Henry Stimson diary, 12/17/41, 12/20/41, LOC.
120. McCloy memo to the secretary of war, 12/20/41, ASW 381, Strategic Objective, box 35, RG 107, NA.
121. John Grigg, 1943: The Victory That Never Was (London: Eyre Methuen, 1980), pp. 18–20.
122. McCloy memo to secretary of war, 12/20/41, ASW 381, Strategic Objective, box 35, RG 107, NA.
123. Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 321.
124. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, p. 322.
125. Grigg, 1943, p. 21.
126. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, p. 321.
127. Henry Stimson diary, 12/28/41, LOC.
128. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, p. 35.
129. McCloy interview, June 23, 1983.
130. Henry Stimson diary, 1/6/42, LOC; Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 9, 1942.
EIGHT: INTERNMENT OF THE JAPANESE AMERICANS
1. Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 589.
2. Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, p. 55. For a detailed account of the internment decision, see Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II, pp. 42–73.
3. Bill Hosokawa, JACL in Quest of Justice: The History of the Japanese American League (New York: William Morrow, 1982), p. 142.
4. Personal Justice Denied, p. 70.
5. McCloy to Frankfurter, 1/13/42; Frankfurter to McCloy, 1/17/42, ASW 014.3, Civil Status and Relations (Public Relations), box 6, RG 107, NA.
6. Francis Biddle, In Brief Authority (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), p. 215.
7. Susan G. Goldmark, “The Japanese in America,” unpublished paper, Hunter College, 1970, p. 26.
8. Karl R. Bendetsen interview, Nov. 10, 1983.
9. Peter Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment, p. 43.
10. Personal Justice Denied, pp. 64–65.
11. Major Bendetsen, General Gullion, and General Clark phone conversation, 2/4/42, RG 389 (CWRIC 5936–40), NA (courtesy of Jac
k Herzig); this document was first cited by Roger Daniels in Concentration Camps USA, p. 56. In the Gullion-Clark phone conversation, Gullion attributes this quote to McCloy three days after the Feb. 1, 1942, meeting. In his wartime diary, Ickes attributes to McCloy the same attitude regarding the Constitution. (Ickes diary, 7/12/42, LOC.) Nearly forty years after the fact, McCloy told a congressional commission that as a lawyer he could never have made such a statement. (See McCloy testimony before the Commission on the Wartime Relocation of Japanese Americans, 11/3/81, p. 17.)
12. Personal Justice Denied, pp. 74–75; Irons, Justice at War, pp. 44–45.
13. Major Bendetsen, General Gullion, and General Clark phone conversation, 2/4/42, RG 389 (CWRIC 5936–40), NA.
14. Personal Justice Denied, p. 75.
15. McCloy-De Witt telephone transcript, 2/3/42, ASW 014.311, E.D.C. Exclusion Order Reports, box 6, RG 107, NA.
16. Roger Daniels, The Decision to Relocate the Japanese Americans (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1975), p. 104; Irons, Justice at War, p. 53; Allan R. Bosworth, America’s Concentration Camps (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), p. 102.
17. Henry Stimson diary, 2/10/42, LOC.
18. Ibid. Only a few days earlier, General Mark Clark and Admiral Stark had both discounted a West Coast invasion in testimony before Congress. Stark went so far as to state flatly that it would be “impossible for the enemy to engage in a sustained attack on the Pacific Coast at the present time.” (See Irons, Justice at War, p. 52.)
19. Irons, Justice at War, p. 57.
20. McCloy testimony, Commission on Wartime Relocation, 11/3/81, p. 59.
21. Personal Justice Denied, p. 79.
22. Irons, Justice at War, p. 58.
23. Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy: 1932–1945, p. 335.
24. Roosevelt to chief of operations, 8/10/36, folder A 8–5, box 216, RG 80, NA (courtesy of Jack Herzig).
25. Biddle, In Brief Authority, p. 219.
26. Personal Justice Denied, p. 80; Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, p. 394; Irons, Justice at War, p. 60. Daniels, Concentration Camps USA, pp. 42–73.
27. Irons, Justice at War, p. 61.
28. Stetson Conn et al., Guarding the United States and Its Outposts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1980), p. 135.
29. McCloy diary, 8:55 A.M., Tuesday, 2/17/42, as cited in McCloy testimony, Congressional Commission on the Wartime Relocation, 11/3/81, p. 105.
30. Biddle, In Brief Authority, pp. 218–19.
31. Irons, Justice at War, p. 62; Biddle, In Brief Authority, p. 219; Conn et al., Guarding the United States, p. 135.
32. Irons, Justice at War, p. 63.
33. Ibid., p. 349.
34. “Japanese Americans and ‘Magic,’ ” Statement of Lt. Col. John A. Herzig, U.S. Army (Ret.) to the House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Administrative Law and Governmental Relations, 9/12/84, p. 19. Citing Don Whitehead, The FBI Story (New York: Random House, 1956), p. 193, Herzig reports that ninety-one persons were convicted of espionage from 1938 to 1945, and none of these individuals were Japanese Americans.
35. Herbert Wechsler, assistant attorney general during the war, told this to Irons. (Justice at War, p. 358.)
36. Years afterward, McCloy told reporter Jules Witcover that Roosevelt “knew all about Black Tom. He said to me, ‘We don’t want any more Black Toms.’ ” As assistant secretary of the navy during the Wilson administration, Roosevelt certainly was aware of Black Tom, but I could find no evidence that McCloy talked with the president about either the old sabotage case or the decision to intern the Japanese Americans. (See Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom, p. 311.)
37. Frankfurter to McCloy, 3/5/42, Frankfurter Papers, LOC.
38. Personal Justice Denied, p. 113.
39. See U.S. House of Representatives, Hearing on HR. 4110 by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Law and Governmental Relations, David D. Lowman testimony, Washington, D.C., June 27, 1984. Lowman is a retired National Security Agency official.
40. John J. McCloy, written testimony prepared for appearance before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Nov. 3, 1981, p. 2.
41. The Magic Background to Pearl Harbor, (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, 1977), vol. I, no. 174, as cited by David D. Lowman, testimony, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Law and Governmental Relations, Washington, D.C., June 27, 1984.
42. Lieutenant Colonel John A. Herzig, “Japanese Americans and Magic,” Amerasia, vol. 11, no. 2 (1984), pp. 56–58, provides a detailed rebuttal of the congressional testimony regarding Magic made by David D. Lowman, a retired National Security Agency official.
43. Gordon W. Prange, Pearl Harbor, pp. 541–42.
44. The Magic Background to Pearl Harbor, vol. II, Appendix A-124–125. The same cable includes a request for another $500,000 “for the development of intelligence.” No indication is made as to whether the request was approved.
45. Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1976), p. 43.
46. McCloy diary, 12/1/41, JJM.
47. K. D. Ringle to chief of naval operations, 1/26/42, ASW 014.311, W.D.C., box 8, RG 107, NA.
48. Ibid.
49. Clark to McCloy, 2/12/42, cited in appendix of David D. Lowman, testimony, Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians.
50. Biddle, In Brief Authority, p. 226.
51. Daniels, Decision to Relocate, p. 121.
52. Personal Justice Denied, pp. 100–102.
53. McCloy testimony before the Congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, 11/3/81, Washington, D.C., p. 10; McCloy to Stimson, 3/6/42, ASW 014.311, E.D.C. Exclusion Order Reports, box 6, RG 107, NA.
54. McCloy to Francis Biddle, 3/21/42, ASW 014.311, E.D.C. Exclusion Order Reports, box 6, RG 107, NA.
55. Hosokawa, JACL, p. 155.
56. Ibid., p. 166.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid., p. 363.
59. Ibid., p. 362.
60. Irons, Justice at War, pp. 70–71; Hosokawa, JACL, p. 171.
61. John J. McCloy, “The Challenge Before Us,” Amherst College speech, May 16, 1942, reprinted in Congressional Record, vol. 88, p. A1929.
62. NYT, March 28, 1942; Philadelphia Inquirer, March 28, 1942. McCloy still had constitutional doubts about what he was doing. The day after this press conference, he wrote General Dwight Eisenhower, “There are also some grave legal difficulties in placing American citizens, even of Japanese ancestry, in concentration camps. All we have done, thus far, in the West Coast is to remove them from certain areas, which I think can clearly be done as a matter of law.” (McCloy to General Eisenhower, 3/28/42, ASW 014.311, Hawaii, box 6, RG 107, NA.)
63. Daniels, Decision to Relocate, p. 56.
64. McCloy to Bendetsen, 4/6/42, ASW Defense Command, Western, Bendetsen, OASW Reference-Subject File 1940–47, Da-Dm, Box 159, RG 107, NA.
65. Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, “Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast,” Department of the Army, Washington, D.C., 1942, p. 145.
66. Colonel Joel F. Watson and W. F. Magill, Jr., to DeWitt, 4/11/42, 014.31, Aliens, vol. II, RG 338–7, NA (courtesy of Michi Weglyn).
67. Stephen Ambrose and Richard Immerman, Milton S. Eisenhower: Educational Statesman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), p. 62.
68. Milton Eisenhower interview, Aug. 5, 1982; Ambrose and Immerman, Milton S. Eisenhower, p. 63.
69. Personal Justice Denied, p. 139.
70. Ickes diary, 7/12/42, LOC.
71. Ickes diary, 6/7/42, LOC.
72. Milton Eisenhower, The President Is Calling (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974), p. 114. As early as April 1, 1942, Eisenhower had written a friend, “I feel most deeply that when the war is over . . . we as Americans are going to regret the avoidable injus
tices that may have been done.” (Weglyn, Years of Infamy, p. 114.) On June 15, 1942, Harold Ickes wrote FDR, “I have it from several sources that Eisenhauer [sic] is sick of the job.” (Weglyn, Years of Infamy, p. 114.)
73. Ultimately, some forty-three hundred Nisei students were allowed out of the camps to attend college. (See Ambrose and Immerman, Milton S. Eisenhower, p. 64.)
74. Richard Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 7–8.
75. Personal Justice Denied, p. 149.
76. Daniels, Decision to Relocate, p. 56.
77. Biddle, In Brief Authority, pp. 325–27.
78. McCloy to Elmer Davis, 8/9/42, ASW 383.4, Espionage etc. (Alphabetically), box 36, RG 107. This letter was never sent to Davis.
79. McCloy to Stimson, 8/9/42, ASW 383.4, Espionage etc. (Alphabetically), box 36, RG 107, NA.
80. McCloy to Elmer Davis, 8/9/42, ASW 383.4, Espionage etc. (Alphabetically), box 36, RG 107, NA.
81. James Rowe, Jr., to attorney general, 10/31/42, folder James H. Rowe, Jr., box 3, Biddle Papers, FDR.
82. Alexander Meiklejohn to Roger Baldwin, 3/17/42, vol. 2363, pp. 196–97, ACLU Papers, PU.
83. Roger Baldwin to Alexander Meiklejohn, 6/30/42, vol. 2363, pp. 29–30, ACLU Papers, PU.
84. Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, p. 123.
85. Baldwin to Meiklejohn, 6/30/42, vol. 2363, ACLU Papers, PU.
86. John Hall memo to adjutant general, 9/17/42, ASW 333.1, Military Post, Hospitals, depots, etc., box 18, RG 107, NA.
87. Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, p. 36.
88. McCloy to Myer, 11/6/42, ASW 014.311, Segregation of Japs, classif. no. ASW 254, Minidoka, RG 107, NA (courtesy of Aiko Herzig).
89. Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, p. 53.
90. Ibid., p. 124.
91. Irons, Justice at War, p. 129. Such prominent board members as Morris Ernst, Corliss Lamont, John Dos Passos, and Max Lerner had all decided that, if military necessity required it, they could support Executive Order 9066. A liberal such as Freda Kirchwey, editor of The Nation, had written Roger Baldwin that she felt the “federal authorities have been doing their best to handle moderately and without hysteria an extremely explosive and dangerous problem.” Later that autumn, the ACLU’s chairman actually wrote General DeWitt a letter expressing his “congratulations on so difficult a job accomplished with a minimum of hardship, considering its unprecedented character.” (Freda Kirchwey to Roger Baldwin, 3/18/42, vol. 2363, p. 188, ACLU Papers, PU; ACLU chairman et al. to DeWitt, 11/3/42, vol. 2444, p. 119, ACLU Papers, PU.) Only a few socialist and pacifist organizations actually took a firm stand against the internment, and for this they were closely monitored by the FBI and military intelligence. That autumn, for instance, McCloy sent Myer an excerpt from an intelligence report suggesting that the American Friends Service Committee and the Fellowship of Reconciliation “are either deliberately, or unwittingly, hindering the war effort . . . [by] encouraging Japanese evacuees to resist restrictions placed upon them.” (McCloy to Myer, 10/15/42, ASW 014.311, WDC Gen., RG 107, NA [courtesy of William Hohri].)