In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror

Do we really need to relearn the lessons of Japanese American internment?

Fred Korematsu

In 1942, I was arrested and convicted for being a Japanese American trying to live here in the Bay Area. The day after my arrest a newspaper headline declared, "Jap Spy Arrested in San Leandro."

Of course, I was no spy. The government never charged me with being a spy. I was a U.S. citizen born and raised in Oakland. I even tried to enlist in the Coast Guard (they didn't take me because of my race). But my citizenship and my loyalty did not matter to the federal government. On Feb. 19, 1942, anyone of Japanese heritage was ordered excluded from the West Coast. I was charged and convicted of being a Japanese American living in an area in which all people of my ancestry had been ordered to be interned.

I fought my conviction at that time. My case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, but in 1944 my efforts to seek protection under the Constitution were rejected.

After I was released in 1945, my criminal record continued to affect my life. It was hard to find work. I was considered to be a criminal. It took almost 40 years and the efforts of many people to reopen my case. In 1983, a federal court judge found that the government had hidden evidence and lied to the Supreme Court during my appeal. The judge found that Japanese Americans were not the threat that the government publicly claimed. My criminal record was removed.

As my case was being reconsidered by the courts, again as a result of the efforts of many people across the country, Congress created a commission to study the exclusion and incarceration of Japanese Americans. The commission found that no Japanese American had been involved in espionage or sabotage and that no military necessity existed to imprison us. Based on the commission's findings and of military historians who reconsidered the original records from the war, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, declaring that the internment of Japanese Americans was unjustified. Finally, it seemed that the burden of being accused of being an "enemy race" had been lifted from our shoulders.

But now the old accusations are back. Fox News media personality Michelle Malkin claims that some Japanese Americans were spies during World War II. Based upon her suspicions, Malkin claims the internment of all Japanese Americans was not such a bad idea after all. She goes on to claim that racial profiling of Arab Americans today is justified by the need to fight terrorism. According to Malkin, it is OK to take away an entire ethnic group's civil rights because some individuals are suspect. Malkin argues for reviving the old notion of guilt by association.

It is painful to see reopened for serious debate the question of whether the government was justified in imprisoning Japanese Americans during World War II. It was my hope that my case and the cases of other Japanese American internees would be remembered for the dangers of racial and ethnic scapegoating.

Fears and prejudices directed against minority communities are too easy to evoke and exaggerate, often to serve the political agendas of those who promote those fears. I know what it is like to be at the other end of such scapegoating and how difficult it is to clear one's name after unjustified suspicions are endorsed as fact by the government. If someone is a spy or terrorist they should be prosecuted for their actions. But no one should ever be locked away simply because they share the same race, ethnicity, or religion as a spy or terrorist. If that principle was not learned from the internment of Japanese Americans, then these are very dangerous times for our democracy.

Fred Korematsu was awarded the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medial of Freedom, in 1998. He and his wife, Kathryn, continue to live in their longtime hometown of San Leandro.

As a conservative, pro-life, "traditional family values" Republican third generation American of Japanese ancestry, I was shocked and saddened by the gross inaccuracies in Malkin's book.

For example, the book purports one of the basic, underlying reasons for internment was the Japanese espionage "threat" on the West Coast. However, Japanese Americans during WWII were among the most loyal to America, and many served valiantly for the U.S. during the war.

According to the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians in a report entitled, "Personal Justice Denied", it stated that "not a single documented act of espionage, sabatoge or fifth column activity on the mainland was committed by an American citizen of Japanese ancestry or by a resident Japanese alien on the West Coast." This view has been substantiated consistently by independent scholars and researchers for almost 50 years since WWII.

Two of my uncles, although interned, volunteered to enlist in the U.S. Army in the 442nd Regimental Combat Unit. One of my uncles in the unit earned a REAL Purple Heart after he sustained extensive damage to his ear when an enemy grenade exploded near his head while fighting for the U.S. in Europe during the war.

The 442nd suffered huge numbers of casualties and is the most decorated combat unit in American history. They were credited for saving a Texas unit trapped behind Nazi lines, although a significantly larger number of Japanese American U.S. soldiers lost their lives rescuing them than the total number of soldiers that were in the Texas unit.

My mom, a U.S.-born American citizen, was also interned during the war. She felt as if she were without a country. Yet she never, ever considered turning her back on this nation she calls "home". She, along with my family, proudly display American flag decals on our clothes and our cars.

Yes, I strongly believe America needs to continue to vigorously fight for freedom here in our homeland and abroad, and defend itself against terrorism. I also have confidence that America, through prayer, wise decision-making and courageous, measured action will pro-actively prevent the mistakes of the past and implement much more innovative and effective means of fighting 21st century terrorism rather than even considering reverting to the extreme, heinous act of wholesale incarceration of innocent people without due process.

The quote used in the editorial reviews from Ms. Malkins book-that it is unfortunate that if some Arab/Muslim Americans are inconvieneced due to 'racial' profiling, but this is preferable to being incinerated at one's desk-is a curious argument. It posits a binary solution to a very complex problem[interantional terrorism], which is 'multi-ethnic', and includes persons from Indonesia[Jemal Islamyiah] and the Phillipines[Moro Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf Group] according to Gurnartna's book Inside Al Qaeda.

The appeal to a Supreme Court decision during the War, doesn't make that particular ruling sacro-sanct. There is some decisions that the country regrets, and the reparation to Japanese Americans who were in the camps, is one that should indeed be considered. I am also aware of the fact that other than Americans of Japanese descent were interned-to include both Americans of Italian and German descent. It is not accidental that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 indicated that there should be no discrimination based on 'national origin'.

You see Ms. Malkin? At this date in history, while not agreeing with all of his policies, I salute the President and the Head of the FBI, for stating that this is a war against extremists, and not Muslims and Arabs. I salute the work of the FBI in investigating attacks against Muslim Americans, while at the same time, going after extremists whereever they are, before they strike. I salute the fact that this President and the Attorney General, oppose 'racial profiling'. That says something-about how far the country has come.

Careful Ms. Malkin-if one is looking at where extremists and terrorists originate-as I mention below, two Al Qaeda associated groups, according to R. Gunartna, come from the South East Asian island region, Jemal Islamiyah from Indonesia, and Abu Sayyaf Group and the Moro Liberation Front come from the Phillipines. I would oppose any 'racial' profiling of Filipino-Americans or Indonesian Americans based simply on these facts. I would oppose racial profiling of you being a Filipino-American.
I believe that your parents came originally from the Phillipines, did they not Ms. Malkin?

There is another statement that Ms. Malkin should respectfully consider, namely the statement by Benjamin Franklin-"Those who sacrifice basic liberty for a little saftety deserve neither Liberty nor safety."

Michelle Malkin conducted absolutely no scholarly research in the writing of this ridiculous book. She argued that Japan controlled the entire Pacific Ocean, maintained a vast network of spies in the US, and planned to invade the West Coast. Through subterfuge and falsification of information, she thus concluded that internment camps were not morally reprehensible because they were of military necessity and because, in her mind, racism did not exist during the 1940s.

Fortunately, Eric Muller, a law professor at UNC -- Chapel Hill, revealed that Malkin's arguments were entirely unsubstantiated and willfully falsified. As historian Greg Robinson observed, "there were no reports of sabotage or espionage" following Pearl Harbor or before Japanese-Americans were unlawfully imprisoned. Allied forces maintained a Germany-first strategy because they considered Japan to be a lesser threat, in part because it did not have absolute control of the Pacific Ocean. Moreover, internment camps were established in June 1942, after the Battle of Midway, in which Japan's defeat greatly diminished its threat to the US mainland.

Despite the great deal of criticism she received, Malkin refused to budge from her position that MAGIC cables established the military necessity of internment camps. She underscored how important MAGIC was to her argument by dedicating her book to David Lowman, whose "research" on MAGIC she borrowed extensively from. However, James C. McNaughton, Command Historian of the US Army, Pacific, declared that Lowman's work on MAGIC to be of no merit and dismissed Lowman's "polemics ... as symptomatic of the lingering bitterness stemming from Pearl Harbor and the emotions raised by apologies and compensation."

Even the Historians' Committee for Fairness proved that Malkin's book represented "a blatant violation of professional standards of objectivity" -- "decades of scholarly research, including works by the official historian of the US Army" have contradicted every one of her intellectually dishonest claims. Following a report by the US government Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, President Reagan authorized that compensation be paid because the denial of civil rights to Japanese-Americans had been "motivated by racism" instead of veritable military concerns. As the noted biographer Jean Edward Smith pointed out, during their internment, Japanese-Americans lost more than $400 million from 1942 to 1945, a sum when adjusted for inflation equated to almost $5 billion. These financial losses were never fully or adequately recouped.

Lastly, it should be noted that the segregated Japanese-American 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team became the most highly decorated unit for its size and length of service in the history of the US Army. When the European Theatre finally ended, the 100th/442nd had received 7 Presidential Unit Citations, and its members were awarded numerous decorations for valor and competence, including 21 Medals of Honor, 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, 560 Silver Stars, 4,000 Bronze Stars, and 9,486 Purple Hearts. Their sacrifice was astounding because they suffered a casualty rate of 314 percent, which meant, on average, every man was injured more than three times.

Apparently Michelle Malkin believes in the selective, subjective, and arbitrary application of constitutional rights for US citizens. There is a vast difference between using "racial profiling" as a tool to assist in the investigation of an actual crime- for instance, looking for evidence of spying among Japanese aliens that worked for the Port Authority in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor- and "racial profiling" as an unconstitutional presumption of guilt that results in the wholesale imprisonment of citizens and legal aliens without any tangible evidence of wrongdoing. Michelle Malkin doesn't seem to recognize the moral spread between the two.

I see from other reviewers' comments that Michelle Malkin is Filipina. I wonder if Michelle Malkin would be willing to have her property stripped from her and live behind barbed wire in a tent in the desert, watched by armed guards, should the U.S. government determine that persons of Filipine descent constituted a terrorist threat to the general populace. It wouldn't be all bad: She could organize schools for the imprisoned children, eat free Army issue food, take some time off from her career, socialize in the communal latrines while she cleaned them, and publish her own newspaper. Maybe Michelle Malkin could even get the chance to swear an oath of fealty in exchange for a trip out of camp as a migrant farm worker, picking potatoes for less than minimum wage. Michelle Malkin: Will you show us your patrotism by giving up your rights? I'd be happy to provide the barbed wire and MREs.