1943 U.S. Government Report on the Internment of Japanese Americans During WWII

This is a 1943 U.S. government report detailing the forced internment of west-coast Japanese Americans during World War II (1939 - 1945). The reports offers disturbing insights into the racist policies and unfounded paranoia that gripped the nation in the wake of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Japanese Internment

The Japanese internment policy began on February 19, 1942, just two months after the shocking and demoralizing Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt, paranoid that Japanese loyalists living in the western United States might engage in terrorism and sabotage, signed Executive Order 9066, forcibly committing innocent Japanese-Americans to special isolated internment camps. Some 127,000 men, women, and children were deported from their homes in exclusion zones in Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona, and relocated to internment camps in rural California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Arkansas. Conditions were overcrowded, unsanitary, and lacked adequate education and medical care. It took three years, until 1945, for the Supreme Court to declare the internment of U.S. Citizens without cause illegal. Nonetheless, most camps continued to operate until April of 1946.

The Report

Totaling over 600 pages, the Final Report is an overwhelmingly positive summary of the 'evacuation' of Japanese Americans and details the why, when, and how of the project. Photographs, maps, and other visuals are scattered throughout, with 76 pages of photos trying to prove the 'humane' and 'joyous' conditions under which internees endured.

Sanitized

After ten months of work, General DeWitt first submitted the report on April 19, 1942, with printed copies being delivered to Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy and others - only ten copies were printed. McCloy, after reading the document, concluded that it was dangerously racist and needed to be revised, suppressed, and destroyed. The report stated in the forward that Japanese Americans should not be allowed to return to the West Coast for the duration of the war, which was counter to prevailing opinion in the government and military. Possibly even more damning, the report asserted that Japanese American 'loyalty' could not be determined 'with any degree of safety', thus necessitating the evacuation of all those Japanese descent from the prohibited areas. DeWitt continued that since Japanese Americans were such a 'tightly-knit racial group', separating the loyal from the disloyal would be impossible.

Four test cases contesting the constitutionality of Roosevelt's executive order and the lack of due process were then pending before the Supreme Court. Justice Department officials promised that DeWitt's report would be made available for use when writing briefs for these cases. However, assertions in the original report would undermine the government's defense.

McCloy began to revise and sanitize DeWitt's report to make it more palatable and 'court-ready'. After infighting between DeWitt, McCloy, and those tasked with making the revisions, DeWitt relented and allowed changes. Language was softened and assertions hedged. However, the unfounded espionage claims remained and appeared in the amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court.

Ten copies of the DeWitt's original draft of the Final Report were printed, nine of which were destroyed, along with notes and any trace of the original submission. DeWitt complied with orders and resubmitted the report with a new letter dated June 15, 1943. Finally, all 'galley proofs, galley pages, drafts and memorandums of the original report of the Japanese Evacuation' were burned, erasing all traces - except one copy eluded the censors. In 1982, a copy of the original report was discovered in the National Archives by Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, a researcher for the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. This discovery helped the Commission declare that interned individuals should be paid $20,000 in reparations. Coram nobis legal cases also followed, which exonerated the convictions of three of the original defendants: Gordon Hirabayashi, Min Yasui, and Fred Korematsu. (For more information about the Final Report and the court cases refer to Peter H. Irons' book Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases which is available for free on archive.org. The entire Final Report has also been digitized and is available on HathiTrust.)

Publication History and Census

This report was compiled by Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt and published by the U.S. government in 1943. The published report is well represented in institutional collections but is scarce on the private market.