In the Name of National Security
On the same day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Presidential Proclamation 2525. The declaration authorized the arrest of non-naturalized Japanese residents as “dangerous enemy aliens,” stirring up existing prejudice and hysteria.
The FBI, which had already been illegally amassing information about “suspicious” activities like teaching martial arts, began raiding homes and arresting Japanese residents. They often separated parents from their children.
Politicians like California Attorney General Earl Warren – later, a California governor and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice – fed this fury. He presented a suggestive map to a House committee, highlighting the presence of people of Japanese ancestry near strategic defense installations along the West Coast. “Such a distribution of the Japanese population appears to manifest something more than coincidence,” he told the panel. They were poised, he said, for sabotage and spying.
Asked why there were no verified reports of such activity, Warren testified, “I believe that we are just being lulled into a false sense of security.” Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt also stated, “The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken.” Later government reports, though ignored, continued to prove them wrong. In the 1980s, a nonpartisan commission determined that the incarceration was the result of racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and the failure of political leadership…not any actual security threats. Warren later expressed remorse for his actions.
