When President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, he authorized the evacuation of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast. Soon after, a Congressional Committee heard testimony from both California public officials and representatives of the Japanese community who both favored and opposed evacuation. The following excerpts are from California Attorney-General Earl Warren (later the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) and from James Omura.
EARL WARREN: Unfortunately, however, many of our people and some of our authorities...are of the opinion that because we have had no sabotage and no fifth column activities in this State since the beginning of the war, that means that none have been planned for us. But I take the view that is the most ominous sign in our whole situation. It convinces me more than perhaps any other factor that the sabotage we are to get...[is] timed just like Pearl Harbor...
We...believe that we can, in dealing with the German and Italians, arrive at some fairly sound conclusions because of our knowledge of the way they live in the community...But when we deal with the Japanese...we cannot inform any opinion we believe to be sound. Their method of living, their language, make for this difficulty...
JAMES OMURA: It is doubtlessly difficult for Caucasian Americans to properly comprehend and believe in what we say. Our citizenship has even been attacked as an evil cloak under which we expect immunity for the nefarious purpose of conspiring to destroy the American way of life. To us -- who have been born, raised, and educated in American institutions and in our system of public schools, knowing and owing no other allegiance than to the United States -- such a thought is manifestly unfair and ambiguous.
I would like to ask the committee: Has the Gestapo come to America? Have we not risen in righteous anger at Hitler's mistreatments of the Jews? Then, is it not incongruous that citizen Americans of Japanese descent should be similarly mistreated and persecuted?...We cannot understand why General DeWitt can make exceptions for families of German and Italian soldiers in the armed forces of the United States while ignoring the civil rights of Nisei Americans. Are we to be condemned merely on the basis of our racial origin? Is citizenship such a light and transient thing that that which is our inalienable right in normal times can be torn from us in times of war?
