wherein Professor Robinson further disassembles Michelle’s assertion of a supposed military necessity to evict and detain all Japanese Americans (but not all German or Italian Americans):
The author’s case for military necessity–she claims there was a “West Coast under siege”–is fatally flawed, as it reposes on her dramatic account of the shelling by Japanese submarines of a refinery in Goleta, California (pp.7-8), which she called “the first foreign attack on the U.S. mainland attack since the War of 1812.” (No, it wasn’t, actually; Pancho Villa’s raid into Columbus, New Mexico set off panic and a large-scale punitive expedition led by General Pershing; but never mind). In fact, as the author states, this event took place on February 23, 1942, four days after Executive Order 9066 was signed, so it could not have played a factor in any of the decisions.
Not satisfied with describing this single (rather minor) incident, the author tries to disguise the lack of concrete military threat by claiming that this incident “was just one of many long forgotten (or deliberately ignored) attacks”(p.9). Long forgotten? Then where are the incident reports and media accounts at the time, when it was well remembered? Deliberately ignored? By whom? By the Californians who were so panicked over the spectre of a Japanese invasion that they spread wild stories that turned out to be untrue? By the West Coast defense authorities who were ready to make the most compelling case for mass evacuation? The author finishes with stories of Japanese submarines roaming free around Hawaiian waters, and mentions two sinkings of boats in the mid-Pacific. How then was the West Coast under siege? As the author confesses by omission, there were then no sinkings of ships by Japanese subs around the area of the West Coast. And if such sinkings in Hawaiian waters did not change the situation in Hawaii, they should not have been responsible for arbitrary action on the West Coast.
In contrast, there was an urgent military danger on the East Coast. Nazi submarines in the Atlantic were sinking Allied shipping at an alarming rate, and Nazi saboteurs landed on Long Island—the last invasion of the U.S. mainland. However, the Army and the Administration did not take steps to intern all German aliens out a fear of collaboration. As Attorney General Biddle, who was responsible for control of enemy aliens, stated in an unpublished section of his memoirs, “There was more reason than in the West to conclude that shore-to-ship signals were accounting for the very serious submarine sinkings all along the East Coast, which were only sporadic only the West Coast…But the decisions were not made on the logic of events or on the weight of evidence, but on the racial prejudice that seemed to be influencing everyone.” (cited in Robinson, BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT, p.112).
Robinson’s not done yet. And neither am I. One more post from each of us to follow.
Comments are closed.