Indecision in dealing
Second of two columns
with Hawaii’s AJAsIwrote Tuesday of the once-secret memos Hawaii veterans of Japanese ancestry have dug out of declassified files in Washington regarding high-level dithering about what to do about Hawaii residents of Japanese ancestry after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in a Feb. 26, 1942, memo he wanted all Oahu Japanese sent to a neighbor island. Nothing came of that for reasons unclear in the records on hand here. But on March 13 he approved a policy "that such Japanese residents of the Hawaiian Islands (either U.S. citizens or aliens) as are considered by appropriate authority in the Hawaiian Islands to constitute a source of danger be transported to the U.S. mainland and placed under guard in concentration camp."
Even that policy became greatly modified.
The available files trace some of the reasons for policy modifications that in the end reduced the number of Hawaii Japanese transported to the mainland to less than 2,000 and totally negated the early FDR plan to send all Oahu Japanese to a neighbor island.
A June 28, 1942, Army memo says authorities were frustrated by 13 interned Japanese citizens evacuated from Hawaii "to a concentration camp" because they were considered dangerous. They "threatened to swear out writs of habeas corpus, and considerable doubt developed as to whether they could be held here (on the mainland) since martial law did not prevail."
The memo continues: "They were therefore returned to Hawaii, where they are now in custody in the Hawaii Department (of the Army) Detention Camp on Sand Island. No further evacuation has been made...."
The memo says that the secretaries of War and the Navy "and other interested parties" then conferred on what to do next. It was decided that mass evacuation would seriously disrupt the economic life of Hawaii and that the earlier plan to put all Hawaii's Japanese under guard on one of the outlying islands was impracticable.
It was decided that danger to the war effort could be removed by sending to the mainland some 12,000 to 15,000 Japanese considered dangerous, around one-tenth of Hawaii's Japanese population. Further, it was decided they would be placed in "resettlement areas" rather than interned, and sent in family groups. Funds to evacuate 15,000 and construct camps for them would be in the fiscal 1943 budget, a June 25, 1942, memo said.
On July 14, 1942, the overall Pacific commander, Adm. Chester Nimitz, was reported to have suggested inducting Hawaii residents of Japanese extraction into the Army by means of the draft. It said: "He thought by this means about 10,000 undesirable Japanese males could be removed from the islands."
This didn't happen, but the Army did decide to accept Japanese volunteers in 1943. The quota was oversubscribed and they became one of the most decorated units in Army history.
A Nov. 19, 1942, memo speaks of still more modifications. "Under present plans," it said, the probable number to be evacuated is 3,000. This evacuation will be spread over a considerable period, possibly several months."
The author of the memo, Col. Karl S. Bendtsen, further added: "The present evacuation is largely a token evacuation to satisfy certain interests which have strongly advocated movement of Japanese from the Hawaiian Islands."
AS of Nov. 17, it said, only 315 Japanese had been notified they would be evacuated, 50 from the island of Oahu, and the balance from the island of Hawaii. These were described as in addition to 107 in Transfer Unit No. 1.
These memos don't show it but both Robert Shivers, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Hawaii, and Col. Kendall J. Fielder of Army Intelligence all along thought all but a few of Hawaii's Japanese population were loyal to the U.S. They foot-dragged on evacuation.
At the end of the war Shivers was able to declare in vindication that not a single act of sabotage had occurred in Hawaii, not even on the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, many rumors to the contrary. The evacuation of West Coast Japanese was wrong. The non-evacuation of Hawaii Japanese, even closer to the war front, was right.
Read the first installment
