Review: In Defense of Internment

R. A. Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Mon Aug 9 06:24:14 PDT 2004


<http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/malkin1.html>

Townhall.com


 In Defense of Internment
The Case for "Racial Profiling" in World War II and the War on Terror

By Michelle Malkin

Review by Peter-Christian Aigner
There is no such thing as a "good decision" in war. Nations do what they
must in order to survive. That sometimes means doing things that would
otherwise be considered intolerable - suspending habeas corpus, for
example, or using atomic weapons. While progressives don't favor this view,
it is gifted to the critics to be idealists. Leaders must be utilitarian.

 This is the starting point from which Michelle Malkin offers her qualified
defense of the internment of the Japanese during World War II. In a
nutshell, she argues that the historians who take a moral purist's stand on
Japanese internment forget that FDR and the generals could not see into the
future. Theirs was not an immoral choice that stemmed from "wartime
hysteria" or "racism" (at least primarily), but a responsible action based
on solid intelligence, constitutional legality, and tough deliberation.

 While liberals will no doubt scream over this thesis, Malkin is no Ann
Coulter controversialist. She makes a clear, reasoned, straightforward
argument, picking apart the standard orthodoxy with methodical care. It is
not iconoclasm for mere shock effect, though the book is quite shocking.

 Popular films such as Welcome to the Paradise and Snow Falling on Cedars
leave the impression that Japanese internment was a cruel manifestation of
bigotry, a groundless, irrational response to the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
According to this reading of history, 120,000 scared patriotic innocents
were rounded up and forced into "concentration camps," where they
languished for the rest of the war under the heartless gaze of armed guards.

 Little of this is true.

Less than two-thirds of the 112,000 removed from the West Coast were
Japanese Americans; the rest were "enemy aliens," not citizens. This was
not the first time internment or relocation had been used; it was a
centuries-old, worldwide practice. The Alien Enemies Act enabled the
executive of the United States to make such decisions in 1798, and that law
remains on the books today. During World War I, 6,300 European resident
aliens were interned; during World War II, almost 15,000 were. More would
have been relocated, but the government estimated that 53 million Americans
were of Axis-European heritage. Such an undertaking would have been
impossible, as the total U.S. population at this time was just over 100
million.

 Instead, the government instituted curfews, forced aliens to register with
local authorities, censored foreign-language newspapers, and excluded
potential subversives from sensitive areas. Thousands of nationalists were
deported, and thousands more were sent to relocation centers with the
Japanese.

 But the most important factor in the decision to relocate and eventually
intern the Japanese was an espionage network discovered in the western
United States. As part of MAGIC, a top-secret project, over 5,000 cables
were decrypted by the finest code-breakers in the government - just a
sliver of the communication estimated overall. These messages revealed a
clear, extensive, pro-Axis mole system in key industrial and military areas
in California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii. In addition, investigators
found detailed maps of Oahu in the cockpits of downed Japanese fighter
planes in Pearl Harbor. The Japanese Empire relied on internal agents in
the Philippines and other territories it conquered as well.

This information was released in 1977, and though it was just as damning as
the Venona papers released eighteen years later, it has been greatly
ignored by current-day historians. Malkin apparently wants to reverse that
neglect: she includes the documents that have been declassified in her
appendix, which makes up half the book. Her point-by-point deconstruction
of the racist-paranoid school on internment is also well-footnoted, and
full of credible and well-respected sources. Detractors will have a hard
time shooting her out of the sky on the basis of her non-academic
credentials.

The connections Malkin makes between Japanese internment and "racial
profiling" during the War on Terror will inevitably enrage critics. While
Malkin does not make any serious policy recommendations, she does use these
topics to remind us that the inalienable rights listed by the Founders "do
not appear in random order." Liberty and the pursuit of happiness cannot be
secured and protected unless life is secured and protected as well.

In Defense of Internment is a thoughtful book, recommended for persons
concerned about both historical truth and civil liberties alike.


Peter-Christian Aigner is an intern at the Heritage Foundation, and
recently received his M.A. in American History from Fordham University, the
Bronx.

Further Reading:
"Current Lessons from the Japanese-American Relocation of WWII."
Townhall.com chat with Ken Masugi of The Claremont Institute, 11/14/01


-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'





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