Professor Caudill teaches economics at Auburn University and Ms. Hill is an undergraduate student.
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, approving the en masse relocation of Japanese and Japanese-American citizens from the West Coast into the interior of the country. The order was signed amid the hysteria following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The reason given at the time for the evacuation was concern about espionage, or so-called “fifth-column,” activities of Japanese and Japanese-Americans on the Coast. But according to the government’s own intelligence service, this concern over espionage was misplaced. That is, concern for national security was not the true reason for interning Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II. Instead, this internment was motivated by nothing other than interest-group politics.
When war erupted in Europe, FDR placed J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI in charge of the nation’s internal security. Before the attack on Pearl, the FBI and Naval Intelligence maintained lists of alien suspects. Though the lists contained 250 to 300 suspects, only 40 or 50 were considered real threats.[1] Within two days of the attack on Pearl Harbor, all of the suspects and many others were detained. The FBI contended that these measures adequately controlled any threat of espionage, and that the relocation of Japanese and Japanese-Americans was unnecessary.[2] As additional evidence that security was not the reason for the internment, note that no mass detainment of people of Japanese ancestry occurred in Hawaii, which is closer to Japan and home to many Japanese and Japanese-Americans. In Hawaii, only suspect Japanese individuals were incarcerated. If espionage was not the reason for the evacuation in California, what was the reason? The answer: special-inte...
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