Inside Jap-Crow Camps -The Story of the West Coast Evacuations
BURNHAM, JAMES
Inside Jap-Crow Camps —The Story of the West Coast Evacuations What a "Life"!"— Henry Luce Goes Intourist With Starry-Eyed Review of Stalin Regime By JAMES BURNHAM I don't know whether it is...
...The internees can be given worthwhile jobs while they wait for opportunity- to leave...
...This problem is a challenge...
...He knows what is involved: that his actions, any actions, are being excused in advance...
...The alleged riots a month or two back, they took place not because of alleged pro-Axis froups agitating against the loyal ones, but because many are tired of the camp administration...
...Their pay can be raised to decent levels...
...And to clinch the point that this is Pare prejudice, some of the men have since been commissioned by the'Army or offered commission for positions of great responsibility...
...kU,, * * * Tft&Administration should have known better...
...In •sort, they had excellent civic records which in pre-war days the politicians were glad to repeat to Nisei groups whose votes they sought...
...Thus, the WRA has tried to place a number of trained scientists and professional specialists through the Civil Service...
...However, it has not been explained in what ways they did this...
...Can anybody think they had there at their disposal »,me "Daily Worker" or radio-station, like Communists in the U. S., that they were able to tour the country freely, to gather public meetings, to make addresses, to use the services of collaborators aad all the other means necessary for making "appeals T" In Stalin's Russia every printed word emanates from the government, every type is under government supervision, and every type-writer is registered with the police...
...The morale of the internees ik sagging and in many camps it is positively decaying...
...Thus, when had they become Soviet citizens...
...and ether bills) which would first strip these of Japanese ancestry of citizenship, then put them simultaneously into concentration ramps for forced labor in chain gangs for subsistence for white I employers, and expulsion after the war...
...What he was trying to say is that the whole idea was wrong, just as in slavery, it was not the question of kind slave owners and cruel slave owners—the institution of slavery as such was undemocratic and immoral...
...150 miles away from Warsaw, and Alter some days earlier at Kovel, at about the same distance from Warsaw...
...During the past few months, Stalin's replies to the boot-licking campaign have been plain enough: the insolent remark that Russia has done all the fighting in the war...
...Both the assertion thaf Erlich and Alter were Soviet citizens and.the charges against them are falsehoods...
...for 22 months Stalin's G.P.U...
...Talk about expropriation of property and taking away rights without the due . process of the law, this, is one of the worst...
...For a whole year the search for a pretext to indict them went on...
...Luce, Davies and Wallace apparently imagine that when Stalin and his friends read a document like the March 29th issue of Life, they feel a warm glow of friendship and are anxious to do big favors in return...
...22 months after they were arrested...
...Again—The Polish-Soviet Riga Treaty of 1921 provided that every former subject of the Russian Empire who at the time of the treaty was residing on Polish territory had the right to apply for Soviet citizenship during a one-year period...
...He was always a loyal and affectionate family man [here a picture of Al surrounded by relatives...
...All attempts to learn whether they were alive or set failed...
...This, as we'shall see, is a serious fault of the Administration—that no agency is equipped to publicize the truth, to deflate these lies in the Hearst papers which the Army and Navy Intelligence and the FBI have repeatedly state...
...Publicity must be organized to counteract the Hearst-Legion-Rankin demagogery...
...There even are some indications that Litvinov voiced his doubts both about the procedure and the advisability of revealing the "achievements" of Soviet tribunals...
...Let us take specific examples "ftya&jation...
...From the purely legal viewpoint, it must finally be added that modern international law does not consider man as a mere accessory to the soil...
...It begins right on the cover: an admirably highlighted portrait of Uncle Joe, just the man to trust your children with, kindly, rather tired now, and stern too in a noble sort of way...
...Aad, aa a free hand is given to Stalin in world policy, as hi the gate opened wide for the conspiracy of his American Communist Party...
...Frightful •srtages exist in these skills which these people have...
...The Attorney-General was right ^ when he opposed evacuation, for the move did not help the Admin-¦haB^ra prestige in California...
...had never heard Japanese let alone Hinderstand I word before, are now ppeaking this horrible pidgin cynically «befled "Japanevacuese...
...There is no use making a lot of fuss about oppositionists who are dead anyway...
...The President has clearly stated that citizens of Japanese extraction must have equal rights, but some of the agencies apparently do not believe him...
...It rests •jreetly with the intolerable social conditions of the camps— •» privacy, no homes—one vast, demoralizing slum...
...He went into exile, leaving behind a secret network of opposition which strove for years to undermine the government...
...WHATEVER may be the motives which lead Luce, and others, toward this present policy on the Russian question, the potential political consequences of that policy are plain enough...
...If any law of modern politics is abundantly proved, it is this: licking Stalin's boots is the surest way of getting kicked...
...We do not use the rubber hose on them...
...Is he playing with the notion that the poet-war world should * be run by this country and* Russia...
...Think how we might publicize Al Capone...
...J. Edgar Hoover ought to have grounds for at least a ' $1,000,060 libel suit...
...But don't turn to Life to find out about them, because they are too unimportant even to be mentioned...
...You can see for yourself that being ruled by Stalin makes everybody happy...
...What would be the point in noting, even briefly, that certain troublesome individuals have a different - view of the events here referred to...
...Originally, they entered these camps because they were told such art act was their patriotic duty, and they were promised early relocation...
...Fundamentally, the dissatisfaction rests upon the complete demoralization of the internees...
...These replies of yesterday are rather ominous foretastes of tomorrow...
...The assertion that Erlich and Alter were Soviet citizens is a lie...
...If free speech does not matter in Russia, then there is no need to worry about it here...
...PRLICH and Alter were released in September, 1941, as Polish citizens...
...The Constitution guarantees it That's a good enough answer for any skeptic...
...Citizens who did not know a single word of Japanese are find-"f themselves speaking a peculiar pidgin...
...Only Pro-fascist reactionaries vrill help the Axis cause by labelling protests of loyal people agaihst intolerable camp conditions as really being Axis-inspired...
...Should the view advanced by the Soviet government go uncontested, the Soviet government will probably avail itself on a wide scale of the argument concerning Erlich and Alter's citizenship...
...the unilateral declaration that Russia will take over what nations and territories she wishes at the peace...
...There are too many Japs here.'' * • * 'J'BISEE' is the definite development of race-conscious servility...
...fhr earnps are composed of two distinct groups tbsj/white Ad-"Wistrators and the internees...
...The I'nited States Congress has several bills an it.s calendar (Stewart, Gillette, Holman...
...These pages of Life, circulating among more than 2 million families, call, I think, for some reflection...
...This is but the' outward sign of inward «-Americanization...
...After all, these local people never saw an Oriental in...
...According to the Molotov-Litvinov letter, they were brought to trial only in August, 1941, i.e...
...But once incarcerated, they were subject to even worse stream of abuse, attacks, and downright obscenity by the Hearst-McClatchy papers, cheap politicians, and vested interests...
...They are stimulating tendencies, which, if they develop sufficiently, will not be checked merely because a Luce may later change his mind...
...The Japanese props...
...The blame does "»t nest with the delinquent children or their parent...
...Henry Luce Goes Intourist With Starry-Eyed Review of Stalin Regime By JAMES BURNHAM I don't know whether it is true elsewhere, bat in this country big-time publishing seems to attract some very odd characters...
...Can something be done to correct this...
...They were put into them purely because of their ancestry...
...In September 1941, they were Polish citizens," and they remained P:lish citizens up to the time of their arrest, December 4. 1941...
...It must be so, Davies proves, because they themselves have said it...
...For, at any rate, they are doing a good job in ¦any instances and certainly most of these people as such were not responsible for the deliberate incitation of the hysteria '¦- which resulted in the evacuation...
...These consequences are disastrous for this country, externally and internally...
...It is obvious that the Soviet government had found no evidence whatever confirming its malicious aspersions...
...The campaign shifted into high with the publication of the March 29th issue of Life...
...WRA is conscientiously administering these camps as kindly as possible, but every one of its more'enlightened officials realizes that the very fact of incarceration is m-Ammcan.,^ . t % „ . - f\F.course, even now the Hearst papers, certain popular column-ists, a number of influential demagogues in the American Legion, and notorious reactionaries in Congress like Rankin of Mississippi and Reynolds of North Carolina are conducting campaigns of hatred...
...Assassination of a prominent Soviet leader, Sergei M. Kirov, in 1934, led to the treason trials from 1935 to 1938 during which Stalin ruthlessly eliminated the so-called Trotskyist fifth column...
...The internees never had a hearing or trial...
...Honigwell is a noted Polish lawyer, prominent in European courts for his leases in behalf of civil liberties.] MAXIM LITVINOv4 letter to William Green con-*w* cerning the execution of Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter is a diplomatic document...
...Consequently, they remained Polish citizens...
...Every single one, except for the Tadzhik, smiling or laughing, just like those smiling persons in all the paintings hung at the World's Fair Soviet Pavilion...
...The Soviet government ignored all appeals in the name of humanity to reveal at least their whereabouts...
...Why not put out sevfcral hundred thousand dollars to hire enough agents who under3tand, these people and expedite their release?—and thus isve millions of dollars spent in keeping loyal Americans, many with high skills and professional experience, most essential for war work, rotting in internment camps...
...Is his present policy a.temporary stunt, sprung from a sudden wild idea, or perhaps put over by some representative or stooge of the GPU who has got to a key place in his organiza-, tion...
...Let us not forget that frcm September, 1939, until June, 1941, Le...
...civilian agencies...
...Henry Luce calls his Fairfield County estate just The House" just that—simple and modest, like God, you might say, come to live among us...
...He was never happier than when he completed his beautiful home in the sunny South [picture, two pictures, of the Florida estate...
...In 21 answers to 21 questions, it is established that Russia's present rulers are the finest lot of honest, sincere, straightforward, realistic, cooperative individuals you would ever meet...
...If Stalin's brutality, "realism" purges, and tyranny lead to each marvelous results, then we too would be well advised to take our medicine from the same bottle...
...Besides, top-pay is only nineteen dollars a month...
...These, two countries...
...Camp councils y\.ao-power and no real control...
...The Hearst papers, we have already mentioned...
...WANT to point out that the Polish citizenship of * Poland's inhabitants has been recognized by the Versailles Treaty...
...the murder of Ehrlich and Alter...
...Stalin feels contemptuous—and justifiably so...
...How then did Erlich and Alter make their "appeals...
...their life...
...This issue is devoted entirely, 100%, to the Soviet Union...
...Before the evacuation the Nisei had the lowest delinquency and crime r»te of any racial group in the West...
...Is Rdssia democratic...
...Or is this a consistent part of Luce's doctrine of "The American Century," to be related to the big editorial a year age and the anti-British policy he has been following, ss in his Open Letter to the People of England...
...Some Chinese nationals have sent aid on the intelligent Sfomise that this internment is an example of the very bigotry *ty are fighting...
...The camps can be improved...
...that he' is being offered an absolutely free hand to do exactly what he wishes, that the public opinion of the democratic nations is being mobilized to accept any action of his,, and to blame themselves and their own governments if anything goes wrong...
...And all this time—for 21 months— they were kept in jail...
...citizens and Japanese aliens alike, in various communities, especially of the Middle West...
...Of the more hopeful trend you are probably informed since leveral progressive newspapers have commented favorably upon it...
...He never forgot his friends, and always sent the most beautiful floral tributes to their funerals [picture of the Torrio funeral procession...
...We in America can fight most effectively only when we practice Soviet Lawyers and Liars on Erlich-Alter By L R. HONIGWELL [Mr...
...Hearst, McCormick...
...I"HEN there is this business of free speech...
...Vasilevska promised to do this, yet we never learned anything from her...
...Younger children cry and ask to be returned » "America...
...They ]' Med public support...
...Will the (Civil Service act...
...Nisei Demoralized by Slums, Discrimination,Press Attacks By JOHN DIXON FORD ARIZONA.—Two counter-currents are apparent in the relocation camps...
...The text of the issue is climaxed by a long, long interview with the incredible Wisconsin butter-and-egg man, Joseph E. Davies...
...was in possession of such archives in the part of Poland the Soviet government chiseled from Hitler...
...As far as Jewish Polish citizens were concerned, the big powers provided an additional guarantee in the treaty on national minorities...
...the continuation of civil war against Mikhailovitch in Yugoslavia...
...r Despite all the talk about democracy, no one of Japanese ex-***W can hold any positions of responsibility...
...But in camp, this outstanding physician can only be a assistant to a white, third rate medic who had just finished interning at a third rate Southern hospital...
...The red tape in getting the actual release permits is often the most discouraging factor...
...Trotsky was not expelled from the Party until 1927...
...The murder apparently is presented as an "internal affair...
...management of the camps is not aimed at demoralization, bat as the officials concerned will frankly admit, they are only American versions of Gestapo concentration camps...
...The Soviet government put . . . the scaffold on the order of the day, at a time when the problem of the Russian-Polish borders is under discussion...
...When the Polish-Soviet treaty was in the making, it became inconvenient for the Soviet rulers to have jailed such prominent men for so long a time...
...For some reason or other, Henry Robinson Luce seems to have taken it into his head to sell the Stalinist regime to the American people...
...the refusal to attend the Casablanca, conference, the renewal of the fishing treaty with Japan and the grant of its accompanying rights to observation posts...
...In conception, it shows a remarkable fusion of the methods of an American advertising agency aiming to put across a new laxative, and the time-tested devices of Comintern propaganda...
...1 . It merely strengthened the native nee-fascists like the Native S°hs, Associated Farmers, and their cohorts...
...This was one of the most astonishing discoveries to me—that no one agency had the responsibility...
...The Soviet lswyers boast that there is no procrastination in the Soviet legal procedure...
...The leaders of the protest - in many instances are the very ones most active in pro-American circles...
...In January, 1940, I especially went to Lvov for an interview with the well-known writer Wanda Wasil-evska in order to ask her in behalf of Erlich's wife to find out where he was and whether he was alive...
...It is not without significance that Americans \ of, Chinese extraction are donating funds and sending messages of nlternal good will...
...But," advises fatherly Life, "probably the attitude to take toward this is not to get too excited about it...
...This view was characteristic for the times cf slavery and serfdom...
...How many Red Army units were there at Kuibyshev—far away from the front...
...Life says, "seem likely to emerge as the two greatest powers of the post-war world...
...The Gestapo had at its disposal the archives of the Polish Intelligence Organs in Warsaw, and other big Polish cities...
...In modern time?, when frontiers had to be changed, the inhabitants were granted the right of self-determination...
...They have lost the basic hope of ever living like human beings...
...The exact opposite is what happens...
...Paragraph 5 of the Polish-Soviet Treaty of July 30, 1941, plainly states: "The Soviet Government grants amnesty to all Polish citizens now detained cn Soviet territory either as prisoners of war or on other sufficient grounds, an from the resumption of diplomatic relations...
...and clear, concise explanation of the nature of his agency "In 1941 when the Commissariats of State Security and Internal Affairs were merged into the United NKV'D (a national police similar to the FBI), he became chief of the joint organization...
...Once Marx wrote that Louis Napoleon's government put the . . . bayonet on the order of the day...
...They exchanged such documents and were helping each other...
...What an irony that the Army, denounced Jfcjatte "liberals" as reactionary (and it is conservative and some •meers are reactionary), is in practice more liberal than the "utera...
...Maybe some of you have heard of the GPU and its chief, L P. Beria...
...Still, one or two sour notes can hardly be avoided...
...As things are, unfortunately, they are allowed to run around loose, with pass-key to the dynamite box and the poison-chest...
...It is here that the church committees are working most effectively—usually quietly but valiantly...
...No," remarked one official cynically,' ; "we don't use the rubber hose or lead pipes because perhaps this country has run short of rubber and lead...
...Their children, the third feneration, who...
...Like most successful American business men, he was &n enthusiastic golfer [picture on the links...
...Private organizations, especially dtsrehes, cannot work alone despite their Valiant efforts...
...The experience of Germany has shown that when the fascists are appeased, they merely become stronger...
...That is all on this unpleasant subject...
...Kamenev was executed in 1936 after trial for conspiring to kill government •leaders...
...According to this treaty, all Jews who had their permanent residence in Poland were Polish citizens...
...He is the master of Life, Time, and Fortune, a rather tall order even for God, according to some accounts...
...Ala?, after their release, Erlich and Alter enjoyed freedom only for a short period of three months...
...After all, who wants to read or look at a lot of gloomy, controversial material on purges and man-made famines and concentration camps and executions and exiles and forced labor and terror and frame-ups...
...Erlich was arrested October 2, 1939, at Brest-Litovsk...
...They resided at the Polish Embassy...
...What irony...
...Basic, too, is the failure to give any professional or administrative positions to qualified, loyal citizens of Japanese extraction in tie civil service...
...for example: "the career of Alphonse Capone is a typical American story...
...The hand of the GPU...
...During all this time no news, no gifts, no greetings from their families and friends reached them...
...sadists are trying to sell their case as a race war—and this situation plays into their hands...
...After the release Erlich and Alter "appealed" to the Soviet armed forces...
...Incidentally, people have forfeited insurance policies upon which they have paid for . yaws and upon real estate upon which they may have had only s small sum left to pay—because on $12, $16, and $19 a month (sut ef which they must buy their necessities), one cannot pay jrimiums and mortgages...
...They had the lowest We of relief cases even in the bottom of the depression...
...They did not travel...
...What is Luce up to...
...Erlich and Alter did not ask for -Soviet citizenship...
...At any rate, the unfavorable trend far outweighs' the favorable one...
...Is there religious freedom...
...This is Life's method on Russia...
...let's use portraits of the boys now in the saddle...
...Between allies, what is a little thing like free speech...
...Trtotsky, a close associate of Lenin during the Revolution, was later exiled and branded as its traitorous Benedict Arnold...
...As one child complained, "Mother, I want to go to America...
...Demoralizing confinement without privacy, without any f redom...
...are false—but which these hysteria mongers do not publish...
...True, pro-Axis individuals took advantage of the dissatisfaction to claim the agitation was for their views...
...The Labor Department flatly bars employment of citizens of feptnese extraction...
...There have been demands in the California legislature and the Oregon . senate for their deportation...
...Let's stick to the big, important things: ares and population and factories and the Red Square and oil and iron and railroads and official paintings and Old Russian architecture...
...The individuals must be cleared by the FBI, must have definite jobs offered to them...
...The WRA and the OWI occasionally argue who should, but in the meanwhile, Hearst papers and their columnists continue their way without a challenge...
...There is no comfort in predicting that Luce and the rithers will live to regret what they are doing...
...Thjs partially explains why only, one or two individuals-tried to secure injunctions against this forced evacuation...
...He was dedicated to service, and when he found that the American people needed something, he felt it his duty to supply that need...
...Treat 'em rough" is their sadistic slogan...
...Can you blame the naive local populace of small Middle Western communities for acting like fascists and threatening the relocation of even a single family of'Americans of Japanese extraction when the only stories they hear are these demagogically inspired Hearst-Rankin tales...
...Why, then, had the Erlich-Alter trial been delayed for such a long time...
...He came up the hard way, with little formal education, learning in the school of hard knocks...
...A NYONE knows that the best way to lie is to tell the * truth—just so much of the truth, of course, neatly pre-selected...
...It goes without saying that all those who did not make use of this right, by the seme token expressed their intention to remain Polish citizens...
...Jmst give a few quotations from the Constitution...
...This is proved best by the fact that the Polish government immediately protested against their arrest and did not stop inquiring about their fste^acd requesting their release...
...WORST of all, isolated, browbeaten, unhappy, and demoralized, the internees are ripe for believing in the worst rumors...
...Fcr two years two men were in jail in a foreign country...
...as fcbty will...
...I could tell many similar stories...
...The death of two internees, both of whom were not participants of'the troubles at Manzanar, would be charged as murder by the juards •normally...
...Here is another example of the waste of taxpayer's money...
...His portrait is here, too...
...And be sure not to miss the two-page spread of pictures of "a characteristic 18 of the U.S.S.R.'s 175 peoples...
...Equally gross is the accusation of Erlich and Alter having collaborated with the Polish "Intelligence Organ for active subversive work against the Soviet Union...
...Both/these "respectable" institutions hunted after documents which might discredit those who at that time were their common OS-ponents and enemies...
...Six months to a year may pass before an ipplicant gets any action...
...And it immediately found Polish citizens under its discretion...
...and the Hitler's Gestapo were collaborating closely...
...Though William Green had cabled a personal message- to Molotov, the latter sent his answer not to Green directly but through the Soviet Embassy in Washington...
...In the meanwhile, the Native Sons and certain American Legion posts are carrying their legal attacks to the United States Supreme Court to deprive ALL of ANY Oriental extraction of citizenship on the basis that this is exclusively a white .man's country...
...I HAVE reliable information that up to Hitler's assault * on Russia, no charges whatever were brought against Erlich and Alter...
...A tip-off came a couple of months ago when Time represented the undiluted Stalinist version of the internal, conflict in Yugoslavia...
...Patterson, Field, and Henry R. Luce...
...These conditions are impossible to fulfill without the active cooperation of local committees of friendly fellow Americans...
...December 4, 1941, they were arrested again...
...Not only because two diplomats—Foreign Commissar MoktOY and Ambassador Litvinov—-participated in the drafting of this letter but because actually it was addressed to the Allied governments and to public opinion the world over...
...not merely of a foolish fellow-traveler, seems directly or indirectly expressed in some of the material I have cited...
...The FBI is perhaps short of help...
...I don't like Japan...
...The \ majority are plainly afraid all will be run out of the country after tbtwar...
...It is not necessary to stress the unkind but true remark that they are urged on", by bad conscience (in letting the hysteria get to the point that evacuation resulted) which they wish to atone...
...The Constitution "makes voting universal, equal, direct and secret...
...The problem it primarily one of public relations...
...After Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, the Soviet government immediately realized the great mjstake it had made in proclaiming that Poland's existence was finished for all times...
...Delinquency has become a grave problem in camps...
...Now the government is sending social workers to "7 to check this delinquency...
...The Molotov-Litvinov letter acknowledges this by stating that "at the request of the Polish Government, Ehrlich and Alter were released in September 1941...
...First, we find an eminent physician of Japanese extraction, who before the war was the director of a major department of one of the largest hospitals on the West Coast (not a-Jlpaaese hospital, but "American...
...Both of them were arrested on Polish territory...
...Internally, the asothesis of Stalin and his regime serves to break down the home defense of democratic rights...
...inevitably results in restlessness...
...The War Relocation Authority has definitely decided to go back to its original job of releasing every one possible and resettling all...
...Its purpose is deliberate—to keep out these P«ople as long as possible...
...the G.P.U...
...They were helpless to defend themselves...
...Why bother about an analysis of political life as it is in, actuality...
...Needless to say, the international repercussion, especially in South Asia, is large...
...This evidently was done in order to emphasize the significance of the answer...
...Of course, * the Russians don't entirely agree with this idea...
...These people are already cleared by the ^ FBI and the Army and Navy Intelligence Services...
...It is not deliberate, but the effects are thssame...
...From all the evidence, they share many basic traits...
...Then there is the Communist International and its affiliated parties throughout the world...
...the announced intention to dismember Poland...
...Each takes himself with infinite seriousness, each is convinced of his Messianic destiny, each lacks utterly a sense of humor, and each is driven by a demonic urge to splash his personality far and wide in waves of printer's ink...
Vol. 26 • April 1943 • No. 16
