Racial Hysteria for Profit
Racial Hysteria for Profit Anti-Japanese Discrimination on the West Coast By Larry Tajiri THE recent denunciation by Harold L. Ickes of Mayor LaGuardia and Governors Bricker and Edge for their...
...team in Hawaii wot tomplomentary...
...But behind the racebaiters stand the economic groups whose opposition to the Japanese-American on competitive grounds provides the fluid for the torches of the intolerant...
...The Japanese Problem League's record to date ihas been one of sustaining the effort to cast suspicion* and create hatred against an American citizen group on the basis of their racial ancestry...
...Meanwhile, county farmer groups have also organized, with an ever present threat of extralegal action to enforce their demands...
...And such is the profit motive behind tke pressures against the return of the evacuees...
...The shock-troops of this campaign of racial intolerance are a combination of newly-arrived pressure and propagandist groups, seeking to exploit war-sharpened prejudices against persons of Japanese ancestry, and svch old-line "white supremacy" fraternities as the Native Sons of the Golden West, who only recognize the native-born of white parents as eligible for membership...
...The one thousand Japaneseoperated retail produce stands in Los Angeles county did a $26,000,000 business in the twelve months before Pearl Harbor...
...Tenney, now a candidate for the Democratic nomination for United States Senator against the incumbent, Sheridan Downey, was the first California politician to make a public address answering Secretary Ickes in behalf of the West Coast's "professional race mongers...
...Ickes, he* served notice that it ia leaving racial fascism w the reactionary opposition...
...This battalion, according to the War Department, has suffered casualties amounting to 40 percent of its original strength...
...Four of the five major Republican candidates for United States Senator in the impending California primaries have made public statements against Japanese-Americans, while the antiNew Deal opposition to Senator Downey in the Democratic race has also Jap-baited American citizens...
...They are made second-class citizens...
...The Japanese Problem League reports that all its incorporators hsve been sctive in the effort to keep the Japanese (and JapaneseAmericans) from being returned to the Pseiflc coast...
...These papers have revived the bogey of the yellow peril and have sent it forth, like some jaundiced ghost, to stir the fears and hates of the people of the Pacific coast...
...The wartime cost of living spiral has boosted the profits of those who took over farms and businesses vacated by the evacuees to figures far in excess to prewsr estimates...
...Most Japanese-Americana before evacuation were engaged in the production, shipping, processing and marketing of farm crops...
...Ten thousand of them are fighting in Italy and ia the Pacific on our side...
...A similar proposal, forever prohibiting an Americsn of Japanese race from owning land in the state, was passed by the Arksnsaa Legislature in 1943, while Arizona's Legislature last yesr passed a law prohibiting persons of Japanese ancestry from engaging in any business transaction, including snch simple operations as the purchase of a newspaper or of a toothbrush in a drug store...
...be stampeded Into undemocratic, bestial, inhuman action and will not be coerces into an instrument of revenge or racial warfare...
...This initiative, proposed for .submittal on the November ballot, was recently given title and petitions are being prepared...
...Its chairman is a renegade liberal, State Senator Jack B. Tenney of Los Angeles, who achieved political notoriety as chairman of the California "Little Dies" Committee...
...It ia no coincidence, then, thst much of the pressure, aa well as the campaign fund, for the movement to continue the present restrictions of the civil liberties of Japanese-Americans, comes from California's industrial agriculture...
...The Pacific Coast Japanese I'roblern, League, incorporated in California in July, 1943, boasts that it is "the outgrowth of a stste-wide conference . . . and is sponsored by more then fifty organisations," and has announced that it will open regional offices in the principal cities of the western ststes, while local chapters sre already being formed in many California counties...
...The great majority of these businesses were taken over by other operators when the evacuees departed, although a few are atill being operated for Japanese-Americans via absentee management...
...John R. Lechner, executive director of the American Educational League, is probably the busiest of the racists, and has made a career of informing the American public regarding the domestic "Jap menace...
...California race-baiters have begun to package their prejudices for export, and have already sent out advance agents into the Middle West and East...
...TlME was whoa a 1st of Americans were seared by the campaign, lad by the Hearst areata, to arouse whites to the "yellow menace...
...The Mayor of New York h« learned in the past two weeks that New York liberals do not hold with his sudden excursion into race-baiting...
...The Japanese Exclusion Association of Los Angeles last week began the circulation of initiative petitions which would tighten the Anti-Alien Land Law of California, prohibiting "aliens ineligible to citizenship" from ownership or enjoyment of real property...
...He ia editor of the Pacific Cititen, published at 25 Second South Street, Salt Lake City, Utah...
...Since the California anti-alien statute already prohibits alien Japanese and all alien Asiatics except Chinese from land ownership, the circulation of the petitions will serve as a maneuver to keep the "Jap issue" before the electorate until November...
...Sheriff Biscailuz, incidentally, has sent his county deputies across two states and 700 miles to the State of Utah to snoop on Japanese-Americans...
...Ten thousand Japanese-Americans in the U. S. Army are fighting in Italy against the Nazis and in the Pacific against Tojo's men...
...The Mayor must also be pained to learn what strange bedfellows he has on the West Coast...
...In principle, this kind of racism ia just aa bad as anti-Semitism, or Jim Crowism...
...It haa no justification—JapaneseAmericans have been aa loyal aa any other minority group...
...The answer to this contradiction may be found in the fact that tht economic petition of Japtnem...
...Another example of naisaace legislation, exploiting California race tensions, is a proposed initiative measure to prohibit Americans of Japanese ancestry from owning fand or fishing boats, and providing prison penalties for anyone engaging in business relations with a person of Japanese ancestry...
...Of the Japanese-Americans at home, Secretary Ickes has stated that "there hat not been one proven -cate of sabotage on the part of a JapaneseAmerican since the war began...
...Subscription rate, $2.50 a year— and worth it...
...keynoter, on down through the rank and fil« of anti-administration campaigners are united in their effort to make this "Jap problem" a New Deal baby...
...The Tolan Committee's fourth interim report disclosed that farmers of Japanese ancestry in California in 1941 produced 205,889 acres of commercial truck crops, amounting to-42 per cent of the state's acreage, and valued at between $30,000,000 and $35,000,000...
...Truck vegetables produced by Japanese farmers in 1941 were valued at more than $40,000,000 for the entire coast, while the wholesale distribution of truck crops brought Japanese produce houses in the Los Angeles srea alone an approximate $26,000,000...
...Amtricant on tho W*tt Coast teas largely competitive in character, wkiU that of the 160,000 Japanese- A met...
...Many have died*at Cassino and on the Anzio beachhead while their brothers here suffer persecution...
...The profits of evacuation for competitive economic groups through the wholesale removal by military dictum of all persons of Japanese ancestry are already enormous, since the annual business done by Japanese and Japanese-Americans in the agricultural and allied industries alone in the year 1941 totaled more than $300,000,000...
...The campaign against the Japanese Americans has been given editorial leadership and direction by the Hearst press, the McClatchy newspapers of central California and by the labor-hating Los Angeles Times...
...These organizers include Judge Russ Avery of Los Angeles, president of the Pacific League whose aims and purposes are similar to that of the new organization...
...Walter H. Odemar and Eldred L. Meyer, grand trustee and past grand president of the Native Sons...
...N Aa we go to press: The head of a Dies subcommittee, California Congressman John M. Costello, who raised a hullabaloo about JapaneseAmericans, seeking to stir up west coast hatreds, was decisively beaten in the primaries this week...
...The Administration, through Mr...
...Since the evacuation in 1942 of 112,000 persons of Japanese parentage from the West Coast area various groups and individuals using racist slogans have carried on a persistent campaign in the evacuated area to obstruct the government's present program of freeing the evacuees for resettlement in the Middle West and East, and to prevent the return of Japanese-Americans to their former homes, farms, and businesses in the Pacific states...
...1 signer, lending a quasi-official note to the campaign...
...The annual business of JapaneseAmericans in the flower industry has been estimated at $120,000,000...
...Clyde C. Shoemaker, former deputy district attorney of Los Angeles County, and Frederic T. Woodman, former Mayor of Los Angelea...
...The racists, like the Native Sons whose legal action to disenfranchise Japanese-Americans was refused review last year by the Supreme Court, have been in the forefront in the current campaign in California against the Japanese-Americana...
...And it is growing...
...Political reactionaries from Governor Warren, the G.O.P...
...Now China ia an ally in the war, and the Japanese-Americans have become the bogey-men against whoso evil machinations wo are warned...
...The American Educational League, Inc., of Los Angeles has been one of the most active organizations fn the fight for Japanese-American exclusion...
...The Chinese exclusion laws have been repealed...
...Racial Hysteria for Profit Anti-Japanese Discrimination on the West Coast By Larry Tajiri THE recent denunciation by Harold L. Ickes of Mayor LaGuardia and Governors Bricker and Edge for their "racialism" against loyal JapaneseAmericana, and his vigorous statement in San Francisco on April 13 against "professional race mongers" who oppose the release of evacuees from war relocation camps, have called national attention to the problems faced by Americans of Japanese ancestry...
...Governors Bricker and Edge have come in for »n assist, but a most amazing an unexpected convert has been Mayor LaGuardia...
...The Home Front Commandos, Inc., of Sacramento, another organization opposing the return of JapaneseAmericans to California, has been carrying on an extensive drive, using pamphlets and circulars, and has initiated a memorial to the United States Congress which contains the suggestion that "no person of Japanese extraction shall be permitted to perform any labor upon any farm, the products of which are placed on the public market for human consumption...
...California politicians consider racism a political asset, as long as discrimination is directed at JapaneseAmericans...
...His pamphlet, Playing With Dynamite, has been circulated in Great Meadows, New Jersey, where five evacuee Japanese workers were forced to leave a farm by a vigilante group Other new coast groups bear such concise names as "No Japs, Inc...
...Bat American citizens of Japaneae aacestry are discriminated against, their constitutional rights violated...
...It is still the fountain head of the propaganda of race hatred that is disseminated in western communities...
...That a "Jap" is not a "Jap" when he is an American has been proven time and again since Pearl Harbor...
...The Joint Immigration Committee, consisting of the American Legion, the State Grange and the American Federation of Labor, has been in the forefront of racist attacks upon Califomians of Oriental uncestry for more than three decades...
...Todsy s head of lettuce which coat a nickel in 1941 brings a dime sad more...
...A battalion of these Japanese-Americans, a part of the famous 34th Division, spearheaded the first drive on Cassino, and is today in action on the Anzio beachhead...
...Jap Crow is the substitute of the California demagogue for Jim Crow...
...Rscial hysteria is being whipped up for economic reasons, for profit Larry Tajiri ia an American citizen of Japanese descent...
...Ben S. Beery, Los Angeles attorney and prominent Legionnaire...
...Cslifornis rejected his racism...
...Henry Kearns, president of the State Junior Chamber of Commerce...
...These anti-Japanese petitions were launched in Los Angeles, with Sheriff Eugene Biscailux of Los Angeles being photographed as the No...
...Secretary Ickes' recent forthright statements on behalf of loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry his sharpened the issue...
...In past weeks Lechner has spoken in Detroit, Cincinnati, Denver, Salt Lake City, Spokane and Boise, opposing the Administration's handling of JapaneseAmericans...
...These emissaries of ill-will have found willing aides in suth expert hate mongers as Martin Dies, J. Parnell Thomas, Clare Hoffman and the lately-rejected Joe Starnes...
...The Administration has indicated that it i* going forward with its present program of rectifying some of the excesses of racial evacuationSecretary Ickes promised in San Francisco that the War Relocation Authority would not "under my direction...
...The law aimed at the prevention of the resettlement of evacuees in the state, was later invalidated by the Arizona Supreme Court in a test esse brought by a Japanese-American whose agricultural operations were endangered because of his inability to purchase seeds for planting...
...In their efforts to create a public atmosphere of hate against this American minority, the coast's hat* mongers have relied on racist themes, echoing General DeWitt's "a Jap's a Jap" justification for his military evacuation order...
...But new organizations for racist propaganda are today threatening its leadership...
...Carey McWilliams has pointed out that some of the very groups in California which urged the wholesale evacuation of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast were opposing, at the same time, any evacuation from Hawaii...
...Than the Chinese were the main "menace...
Vol. 27 • May 1944 • No. 21
