Special to Hearst News
Former fruit-and-vegetable stands sit empty, their piles rotted away, but a contamination is not yet scoured from our city. The Dies Committee today released a report noting 40,000 dangerous persons are still at large, more than a year after Order 9066 of the Western Defense Command routed foreign-and American-born Japs to detention centers in the central states. The report contains evidence of espionage rings in which many, if not all, Japanese “fishermen” and “truck farmers” used their merchant status in our country as a cloak for approaching strategic facilities.
Military command keeps watch on more than 100,000 evacuees now residing in detention camps, where observers have noted the detainees care little whether this country or Japan wins the war. Yet the Justice Department is still considering an appeal to release certain detainees professing “loyalty” into non-war jobs. Our Western States oppose the move with a single voice. Senator Hiram Johnson vowed yesterday the War Department will not allow resettlement of one single Jap in coastal states, pointing out that most residents here would have them shipped to Tojo after the war ends.
No Californian need be reminded of the incendiary bombs dropped on Ft. Stevens and the Pacific forests last year, or the shelling of the Goleta refinery whose flames engulfed our city in terror. The warships of Dai Nippon lurk in plain view off our coast, with pilots ready to fly on the “kamikaze wind” to meet their targets, heinously exchanging life itself for a promise of immortality. But few realize the number of such inimical persons still hiding in the Pacific states under civilian guise.
In a statement to Hearst News today, General John L. DeWitt declared, “We ignore the Dies Committee report at our peril.” Describing the adversary’s nefarious character he said, “Racial affinities are not severed by migration. The Japanese are an enemy race, and while many of those born on U.S. soil have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted.” In a recent conference with the Secretary of War, DeWitt cited undisclosed indications of a Nip conspiracy prepared for action. The fact that no violent outburst has yet taken place, he explained, is a confirming indication of such actions soon to be taken.
Whether of alien or American birth, Japs remain banned from our coast until the final surrender. The rightful place of all such persons is detention in the desolate interior. Responding to rumors of release, the Governor’s office promised full security for our citizens. “We afford no quarter to those whose presence is inimical to the public safety. Our tolerance of their kind is revoked. Their property has been dispensed, their business contracts cancelled and bank accounts forfeited. FBI agents stand ready to conduct search and seizure raids on homes or businesses suspected of harboring aliens.”
To US citizens this comes as welcome news. While Americans face death from fascist bullets overseas, the Justice Department has leaned over backward to preserve the right of free speech in wartime, opening the gates to those who would spread lies and propaganda behind the lines at home.
This report has been submitted for clearance by the Army and Navy.
The New York Times, December 13, 1941
2,541 Axis Aliens Now in Custody
Biddle Says List Includes 1,370 Japanese,
1,002 Germans and 169 Italians
Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12—Up to Thursday night the Justice Department had arrested 2,541 German, Japanese and Italian citizens in the roundup of dangerous aliens which got under way with the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States, Attorney General Francis Biddle said tonight. Of these 1,002 are Germans, 1,370 Japanese, and 169 Italians.
Mr. Biddle emphasized that although they were regarded as “dangerous to the peace and safety of the nation,” Axis subjects under arrest “represented only a small fraction of the more than 1,100,000 Axis nationals residing in the United States.”
“Arrests were limited to persons whose activities have been under investigation by the FBI for some time,” said Mr. Biddle.
Aides declared that none of the prisoners would be interned throughout the war except where there is “strong reason to fear for the internal security of the United States.”
The Justice Department issued a warning that any Japanese, German or Italian citizen found in possession of a camera, regardless of the use to which it was put, faced loss of his equipment and possible detention. Axis citizens already had been ordered not to make airplane flights of any kind.
26 MORE ALIENS TAKEN HERE
The round-up of potential saboteurs, spies and enemy aliens here brought in twenty-six more prisoners yesterday. Sixteen were German, six Japanese and five Italian. Those arrested yesterday also were taken to Ellis Island and turned over to agents of the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization. As usual, Federal Bureau of Investigation officials refused to comment.
William H. Marshall, assistant director of emigration and naturalization, said that 553 enemy aliens have been rounded up since Sunday. The figures included those seized in places adjacent to New York City. All enemy aliens were barred by the Civil Aeronautics Authority from riding in commercial, government or private airplanes.
The State Labor Department pointed out that enemy aliens were not entitled to receive unemployment insurance, as the law provides that the payments can be made only to persons “available for work.”
The large plaque in front of the Italian Building, 626 Fifth Avenue, was covered yesterday.
September 12, 1944
Dear Frida,
Thank you for sending the clippings. Forgive me for doubting you, this is terrifying news and not well known in these parts. If nothing on earth is new, these howlers are the proof. People will be made afraid at any cost.
Your Insólito remains a muddled assembly of two nations, settled for now in the house of his father, puzzling over its construction. By day we whistle “The Internationale” and reach right across the world to our comrades. My neighbor knits stockings for the orphans of Moscow. But by night the neighborhood bolts its doors and looks beneath the beds for an alien menace. Yet I stake a claim, I am here, for I must be somewhere. But only as a child it seems, struggling to understand what every wife and gentleman passing on the street seems to know by rote. Whom to love, whom to castigate.
The only certainty in my own household is: the novel is finished. I feel a peculiar sadness, like missing a lively, quarrelsome friend who has ended his long visit. These days I purse my lips at the mirror and wonder how it is that other men find first-class reasons to shave, change out of pajamas, and leave the house, practically every day.