What were MAGIC messages? and Twelve Facts You Should Know Excerpted from Chapter 10 of Silent Siege-III; Japanese Attacks on North America in World War-II; Ships Sunk, Air Raids, Bombs Dropped, Civilians Killed. by Bert Webber WEBB RESEARCH GROUP PUBLISHERS Copyright © Bert Webber 1997 From the perspective of "20-20 hindsight," of all the activities on the home front during World War II undoubtedly the least understood but the most often argued has to do with the relocation of Japanese and Americans of Japanese ancestry from critical areas of the United States, especially along the west coast. An exclusion order signed by President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, included "any and all persons" living within a prescribed military area. The order did not apply strictly to the Japanese as revisionist historians would have the public believe. "Any and all persons" included those whose countries of origin, not race were at war with the United States. The primary targets of the exclusion order were Germans, Italians and Japanese. All were directed to move out of the State of California and from the western halves of Oregon and Washington as well as from the lower one third of Arizona. Thousands complied. The order was a direct result of the American Signal Corps having broken the secret Japanese diplomatic code thus, the American government was reading what the Japanese government was advising its consulates around the world. These Top Secret messages were dubbed "MAGIC" and only a mere handful of people knew about this code-breaking feat until after the war. MAGIC messages were not made public until 1980. Therefore all books or articles written prior to 1980 about why the relocation was necessary are obsolete by error of omission. In dozens of MAGIC messages, persons who were loyal to the Imperial government were named and locations given. This data, added to other information from German and Italian sources, caused American government agents to swoop down on hundreds of German, Italian and Japanese on the day war was declared (December 8, 1941) with named warrants to arrest these persons. Each person was given an individual hearing. As a result of the hearing, the person was either paroled and permitted to rejoin his/her family, or sent to an Internment Camp to be deported. The Japanese had a difficult time when many of them tried to move from the coastal areas to other parts of the country due to war time hysteria. Others had no money for such a major move because all Japanese funds had been "frozen." In addition, thousands of Japanese, nationals as well as Japanese-Americans (U.S. citizens), were having severe difficulty recovering from the depression and were jobless or worked in underpaying jobs. Of particular concern to the U.S. government was the fact - which many people today may be learning here for the first time-is that all Japanese children were required to be registered at birth with the nearest Japanese Consulate. When the boys reached age 17 years of age, they were required to join the Japanese army or perform other military service as directed including being a spy. This was because these young men were dual-citizens of Japan, by decree, and of the U.S. because they were born in the United States. This caused a great dilemma for these young men and for the U.S. war time government. Many of these men spoke or wrote little or no Japanese, had never been out of the United States and were thoroughly "Americanized." But others, particularly those whose parents had sent them to Japan for their education on coming back home - to the U.S. - were more Imperial minded than their parents. Question in the minds of U.S. authorities: Would these men side with Japan in the event of war or side with their birth land, the United States? As history shows, there were lots of each. When it became apparent that voluntary removal from the military areas could not be accomplished for a wide variety of reasons, the United States reluctantly found itself in the housing business. We will not treat the matter of the temporary relocation of persons of Japanese descent in any detail here for that has been widely covered by a number of authors. Unfortunately, as careful scrutiny reveals, the majority of books on this subject are attempts to rewrite the history of what truly happened in a huge effort to make the United States war time government look bad. Some books that are known for historical accuracy are cited here. Here are indisputable facts backed by original documents available in the National Archives and in the Lillian Baker Collection at Hoover Institution on War Revolution and Peace at Stanford University: The moving into the Relocation Centers, which were operated by a civilian agency of the government, was never required of those of Japanese descent. So found the U.S. Supreme Court: the order to leave the coast was only an "exclusion order" and "reasonable in war time" ruled the court. (Korematsu v. U.S. Oct. 1944 Term). The decision of the male head of each Japanese household determined for the entire family if the family would move away from the west coast on its own, or accept the government invitation to sit out the war in a Relocation Center where there was free housing, free beds, free food and wages for work if one wanted to work. Some revisionist writers claim the only luggage that could be taken to Assembly Centers by those who decided to accept the government's invitation was "what they could carry with them." But that only half states the facts. It is true only "hand luggage" could go with the folks on the chartered Greyhound busses, but all of their other goods, regardless of size, was either stored in warehouses for the duration of the war, paid for by the government, or shipped to the people at government expense where ever they settled. There are often stories that the Japanese in the Relocation Centers "lost their educational privileges." However, every one of the ten Relocation Centers had public schools, teachers, books and all school activities, especially in the junior and senior high grades as found in the city schools from where they transferred. At the college level, students who had been admitted to west coast colleges or universities were transferred to midwest and eastern schools and studied their way through the war in these schools. Over 4,000 college age students never saw the inside of a temporary Relocation Center. Regarding the public health: Each Relocation Center was a "city" unto itself, and had fully equipped and staffed hospitals and clinics and dental facilities. During the war years, the live birth rate in the Relocation Centers was the highest in all of the United States. As to "concentration camps" in the United States, which some people claim to have existed, there were none. In fact, Japanese from the midwest and east coasts who were not affected by the west coast exclusion, asked to be admitted and were accepted. Barbed Wire, Guard Towers and Military Police? There were never any Military Police inside the Relocation Centers unless called in by the Camp Director if there was need for them. The only fence at the property line was a common cattle-guard to keep out the neighboring farmer's cows. Fireguard towers at the Relocation Centers were unarmed, were used only by fire-watchers as all of the buildings had wood frames, walls, roofs. Young men who would not sign the loyalty oath, many of whom were trouble makers, petitioned the U.S. to be sent to Japan to fight for Japan against the United States. These men were transferred to the Segregation Center at Tule Lake, California to await expatriation. It was only at Tule Lake where there was barbed wire and guard towers, necessities due to the classification of the persons therein. There were so many that a special Act of Congress was passed to allow these dissidents to renounce their American citizenship then be interned and held for expatriation to Japan. Due to a shortage of ships, these men did not reach Japan until well after the war was ended. (Many later petitioned the United States to return to the U.S. claiming various reasons for not liking post war Japan. The United States let many come "home.") In cases where an alien enemy declared for the Emperor (either the man or woman of the house) or had been named on a warrant as an undesirable for any number of reasons, these families were kept together and transferred to the family Internment Camp at Crystal City, Texas. At Crystal City, families of German, Italian and Japanese lived together in the same camp - equal treatment under the law. These families were all deported at the end of the war. People living in the Relocation Centers could leave on pass, be granted a leave-of-absence for work, or leave permanently after they signed a loyalty oath to the United States and found work and/or sponsorship. Thousands left. The 442nd Regimental Combat team included volunteers from the Relocation Centers. But the numbers of these men were so few (most of the young men preferred to sit out the war in the Relocation Centers), that the group was amalgamated into the 100th Infantry Division - Hawaii National Guard then at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. Then the Divisions' designation was changed to become the 442nd. Although a number of writers declare the 442nd to have been an "all Japanese" unit, the roster contained Caucasians as well as Japanese. There is great confusion among the public between the word "internment" and the word "relocation." They are not the same. To be "interned," one must be a national - an alien enemy - of a country with which the U.S. government is at war. The law, nearly 200 years old, prohibits any American citizen from being "interned." Those interned will be deported as deportation is the second half of how the word "internment" is defined. In World War II, there were no "internees" among the Japanese-Americans regardless of how hard historical revisionists strive to make it so. There are dozens of other facts too numerous to include here.

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