Spies Like Us : For a Moment or Two, Imagine Yourself a Relocation Camp Inmate . . .

In November, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the Japanese-American citizens sent to internment camps during World War II may sue the government for billions of dollars in lost property. A ruling is expected by July.

“It would be good for the United States generally, and I think it would be good from the standpoint of the Japanese-Americans themselves, to be scattered over a much wider area and not to be bunched up in groups as they were along the coast. . . . (WRA relocation helps solve) a serious racial problem by having them scattered throughout the United States instead of bunched up in three or four states.”

--Dillon S. Myer, press conference, May 14, 1943

All “bunched up” before the roundup into relocation camps, both Issei and Nisei had been an undesirable presence on the Pacific slope. War Relocation Authority Director Myer sympathized with his beset fellow whites, who were also not incidentally voters, and moved to relieve them of their problem, pretty much as Andrew Jackson had taken pity on the white Georgians a century earlier and removed the Cherokee Indians from their midst. But in the 1940s there was no Great American Desert for a collective dump, and in any event this push had to be from the West eastward. Myer and his modern crew of removers thus had to reverse the historic pattern by scattering their unwanted charges back across the continent. . . .

For a moment or two, imagine yourself a relocation camp inmate who has filed for leave clearance on Form WRA-126, executed in duplicate, accompanied by Form WRA-26, executed in sextuplicate. Today your turn for a leave-clearance interview comes up, breaking the monotony of camp life. Among the questions you answer under oath are these:

Before questioning you any further, we would like to ask if you have any objection to signing a Pledge of Allegiance to the United States.

Will you assist the general resettlement program by staying away from large groups of Japanese?

Will you try to develop such American habits which will cause you to be accepted readily into American social groups?

Are you willing to give information to the proper authorities regarding any subversive activity . . . both in the relocation centers and in the communities in which you are resettling?

Would you consider an informer of this nature an “Inu” (stool pigeon)?

Will you conform to the customs and dress of your new home?

Have you been associated with any radical groups, clubs or gangs which have been accused of antisocial conduct within the center?

Can you furnish any proof that you have always been loyal to the United States?

After you have said yes, that you will pledge allegiance, will stay away from concentrations of “Japanese,” and will become an informer, you wait and hope another inmate has not already performed a like service for the Administration by saying something real or imaginary about you, hope you are not in bad for other reasons with the project director and his staff, and hope the FBI does not know of your existence. It will after your application.

You have been “cleared” and have a job in Chicago, a favorite city of “resettlers.” With a grant of $25 and a one-way coach ticket you speed to your WRA-approved destination. Once there you report your arrival within 24 hours to Director Myer, as you have pledged, and confirm your address. Meanwhile the FBI has two copies of the Form WRA-26 you filled out in sextuplicate and has sent the information thereon out to the nearest SAC (Special Agent in Charge), in your case the SAC of the Chicago field office.

In Chicago your first residence is a hostel, Issei-organized and WRA-approved, in a run-down neighborhood just north of the Loop District. Though you may not know it as you mind your own business, refrain from fraternizing with the other 19 residents, who have also promised to be informers, and only have a relative or close camp friend visit on Sundays, you still are under close observation. As Chicago SAC S. J. Drayton advised J. Edgar Hoover on Sept. 27, 1943, his “confidential informants” had turned up “no evidence that this place has been used as a center for subversive activity among the Japanese. . . . However, it is a potential meeting place for subversive activity and will be closely observed and the Bureau advised accordingly.”

Though a citizen who has been “cleared,” you have been told where to live, with whom to associate, how to dress and act, and what to do for a livelihood. You have been and will continue to be spied upon.

Richard Drinnon is a professor of history at Bucknell University. This is adapted from “Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism,” by Richard Drinnon, to be published this week by the University of California Press.

Copyright 1987 by the Regents of the University of California.