Earl Warren

Exerpts from "The Unacknowledged Lesson: Earl Warren and the Japanese Relocation Controversy"  

Gov. Earl Warren

Essay by G. Edward White

Published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 1979

     President Franklin Roosevelt signed the executive order creating the relocation centers, but the principal architects of the relocation program were John J. McCloy, assistant secretary of war, and three U. S. Army officers, Major General Alien W. Gullion, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, and Colonel Karl R. Bendesten. In developing the relocation policy these men had the full cooperation and support of Earl Warren, who held the positions of attorney general and governor of California during the Second World War.

     In 1971 Earl Warren , having retired as chief justice of the Supreme Court two years earlier, began writing his memoirs. I was a law clerk to Warren at the time, and he asked for my reactions to drafts of the memoirs as they were prepared. Warren's memoirs, anonymously edited, eventually were published in 1977, three years after his death. For the most part, they were the conventional reminiscences of a public figure. Warren revealed almost no information that was not already available, and in some instances, such as his account of the Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the famous 1954 case invalidating racial segregation in the public schools, he gave a less than full description of events.

     One episode of Warren's career, however, received significant, although sparse, attention in his memoirs—the Japanese relocation decision. Warren said that he had "since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens." He then articulated his guilt feelings in terms that, for a father of six and a devoted family man, were vividly personal: "Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends, and congenial surroundings, I was conscience stricken." On reflection, Warren believed that "[i]t was wrong to react so impulsively, without positive evidence of disloyalty. . . ."

Source: http://www.vqronline.org/articles/1979/autumn/white-unacknowledged-lesson/

Congressional Gold Medal

Group raising funds for Japanese-American veterans of World War II to attend medal ceremony

HONOLULU — A veterans' group has launched a fundraising campaign to help Japanese-American veterans of World War II travel to Washington, D.C. for a ceremony awarding them the Congressional Gold Medal.

Christine Sato-Yamazaki, the chairwoman of a coalition of 25 Japanese-American veteran and civic organizations called the National Veterans Network, said Friday the group wants to minimize expenses for the veterans and ensure they enjoy a "first class celebration" in the nation's capital. The group plans to hold a gala dinner and a memorial service around the time the medal is awarded.

So far, 370 veterans from 30 states have registered to go, Sato-Yamazaki said. The number includes 101 veterans from Hawaii. The youngest of the veterans are in their mid-80s. Many are now in their 90s.

Congress last year voted to award the medal collectively to those who served in the 100th Infantry Battalion, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and Military Intelligence Service during the war. President Barack Obama signed the legislation shortly afterward.

The medal is due to be presented this year at a ceremony hosted by House Speaker John Boehner. The House has yet to set a date for the event.

The veterans volunteered to go to war even though they were branded "enemy aliens" and rendered ineligible for the draft. Some, particularly those from the mainland, enlisted while their families were detained in internment camps. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which absorbed the 100th Infantry Battalion, saw some of the most brutal fighting in the war. By the end of the conflict, it had become the most highly decorated military unit in U.S. history for its size and length of service.

The National Veterans Network plans to organize a memorial service at the World War II memorial in Washington both for those who died in the line of duty and those who have died since the war.

Information on donating can be found at the group's website, http://www.nationalveteransnetwork.com.