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Declassified Documents Throw Light on Ethnic Japanese in WWII

Submitted by HPI on Sat, 11/30/2013 - 04:04

David Lowman, retired National Security Agency official, testified before the House Judiciary Committee in 1984 on the ties that bound U.S.-based ethnic Japanese during WWII to Japan and shared some reasons why their loyalty was questioned by the government.

His testimony brought to light internal communications within the Japanese government that were necessarily classified during the War.

There is still much misunderstanding about what happened back then. Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie (D) made the claim in a talk before constituents the night before he signed the homosexual marriage bill on November 13 that "not one" of the ethnic Japanese kept captive at Honouliuli Camp on Oahu during WWII were guilty of anything that would justify their being deprived of their freedom. They were there, said the governor, solely because of their race.

Representative Colleen Hanabusa (D) told Bill O'Reilly of Fox News that Americans of Japanese ancestry were interned during the war "for no reason other than the fact of where their parents may have been born or where they may have been born," again promoting a distorted view of what the situation actually was.

But if racial prejudice was the reason for Japanese troubles in America, why did ethnic Chinese not suffer the same fate? Or Filipinos? Clearly there was more in play here than racial prejudice, but no one wants to go there.

Lowman testified,

Everyone on MAGIC distribution during 1941 realized that what was being seen was only a portion of the actual flow. We had a small window on a very large scene. Nonetheless, what was available was sufficient to form a reasonably accurate picture of the scope, nature, and success of the Japanese Government's espionage activities on the West Coast, as well as its involvement with Japanese-Americans and resident Japanese nationals.

Lowman went on to testify that ethnic Japanese in the U.S. were looked upon by the Japanese government as family:

To assist in this massive information-gathering project, agents were to be recruited. The agents were to include both resident-Japanese nationals and American citizens of Japanese ancestry, as well as other ethnic groups. In recruiting Japanese second generation and resident nationals, Tokyo warned to use the utmost caution, lest "our people in the United States" be subject to persecution.

Nor was this an isolated quote on the subject of the view Japan had of ethnic Japanese in the U.S.:

A paternalistic attitude by the Japanese Government toward people of Japanese ancestry living in the United States is evident in many messages. They are referred to as "our second generation," "our resident nationals," and "our people." There are discussions about propaganda broadcasts and Japanese language newspapers -- which, incidentally, were subsidized by Japan and depended on the Japanese news service, Domei, for their information. There were discussions about maintaining close relations with various organizations and societies all designed to keep the ethnic Japanese in the United States informed of the Tokyo point of view, and for the purpose of collecting intelligence from them.

David Lowman's 1984 testimony before Congress is lengthy: 16,761 words, equivalent to more than 11 in-depth newspaper articles. Read it here.

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