responses to the McCloy memo

by Cliopatria

Commander Will Hopwood has been an indefatigable, if frequently repetitive, defender of Michelle Malkin and the rightness of the wartime removal of Japanese Americans. I am oddly indebted to him for his commentary in response to my latest CLIOPATRIA post, since his combination of scurrilous attack and selective quotation goes far towards proving my point about the reflexes of the Michelle Malkin supporters.

There is nothing terribly mysterious about the circumstances of my locating what I call the "McCloy memo." In fact, I first came across the document sometime in 2000-2001. At the time, I was researching other material. I scanned quickly through the main text of the memo amid the other papers I found in Patterson's files, decided it was nothing important, and filed it away. It was only in the last weeks that I came across the memo in my files, noticed the postscript, and realized its importance.(What was relevant to my researches in 2001, and what I did put in a footnote to BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT, was that it was Patterson who wrote Eleanor Roosevelt in mid-1942 to forbid her from visiting the camps, as she had asked to do--evidently because he believed that the Japanese Americans were the enemy).

Equally revelatory is Commander Hopwood's refusal to deal with the text and meaning of the document, or to explain what McCloy could have meant by it. He instead cites Secretary of War Stimson's memoirs as authority for the proposition that military necessity dictated removal. Significantly, he deliberately fails to disclose the sentence immediately following the passage he cites:

"More than that, anti-Japanese feeling on the West Coast had reached a level which endangered the lives of all such individuals: incidents of extra-legal violence were increasingly frequent."

He goes on to say that "It remained a fact that to loyal citizens this forced evaucation was a personal injustice, and Stimson fully appreciated their feelings." Now, it is possible for thoughtful persons to debate the propositions raised in Stimson's self-exculpatory narrative, and how much weight to give them. However, Commander Hopwood's selective citation amounts to a distortion of the evidence, and a demonstration of why the arguments he presents cannot be trusted.

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More Comments:

William Hopwood - 9/30/2005

Mr.Hayhow:

Thanks for the observation. It was my error. I should have done what you said and will if future occasion presents. WJH

Van L. Hayhow - 9/29/2005

In the legal business what you did with the quote is known as "pulling a cite." It it not considered a bad thing to do per se, but it is considered dangerous for the exact reason that was demonstrated here. You took the quote from a source you regarded as accurate but did not note you took it from a secondary source. When someone reads the orignal and finds additional comments you can look bad. If you had cited the source as the CJ's book, you would not look bad.

John H. Lederer - 9/28/2005

I don't know the facts of the Japenese internment. My interest is mild.

But I can tell you this from a very detached view. The controversy sharply reduces my regard for historians. Some in the debate cannot seem to recite the facts in support of their position without accompanying it with an attack on the person, ranging from snide to vehement.

It sure lowers the tone of the debate.

William Hopwood - 9/28/2005

Prof. Robinson:

Re your attack on my integrity.

With regard to the passage from SecWar Stimson's memoir which I quoted in part, I seem to have been in good company. I took it from the book by the late Chief Justice Rehnquist, "All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime." The Chief Justice did not seem to feel it important to include the additional passages which you quote in your latest post, and I was unaware of them.

However, the passages you quote do not negate the fact that the evacuation decision was a military one primarily for military reasons. In that connection I think it relevant that I quote the whole passage included by the Chief Justice from which I quoted only a portion. Here it is:

"At the same time, mindful of its duty to be prepared for any emergency, the War Department ordered the evacuation of more than 100,000 persons of Japanese origin from strategic areas on the west coast. This decision was widely criticized as an unconstitutional invasion of the rights of individuals many of whom were American citizens, but it was eventually approved by the Supreme Court as a legitimate excercise of the war powers of the President. What critics have ignored was the situation which led to the evacuation. Japanese raids on the West Coast seemed not only possible but probable in the first months of the war, and it was quite impossible to be sure that the raiders would not receive important help from individuals of Japanese origin."

We have no disagreement about the fact that both Stimson and McCloy were concerned with the attitude of the local population with regard to the ethnic Japanese. But in view of other statements and testimony by both men, it shall remain a mystery to me how you can continue to insist that the primary motivation was other than national security.