Potent, headline material - handled with utmost skill and care. The
recent determination, by a federal study commission, that the
120,000 Japanese Americans interned during WW II suffered a "grave
injustice" - since "Executive Order 9066 was not justified by
military necessity" - figures in the background and foreground of
this book. This is not, however, its only import. Irons, a
political scientist (at UC, San Diego), legal historian (The New
Deal Lawyers), and attorney, began it as a study of the test cases
in which the Supreme Court upheld the military orders based on E.O.
9066 - a study, simply, of "justice at war" - and concluded, from
his findings, that "a legal scandal" had taken place; he has since
filed to reopen the cases under an obscure provision of federal law
(coram nobis), which requires evidence of governmental misconduct.
The first three chapters primarily recount the debate over mass
Japanese evacuation between the Justice and War departments from
Pearl Harbor to the signing of E.O. 9066 in February 1942 -
material whose hands-on drama could keep viewers riveted to
television for a week. The principals, with one exception lawyers:
liberal Edward Ennis, of Justice, and Wall Streeter John McCloy, of
War; (the two most closely involved); their superiors Frances
Biddle, upright but insecure, and Henry Stimson, scrupulous but
much-pressured; and FDR, who gave Stimson an unthinking go-ahead
instead of the guidance sought. Also, a single zealous "lawyer in
uniform," strategically placed, who not only convinced the one
non-lawyer, West Coast commanding general De Witt, to urge the
military necessity of evacuation (the crucial factor), but drew up
the orders by which evacuation became internment. The larger part
of the book then concerns the cases brought against the various
orders by four young Nisei - Gordon Hirabayashi, Min Yasui, Mitsuye
Endo, and Fred Korematsu - which Ennis and his colleague James
Roche (both prominent civil rightsers in later years) duly defended
for the government. Who the four challengers were, why they acted,
what support they received, are also part of Irons' story. His
charge of governmental tampering with the evidence hinges on the
suspicion of Ennis and an aide (corroborated by the FBI and the
FCC) that General DeWitt's claim that Japanese Americans had
committed acts of sabotage was untrue and the excision of a
footnote to that effect (perhaps at McCloy's instigation) from the
government's Supreme Court brief in the Korematsu case. There are,
however, innumerable other instances of conflict between duty and
conscience, civil rights and other loyalties - as well as among
other stellar personalities. The last chapter reunites Ennis and
McCloy and the other principals, 40 years later, at the federal
commission hearings - where McCloy, squaring off with a Japanese
American commissioner, lets slip the word "retribution." Whatever
the ultimate end to the story, Irons is to be lauded for his triple
role of attorney, advocate, and author. (Kirkus Reviews)
"Justice at War" irrevocably alters the reader's perception of one
of the most disturbing events in U.S. history--the internment
during World War II of American citizens of Japanese descent. Peter
Irons' exhaustive research has uncovered a government campaign of
suppression, alteration, and destruction of crucial evidence that
could have persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down the
internment order. Irons documents the debates that took place
before the internment order and the legal response during and after
the internment.
General
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