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Trading Civil Liberties for National Security: Warnings from a World War II Internment Program

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Max Paul Friedman
Max Paul Friedman
Affiliation:
Florida State University
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Extract

A recurring theme in American political discourse is how to strike the appropriate balance between protecting the nation against threats to its security without eroding the liberty that is at the heart of its democratic character. Civil liberties versus national security is a choice apparently to be made in every crisis and every war, whether hot or cold. We can trace the debate from the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 through Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, to the Red Scares that followed both world wars. The classic case of going too far, and the most widely repudiated example, is the illegal mass internment of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, most of them U.S. citizens, without charge, during World War II. Today, in what is commonly called the war on terrorism, hawks and doves take up their customary positions on opposing sides of the old argument as they debate the U.S.A Patriot Act, the imprisonment of foreigners at Camp Delta on Guantánamo Bay, and the indefinite detention of American citizens by presidential order.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , July 2005 , pp. 294 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2005

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References

Notes

1. “Internment,” a legal practice of detaining enemy aliens, is a commonly misapplied euphemism for this program, which affected a majority of U.S. citizens. The standard work is Daniels, Roger, Concentration Camps U.S.A. (New York, 1971)Google Scholar, and Daniels's subsequent publications. Although there is a broad consensus, it does not extend to unanimity. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist recently defended the action as necessary to national security in All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime (New York, 2000)Google Scholar. Page Smith made a comparable argument in Democracy on Trial: The Japanese-American Evacuation and Relocation in World War II (New York, 1995)Google Scholar. Malkin's, Michelle error-ridden In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror (New York, 2004) revives their views.Google Scholar

2. Coliver, Sandra, “Commentary to the Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information,” Human Rights Quarterly 20, no. 1 (1998): 12–80.Google Scholar

3. The most reliable statistics on Nazi membership in Latin American countries are Senate Committee on Military Affairs, Nazi Party Membership Records, Senate Committee Prints 79/2/46, Part 2, March 1946, and Part 3, September 1946, S1535–S1538 (Washington, D.C., 1946), and Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf, Nationalsozialistische Auβenpolitik 1933–1938 (Frankfurt, 1968), 662–663.Google Scholar

4. See Rout, Leslie B. Jr. and Bratzel, John F., The Shadow War: German Espionage and United States Counterespionage in Latin America During World War II (Frederick, Md., 1986)Google Scholar; Hilton, Stanley E., Hitler's Secret War in South America, 1939–1945: German Military Espionage and Allied Counterespionage in Brazil (Baton Rouge, 1981).Google Scholar

5. For a full treatment, see Max Friedman, Paul, Nazis and Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign Against the Germans of Latin America in World War II (New York, 2003)Google Scholar. A briefer look at the internment in the United States of Japanese from Peru is Gardiner, C. Harvey, Pawns in a Triangle of Hate: The Peruvian Japanese and the United States (Seattle, 1981)Google Scholar. There is no other significant scholarly work on the Latin American internments. Although some of the Japanese were seized to be traded for Americans held by Japan, in the German case the U.S. government was not eager to carry out such exchanges. See Friedman, Nazis and Good Neighbors, chap. 8.

6. Rout and Bratzel, The Shadow War, 42.

7. Chapin to Welles, Axis Aspirations in South America, 17 April 1942, “General Memoranda, March 19–April 1942,” Memoranda Relating to General Latin American Affairs, Box 7, American Republic Affairs (hereafter ARA), State Department, RG59, National Archives, College Park, Md. (hereafter NA).

8. FBI, Bolivia Today, pp. 3, 32, 42, June 1942, “FBI Reports—Bolivia,” Box 141, Hopkins Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York (hereafter FDR Library).

9. Eva Bloch, interview by author, Guayaquil, 18 February 1998; Gunter Lisken, interview by author, Guayaquil, 17 February 1998.

10. Nester to Guarderas, 5 January 1943, Series B, Embajada de Estados Unidos, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Archivo Histórico de Quito, Ecuador.

11. Schelling, J. M., Intelligence Report, 4 06 1940Google Scholar, “U.S.-Guatemalan Relations C-9-b/18685,” Intelligence Division Confidential Reports of Naval Attaches 1940–1946, Box 428, Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), RG38, NA; Phillips to Shipley, 19 August 1941, and Riheldaffer to Phillips, 26 August 1941, “SIS (Administration, Policy, Finance) 1940–10 October 1941,” SIS: General File 1940–42, Box 1, ONI, RG38, NA.

12. See Josephus Daniels Diary, 7 April 1941, reel 7, Daniels Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, and Spruille Braden reference in Adolf Berle Diary, 28 April 1943, Adolf Berle Papers, FDR Library. “You may get an informant who gives you one good piece of information, but then if you take him on permanently he thinks he's got to earn his pay,” Braden explained later. “Then he begins to invent stuff in order to earn his stipend.” Spruille Braden, 1952–53, Oral History Collection, Columbia University, 1195.

13. Postwar investigation in Herbert Jabs folder in alphabetical Name Files of Enemy Aliens, Special War Problems Division (hereafter SWP), Boxes 31–50, RG59, NA.

14. See Westermeier folder in alphabetical Name Files of Enemy Aliens, SWP Boxes 31–50, RG59, NA, and Panama list in Nazi Party Membership Records.

15. Individual files on Panamanian internees compiled by the author, Name Files of Enemy Aliens, SWP Boxes 31–50, RG59, NA.

16. Kaufmann folder in alphabetical Name Files of Enemy Aliens, SWP Boxes 31–50, RG59, NA.

17. Assémat folder in alphabetical Name Files of Enemy Aliens, SWP Boxes 31–50, RG59, NA.

18. Confidential: Carl Bald, Panama, 4 February 1946, “Bald, Carl, Panama,” Name Files of Interned Enemy Aliens from Latin America, 1942–48, Box 36, SWP, RG59, NA.

19. Karliner folder in alphabetical Name Files of Enemy Aliens, SWP Boxes 31–50, RG59, NA.

20. Wolff folder in alphabetical Name Files of Enemy Aliens, SWP Boxes 31–50, RG59, NA.

21. For Panama totals, see White to Lafoon, 30 January 1946, in folder “Statistics,” Subject Files 1939–54, Box 70, SWP, RG59, NA; German Nationals Deported By The Other American Republics Who Were Deported By The United States, in folder of same name, Subject Files 1939–54, Box 121, SWP, RG59, NA; and author analysis of all Panamanian cases in Name Files of Enemy Aliens, SWP Boxes 31–50, RG59, NA.

22. Their names appear in Nazi Party Membership Records and not in any of the deportation records.

23. White to Bingham, 28 January 1946, “Statistics,” Subject Files 1939–54, Box 70, SWP, RG59, NA.

24. Quoted in Jerre Mangione, An Ethnic at Large (New York, 1978), 322. Mangione was a special assistant in the Justice Department's Alien Enemy Control Unit.

25. Werner J. Kappel, telephone interview by author, Sun City Center, Florida, 25 February 2000.

26. Col. Bryan to Gufler, 14 September 1942, 740.00115EW1939/4525, RG59, NA.

27. Col. Bryan to Gufler, 14 September 1942, 740.00115EW1939/4525, RG59, NA; Max Habicht to Swiss Foreign Ministry, Report on the Visit to Detention Stations for Civilian Internees in the United States of America, 18 August 1942, Band 1, E2200 Washington/15, Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv, Bern, Switzerland (hereafter SBA).

28. Martin, G. E. (International Red Cross), Camp de Stringtown, 22 09 1942Google Scholar, “Stringtown '42,” Inspection Reports on War Relocation Centers, 1942–46, Box 20, SWP, RG59, NA.

29. New York Times obituary, 9 January 1990, D22; Ennis to Biddle, “Memorandum for the Attorney General,” 14 February 1942, in folder “146–13–2–0 Section 5,” Closed Legal Case Files, Box 5, Alien Enemy Control Unit, War Division, DoJ, RG60, NA; public complaints and AECU form responses in same folder. Justice Department procedures regarding U.S. resident Germans and Italians are described in Krammer, Arnold, Undue Process: The Untold Story of America's German Alien Internees (New York, 1997), 46–49Google Scholar. Holian, Timothy J., The German-Americans and World War II: An Ethnic Experience (New York, 1996)Google Scholar; Fox, Stephen, The Unknown Internment: An Oral History of the Relocation of Italian Americans During World War II (Boston, 1990)Google Scholar, and Fox, , America's Invisible Gulag: A Biography of German American Internment and Exclusion in World War II (New York, 2000)Google Scholar; and Jacobs, Arthur, The Prison Called Hohenasperg (Parkland, Fla., 1999)Google Scholar, also criticize the domestic internment program. My reading of the evidence suggests that while the legal domestic program was certainly flawed and trapped some innocent persons, it never reached the level of errors and abuses that characterized the illegal Latin American program, and that the treatment meted out to Japanese, regardless of their citizenship, was consistently less discriminate.

30. Mangione, An Ethnic at Large, 327.

31. Ibid., 321.

32. Strum, Harvey, “Jewish Internees in the American South, 1942–1945,” American Jewish Archives 42 (1990): 27–48, esp. 33.Google Scholar

33. Lafoon memo, 21 September 1942, 740.00115EW1939/4565, RG59, NA.

34. Rodríguez was Costa Rica's notoriously corrupt police chief. Don Paco was Francisco Calderón Guardia, Secretary of Public Security and brother of the Costa Rican president. His nickname was Paco a medias, “One-Half Paco,” because of his reputation for taking a fifty percent cut on government contracts. Scotten to Secretary of State, 22 September 1942, in folder “711.5,” Costa Rica, San José Legation: Confidential File, Box 18, RG84, NA. See also Brandt, 20 October 1942, “V,” Name Files of Interned Enemy Aliens from Latin America, 1942–48, Box 35, SWP, RG59, NA; Ennis to Keeley, 12 November 1942, 740.00115EW1939/4130, RG59, NA; Clattenburg to Ennis, 22 December 1942, 740.00115EW1939/5130, RG59, NA; Edward G. Trueblood, 7 October 1943, “711.5,” Costa Rica: San José Embassy Confidential File, Box 26, RG84, NA; Ameringer, Charles D., Don Pepe: A Political Biography of José Figueres of Costa Rica (Albuquerque, 1978), 11.Google Scholar

35. Keeley to Moore, 12 November 1942, and Keeley to Long, 19 November 1942, in folder “Olshansky, Andrew, Panama,” Name Files of Interned Enemy Aliens from Latin America, 1942–48, Box 45, SWP, RG59, NA.

36. Raymond W. Ickes, “Memorandum to the Minister,” 30 March 1943, in folder “711.5,” Costa Rica: San José Embassy Confidential File, RG84, NA.

37. Raymond W. Ickes, interview by author, Berkeley, California, 18 September 1997.

38. FBI, German Espionage in Latin America, pp. 2, 38, 105–6, June 1946, 862.20210/6–1746, RG59, NA; Hoover to Neal, 14 October 1946, 862.20210/10–1446, RG59, NA; see also Ingo Kalinowsky and Georg Nicolaus in “Name Files of Enemy Aliens,” alphabetical folders in SWP Boxes 31–50, RG59, NA.

39. See Friedman, Nazis and Good Neighbors, 222–23 and passim.

40. “Memorandum regarding activities of the United States Government in removing from the other American Republics dangerous subversive aliens,” 3 November 1942, p. 2, Subject Files 1939–54, Box 180, SWP, RG59, NA.

41. See, for example, Milton Heumann and Cassak, Lance, Good Cop, Bad Cop: Racial Profiling and Competing Views of Justice (New York, 2003)Google Scholar; Dempsey, James X. and Cole, David, Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security (Los Angeles, 2002)Google Scholar; Harris, David A., Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work (New York, 2002)Google Scholar; Dedman, Bill, “Memo Warns Against Use of Profiling as Defense,” Boston Globe, 12 10 2001Google Scholar; McGee, Jim, “Ex-FBI Officials Criticize Tactics on Terrorism; Detention of Suspects Not Effective, They Say,” Washington Post, 28 11 2001.Google Scholar

42. Friedman, Nazis and Good Neighbors, passim.

43. Albrecht to St.S & RAM, Behandlung den Reichsdeutschen in Amerika and Deutsche Gegenmassnahmen, 6 February 1942, “Deutsche Zivilgefangene in den Verein. Staaten. v. Amerika 1941–1942,” R41876, Rechtsabteilung, Politisches Archiv des Auswärgtigen Amtes, Bonn (now Berlin), Germany (hereafter PAAA); Albrecht to R IV, 26 November 1942, “Zivilgefangenen-Austausch-Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika,” R41564, Rechtsabteilung, PAAA.

44. La Prensa Libre, San José, 17 September 1945, cited in Karl Franz Merz to Swiss Legation Washington, “Verhaftung von Schweizern in Panama,” N 9.1, Band 9, E2200 Washington/16, SBA.

45. Hilton F. Wood to Gibson, 4 September 1945, “711.5,” Costa Rica: San José Embassy, Confidential File, Box 39, RG84, NA.

46. Nye, Joseph S. Jr., The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (New York, 2002).Google Scholar