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JACL Responds to "Defense of Internment, Case for Race Profiling"

Response to Michelle Malkin

Release by the Japanese American Citizens League

August 24, 2004 - Michelle Malkin’s book In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror is a desperate attempt to impugn the loyalty of Japanese Americans during World War II to justify harsher governmental policies today in the treatment of Arab and Muslim Americans.    

Malkin’s thesis depends on World War II intelligence cables for her argument that the Japanese consular offices in the U.S. had successfully recruited Japanese Americans as spies and saboteurs, notwithstanding the fact that those intelligence communiqués had previously been examined by scholars and government researchers for decades and rejected as justification for the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans.

The Magic cables were reviewed by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, a fact-finding commission created by the President and Congress in 1980.  Following a thorough examination, the commission found no evidence connecting the decision to intern Japanese Americans to any of the information contained in the cables.  Furthermore, a finding in the commission report, Personal Justice Denied, stated that “not a single documented act of espionage, sabotage or fifth column activity on the mainland was committed by an American citizen of Japanese ancestry or by a resident Japanese alien on the West Coast,” a view consistently substantiated by independent scholars and researchers for almost half a century since World War II.

The JACL finds it offensive that Malkin would make the judgmental leap that any intent by Japan to form a spy network during World War II somehow implicates the entire population of Japanese Americans, thereby causing the necessity for their mass incarceration.  The facts speak for themselves, and President Ronald Reagan concurred when he signed a law in 1988 acknowledging the injustice of the internment.

The JACL’s objection to Malkin’s recent publication is that it purports to present the “truth” about the historical facts of the internment but, in fact, is a regurgitation of old arguments that attempt to justify the decision to imprison Japanese Americans. 

In writing the book, Malkin states that her purpose is to debunk the internment as “racist” and “unjustified.”  By her own admission, Malkin makes no claim to expertise on the subject, admits that her work is not thorough, fashions conclusions to suit her political views, all the while asking her readers to “reject political correctness…and the ability to view the writing of history as something other than a therapeutic indulgence,” a criticism that fails to escape her own work.

In a recent Op-Ed piece, Malkin states, “Getting the history right is vital to informed debate about the proper balance between civil liberties and national security.”  With this we would agree; however, history tells us that intolerance and bigotry played a devastating role in denying Japanese Americans their civil rights during World War II, and it is for this reason that the JACL will continue to be outspoken toward any policy that targets or profiles Arab and Muslim Americans or undermines the civil liberties of any American.

Unlike sixty years ago, when Japanese Americans had few proponents to defend their loyalty and speak up for the American values of fairness and equality, today many have reacted quickly and knowledgeably to Malkin’s outrageous claims.  The JACL values and thanks all those individuals whose conscience will not abide distortions of history to suit a political agenda.