Free Infamy by Richard Reeves Page B

areas.”
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    Secretary Stimson asked for a meeting with the president but was told there were many more pressing concerns than the “West Coast problem.” The president and the secretary spoke by telephone instead. Stimson was an elder statesman, a seventy-four-year-old Republican, who had served as secretary of state in Republican administrations. He was personally close to the president and he was an old-fashioned “president’s man,” loyal to the chief, even if he was not comfortable with what was happening. During their telephone call, Stimson asked whether Roosevelt was prepared to remove both citizens and aliens from the West Coast. The president, certainly influenced by the news that day that Japanese troops were invading Singapore and other Asian targets, told the secretary of war to make the decision himself on how to handle Japanese citizens at home. “But…” the president added, “be as reasonable as you can.”
    Stimson called in his deputy McCloy, who was also a Republican, and told him what the president had said. McCloy interpreted that to mean Roosevelt was giving them, in McCloy’s words, “carte blanche” to deal with the West Coast problem. McCloy then called Bendetsen and DeWitt, saying, “We talked to the President, and the President, in substance, says go ahead and do anything you think necessary.… If it involves citizens, we will take care of them too. He says there will probably be repercussions, but it has to be dictated by military necessity.”
    The secretary of war and his aggressive deputy understood that the president wanted to stay as far from the operation as possible, and that the military side—Stimson, Gullion, DeWitt, and Bendetsen—would be in charge of the evacuation. Beyond the Bendetsen-DeWitt declaration that all of the West Coast was a “War Zone,” no real preparations had been made for such a complicated operation. In the beginning, even though American Japanese were prohibited from traveling more than five miles from their homes and were subject to an 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. curfew, DeWitt also announced that Japanese and Japanese Americans were free to move “voluntarily” from the new West Coast “War Zone” to states and places east of the zone. But move where? Few of the West Coast Japanese, a clannish bunch, had family or knew anyone in other parts of the country. And they were afraid, expecting open hostility across the country. One of the army’s arguments for what Roosevelt himself had called “concentration camps” was to protect the Japanese from their fellow Americans. Lippmann and McCloy were among those who would later maintain that their primary concern was to protect the American Japanese from the potential vigilante violence of their white neighbors.
    On February 17, Roosevelt officially told Stimson and McCloy to draft an executive order authorizing evacuation—without informing Biddle. The matter, if not the manner, was settled. Roosevelt had made it as clear as he could: he did not want to hear any more of this. Stimson began working on an executive order that declared the evacuation “a matter of Military Necessity.” The final draft of the executive order did not mention the words “Japanese,” “Japanese American,” or “citizen.” Internal memos referred to American citizens of Japanese descent as “non-aliens.”
    That evening, Colonel Bendetsen and Assistant Attorney General Clark, who had flown into Washington the night before, went to Biddle’s home to meet with the attorney general, McCloy, and Gullion. After two of Biddle’s assistants, Ennis and Rowe, laid out the legal case against incarceration, Gullion pulled out the draft order approved by both War and Justice. Biddle’s assistants were stunned. Ennis was near tears. The attorney general himself said nothing, although he had sent a memo to the president that same day, saying: “A great many West Coast people distrust the Japanese, various