The Catalyst
Anti-Japanese sentiment in the US was propelled by the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Americans were in fear of Japan's further attacks on American soil.
"I'm for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps and shipping them back to Asia as soon as possible ... This is a race war, as far as the Pacific side of the conflict is concerned ... The White man's civilization has come into conflict with Japanese barbarism ... One of them must be destroyed ... Damn them! Let's get rid of them now!" -Mississippi Congressman John Rankin |
"I am for immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior. I don't mean a nice part of the interior either. Herd 'em up, pack 'em off and give 'em the inside room in the badlands. Let 'em be pinched, hurt, hungry and dead up against it ... Personally, I hate the Japanese. And that goes for all of them." - Henry McLemore, columnist of the Hearst newspapers |
A March 1942 national public opinion poll showed that 93 percent of Americans agreed with evacuating alien Japanese, 59 percent wanted to evacuate U.S. citizens of Japanese origin, and 25 percent disagreed.
"I have never found it harder to arouse the American public on any important issue than on this. Men and women who know nothing of the facts (except possibly the rose-colored version which appears in the public press) hotly deny that there are concentration camps. Apparently that is a term to be used only if the guards speak German and carry a whip as well as a rifle." - Norman Thomas, leader of the Socialist Party |