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The Smith Act and the Relocation of Japanese-Americans

Yet cultural tensions, if somewhat dampened, remained an important source of social conflict and a basis on which the federal government extended its authority. Typical of developments were the Smith Act ( 1940) and the relocation of Japanese-Americans following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

With war raging in Europe, Congress in March 1940 reenacted the Espionage Act of 1917, with increased penalties for peacetime violation. Congress added additional muscle, however, through the Alien Registration Act of June 1940, also known as the Smith Act, after its author, Congressman Howard Smith of Virginia. The measure was directed primarily at Communists, because Communist sabotage ( Hitler had not yet invaded the Soviet Union) of defense industries was considered a genuine threat. The measure made it illegal not only to conspire to overthrow the government but to advocate or conspire to advocate its overthrow. Nearly five million aliens were registered and fingerprinted within a few months, although Attorney General Robert H. Jackson exercised "great caution and tact in insisting that such actions be taken

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sympathetically and with solicitude for the rights and feelings of those so handled." 11 Still, by the end of the 1940s, the Smith Act became the backbone of the federal government's efforts to root out communism.

A combination of racism, nativism, and wartime security concerns combined to bring about the forced removal of Japanese-Americans from their homes in 1942. On the afternoon of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Roosevelt issued a proclamation that made German, Italian, and Japanese aliens "deemed dangerous to the public peace or safety of the United States" subject to "summary apprehension." 12 By mid-February 1942 at the end of the alien roundup under this proclamation, more than three thousand Japanese on the mainland and in Hawaii had been arrested. (The better-assimilated German and Italian ethnic communities were left untouched.) This number included almost 10 percent of the adult males among Japanese aliens on the West Coast. One of the reasons the government was able to act as quickly as it did was that since 1932 the agency that became the Federal Bureau of Investigation (the same agency that had overseen the Palmer Raids) and military intelligence had maintained surveillance over Japanese deemed "subversive." 13

The program might have stopped there had it not been for the continuing military setbacks suffered by the United States in the Pacific and the anxiety of the white elite business and political establishment of California. A tougher policy toward the remaining Japanese-Americans emerged gradually and amid considerable opposition during the first six months of the war. For example, General John L. De Witt, the commander of U.S. forces on the West Coast, thought that the initial roundup and the establishment of restrictive areas around military facilities would suffice. The Department of Justice thought a strategy of total removal was unnecessary and constitutionally flawed.



Prejudice existed against the 112,000 people of Japanese descent living on the West Coast. Two-thirds of them were citizens, and "more would clearly have been, if they had not been barred by the federal naturalization laws." 14 The Japanese in California were successful and skilled agricultural workers, truck gardeners, and small-business operators; their prosperity, in the midst of general economic depression, bred white resentment. California political leaders, including Governor Earl Warren (later to become chief justice of the United States), joined with white pioneer fraternal groups, such as the Native Sons of the Golden West, to mount a vigorous campaign for immediate evacuation. The War Department agreed, General De Witt changed his mind, and in the name of national security they successfully urged on President Franklin D. Roosevelt a massive program of forced relocation. Without discussion with his cabinet and based on his inherent presidential powers, the president on February 19, 1942 issued Executive Order 9066, directing the relocation of all Japanese-Americans (including U.S. citizens) from the West Coast to relocation camps in such places as Jerome, Arkansas and Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

The relocation of the Japanese-Americans was "the most drastic invasion of the rights of citizens of the United States by their own government . . . in the history of the nation." 15 They suffered not only great personal trauma and hardship, but frequently heavy financial losses. They were forced to dispose of their land, homes, stores, and personal property almost overnight. Some of the young men among them joined the armed services and went to fight with great valor in Europe.

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The Crime Control Decades

The ethnic and racial diversity of U.S. cities, prohibition, and high unemployment brought on by the Depression posed new challenges to the criminal justice system. The period from World War I through World War II comprised the "crime control decades," and here too the federal government expanded its legal authority. 16

 

Racial Rioting and the Criminal Justice System

The influx of blacks into northern cities often created racial tensions that sometimes exploded into violence. In 1919 and, less so, in 1943 urban race rioting spread across the nation. These riots stemmed from competition between blacks and white ethnic groups for jobs, housing, and recreational facilities. White aggression was followed by black retaliation. One of the worst disorders of the World War I period occurred in Chicago in 1919 when a white mob killed a black youth who had crossed the unofficial color line that divided swimming areas on Lake Michigan. Over the next four days a general melee ensued, with gangs of white youths, many of them Irish, sweeping into the black ghettos. Thirty-eight people (twenty-three black) died. In the case of the Chicago riot, as well as others at about the same time in Omaha, East St. Louis ( Illinois), Knoxville, and Washington, D.C., the police carried out "[d]iscriminatory law enforcement" that "contributed to racial tensions leading up to the outbreak of violence." 17 In the face of overwhelming police racism, nothing was done in the wake of these World War I riots to improve police-community relations.

Similar rioting occurred during World War II in northern, midwestern, and western cities. In Los Angeles, for example, the so-called Zoot Suit riot, named after the fashionable teenage dress of the day, involved a three-way clash between Mexican- Americans, white servicemen, and the Los Angeles police. The worst riot, however, was in Detroit in 1943, where since 1940 the white population had grown by 440,000 persons and the black population by 50,000. Competition for jobs, housing, and public transportation was intense and often fought along racial lines, even in the midst of war. The Detroit riot began on a hot summer afternoon and lasted two days, throwing the entire city into chaos and leaving thirty-four people dead and more than $2 million worth of property destroyed.

Police and community leaders determined in the wake of the World War II riots to improve race and community-police relations. Racism persisted, but the need for social cooperation during wartime, a growing sense of police professionalism, and the new strength of black leaders in northern cities contributed to the movement. The program received a particularly strong boost in California, where Governor Earl Warren sponsored an official inquiry into the rioting and the means to better race relations. One of the products of Warren efforts was A Guide to Race Relations for Police Officers ( 1946), which became a model for other states and cities trying to improve race relations, riot control, and the police role in the ghetto. These enlightened programs, which seemed to promise that the rule of law had to be enforced on a colorblind basis, fell short of success. Departments were reluctant to hire black officers, and, as suburbanization after the war left the core of major cities to blacks, predominately white police forces became estranged from the people who suffered most from crime.

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Date: 2015-01-29; view: 724


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