Licensing

What Lessons Have Been Learned?

There are Arab Americans today who are going through what Japanese Americans experienced years ago, and we can’t let that happen again. I met someone years ago who had never heard of the roundup of Japanese Americans. It’s been sixty years since this [arrest] happened, and it’s happening again, and that’s why I continue to talk about what happened to me.

- Fred Korematsu

No evidence exists that any Issei or Nisei committed any acts of espionage or sabotage on behalf of Japan during World War II. From 1938 to 1945, ninety-one individuals were convicted by American courts for espionage, sixty-four of them American citizens. None were of Japanese ancestry. Moreover, an illegal burglary of the Japanese consulate in Los Angeles by the Navy’s ONI (probably in March 1941) revealed that "official agents of Imperial Japan looked upon most American Japanese — both resident aliens [Issei] and American-born [Nisei] — not as potential allies but as cultural traitors not to be trusted." [Ken Ringle] The ONI’s own investigations also reached the conclusion that the Issei men and women did not pose a major threat to national security, as was also found by personal fact-gathering agents of President Roosevelt prior to December 7, 1941.