FDR - Jean Edward Smith [346]
The national press took up the cry. On February 12, 1942, following a long interview with General De Witt, Walter Lippmann, the dean of the liberal establishment, bannered his influential column in the Herald Tribune “Fifth Column on the West Coast.” After declaring the entire Pacific coast a combat zone, Lippmann pronounced judgment: “Nobody’s constitutional rights include the right to reside and do business on a battlefield.”35 Lippmann’s widely read conservative colleague Westbrook Pegler came to the same conclusion. “The Japanese in California should be under armed guard to the last man and woman right now. And to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over.”36
In Washington, Attorney General Biddle found himself and the Justice Department fighting a rearguard action.* Stimson, who was keenly aware of the constitutional difficulties, believed a Japanese invasion of the West Coast to be a distinct possibility.37 Assistant Secretary John J. McCloy, the War Department’s point man for domestic security, shared that concern: “If it is a question of safety of the country or the Constitution of the United States, why the Constitution is just a scrap of paper to me.”38 In mid-February, when General De Witt asked the War Department for permission to evacuate all Japanese from the West Coast, the Army registered its opposition.39 General Mark Clark, the deputy chief of staff, told Stimson and McCloy that California was not endangered and that the Army was unwilling to allot De Witt any additional troops for evacuation purposes. “I cannot agree with the wisdom of such a mass exodus,” wrote Clark. “We must not permit our entire offensive effort to be sabotaged in an effort to protect all establishments from ground sabotage.”40† At that point Stimson could have turned De Witt down summarily. Instead, he referred the question to FDR.
Stimson called Roosevelt the afternoon of February 11. Singapore was under siege (it would fall four days later), and the president was preoccupied with military matters. “I took up with him the West Coast matter first,” Stimson recorded in his diary. “[I] told him the situation and fortunately found that he was very vigorous about it and told me to go ahead on the line that I thought the best.”41 FDR expressed no opinion on the evacuation and tossed the matter back to Stimson and the War Department. That was sufficient for McCloy. “We have carte blanche to do what we want to as far as the President is concerned,” he informed Fourth Army headquarters in San Francisco. “He states there will probably be some repercussions, and it has got to be dictated by military necessity, but as he puts it, ‘Be as reasonable as you can.’ ”42
The chain of events is clear: Roosevelt delegated the decision to Stimson, Stimson turned it over to McCloy, and McCloy made the call. “This does not exonerate Roosevelt,” wrote McCloy’s principal biographer, “but at the very least it was McCloy’s job to determine if military necessity justified such draconian measures.”43
One week later Roosevelt signed the executive order that had been prepared by the civilian leadership in the War Department. It authorized the department to “prescribe military areas … from which any and all persons may be excluded.” No explicit reference to the Japanese was necessary. When Attorney General Biddle registered a mild objection, FDR said it was a matter of military judgment. Having been blindsided at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt was unwilling to skimp on what constituted military necessity.