Norman Thomas and the Struggle Against Internment

Abstract

Historians of the wartime removal and mass incarceration of West Coast Americans of Japanese ancestry, commonly called theJapanese American internment, have examined with care and thoroughness the actions of the government and of the anti-Japanese-American forces that instigated the signing of Executive Order 9066. Most scholars, with the exception of Robert Shaffer, have paid comparatively little attention to the writings and activities of those non-Japanese Americans who opposed the internment policy. This is no doubt a result of the fact that the number of people who publicly challenged or opposed the government was small, especially at the outset, and that they were unable to mobilize public opinion in favor of Japanese Americans. However, the study of these dissenters is vital to understanding the internment, not as an exercise in political courage or feel-good humanitarianism, but because it points up the level of general awareness of the injustice done to Japanese Americans. By revealing the existence and contours of public debate over the treatment of Japanese Americans, it both suggests, at least heuristically, the availability of possible alternatives to internment and at the same time demonstrates the limits of most people's willingness to follow such alternatives.