Earl Warren

California attorney general Earl Warren was one of the most prominent proponents of Japanese relocation. In the following essay, excerpted from his testimony before the Tolan Committee, a Congressional commission investigating problems posed by enemy aliens living along the Pacific shore, Warren argues that Japanese Americans, as potential saboteurs, pose a serious threat to the safety of the west coast. The children of first generation Japanese immigrants, American citizens by birth, constitute an even greater threat than Japanese aliens, Warren contends, because this larger segment of the Japanese population has been educated in Japan and thereby subject to Japanese militarist doctrine. Moreover, Warren points out, relocation would benefit Japanese Americans by protecting them from vigilantism.

For some time I have been of the opinion that the solution of our alien enemy problem with all its...