Statement by Dillon Myer, Constitutional Principles Involved in the Relocation Program

Statement by Dillon S. Myer Director, War Relocation Authority Constitutional Principles Involved in the Relocation Program The evacuation and relocation program raise important questions NATIONAL of constitutionality. This is so because two-thirds of the persons of Japanese ancestry evacuated from West Coast military areas are citizens of SERVICE the United States, and the great majority of the remainder are law-abiding aliens. It is the position of the War Relocation Authority that its Leave Regulations are essential to the legal validity of the evacuation and reloca- tion program. These Leave Regulations establish a procedure under which the loyal citizens and law-abiding alions may leave a relocation center to become reestablished in normal life. We believe, in the first place, that the evacuation was within the constitutional power of the National Government. The concentration of the Japanese-Americans along the West Coast, the danger of invasion of that Coast by Japan, the possibility that an unknown and unrecognizable minority of them might have greater allegiance to Japan than to the United States, the fact that the Japanese-Americans were not wholly assimilated in the general life of communities on the West Coast, and the danger of civil disturbance due to fear and misunderstanding--all these facts, and related facts, created a situation which the National Government could, we believe, deal with by extraordinary measures in the interest of military security. The need for speed created the unfortunate necessity for evacuating the whole group instead of attempting to determine who were dangerous among them, so that only those might be evacuated. That same need made it impossible to hold adequate investigations or to grant hearings to the evacuees, before evacuation, When the evacuation was originally determined upon, it was contemplated that the evacuees would be free immediately to go anywhere they wanted within the United States SO. long as they remained outside of the evacuated area. Approximately 8,000 evacuees left the evacuated area voluntarily at that time and 5,000 of these have never lived in relocation centers. The demision to provide relocation centers for the evacuees was not made until some six weeks after evacuation was decided upon, and was made largely because of a recognition of the danger that the hasty and unplanned resettlement of 112,000 people might create civil disorder. Detention within a relocation center is not, therefore, a necessary part of the evacuation process. It is not intended to be more than a temporary stage in the process of relocating the evacuees into new homes and jobs. C-0237-P1 of 3-BU-COS-WP