http://www.newworldorderreport.com/Default.aspx?tabid=266&ID=2552
The Census Bureau was deeply involved in the roundup and internment of
Japanese Americans. Included identifying concentrations of people of
Japanese ancestry in geographic units as small as city blocks and a
willingness to disclose names and addresses
Census blamed in internment of Japanese
Scholars study wartime bureau
March 17, 2000
By STEVEN A. HOLMES
THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON -- Two scholars say in a new research paper that despite earlier
denials, the Census Bureau was deeply involved in the roundup and internment
of Japanese Americans at the onset of U.S. entry into World War II.
The academics say the Census Bureau's involvement included identifying
concentrations of people of Japanese ancestry in geographic units as small
as city blocks, lending a senior Census Bureau official to work with the War
Department on the relocation program and a willingness to disclose names and
address of Japanese Americans.
While it is common today for the Census Bureau to publish reports that
detail the number of people of a given race living in an area as small as a
city block, such information was generally not available in the 1940s. But
the authors of the paper contend that the Census Bureau provided such
detailed information as well as age, sex, citizenship and country of birth
to the War Department, now the Defense Department, on only one group --
Japanese Americans.
In 1941 and '42, the paper says, Census Bureau officials believed that such
information was valuable to the War Department's effort in rounding up
Americans of Japanese ancestry.
The paper, "After Pearl Harbor: The Proper Role of Population Data Systems
in Time of War," was written by William Seltzer, a statistician and
demographer at Fordham University, and Margo Anderson, a history professor
at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee whose area of expertise is the
census.
Seltzer and Anderson plan to present the paper at the annual meeting of the
Population Association of America next week in Los Angeles.
The practices described in the paper did not appear to have violated laws
governing the census, which prohibit the bureau from disclosing information
on individuals. But the authors indicated that Census Bureau officials
appeared to be willing to provide such data. What is not clear is whether
they were asked to do so.
"We're by law required to keep confidential information by individuals," the
paper quotes the director of the Census Bureau, J.C. Capt, as saying at a
meeting of the Census Advisory Committee in January 1942. But if the defense
authorities found 200 Japanese Americans missing and they wanted the names
of the Japanese Americans in that area, Capt said, "I would give them
further means of checking individuals."
The Census Bureau often boasted that its conduct in the relocation of
Japanese Americans had been its finest hour because it resisted pressure to
provide explicit data to the War and Justice Departments.
But Census Bureau officials do not dispute the findings of the paper. They
say, however, that the strengthening of the laws protecting the
confidentiality of data on individuals and the environment today would make
a repeat of those abuses unlikely.
Japanese Americans have long suspected that the Census Bureau played a
prominent role in the roundup and relocation of 120,000 residents of
Japanese ancestry to detention camps in the interior.
"We've always suspected this," said Norman Mineta, a former California
congressman who was relocated with his family from San Jose to a detention
camp in Wyoming. "After all, they are the keeper of this kind of
information."
On Dec. 9, 1941, two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Census
Bureau produced a report titled, "Japanese Population of the United States,
Its Territories and Possessions." The next day it issued a report on the
Japanese population by citizenship and place of birth in selected cities.
The next day it published another report, this one on the Japanese
population by counties in states on the West Coast. All reports were based
on data from the 1940 census.
Capt justified the speed with which the bureau produced these reports by
saying at meeting of the Census Advisory Committee in January 1942: "We
didn't want to wait for the declaration of war. On Monday morning we put our
people to work on the Japanese thing."
The United States declared war on Japan that Monday afternoon.
http://www.seattlepi.com/national/cens17.shtml
© 2000 The New York Times.
All rights reserved.
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