Defending Internment Part II

Via Muller's post, I found this exposition of Malkin's central thesis by David Neiwert. Malkin's idea, that the internments were justified by the MAGIC program, a system of coded Japanese messages regarding potential spies and saboteurs on the West Coast, is directly refuted by all the available evidence. From Personal Justice Denied: The Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians:

What the "Magic" cables show is an effort by Japan to develop an intelligence capability in the United States made up of both non-ethnic Japanese and ethnic Japanese. In fact, in sending instructions about who should be used in such an effort, the cables emphasize groups other than the Issei and Nisei [because they would be less likely to raise suspicions] ...[snip]...

One reason that the documents were not located and reviewed is that there is no clear evidence that they played any part in the decision to issue Executive Order 9066 or to pursue the policy of exclusion and detention of the West Coast Japanese [Emphasis mine]....

And from John McCloy, the Assistant War Secretary whom Malkin claims had stated that "'MAGIC' was instrumental in shaping the policies of the administration's homeland security policies":

Whether it was espionage or not, I can't say. But this wasn't such a motivating factor with us ... There were suspicions and rumors but that's as far as I can go.

McCloy himself gave testimony at the time of the internments demonstrating that he had no knowledge of the MAGIC cables. Only afterwards did he contradict his earlier account (I wonder why). It is that later testimony that Malkin offers as "proof" of the role the MAGIC program had in influencing policy. Either she knows better and is deliberately deceiving her readers, or else she unwittingly and ignorantly engaged in a project of pseudo-history. Either way, she is unfit to be published (which might be the reason that she sold her book to Regnery, the McCarthyite "book" mill that is currently engaged in a project of defamation of Senator Kerry by a Nixonite dirty-trickster).

Why were Japanese- Americans actually interned in camps? Let's ask Lt. Gen. John Dewitt, who authored the "military necessity memorandum":

The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become Americanized, the racial strains are undiluted. To conclude otherwise is to expect that children born of white parents on Japanese soil sever all racial affinity and become loyal Japanese subjects, ready to fight, and if necessary, to die for Japan in a war against the nation of their parents.

"Undiluted racial strains"? Where have we heard that before?

Yet Malkin claims with a straight face that "the internment of Japanese, German, Italian and other enemy aliens, and the relocation of and evacuation of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast, were not the product of irrational hatred or conspiratorial bigotry." She should be ashamed of herself. Even Fox News Channel should have the decency to stop airing the views of a David Irving in drag.