There is certainly something to be said about a writer who stirs the pot.  It does take some chutzpah to challenge conventional wisdom and try to persuade a critical mass of people who have thought about a certain subject in one way to look at it from an entirely different point of view.  Sometimes germane information has been left out of the discourse (whether by omission or commission), thereby skewing a more complete understanding of the matter.

However, there are those who simply stir the pot for the sake of stirring the pot.  Sure, attention may be attracted but it is done so for all the wrong reasons.  Most of the time, this is done on the part of the stirrer to gain notoriety for oneself rather than raise public consciousness about our history and what, if anything, we can learn from it.  Of course, the motives are not always sinister.  But misguided premises (even if well intentioned) and specious conclusions are every bit as harmful as an ample dose of vanity.

That is the impression this reader was left with after having read Michelle Malkin’s In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror.  Her book is essentially a defense of FDR’s evacuation, relocation and internment of people of Japanese descent from the West Coast beginning in February 1942 -- two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  She also applies this defense to the present day context in the War on Terror with respect to racial profiling.

I should be clear in stating that Malkin’s book does raise one valid point.  In the wake of 9/11, Muslim/Arab organizations and civil liberties organizations likened the Bush Administration’s approach to the War on Terror to the Japanese internment of World War II.  These organizations objected to, amongst other things, increased monitoring of Arab and Muslim foreign students on temporary visas and increased scrutiny of Muslim chaplains serving in our armed forces.  While one can debate the merits of these policies, nothing undertaken by the Bush Administration comes close to rising to the level of the Japanese internment.    

Malkin challenges the notion that the Japanese internment was undertaken because of racism and wartime hysteria.  She asserts that the internment was a consequence of a vast Japanese spy network on the West Coast of the United States.  The source for this argument are a large volume of decrypted Japanese diplomatic cables known as MAGIC.

Malkin may be correct in asserting that the Japanese government undertook a tremendous effort to spy on the United States and that these efforts may have resulted in the attack on Pearl Harbor.  But it is not clear why this warranted the evacuation, relocation and internment of 112,000 people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast -- including American citizens.

Actor Pat Morita, who is best remembered for his roles on TV’s Happy Days in the 1970s and in the Karate Kid movies in the 1980s, was one of the 112,000 who was interned.   At the age of 11, Morita was sent to the Gila Internment Camp in Arizona.    Prior to his internment, Morita had spent most of his life hospitalized with spinal tuberculosis, which rendered him unable to walk.  In an interview, Morita spoke about his internment with great bitterness:

Somehow I cannot bring myself to believe that Pat Morita was a threat to the national security of the United States.

Malkin presents an extraordinarily benign view of the internment.    First she argues that people of other nationalities, such as people of German and Italian origin, were also interned.  This is certainly true.  It is also valid to argue why people of German and Italian origin were not compensated for their time in internment camps.    Indeed, the late Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (remember there were also internment camps in Canada) always argued against compensating Japanese Canadians precisely because his government would have to compensate the German and Italian Canadians.  But even if people of other ancestry were interned along with the Japanese, three wrongs certainly do not make a right.

Malkin also takes the position that people of Japanese ancestry had to be interned for their own protection.  Protection from whom?     Well, the rest of the American people apparently.  But as one Japanese internee queried, “If we were put in there for our protection, why were the guns at the guard towers pointed inward, instead of outward?”  In the initial stages of this policy,  Japanese families were encouraged to leave of their own volition but were ultimately unsuccessful because of “hostility towards evacuees by inland communities.”  But Malkin never asks why such hostility existed.  Certainly, one cannot ignore the anger that came about after Pearl Harbor.  However, Malkin makes no mention of the anti-Japanese propaganda, particularly the posters that were circulated before the attacks on Pearl Harbor, such as the “Jap Hunting License.”  For Malkin not to acknowledge that racial animosity existed towards the Japanese before and after Pearl Harbor makes her guilty of the historical revisionism that she is quick to attribute to those who don’t share her views.  

At the beginning of the book, Malkin remarks that those who were interned protested the closure of the internment camps.  First, Malkin does not indicate whether this constituency comprised 100,000 people or 10.  Second, even if we accept that there were a critical mass of Japanese who did not want the internment camps closed, there is a very easy explanation for that motivation: Where the hell were they going to go?  They had their homes taken away from them.  These were people held in disdain by their country.    Better to deal with the devil that you know.

If Malkin believes that the evacuation, relocation and internment of people of Japanese ancestry was so benign and not motivated in any way, shape or form by racism, why is it that Malkin opposes such a policy in 2004?  Malkin argues that such a policy would be impractical because of “the geographical dispersion of the current threat of Islamofascism.”  Is Malkin suggesting that if Islamofascism were confined to Michigan that she would support a policy of internment?  This is why I cannot help but think that Malkin is stirring the pot for the sake of stirring the pot.  If she does not believe that internment is a viable public policy position in the context of the war on terror, why write a book about it?  By focusing almost entirely on the Japanese internment, Malkin not only does not make a case for racial profiling, but unintentionally makes the case against it.

There is certainly a case to be made for racial profiling.  There is certainly merit in scrutinizing people of a certain age and gender who enter the United States from certain countries, who engage in certain occupational activities (i.e. becoming airline pilots) and who travel regularly.  There is certainly a case to be made with regard to citizens within our own borders who associate with organizations that would do harm to the people of the United States.  These are entirely legitimate methods in combating terrorism.  If Malkin had written a book that addressed these questions with regard to racial profiling, there is every reason to believe that this would have been a far more worthy endeavor.    

What was not legitimate was arbitrarily and capriciously removing hundreds of thousands from their homes who had little in common with each other, other than their ancestry, and taking their livelihoods away, when we knew that virtually all of the people in question had nothing to do with acts that threatened the national security of our country.  President Reagan was right to recognize the Japanese internment for what it was and to right a wrong.   President Reagan was right to apologize for this blemish in our history and to make efforts to rectify it.  Michelle Malkin is wrong to pretend that the Japanese internment was of any service to the security of the United States.  She is also wrong to believe that the Japanese internment will somehow better inform the United States in how to fight to War on Terror.

In Defense of Internment is available on Amazon.com.

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