Lawrence Distasi on Searching for Subversives: the Story of Italian

Mary Elizabeth Basile Chopas. Searching for Subversives: The Story of Italian Internment in Wartime America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. xvi + 232 pp. $90.00, cloth, ISBN 978-1-4696-3433-3. Reviewed by Lawrence DiStasi Published on H-FedHist (August, 2018) Commissioned by Caryn E. Neumann (Miami University of Ohio Regionals) Searching for Subversives by Mary Elizabeth uralized citizens, and the relation of all these to Basile Chopas has one main intention, and that is the harsher internment program against the Japa‐ to clarify the process employed by the US Depart‐ nese—Chopas is less successful. This may be due ment of Justice (DOJ) in the hearings it afforded to the fact that she is trying to summarize com‐ enemy aliens—ostensibly to sort out the immi‐ plex programs in single chapters or sometimes grants of Italian descent apprehended as “poten‐ single paragraphs. Any reader not intimately fa‐ tially dangerous” and therefore liable to intern‐ miliar with all these distinctions would be forgiv‐ ment during World War II. With regard to that in‐ en for emerging with a somewhat foggy notion of tention, Chopas does a creditable job of uncover‐ exactly what had happened to which individuals ing materials that have previously been unexam‐ or groups, why it had happened, and how it had ined, and that is a significant contribution to the happened. The impression she leaves is one of scholarship of the home-front internment confusion. process. Chopas fnds DOJ fles containing letters This is particularly noticeable in her second and other documents; she discovers the papers of chapter, “The Face of Selective Internment and several citizens who chaired the three-man hear‐ the Impact of Other Wartime Restrictions.” In her ing boards, such as Professor Erwin Griswold of first summary, for example, Chopas correctly Harvard Law; and she attends to the debates refers to the attorney general’s initial late January within the government over how to bring the ene‐ order “establishing prohibited zones on the West my alien hearings into some kind of conformity Coast that all enemy aliens had to evacuate by with constitutional due process. February 24,” but then shifts to April 26, 1942, But internment is only one aspect of the noting that General Hugh Aloysius Drum, head of wartime measures employed against enemy the Eastern Defense Command, “proposed the aliens. With regard to the others—the restrictions classification of prohibited and restricted areas imposed on travel and possessions, the evacua‐ for the Eastern Defense Command ... but no mass tion of enemy aliens from prohibited zones on the evacuation” (p. 44). The question this raises is sim‐ West Coast, the attempt to expand those evacua‐ ple: a “prohibited zone” is, in fact, a zone in which tions to the Eastern and Southern Defense Com‐ whole classes of people, in this case enemy aliens, mands, the individual exclusion program for nat‐ are not allowed to remain, and must vacate. H-Net Reviews Drum’s move was clearly interpreted by the attor‐ DeWitt. But Chopas’s discussion seems to forget ney general’s office at the time as exactly this, an about the DOJ and focuses on “military zones” attempt by the military to extend to the East Coast both with respect to this evacuation and the larg‐ the zones prohibited to enemy aliens already in er Japanese internment. She writes, “Although the place on the West Coast. That it was interpreted as Western Defense Command imposed evacuation preparation for a “mass evacuation” is clear from orders from military zones only on aliens in the the attorney general’s April 9, 1942, memo to Pres‐ Italian and German populations, family members ident Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he warned who were citizens often accompanied them. In of precisely this action, saying it had the possibili‐ contrast, both Japanese aliens and Japanese ty of “disaffecting 17 million people.” Memos from American citizens were forced to leave their Attorney General Francis Biddle to the president homes” (p. 53). It is not clear whether this means and from Assistant Attorney General James Rowe to contrast the experience of European and Japa‐ to John McCloy, assistant secretary of war, then nese enemy aliens in the initial evacuation from made the same point after Drum’s military-zone prohibited zones, or whether the contrast is be‐ proposal. Both objected to the clear implication of tween the initial mass evacuation of only enemy Drum’s announcement: “The military order does, aliens and the later mass internment of all Japa‐ however, expressly apply to ‘Segregation and nese, aliens and citizens alike. Whatever the in‐ evacuation of enemy aliens.’”[1] But Chopas does tention, the confusion in terms and the focus ex‐ not reference or reflect on this; instead she moves clusively on the military leaves the reader uncer‐ immediately to the military’s institution of its “in‐ tain, both here and in subsequent sections. dividual exclusion” program for “suspicious Ital‐ When she gets to chapter 3, “The Struggle for ian aliens and naturalized citizens from military Justice in the Internment Process,” Chopas gets to areas” (p. 44). This begins the confusion that con‐ the heart of her study and is on frmer ground. As tinues over the difference between programs in‐ noted above, her research uncovers valuable stituted by the military and those instituted by the sources regarding the internal “struggle” at the DOJ and the resultant confusion over terminology. DOJ to fnd some accord with constitutional due Readers might not be clear whether “evacuation” process in a program in which enemy aliens es‐ is a military program or the same as “exclusion,” sentially had no due process rights at all. Chopas or whether the exclusion of the Japanese Ameri‐ attributes at least some of this problem to the fact cans is the same as the individual exclusion of the that the wartime hearing process resembled not a Italian-born naturalized Americans from military legal trial but more nearly “the informality of the zones, or whether the proposed exclusion (or preliminary hearings in deportation proceedings” evacuation) of Italian enemy aliens from the en‐ (p. 76). The lack of “adherence to the rules of evi‐ tire Pacific Slope by General John L. DeWitt was to dence” was similar in both cases, especially since be the same as the earlier exclusions (or evacua‐ “the alien was not acquainted with the charges in tions) by the DOJ. Previous scholarship has estab‐ his case because the purpose of the hearing was lished that the evacuation from West Coast pro‐ to discover evidence to be used against him” (p. hibited zones was instituted as a DOJ program. 75). Indeed, the US government made it clear that Though the Western Defense Command took over enemy aliens were not owed the hearings at all. its implementation on March 2, 1942, very little Biddle, in his Instructions to Alien Enemy Hearing changed save for the expansion of a few zones (in Board, Supplement #1, January 7, 1942, said Stockton, California, for example) and the exten‐ specifically that “all alien enemies are subject to sion of curfew hours from the 9 p.m. curfew or‐ detention and internment for the duration of the dered by the DOJ to the 8 p.m. curfew ordered by war without hearing, which hearing has however 2 H-Net Reviews been provided, not as a matter of right, but in or‐ ceive a ‘statement of the charges,’ ... were not con‐ der to permit them to present facts in their be‐ strued to apply to interned enemy aliens who had half.”[2] Equally surprising is the fact that the at‐ not been charged with any criminal offenses” (p. torney general was under no obligation to heed 75). This gets to the real Catch-22 in the entire in‐ the recommendations of his own hearing boards. ternment process. Suspect enemy aliens were ap‐ In many cases where the hearing board found prehended based on secret FBI reports and the le‐ that the enemy alien constituted no threat to pub‐ gal authority of the Enemy Alien Act of 1798. This lic safety and should be paroled, the attorney gen‐ latter made aliens of nations with whom the US eral countered the recommendation and ordered was at war “enemy aliens” and so, automatically the person interned. For instance, Cesare Pasqua’s subject to apprehension, confinement, and depor‐ Order for Internment signed by Biddle says quite tation. The question that naturally arises, of openly: “WHEREAS, the Alien Enemy Hearing course, is: what purpose did the so-called hear‐ Board has recommended that said alien enemy be ings serve? The hearings were called variously a paroled; and it appearing from the evidence be‐ “courtesy” and an attempt at “fairness.” Instruc‐ fore me that said alien enemy should be interned; tions to the hearing boards cited by Chopas out‐ NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that said alien line some guidelines to follow: “internment was enemy be interned.”[3] for those of ‘dangerous character’; those ‘consid‐ Chopas addresses this situation from several ered not so dangerous’ were granted parole ...; angles. She points out that the government in ef‐ and those ‘found to be harmless to the public safe‐ fect prejudged aliens, operating on the principle ty’ were released from government custody” (p. that the enemy alien was presumed guilty until he 81). Chopas is very keen about the “tension” here, could prove his innocence. She terms this “pre‐ and so posits the relevant and often-made conclu‐ sumptive guilt” and rightly maintains that this sion: “barring evidence of specific acts of disloyal‐ was one of the major defects in the government’s ty or threats to the public’s safety, the board’s de‐ process.

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