Fwd: Census WAS deeply Involved in Round up and Internment of Japanese Americans

[Guest guest]

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Census WAs deeply Involved in Round up and Internment of

Japanese Americans

 

 

 

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 11:47:57 -0700

 

 

 

Jan Slama <janslama

 

 

 

<janslama

 

 

 

Jan Slama <janslama

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You think

they won’t use it against anyone

they decided to target? Christians, retired military and police, or

whoever

they fear. Read my previous email on the census. You are only

required to

fill out the questions that have the code. If you give them more, you

do so at

your own risk.

 

 

_The

Census Bureau was deeply involved in the roundup

and internment of

Japanese Americans. Included identifying concentration._

(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_

(http://www.newworldorderreport.com/Default.aspx?tabid=266 & ID=2552)

 

 

 

Source:

_Seattle Post-Intelligencer,_

(http://www.seattlepi.com/national/cens17.shtml)

Hearst

Seattle Media, LLC

 

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.