The Colonel and the Pacifist

by de Nevers, Klancy Clark

• ISBN13: 9780874807899
• ISBN10: 0874807891
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-05-07
• Publisher: Univ of Utah Pr

Summary

Executive Order 9066. In February 1942, ten weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt put his signature to a piece of paper that allowed the forced removal of Americans of Japanese ancestry from their West Coast homes, and their incarceration in makeshift camps. Those are the facts. But two faces emerge from behind these facts: Karl R. Bendetsen, the Army major who was promoted to full colonel and placed in charge of the evacuation after formulating the concept of 'military necessity,' and who penned the order Roosevelt signed, and Perry H. Saito, a young college student, future Methodist minister, and former neighbor from Bendetsenrs"s hometown of Aberdeen, Washington who was incarcerated in Tule Lake Relocation Camp. The Colonel and the Pacifist tells the story of two men caught up in one of the most infamous episodes in American history. While they never met, Bendetsen and Saitors"s lives touched tangentially-from their common hometown to their eventual testimony during the 1981 hearings of the Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. In weaving together these contrasting stories, Klancy Clark de Nevers not only exposes unknown or little known aspects of World War II history, she also explores larger issues of racism and war that resonate through the years and ring eerily familiar to our post-9/11 ears.

Author Biography

Klancy Clark de Nevers is coeditor of Kathy Hogan's Cohassett Beach Chronicles: World War II in the Pacific Northwest. She lives in Salt Lake City

Table of Contents

Foreword	viii
Preface	xiii
Introduction One Man Makes a Difference	1	(6)
PART I Hometown
1981: Revisionism or Redress?	7	(8)
Birds of Passage	15	(29)
Karl R. Bendetsen: From Hometown to Nation's Capital	44	(29)
PART II The Japanese Question
Specters of Fear	73	(25)
Tightening the Noose	98	(27)
Taking Full Charge	125	(22)
PART III Incarceration
A Painful Time	147	(24)
Tule Lake, June 1942	171	(26)
Loyalty Crisis	197	(28)
Sincere Conscientious Objectors to War	225	(16)
PART IV The Struggle for Justice
``A Little Hitler''	241	(23)
Stories Told in the 1970s	264	(11)
Legacy of History	275	(20)
Epilogue My Quest	295	(26)
APPENDICES
A Executive Order 9066	311	(2)
B Copy of classification questionnaire for statement of military qualifications for Karl R. Bendetsen, 7/5/42	313	(3)
C Bendetson Family Tree	316	(3)
Saito Family Tree	318	(1)
D Map of Washington and Grays Harbor	319	(1)
E Map of United States showing WRA relocation centers	320	(1)
Abbreviations	321	(2)
Notes	323	(44)
Bibliography	367	(6)
Index	373	(10)
About the Author	383