When the U.S. government forced 70,000 American citizens of
Japanese ancestry into internment camps in 1942, it created
administrative tribunals to pass judgment on who was loyal and who
was disloyal. In
American Inquisition, Eric Muller relates
the untold story of exactly how military and civilian bureaucrats
judged these tens of thousands of American citizens during
wartime.
Some citizens were deemed loyal and were freed, but one in four was
declared disloyal to America and condemned to repressive
segregation in the camps or barred from war-related jobs. Using
cultural and religious affiliations as indicators of Americans'
loyalties, the far-reaching bureaucratic decisions often reflected
the agendas of the agencies that performed them rather than the
actual allegiances or threats posed by the citizens being judged,
Muller explains.
American Inquisition is the only study of the Japanese
American internment to examine the complex inner workings of the
most draconian system of loyalty screening that the American
government has ever deployed against its own citizens. At a time
when our nation again finds itself beset by worries about an "enemy
within" considered identifiable by race or religion, this volume
offers crucial lessons from a recent and disastrous history.