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NOTE: The present draft was completed on March 8, 2000 to serve as the
basis for our presentation at the session on "Human Rights, Population
Statistics, and Demography: Threats and Opportunities," Population
Association of America, Annual Meeting, March 23-25, 2000, Los Angeles,
CA. An electronic copy of the paper was provided to the session chair
and discussant and to the U.S. Census Bureau on that date with the notation
on the cover sheet "Not for quotation, direct or indirect, prior
to March 25, 2000, 8 am PST." Even though we circulated no other
copies of this draft and despite the embargo, reports based on it began
appearing in the press on March 17. Both at an advance presentation of
the paper at the Census Bureau on March 15 and during its presentation
at the Population Association meetings we received many helpful comments
and criticisms. We are circulating the paper now to obtain comments and
suggestions for improvement more broadly as well as to provide interested
colleagues an opportunity to go beyond the partial reports of our work
that appeared in the media. Information on contacting either author is
presented on the next page. Subsequently, we will revise the paper to
take into account the comments and criticisms received.
ABSTRACT
Following other studies of the misuse of otherwise benign population
data systems to assist in the perpetration of major human rights abuses,
we present interim results of our study of how such data systems were
used in this country in the early stages of World War II. We trace the
involvement of the federal population statistics system, including individual
agencies, outputs, staff and advisory committees, in a series of war-related
activities. These activities include the internment of over 100,000 Japanese
Americans then living in the Pacific Coast States, the alien registration
of 1940, the registration and tracking of "enemy aliens" early
in the war, and an unsuccessful effort to establish a general population
registration system for military and statistical purposes. We also briefly
examine the possible long-term consequences of some of these activities
and discuss the research and human rights and statistical policy implications
of our findings.
CONTACT INFORMATION
William Seltzer
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Dealy 407
Fordham University
441 East Fordham Road
Bronx, NY 10458
email: seltzer@fordham.edu
Margo Anderson
Department of History
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI 53201
email: margo@uwm.edu
I. Introduction
Following other recent studies of the misuse of otherwise benign population
data systems to assist in the perpetration of major human rights abuses
[Aly and Roth, 1984; Remond et al, 1996; Seltzer, 1998, 1999a; Søbye,
1998], this paper provides interim results of our continuing examination
of how such data systems were used to assist in the military defense of
the United States in the early stages of World War II and the human rights
and statistical policy implications of this involvement. A major aspect
of this examination is the often-discussed issue of how the US Census
Bureau contributed to the internment of some 100,000 Japanese Americans
then living in the Pacific Coast States. Nevertheless, our concern is
somewhat broader. After dealing with evidence and issues related to the
internment program (section II), we briefly trace the development of registration
systems for the military draft and for aliens and continue with an examination
of the programs for the control and registration of enemy aliens on the
West Coast early in 1942 (Section III). We next describe an ultimately
unsuccessful effort to establish a general population registration system
throughout the United States for military and statistical purposes (section
IV). We also briefly examine the question of whether any long-term consequences
of these events can be identified (section V).
After this largely factual account based primarily on our reconstruction
of events that occurred nearly 60 years ago, we explore the apparent motivations
of the demographers and statisticians associated with these events and
a series of critical decision points (section VI). In addition, and equally
important, in the same section, we present some implications of this historical
review for statistical policy and research issues for today and the future.
Given that this paper is being presented within a week of the start
of enumeration of the 22nd decennial census of the population, one conclusion
we would stress at the outset is that nothing in this paper should be
taken as discouraging the need for each person and family to be included
in the forthcoming census count. Indeed, as one of us has previously emphasized
[Seltzer, 1998: 539-540], a decennial population census is, next to the
sample survey, generally the least threatening method of collecting needed
population statistics. In this context, the recent efforts of the Census
Bureau to increase the use of sampling in connection with the decennial
census can only be viewed as highly salutary from the perspective of prudent
human rights policies.
Finally, a personal note: Both authors of this paper feel a strong attachment
to the Census Bureau as an important public institution performing a valuable
social function, often under the most difficult circumstances. Regrettably,
some of our findings and conclusions call into question certain Census
Bureau actions and policies and those of others active in the federal
statistical community. We are aware that hindsight can make us all wiser
and that during the immediate post-Pearl Harbor period actions were done
by many in the interests of patriotism and misguided self-defense that
were ultimately recognized as wrong. However, to leave such mistakes unexamined
bars us from learning from them and perhaps avoiding similar errors in
the future. Although our research documents what we consider to have been
both past and continuing mistakes, we have also identified a few instances
where, even in the context of the crisis atmosphere of early 1942, Bureau
staff were alert to the possible misuse of population data systems.
II. The Internment of the Japanese Americans
We are not the first persons to have reviewed the issue of the involvement
of the US Census Bureau in the internment of the Japanese Americans during
Word War II. The subject was dealt with first by the Bureau itself in
a section of its unpublished War History volume [Dobbin, 1946a]. Subsequently,
several investigators of the Japanese American internment experience have
touched upon various aspects of the issue in the course of their research,
sometimes locating highly relevant archival materials [see particularly,
Okamura, 1981; Daniels, 1982; and Weglyn, 1996]. In addition, over the
intervening decades, newspaper stories have appeared often based on or
inspired by the results of these research efforts [San Francisco Examiner,
1981], raising the issue of the nature of the Bureau's involvement in
the internment effort. Largely in response to the questions raised by
these researchers and the related press coverage, the Bureau has provided
a series of explanations of its involvement in the internment program,
sometimes citing its own archival research [see, for example, Bohme, 1975;
Barabba, 1981; Dedrick, 1981a and b; Chapman, 1982; US Census Bureau,
1982; and Bohme and Pemberton, 1991]. However, all prior examinations
of this issue have been carried by persons who either (i) lacked knowledge
of population statistics operations and the history of the Bureau, but
who were independent of the Bureau or (ii) had such knowledge, but were
not independent of the Bureau. It is hoped that our combination of expertise
and independence, may help to provide some new insights into these events
of nearly 60 years ago.
It maybe useful to begin by offering three worse-case hypotheses concerning
the involvement of the US Census Bureau in the internment of Japanese
Americans after the US entry into World War II:
(1) That the Census Bureau provided names and addresses of Japanese
Americans obtained from the 1940 Population Census files, in violation
of census confidentiality laws and related assurances, to the military
authorities to assist in the internment program;
(2) That the Census Bureau has engaged in a deliberate and systematic
cover-up of its involvement in the internment program; and
(3) That the very existence of the category, "Japanese," within
the racial classification used by the Census Bureau in the 1940 Census,
led to a different treatment of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor
than that given to persons of German and Italian ancestry.
Although the evidence we have so far assembled and will present here,
does not unequivocally establish any of these hypotheses as stated, it
does raise troubling questions about what happened in 1941 and 1942, and
perhaps even more disturbing, how the Bureau has dealt with the issue
over the intervening decades. As discussed in Section VI below, this evidence
also suggests a series of improvements and safeguards for the future as
well as needed future research.
Stepping back from these narrowly-worded hypotheses, we shall examine
the Bureau's involvement in the internment process in terms of three broad
topics: (1) the operational involvement of Bureau outputs, materials,
expertise, and staff in planning and carrying out the internment; (2)
the accounts provided by the Bureau, its staff, and its Directors concerning
these events; and (3) the role of the racial classification and the available
data by race in contributing to the internment of the Japanese Americans.
(1) The operational involvement of the Bureau
We divide our attention to this broad topic into four categories: (a)
the use of macrodata, that is, the use of census results in terms of large
aggregates and geographic units; (b) the use of mesodata, that is, the
use of census results for very small geographic units; (c) the use of
unprotected microdata, that is, census information that permits the identification
of individuals; and (d) the use of other material, staff, services, and
expertise provided by the Bureau.
(a) Macrodata
On Sunday, December 7, 1941 the Japanese armed forces attacked Pearl
Harbor in Hawaii precipitating the United States entry into World War
II. On Tuesday, December 9, 1941 the Bureau of the Census published its
first report on Japanese Americans based on the 1940 Census, "Japanese
population of the United States, its territories and possessions,"
followed immediately by reports on the "Japanese population by nativity
and citizenship in selected cities of the United States" on December
10, and "Japanese population in the Pacific Coast States by sex,
nativity and citizenship, by counties" on December 11 [US Census
Bureau, 1974: items 1286, 1287, and 1288, respectively]. Additional preliminary
1940 census reports on the Japanese Americans were issued on December
19 and February 2, 1942 [US Census Bureau, 1974: items 1291, 1292, and
1293]. On December 12, 1941 the Bureau also produced a report on foreign
born Germans and Italians in selected cities [item 1289] and only on September
30, 1942 a report on "Foreign white stock of German and Italian origin"
[item 1299].
Copies of these reports can be found in some Census depository libraries
and some were quoted in the press shortly after their release [NY Times,
12/13/41, p. 15; 12/30/41, p. 6; San Francisco Chronicle, 12/17/41, p.
15; San Francisco Examiner, 12/16/41, p. B; 12/17/41, p. 5; 12/24/41,
p. A]. (Some of these numbers were referred to in the internal policy
discussions in the period that preceded the internment decision, see section
II.3 below.) In early January 1942 the Census Director, J.C. Capt, attributed
the quick production of most of these tabulations to the fact that "we
didn't wait for the declaration of war [which took place on Monday afternoon].
On Monday morning we put our people to work on the Japanese thing. And
before the German and Italians hopped in we were working on that..."
[Census Advisory Committee, January 1942: 20].
The production of census tabulations of this type would generally not
be considered violations of the census confidentiality provisions. It
should be noted that over and above the early start of work noted by Director
Capt, the rapid tabulation of the data on Japanese Americans can be attributed
to the fact that number of Japanese Americans was relatively small (under
300,000 nationwide in the 1940 Census) and, more importantly, because
they could be identified by a single sort on race which has always been
a 100 percent item in US census tradition. The possible role that the
early availability of these tabulations may have played in either contributing
to the growing fear of Japanese Americans on the West Coast or helping
the Western Defense Command to form its conception of the internment effort
will be discussed subsequently.
(b) Mesodata
As used here the term mesodata refers to statistical results presented
at such a fine level of geographic disagregation that the results may
be used in conducting field operations at the local level. The borderline
between macrodata and mesodata is not always clear cut. In part it depends
on the size of the geographic units, in part on the distribution of the
target population among these units, and in part on the intended operational
uses. For example, the special reports issued by the Census Bureau on
December 10, 11, and 19, 1941 providing data on the number of Japanese
Americans in specific cities and counties certainly provided a measure
of operational assistance to those trying to locate the whereabouts of
individual Japanese Americans. However, for those cities and counties
that were comparatively large or that contained many Japanese Americans
the operational significance of county-level or city-level data was limited.
The Census Bureau geography at the time of the 1940 Census was also
capable of making finer geographic distinctions. These included entities,
such as towns, townships, villages, or city wards, often collectively
termed minor civil divisions. Another geographic unit often used in urban
areas was the census tract, a well-defined and well-mapped way of dividing
the land and population of a city. In 1940 each tract usually had a population
in the 4,000-8,000 range [Truesdell, 1941: 365]. At these finer levels
of disagregation the operational value of mesodata in locating a target
population was clear to both the users and producers of 1940 Census mesodata
on Japanese Americans. For example, during the January 1942 Census Advisory
Committee meeting the following colloquy took place between Dr. Leon Truesdell,
Bureau's chief population statistician, Dr. Virgil Reed, the Bureau's
assistant director, and Director Capt:
Dr. Truesdell: ... We got a request yesterday, for example, from one
of the Navy officers in Los Angeles, wanting figures in more or less geographic
detail for the Japanese residents in Los Angeles, and we are getting that
out....
Dr. Reed: [Commenting on all the hard work occasioned by numerous requests
for data on the Japanese, Germans, and Italians] ... and some of them
wanted them by much finer divisions than States and cities; some of them
wanted, I believe several of them, them by census tract even.
Dr. Truesdell: That Los Angeles request I just referred to asked for
census tracts.
...
The Director: We think it is pretty valuable. Those who got it thought
they were pretty valuable. That is, if they knew there were 801 Japs in
a community and only found 800 of them, then they have something to check
up on....[Census Advisory Committee, January 1942: 20-21]
In fact, the Bureau had two geographic units even more compact than
the census tract: enumeration districts and in some cities, census blocks
and the 1940 census geocoding permitted tabulations at these levels of
detail [Truesdell, 1941: 367]. Indeed, Dedrick [1981b: 172-173] testified
to the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians that
at the end of February 1942 when he was on "detail to the War Department"
the Census Bureau was asked to provide him,
a detailed cross-tabulation for even the most minute areas, the smallest
areas for which data were collected. In other words, enumeration districts
and in some instances cities by blocks.... Sheets of paper from the tabulation
machines were sent out to WCCA at the hotel in Market Street in San Francisco,
and became the basis for the WCCA statistical activities.
These recollections appear to be confirmed by contemporary Bureau records
that included in one of its listings of war related activities for 1942,
the provision of "photographic and photostatic copies of block maps
for 10 cities" to the Western Defense Command [US Census Bureau,
1942b, Exhibit A:12]. That such block level tabulations were made and
used operationally is also consistent with the 1972 recollections of Tom
Clark, then serving as a liaison officer for the Justice Department with
the Western Defense Command. Referring to the Bureau's help, Clark recalled
"... They would lay out on tables [maps of] various city blocks where
Japanese lived and they would tell me how many were living in each block"
[US Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, 1982:
105] (see Clark [1972] for a more complete text).
The usefulness of mesodata displayed cartographically can also be seen
from figure 6 of the final report on the evacuation submitted by General
DeWitt to the Army Chief of Staff [US Army. Western Defense Command and
Fourth Army. 1943: 83] which reproduces a set of five population density
maps of the "Japanese Population - Western Defense Command Area:
1940." The figure cites the "US Bureau of the Census" as
the source and carries the legend, "each dot represents 10 people."
As a precursor to a forced migration with a far more sinister ending,
similar so-called "dot maps" prepared by the statistical authorities
in Amsterdam played a major role in Nazi-inspired attacks in February
1941 aimed at several Jewish residential areas of that city [Seltzer,
1998: 525].
Recognizing the possible threats to the public arising from certain
kinds of mesodata, the Census Bureau has progressively introduced stricter
disclosure standards. Furthermore, beginning with the 1990 Census some
deliberate noise has also been introduced into small area tabulations
in an effort to provide further protection. Indeed, the Bureau has indicated,
under the standards now in place the release of mesodata from the 1940
Census on Japanese Americans would have been severely restricted. Ironically,
even as it was releasing mesodata from the 1940 Census pertaining to Japanese
Americans, the 1940 Census marked the first time the Bureau introduced
procedures to guard against inadvertent respondent disclosure from small
area tabulations [Bohme and Pemberton, 1991: 18].
(c) Unprotected microdata
Whatever ambiguity may have existed in 1941 and 1942 about the propriety
of using mesodata to target population subgroups (see, for example, Okamura
[1981: 113-115] and Barabba [1981], quoted in part in Okamura), all agree
that disclosure of data on specific individuals gathered under the protection
of Title 13, the census act, was prohibited. In addition to statutory
provisions, assurances made to the public in the years prior to the 1940
Census were clear and unwavering. For example, Corcoran [1963: 36] quotes
President Hoover's 1929 proclamation for the 15th Census, including the
explicit language that
the sole purpose of the census is to secure general statistical information
regarding the population and resources of the country ... No person can
be harmed in any way by providing the information required. The census
has nothing to do with ... the enforcement of any national, state, or
local law or ordinance. There need be no fear that any disclosure will
be made regarding any individual person or his affairs ...
In response to a series of columns by Arthur Krock in the New York Times
written in February 1940 expressing various concerns about the forthcoming
census, including the possible misuse by different government agencies
of information provided by the responding public, the then Census Director
wrote a lengthy refutation which at one point quoted from the provision
of Title 13 "that in no case shall information furnished under the
authority of this Act be used to the detriment of the person or persons
to whom such information relates" and at another point ridiculed
the idea that census officials could be ordered to ignore the confidentiality
provisions of Title 13 [Austin, 1940]. Finally, the 1940 Census enumeration
form itself contained the reassuring words [US Census Bureau, 1979: 58-60]
that
... Only sworn census employees will see your statements. Data collected
will be used solely for preparing statistical information concerning the
Nation's population, resources, and business activities. Your Census Reports
Cannot Be Used for Purposes of Taxation, Regulation, or Investigation.
[Capitalization in the original]
Despite this clearly articulated policy, rumors have persisted that
names and addresses of Japanese Americans from the 1940 Census were provided
to the military authorities to assist in the internment program. In a
few instances, these rumors turned into concrete charges or new evidence
emerged that seemed to confirm one or another aspect of these rumors.
For example, in a 1982 book by John Toland, the author recounts a story
based on a letter written in 1980 by one Henry Field to the effect that
he (Field) was given the assignment by President Roosevelt on November
26,1941 to obtain the names and addresses of all American- and foreign-born
Japanese listed by state and locality based on the 1930 and 1940 Censuses.
Toland provides a wealth of detail, ostensibly based on Field's account,
describing this massive enterprise which was successfully completed on
December 3 [Toland, 1982: 268-269; 284-285; 351]. (It is not clear whether
all the detail was Field's or some of it was added by Toland.) In any
case, as it appeared in Toland's book, the tale contained so many factual
errors and implausibilities (for example, the location of the Bureau's
office, Director Capt's appearance and personality, the nature of his
intercom, the length of time it would take to compile a roster of names
and addresses from the census schedules, the number of pages of paper
needed for such a roster), that it was effectively discredited by the
Bureau shortly after it appeared [Chapman, 1982; US Census Bureau, 1982].
One source of misunderstanding was the remark by Tom Clark's in his
oral history interview cited above, and referred to by Okamura [1981:
112-113], that "...the Census Bureau moved out its raw files"
[Clark, 1972]. However, that remark seemed to refer directly to the block-level
tabulations and maps provided by the Bureau from the 1940 Census and not
to the availability individual names and addresses. Another example, also
cited Okamura [1981: 115], was a July 1942 memorandum to Calvert Dedrick,
seeking his help in locating the current addresses for two different groups
of Japanese Americans [Bendetsen, 1942a]. This memorandum, which those
writing on behalf of the Bureau seem to have ignored, has been dismissed
by Daniels [1982] as irrelevant. Certainly, in and of itself, the memorandum
may be explained in many ways that have nothing to do with the use of
name and address information from the 1940 Census. As has been pointed
out by Daniels [1982] and several of those speaking on behalf of the Bureau
[Barabba, 1980; Chapman, 1982], initially the rumors may have been sparked
over a failure to distinguish between the use of very detailed mesodata
and the use of unprotected microdata.
During the course of its 1982 investigation of the Field/Toland charges
the Census Bureau also indicated it had made a search of the archival
materials pertaining to the Bureau stored in Record Group 29 maintained
in the National Archives. On the basis of this review, the Bureau formulated
its conclusions in two different ways: first, that it could find no records
that would confirm that any disclosures of names and addresses from the
1940 Census had taken place, and second, that "the Census Bureau
Director did not release any names and addresses from his census records
to anyone at any time for any purpose" [Census Bureau, 1982: 1].
On the basis of our own review of what we considered to be the most
relevant portions of Record Group 29, we too are able to conclude that
the archival record does not establish that unauthorized disclosure of
microdata took place. Unfortunately, we cannot agree that the archival
record supports the Bureau's second formulation. At the same January 1942
Census Advisory Committee Meeting, in which Director Capt and his senior
staff indicated that by January 10 that they were already providing tract
level data on the Japanese Americans to the military, Director Capt expressed
his willingness to take the next step:
We're by law required to keep confidential information by individuals.
But in the end, [i]f the defense authorities found 200 Japs missing and
they wanted the names of the Japs in that area, I would give them further
means of checking individuals. [Census Advisory Committee, January 1942:
21]
The only comment offered was that by the chair, Dr. Murray Benedict,
who noted briefly "I would guess you may have additional minor jobs
in that," before turning to other matters.
Was Director Capt asked by the military for individual names and, if
so, did he "give them further means of checking individuals?"
The record at this point becomes murky. As described in the next subsection,
within six weeks Dr. Dedrick, who participated in the January 1942 meeting
of the Census Advisory Committee, was sent to San Francisco to assist
Western Defense Command first in alien registration and subsequently in
the detailed planning of the forced evacuation of the Japanese Americans.
Furthermore, as already discussed, one memorandum has been found in which
Dr. Dedrick's military supervisor does ask his help in providing names
and addresses [Bendetsen, 1942a]. Equally disquieting are the inconsistent
accounts of the Bureau's role (section II.2 below).
Given Tom Clark's detailed involvement in the planning operations for
the internment and his description of the use of census maps and tabulations
at the block level coupled with his omission of any mention of the use
of names [Clark, 1972], it seems unlikely that names were released en
masse by the Bureau. Moreover, there was no real need for this type of
microdata since address information was effectively provided through the
extensive release of detailed mesodata. On the other hand, one may speculate
that Dedrick's presence on the West Coast provided a means for the Bureau
to release confidential microdata on a selective basis in response to
stated "military needs." The identification information on the
punch cards included a reference to the schedule page and line number
for each person. While as the Bureau has correctly pointed out searching
through the original census schedules for all Japanese Americans would
have been a massive clerical undertaking that would have been difficult
to conceal [US Census Bureau, 1982], discrete searches for a few names
might have taken place unremembered. It must be stressed that the evidence
that any microdata from the 1940 Census were released in this manner is
at this point conjectural. On the other hand, the fact that many searches
of the 1940 Census schedules were carried out at this time for other purposes
was acknowledged by the Census Bureau in its report for the fiscal year
ending June 30, 1942 [1942a: 26]:
When information is desired about any individual person, the first step....
in referring to the schedule is to determine in what enumeration district
that person lived at the time of the census. During the past year 500,000
addresses were allocated to enumeration districts preparatory to referring
to the population schedules. Most of these searches were made for personal
census record transcripts but a large number of these cases involved segregating
information for special tabulations.
(d) The use of other material, staff, services, and expertise provided
by the Bureau
In addition to the various types of outputs from the 1940 Census reviewed
in the previous subsections, the principle assistance provided by the
Census Bureau to support the internment program was the technical support
and services provided to the Western Defense Command and the War Department.
Central to this effort was Dr Calvert Dedrick. Dedrick served in San Francisco
for about a year starting from February 27, 1942. In 1946 Dedrick described
the circumstances of his involvement in these terms
The request for the assistance of the Census Bureau was made by General
Allan Gullion, Provost Marshall General, in successive telephone conversation
with Mr. South Trimble, Jr., Solicitor of the Department of Commerce,
and Mr. J.C. Capt. At the outset it was anticipated that I would remain
on the west coast for only 10 days or two weeks to assist Lt. Gen. John
L. DeWitt in preparing forms and procedures for the registration of enemy
aliens in that area. [Dedrick, 1946]
In March, after General DeWitt decided that evacuation of all Japanese
Americans from the area was necessary, "arrangements were made by
the Office of the Provost Marshall General with the Bureau ... for the
loan of Mr. Dedrick to assist in this evacuation program" [1946].
On the West Coast, Dedrick worked under the direct supervision of Colonel
Karl R. Bendetsen, Director of the WCCA and "recruited, trained,
and operated a civilian statistical branch of that agency from March 1942
to March 1943" [1946]. On his arrival and until June 7,1942 Dedrick
remained a Census Bureau staff member, thereafter at the War Department's
insistence, he was transferred to the War Department payroll. In March
1943, he returned to Washington, DC where he worked in the Office of the
Provost General on a variety topics, including "problems of alien
evacuation and control" [1946].
The recruitment of qualified professionals to staff the statistical
unit involved some effort. In 1981 Dedrick recalled that "my sociology
friends [i.e., Dorothy Thomas, among others] over across the bay at Berkeley
were very upset at me, but I must say I reached up to the University of
Washington and got a Professor of Sociology [i.e., Calvin Schmid] and
his principal graduate student [i.e., David Carpenter] as my right and
left hand in this thing" [Dedrick, 1981b: 186-187].
The operational responsibilities of the WCCA statistical branch, headed
by Dedrick, included
preparation of all necessary forms and procedures for the registration,
temporary detention in Assembly Centers, and transfer to War Relocation
Centers of all Japanese (sic) evacuees; the maintenance of adequate individual
records through which the movement of each individual and each family
would be traced; the maintenance of certain intelligence type records
concerning individuals; drafting the details of the logistics of the evacuation
movement including preparation of maps of individual evacuation area units
by groups (of units) for temporary detention in Assembly Centers, and
the regrouping of population for transfer to Relocation Centers; and for
the preparation of tables, charts, and maps needed for over-all planning,
operation and report purposes [Dedrick, 1946].
These are an unusually broad set of responsibilities for a statistical
unit, at least in a democratic society. It is particularly surprising,
both from the perspective of the Army and that of the Census Bureau, that
Dedrick would be permitted, as the "Census Bureau's West Coast representative"
[Capt, 1942b], to take charge of a number of the listed responsibilities.
(Actually the precedent established in the WCCA for the statistical operation
to serve as an administrative home for intelligence and control activities
carried over into the WRA. )
In addition, the Population Division, the Division of Vital Statistics,
and the Machine Tabulation Division were frequently called upon by WCCA
and the WRA to provide special population estimates and special tabulations
of Census Bureau data files as well as numerous tabulations based on administrative
data files generated by the WCCA and WRA operations. A quick glance at
the tabular material contained in many reports issued by the Western Defense
Command, the WCCA, the War Relocation Authority, reveals the guiding hand
of the Bureau's Manual of Tabular Presentation (see, for example, US Army
[1943] and US War Relocation Authority [1946b]).
(2) The varying accounts provided by the Bureau, its staff, and its
Directors concerning these events
Anyone attempting to reconstruct the extent and nature of the Census
Bureau's involvement in the internment process faces three main obstacles:
(1) with time, there are fewer and fewer eyewitnesses to the event and
memories become less reliable; (2) as the Bureau [1982:1] has stated "...
it could be surmised that if Census Bureau officials were secretly engaged
in an action, including the violation of a federal statute, they would
leave no trace of their actions;" and (3) the accounts of its involvement
in the internment program have contained numerous substantial inconsistencies
beginning with Calvert Dedrick's first memorandum on the subject [Dedrick,
1946].
Dedrick's immediate post war statement was written in July 1946, a year
after he returned to the Census Bureau, for the Bureau's War History project.
It contained two seemingly inaccurate assertions. First, in describing
the use of 1940 Census punch cards and special tabulations, he observed,
"However, the name and the individual identification data from the
1940 Census for the Japanese were not provided to the War Department nor
were such data requested" [Dedrick, 1946]. As we shall see, many
subsequent statements by the Bureau, including one directly attributed
to Dedrick, assert that the War Department did make such a request, but
that the Bureau refused. Second, in referring the short-term consultancy
mission to the West Coast of a Bureau expert, Dr. Forrest Linder, he described
Linder's assignment as working on "alien registration procedures."
Four years earlier, as we discuss more fully below, he had referred to
Linder's assignment under the heading "plans for the general registration
of the civilian population" [Dedrick, 1942; see also Linder, 1942
and Dobbin, 1946b: 25]. Whether by chance or design, both of these errors
served to minimize the Bureau's role in questionable activities .
Even in the final report of the evacuation prepared in 1943 by General
DeWitt and his staff, one may observe a similar example of selective minimization
with regard to the Bureau's role. While the 1940 Census was identified
as the "most important single source of information prior to the
evacuation" and the Bureau was given full credit for running special
tabulations that "became the basis for the general evacuation and
relocation plan," the actual tabulations referred to were "the
aggregate Japanese population of states, the larger cities and groups
of counties" [US Army. Western Defense Command and Fourth Army, 1943:
352]. There was no mention here, or elsewhere in the report, of the special
small area tabulations of the 1940 Census used in operational planning
or to generate the population density maps also shown in the report [1943:
83]. At the time this report was prepared, Dedrick was still on the West
Coast working for Bendetsen and his help with this report has been noted
[Dobbin, 1946a; Dedrick, 1981b: 178].
About the same time, in the Bureau's own pamphlet describing itself
to the war-time American public [US Census Bureau, 1943a: 7-8], referred
to its use of the 1940 Census data in sub-section, "War Facts Were
Ready" to grind "out promptly and in detail" answers to
such questions as
How many alien Japanese and Germans and Italians have we, and where?
How many naturalized, and second generation? How old are they, and what
are their occupations in specific areas? How thick are they in strategic
areas and possessions, such as Alaska and Hawaii?
There was no further mention as to how these data were used or produced,
except for the captions to several illustrations extolling the power of
punch cards.
The discussion of the use of 1940 Census data in the chapter of the
unpublished war history volume dealing with the Bureau's role in the evacuation
repeats verbatim the statement in Dedrick's memorandum that name and individual
identification data from the 1940 Census were neither provided to the
War Department nor sought by them [Dobbin, 1946a: 4]. It then goes onto
add
This was in conformance with Census law, under which the Bureau must
keep such data confidential, excepting that it can give these data to
an individual when he requests it. [1946a: 4]
A year after the war history volume was completed, when the Census Bureau
issued its public information pamphlet, Fact Finder for the Nation, all
mention of the Japanese Americans had vanished and the brief summary of
the Bureau's war-time contributions focused elsewhere, "the marshaling
of facts on materials and manpower during Word War II was one of the important
aspects of accomplishing the miracle of production that made possible
the winning of the war." [US Census Bureau, 1947: 4]. The omission
cannot be attributable to staff turn-over since when the pamphlet was
issued, Capt was still Director and Dedrick was still a member of the
senior management team.
An extended period of institutional silence then ensued. When the subject
of the Japanese Americans and the 1940 Census subsequently reemerged,
the Bureau's role was cast in far different terms. In marked contrast
with both its earlier accounts and its long silence, at some point in
the 1960's or early 1970's the Bureau's war-time involvement in the internment
program began to be cited as an example of how the Bureau was able to
protect census respondents from the efforts of others in Government to
harm them.
In time, this version of the story became quite specific. For example,
in 1975 the then chief of the Census Bureau's history staff, responding
to a question by the historian Roger Daniels, wrote [Bohme, 1975]:
According to Dr. Calvert L. Dedrick, who was Chief of the Census Bureau's
Statistical Research Division in 1942, "someone" in the office
of the U.S. Army Provost Marshal General telephoned Mr. South Trimble,
Solicitor of the Department of Commerce in Washington, on or about February
24, 1942, and asked for detailed information from the 1940 Census records,
culminating in a list of individual Japanese Americans by name and address.
The Solicitor's response was that no names or addresses would be disclosed,
but that the Census Bureau could prepare a special tabulation of persons
of Japanese ancestry by minor civil division (which the Bureau subsequently
did). There is no correspondence involved in this particular interchange.
As we established in section II.1.b above, census tract data from the
1940 Census had already been requested and provided in early January 1942.
According to Daniels [1982: 105], in 1975 Dedrick declined an opportunity
to comment further on this account by Bohme. Subsequently Dedrick apparently
returned to his 1946 position, stating that "at no time were the
names and addresses of individuals or families received or requested from
the Bureau of the Census" [Dedrick, 1981a: 4].
By early 1980, the Bureau's description of the episode went even further
in articulating the heroic lengths it went to protect Japanese Americans.
As part of its preparatory program for the 1980 Census, the Bureau launched
an effort to involve college and university students in the enumeration
process and issued a textbook to assist in their training [US Census Bureau,
1980]. That work, in a chapter entitled "Facing Some Issues,"
included in its review of the Bureau's track record in dealing with privacy
and confidentiality issues the following account [1980: 76-77]
The Census Bureau was even able to resist intense political pressure
for the release of data. For example in 1941, with World War II underway,
there was near hysteria about the fact that there were many Japanese-Americans
living on the West Coast. This led to one of the most embarrassing moments
in U.S. history - the confinement of large numbers of loyal Japanese Americans.
At the height of this feeling, the Secretary of War is believed to have
requested the Census Bureau to supply, the names, addresses, and ages
of all persons of Japanese extraction living on the West Coast. This time,
in spite of the national emergency, the Bureau held to its position on
confidentiality of individual records and refused to release the information.
The Bureau did supply summary data for political jurisdictions, but no
individual data were released.
Okamura [1981: 111-112 and footnote 2] cites several other sources where
virtually the same retelling of the story is used in the mass media, including
a television script provided Michi Weglyn perhaps dating back to 1960.
In the same article, Okamura went on to question the Census Bureau's depiction
of itself as defenders of the Japanese Americans in the post Pearl Harbor
period, citing several documents [for example, US Army, 1943; Bendetsen,
1942a; Clark, 1972], already discussed here. He concluded "there
is no doubt that the Census Bureau was intimately involved in the planning
for the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans. The only question is
whether their actions violated the law" [Okamura, 1981: 113]. He
then quoted [1981: 113-114] from a letter from then Census Bureau Director,
Vince Barabba that attempted to respond to the information that he and
Weglyn had unearthed.
In the quoted portions of his letter, after first acknowledging that
"a different account would be more appropriate in the future,"
Barabba [1980] basically made two points in defense of the Bureau: first,
that the confidentiality law that governed the 1940 Census did not extend
to any harm that arose from tabulated data; and second, that the War Powers
Act of 1942 suspended the confidentiality provisions of the census act.
Although he indicated that "we have no evidence ... that identifiable
confidential information was ever released during this period because
of the [War Powers] act," Director Barabba's references to the War
Powers Act actually raised more questions than it answered. As we have
seen, Director Capt as far back as January 10 had expressed a willingness
to provide the defense authorities with confidential information from
the 1940 Census in violation of his understanding of the law [Census Advisory
Committee, January 1942]. This occurred some two weeks prior to January
22, 1942, the date that the bill that eventually became the War Powers
Act was introduced. Moreover, according to Dedrick's 1975 account, a request
for names and addresses from the 1940 Census was made by the War Department
to the Department of Commerce on or about February 24, 1942 [Bohme, 1975].
Under the then pending legislation for the War Powers Act, requests for
otherwise confidential information held by any bureau in the Department
of Commerce, were to be made through the Secretary of Commerce. Thus,
the request if made in February 1942 could have lawfully been provided
in a month's time under the provisions' of the War Powers Act. The question
then arises, what led Director Barabba to refer to this Act?
In 1982 Census Director Chapman, again wrote to Okamura, forwarding
and endorsing a five- page report responding to the charges in the Toland
book [1982]. This report [US Census Bureau, 1982], in addition to refuting
Toland's charges, reiterates and elaborates several earlier statements
made by the Bureau about its involvement in the internment. These include:
(1) a description of the macrodata provided that implies that the tabulation
runs for "Japanese, German, and Italian Americans" were equivalent
and obfuscates the timing of the post-Pearl Harbor publications [1982:
2]; (2) a recollection by Dedrick that "he received from the Census
Bureau, early in 1942, aggregate data on the Japanese American population
by citizenship status and by place and county subdivision within each
state on the West Coast" [1982: 3]; and (3) another recollection
by Dedrick "that about the time of his departure for San Francisco,
on February 25, 1942, Director Capt told him that inquiries from War Department
staff as to the use of the names and addresses from the population schedules
had been refused but that tabulations of data for small areas could be
supplied" [1982: 3].
In 1991, two members of the Census Bureau historical staff, indicating
that they were reporting "the general results of research,"
summarized the Bureau's role in the internment using the following language
[Bohme and Pemberton, 1991: 12]:
the Bureau turned down the War Department's telephoned request in 1942
for the names and addresses of Japanese (sic) living in Western States.
What the Census Bureau did do, however, was to give the War Department
stacks of punch cards (which had no names or addresses) identifying such
persons by census tract or other small area - information readily to available
to anyone in the published reports, but in more convenient form. The military
authorities thus knew where to concentrate their efforts to intern these
people, but in no case did the Census Bureau, contrary to law, furnish
information about individuals that could be used to their detriment.
While some tract and block data from the 1940 Census were eventually
published by the Census Bureau, although not in early 1942, data for individual
enumeration districts as such were never made available to the public.
In 1995 former Census Director Bryant, largely relying Bohme and Pemberton's
account, even as she began to distance herself from it, wrote that after
Pearl Harbor
The War Department requested the names and addresses of all Japanese
and Japanese-Americans enumerated in the 1940 Census in the Western states.
The Census Bureau rejected the request. But the Bureau did give the War
Department punch cards, without names or addresses, identifying census
tracts and other small areas with high concentrations of Japanese....
Bureau defenders contend that the population counts provided to the military
were already available in published reports. Even today, the Census Bureau
promises confidentiality only to individuals. Neighborhood characteristics...
are available to all.
The Japanese-Americans who lost property and were interned simply because
of their ancestry see things differently, indeed. Their devastating fate
has been cited repeatedly by critics as a breach in spirit, if not in
fact, of census confidentiality. [Bryant and Dunn, 1995: 32-33]
Unfortunately, during the period leading up to the 2000 Census, the
image of the Bureau's protection of the Japanese Americans early in Word
War II was once again invoked to reassure respondents more generally.
For example, earlier this year the Chicago Tribune [Ibata, 2000] reported
that
Michael Voss, manager of the Census Bureau's Palatine office, urged
executives to assure their employees that census data is confidential
.... "During World War II, the president tried to obtain information
from the Census Bureau about Japanese Americans, and the President himself
was turned down," Voss said.
Since we have heard of this same example being cited by local census
officials elsewhere in the country (see, for example, the Bergen (NJ)
Record [2/9/00, "Ducking the Census," opinion section, p. 8]),
we can only assume that the example was, as in the 1980 Census, included
in the training materials for the present census. This despite Director
Barabba's 1980 disavowal of this sort of characterization of the Bureau's
behavior and Director Bryant's more recent comments. The only change in
the story from that used in 1980 is that now the Bureau is said to have
turned down the President rather than merely the War Department. (It should
be noted that as soon as we became aware of this problem in the 2000 Census,
we notified the Bureau, and they took steps to correct the record in so
far as possible.)
Not only was the Census Bureau disseminating a falsely romantic myth
about its past behavior to the public, it appears that this myth has been
internalized widely among the Bureau's permanent professional staff. During
informal discussions over the past year with a range of staff members,
we have repeatedly heard that the story of the heroic steps taken by the
Census Bureau to protect the interests of Japanese Americans respondents
at the outbreak of World War II is accepted as fact within the Census
Bureau.
The numerous accounts of the use of 1940 Census data to assist in the
internment of Japanese Americans provided by the Census Bureau, Census
staff, Census directors, and others, over the years, vary so greatly that
the scope of the problem may become lost in the detail. By way of clarification,
Table 1 presents summary information on critical aspects the Bureau's
involvement drawn from the different accounts discussed in this section.
A glance down each column of the table reveals such inconsistencies and
departures from the truth, whatever their cause, that taken together seriously
undermines the Bureau's credibility. This is particularly unfortunate,
given that at the outset of Bureau's work on the War History Project that
the stated goal was to include
not only a record of what we did, but why we did it, and how, and how
it could be better done if we had to it over again. There is no point
in simply making it a boastful record of achievement. We should record
failures as well as success [Capt, no date].
The Bureau has a long tradition of respecting the truth of this view
with respect to various types of statistical errors. However, the proposition
is equally apt with respect to policy and administrative mistakes.
Table 1. Summary of Available Information on Aspects of the Use of the
1940 Census
in the Internment of Japanese Americans
Reference(Source and date)(a) Date information requested or provided(b)
Lowest level for whichinformation providedand nature of information(c)
Was the Bureau asked to provide names and addresses?(d) Census Bureau
response(e)
US Census Bureau, 1941c 12/11/41 County - statistics Not applicable Not
applicable
Census Advisory Committee, January 1942, pp. 20-21 1/10/42 and earlier
Tract - statistics Not mentioned Director Capt: "If the defense authorities
... wanted the names ... I would give them further means of checking individuals."
US Census Bureau, 1942, p. 12 1942 Block - maps Not applicable Not applicable
Bendetsen, 1942a 7/3/42 Dedrick requested to provide addresses of individuals
Possiblya Not known
US Army, 1943, p. 352 (Drafted by Dedrick) Early 1942 "States, larger
cities and groups of counties" Not mentioned Not applicable
Dedrick, 1946 Not applicable Not applicable "Not requested"
"Not provided"
Dobbin, 1946a Not applicable Not applicable "Not requested"
"Not provided"
Clark, 1972 Prior to 3/42 Block - statistics Not mentioned Not applicable
(a) (b) (c) (d) (e)
Bohme, 1975, citing Dedrick On or about 2/24/42 "Minor civil divisions"
Yes, by the War Department "Names not provided"
US Census Bureau, 1980, pp. 76-77 (Drafted by Bohme) Unspecified "Summary
data for political jurisdictions" Yes, by the WarDepartment "Names
not provided"
Dedrick, 1981 Just after 2/26/42 Detailed cross tabulations for blocks
and enumeration districts "Not requested" "Not provided"
Bohme and Pemberton, 1991, p. 12 In 1942 Punch cards identifying people,
but without names and addresses, by census tract and other small area
Yes, by the War Department Names and addresses not provided
Ibata, 2000, citing a local Census Bureau official in Illinois During
World War II Not mentioned Yes, by the President Information not provided
(a) It is unclear whether this request to Dedrick for addresses of specific
individuals involved
the use of 1940 Census information or what Dedrick's response was.
(3) The role of the racial classification and racial data in contributing
to the internment of the Japanese Americans
Regardless of the extent to which data from the 1940 Census was used
by the Western Defense Command in the initial operational planning of
the internment program, did the availability of data on the Japanese Americans
in the 1940 Census influence the decision to launch the internment program
or at least the form it took? If such an influence can be identified,
how did it seem to operate? These questions are particularly relevant
because the war-time experience of the Japanese Americans was so radically
different that of German Americans and Italian Americans. In addition,
the treatment of the concept "Japanese" by the census and the
US Census Bureau also differed radically from that used for the other
groups. That is, while the concepts "German" and "Italian"
are used solely in the census to refer to countries of birth, the concept
"Japanese" is used both to denote a country of birth and as
a racial category. In short, were the differences in census treatment
in any way related to the differences in how these different population
groups were treated during World War II?
In order to examine the possible influence of the existence of Japanese
as a racial category in the 1940 and earlier censuses on the treatment
of Japanese Americans during World War II, we posit three modes of influence:
(1) influence operating directly on the Western Defense Command or on
the War Department in Washington, DC, between December 7, 1941 and March,
1942, by which time the major decisions had been taken; (2) influence
operating through the perceptions of the general public and opinion leaders
on the West Coast of the nature and scope of the 'Japanese problem' during
the same period; and (3) influence operating through the continuous fueling
of endemic racism. It is possible for more than one of these modes of
influence to have played a role.
Without more thorough research than we have been able to so far carry
out, we have not been able to fully document or quantify the importance
of any of these influences. We have examined two of the major sets of
published archival material relating to the internment decision process
in the War Department and other concerned federal agencies in Washington,
DC and in the Western Defense Command [Daniels, 1989 and the CWRIC, 1984].
Although we found numerous references to population counts and estimates
of various sorts, including the invocation of figures from the 1940 Census
in critical discussions within the Western Defense Command, these references
often raise more questions than they answer. We realize, however, that
we were constrained by the selections made by others from the full set
of relevant materials in the archives. Accordingly, it is important to
reexamine some of the basic archival sources to search out additional
relevant material. Having done so, we could then reassess the influence
of the census concept and the figures based on it using the larger set
of materials related to the decision to intern all Japanese Americans
and not just those who were foreign born or aliens.
Similarly, pilot research we carried out aimed at examining the influence
of Census Bureau outputs and activities on public perceptions of the "Japanese"
problem on the West coast in the months following Pearl Harbor produced
suggestive, but very incomplete results. For example, searches for data-driven
stories concerning Japanese Americans in two California newspapers in
the two months following Pearl Harbor found roughly similar peaks and
valleys in such coverage to those that had been found by Grodzins [1949,
Appendix I]. (Grodzins based his study on all Japanese American related
stories in a far-larger number of California newspapers.) Our preliminary
research has also revealed that the Census Bureau did not simply tabulate
and publish the special 1940 Census reports on the Japanese Americans.
It also sent copies of at least one of these reports [US Census Bureau,
1941c] directly to concerned local officials, including the Governor of
California [San Francisco Examiner, 12/17/41, p.5].
Further research in this area would attempt to replicate Grodzins' earlier
study of West coast press coverage in terms of the sub-set of stories
based on reports of data attributed to the Census Bureau. Such a study
would document more fully how widely the Bureau results were picked up
and the extent to which Grodzins' over-all conclusions on total press
coverage were a function of data-based stories. Given the direct provision
of data by the Census Bureau to local officials on the West Coast it would
also be useful to re-examine the archival records of the relevant government
offices to assess whether these data had any apparent impact on the formulation
of local views and policies.
Whatever the outcome of such further research, it seems self-evident
to us that influence of the continuing and unthinking use by the Census
Bureau of a "racial/ethnic" classification that was first used
to reflect the constitutional requirements of racially based slavery.
Subsequently, the classification not only evolved in response to the shifting
racist fashions of the 19th and early 20th centuries, but it also helped
to foster a range of race-based thinking by the public. In other words,
the racial classification used in the 1940 Census, including its choice
of categories, was likely both a reflection of an endemic racism that
led to the internment of the Japanese Americans and an important contributing
factor that helped to continually fuel racism generally and shape the
specific basis and geographic scope of the internment program.
Racist thinking with regard to persons of Asian ancestry tended to have
a more direct impact on the Bureau's racial/ethnic classification over
the years than for those of European ancestry. For example, while persons
of Swedish and Italian ancestry stereotypically may differ in appearance,
the census captured any differences in these populations through such
items as country of birth or country of birth of parents. In the case
of those of Asian ancestry, analogous national differences were (and still
are) captured by the Census Bureau through the introduction of nationality-based
racial categories into the race item, such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.
Given this background, it is not surprising that on the morning of December
8, 1941 the decision was made at the Bureau to produce tabulations of
Japanese Americans based on the item on race rather than on country of
birth or citizenship. It also helps to explain why this decision was not
altered in the following weeks after the Bureau produced tabulations of
German Americans and Italian Americans.
As is also clear from material quoted earlier, senior Census Bureau
staff and the members of the Census Advisory Committee, like most Americans
at that time, constantly referred to all person of Japanese ancestry,
whether living in Japan or the United States, as "Japs." Indeed,
at one point during the January 1942 Census Advisory Committee meeting,
Director Capt thought it necessary to remind those present that most of
the "Japs" enumerated in the 1940 Census were American citizens.
III. Registration Systems for Military Service and Aliens
During World War II, military authorities claimed that the Japanese
population on the West Coast posed a national security threat, and they
justified the internment of the Japanese alien and citizen population
on these grounds at the time. The CWRIC investigations and report and
the subsequent actions of Congress in the 1980's repudiated that claim.
Nevertheless it is widely recognized that nation states have an obligation
to defend their own existence and the safety of their residents, and that
in time of war, a government will make extraordinary demands on its population,
including drafting people into war service, deploying a surveillance apparatus
for national defense, and otherwise instituting control mechanisms, which
would be abhorrent during peacetime. Hence it is still possible to propose
that despite the repudiation of the decision to intern the Japanese population,
the federal statistical system and the Census Bureau did not violate their
own rules and procedures or do anything improper while participating in
the administration of the internment.
Dealing with this claim involves suspending judgment on the legality
and propriety of the internment for the time being and considering alternative
scenarios for protecting the West Coast from the threat of invasion and
domestic terrorism in December 1941 and early 1942. We may ask what other
and related roles in national defense did federal statistical agencies
play in this period? The answer takes us into the history of the population
data systems that were used to draft men into military service and to
control any potential threat posed by the large alien population in the
United States. Unlike the census, these registration systems were primarily
designed to serve administrative functions. They could serve research
functions as we shall see, and senior officials from statistical agencies
were involved in their development, but the administrative requirements
of the registrations meant that they were designed to monitor individuals
and their behavior. Men were to be drafted into the army and aliens were
to be watched for signs of disloyalty and encouraged to naturalize and
thereby prove their loyalty to the United States. Our research and conclusions
on these matters are very preliminary, though they do provide, we hope,
an important new framework for evaluating the role of the 1940 Census
in the internment of the Japanese and for considering the relationship
between administrative record systems and survey operations more generally.
The background for the development of these registration systems from
the perspective of the statistical system lies in the larger initiatives
of the New Deal. In the late 1930's the younger generation of statisticians
and social scientists at the Census Bureau and related federal statistical
agencies began to expand their horizons for research on the American population
[Anderson, 1988]. Since the onset of the Depression, they had confronted
what they saw as the weakness of federal population statistics and began
to envision how they might gather current and continuous data to monitor
the condition of the American population. The development of population
sampling methods for use in consumer expenditure and unemployment surveys
was one such avenue. The coming completion of the vital registration system
for the entire country was another. Yet, at the time, any notion of developing
a system to generate continuous national, population data seemed a very
faint possibility indeed since there seemed to be little likelihood that
Congress and the administration would ever fund an ongoing program of
population statistics. Articles about the successful implementation of
such comprehensive systems in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands,
appeared in American demographic and statistical journals [Methorst, 1936,
1938; Thomas, 1937]. At best, American researchers had to hope they could
attach proposals for data collection and research to new programs as they
came along.
A major opportunity along these lines arose in 1937. After debating
the need for a national unemployment census for years, Congress and the
administration finally funded a national registration of the unemployed
through the post office. John Biggers was put in charge of the effort
and census officials Calvert Dedrick and Morris Hansen lent technical
support. They convinced Biggers to include a sample check census administered
by post office personnel along with the voluntary registration. The sample
survey proved that the voluntary registration undercounted the unemployed.
It was the first national area sample survey and its success prompted
further efforts to introduce sampling into the 1940 Census design. The
1937 check census is generally considered the germ of the idea for the
monthly unemployment survey, the Monthly Report on the Labor Force, now
the Current Population Survey [Duncan and Shelton, 1978; Dedrick and Hansen,
1937].
This history of the origins of the innovations in statistical sampling
methodology is generally known to students of the history of federal statistics.
What is less well known is that the expertise developed during these data
collections was not limited to the development of survey sampling. These
efforts also gave key federal officials expertise in developing and assessing
the quality of data from population-based registration systems of one
kind or another, and the war years saw several major efforts in this regard.
In the late 1930's, the federal government turned its attention to its
defense needs. War broke out in Europe and Asia, and Congress and the
administration called for further measures, which would lead naturally
to such population-based registration systems. In June 1940, the Alien
Registration Act of 1940, also known as the Smith Act, required that all
aliens register and be fingerprinted at their local post offices. In September
1940, the United States instituted its first peacetime draft, requiring
all men between the ages of 21 and 35 to register for possible military
service [Hutchinson, 1981: 540-542].
Both these registration efforts were very large projects. The alien
registration encompassed 5 million aliens. The draft registration signed
up 16.4 million men. For social researchers, these new laws signaled the
possibility of building more complete and more sophisticated data systems
than one could derive from the most ambitious existing population data
collection, the decennial census. And they presented interesting technical
challenges for questionnaire design, possibilities for record linkage
and continuous updating. As the October 1940 issue of Population Index
reported ["Current Items," vol. 6, no. 4 (Oct. 1940), pp. 250-1]:
A system of registering a large segment of the population of the United
States was instituted by the Alien Registration Act. . . . Whatever the
primary purpose of the Act, it may prove of importance to students of
population by establishing a precedent for non-military registration as
well as by providing statistics on non-citizens.
And the American Journal of Sociology ["News and Notes," Vol.
46, No. 3, Nov., 1940, p. 381] reported that
Calvert L. Dedrick, chief statistician, Division of Statistical Research
in the Bureau of the Census, has been loaned by that agency to serve temporarily
as a technical consultant to the solicitor-general of the Department of
Justice, to advise on the solution of technical problems involved in the
registration of aliens.... The act providing for the alien registration
specified not only that all aliens must register but that registration
be kept currently up to date, taking account of the movements of aliens
within the United States as well as movements to the United States.
Both these systems involved the federal government in major new population-based
registration systems that went far beyond any previous effort. It is useful
to recall that although the United States had been a nation of immigrants
since its inception, and had required ship captains to provide lists of
immigrants arriving since the early nineteenth century, the federal government
had given up efforts to maintain an alien registration system in 1828
[Neuman, 1996: 40-41]. The selective service system, instituted during
World War I, was quickly dismantled during peacetime.
The administrative issues involved in developing questionnaires, retrieving
the data, and determining where the records should be located and how
the forms should be organized for both statistical and administrative
purposes were formidable. From the perspective of the administrative agencies,
the data were designed to facilitate a military draft and the monitoring
of subversive activities in case of war. The statistical experts saw broader
possibilities for the grounding of "American population policy"
and the analysis of demographic trends (see e.g., Lorimer, Winston and
Kiser [1940]). For both administrators and researchers, there was interest
in getting the basic data collected properly and accurately. The experience
of the unemployment registration indicated that the researchers could
anticipate an undercount in the registration because of inexperience with
the new, far-flung efforts, and because the purposes of the registrations
were inherently controversial. Officials were aware that individuals might
not want to admit to being unemployed. Individuals might try to avoid
registration as an alien or for military service because of the social
stigma of admitting one's status, or out of fear or suspicion of government.
The alien registration was particularly problematic, and generated a storm
of debate in the media about the loyalty of the foreign born, created
worries over discrimination against immigrants, and widespread press coverage
of the entire effort.
Census officials responded to these concerns by offering technical help
in developing the registration methods. They also suggested using the
population census to provide comparative data for evaluating the completeness
of both the draft and alien registration efforts. The first offer facilitated
the development of ties between key statisticians in the Census Bureau
and those in the administrative agencies of the Justice and War Departments
managing the registration programs. The second led to rather awkward questions
about the accuracy of the census.
In June 1940, Calvert Dedrick reported to Leon Truesdell, head of the
Census Population Division, that the War Department had requested estimates
of the numbers of draft age men. Dedrick reported to Truesdell that he
had the estimates prepared, and that the task was 'somewhat hazardous'
-- presumably because the 1940 census was still in the field. [Dedrick,
1940a]. We know now that whatever undercount existed in the draft registration,
the estimates the Census Bureau reported were also low. More men registered
than the Bureau estimated, and this finding spurred further analysis of
what became the issue of the differential undercount in the census [Anderson
and Fienberg, 1999].
In the same memo, Dedrick also reported to Truesdell that he was "discussing
the subject of alien registration" with staff in the Department of
War, and in late July, he sent a copy of an alien registration form he
had developed to Truesdell for comments [Dedrick, 1940b]. Alien registration
was the responsibility of the Immigration and Naturalization Service of
the Department of Justice (INS). The INS required basic estimates of the
number of aliens likely to register in order to print the proper number
of forms, deliver them to post offices, etc. The registration period ran
from August to December 1940. Initially the INS estimated that 3.6 million
aliens would register. By late fall, more aliens were registering than
anticipated. The number eventually approached 5.0 million [NY Times, 7/6/40;
7/31/40; 9/2/40; 12/27/40; 2/20/41]. By December 1940, when the alien
registration period ended, the INS was running behind in returning the
receipt cards to the registrants; they estimated they would not finish
mailing them until February 15, 1941.
With the completion of the registrations, the information was available
for administrative purposes. For the alien registration, the FBI matched
fingerprint files from the alien registration with their records of spying,
crime and subversive activity in the spring of 1941. Records were stored
centrally in Philadelphia, and at local FBI offices around the country.
In 1940 and 1941 the FBI, Special Defense Unit of the Justice Department,
the Office of Naval Intelligence and Army Military Intelligence (G-2)
began compiling lists of potential subversives to be apprehended in case
of war onto what came to be called the ABC lists [Irons, 1983]. Military
and Justice department officials planned for internment camps and alien
detention centers in case of war, and local police were encouraged to
track potential subversives.
Once the U.S. entered the war on December 7, 1941, these surveillance
systems were called upon to protect the nation from internal subversion
and further external attack. The war declaration created a new category
of 'aliens,' namely 'enemy aliens.' President Roosevelt's Proclamations
of December 7 and 8, 1941 defined the status of enemy aliens from Germany,
Italy and Japan, and specified that "all natives, citizens, denizens,
or subjects of (those countries), being of the age of fourteen years and
upward, who shall be in the United States and not actually naturalized,
shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as
alien enemies" [quoted in Daniels, 1997]. If apprehended, the alien
was entitled to a hearing before an Enemy Alien Hearing Board, though
the alien was not entitled to legal counsel. Daniels estimates that 11,000
enemy aliens were interned overall during World War II, though it is thought
that many more aliens were arrested than interned.
It fell to the Justice Department, including the INS and the FBI, and
the military, including its intelligence arms, to manage the administrative
issues of interning enemy aliens. The Justice Department set up an Alien
Enemy Control Unit on December 22, 1941 [Irons, 1983: 23], started arresting
those on the ABC Lists, and began planning for a second registration activity,
this time of 'enemy aliens' only. As we have already observed, military
officials on the West Coast requested and obtained from the Census Bureau
small area tabulations of 1940 Census data as well.
The story of the control of enemy aliens is a complex one and has been
told elsewhere (for example, Irons [1983]; tenBroek, Barnhart and Matson
[1954]; and CWRIC [1982]). Suffice it to say here that the Justice Department
and military officials in Western Defense Command clashed over the rights
of enemy aliens, including the need for individual warrants for searches,
and appropriate travel and other restrictions on their activities. The
war news in the Pacific was extremely bad in early 1942, and it was believed
that Japanese submarines were operating off the West Coast. There was
great fear of invasion or subversion, even though the FBI, the Office
of Naval Intelligence and G-2 had no definite evidence of subversion.
Nevertheless, civilian political leaders and military leaders, particularly
General DeWitt of the Western Defense Command, feared that the 200,000
enemy aliens' households on the West Coast posed a greater national security
threat than the Justice Department realized.
In late December and early January 1942, the War Department began to
demand that the Justice Department accelerate the enemy alien registration,
issue regulations for seizing contraband held by enemy aliens, and consider
the creation of prohibited or restricted zones from which enemy aliens
could be removed. In early January the Justice Department acceded to mass
raids on the homes of enemy aliens who could be suspected of having illegal
'contraband,' including radios and other devices which could be used to
signal the enemy, and scheduled the alien enemy registration for the week
of February 2, 1942.
Good data on the location of enemy aliens was necessary for these programs,
and the natural source was the 1940 alien registration records. We are
not aware of any definitive research evaluating the role of the 1940 alien
registration records in the control of enemy aliens generally, and on
the West Coast in particular during the first months of 1942, and we have
yet to examine the issue in depth. We do know that the FBI Agent in Charge
in San Francisco, Nat Pieper, reported to Col. Forney of the Western Defense
Command on January 1, 1942, that he found the
Immigration Records regarding enemy aliens. . . in a condition unsatisfactory
for prompt use and estimates that extensive clerical work over a period
of time will be necessary to put them in shape for ready use [Daniels,
1989: vol. 2, no page].
The raids in search of contraband started the first week of February
1942. The Justice Department also asked that as the Army and Navy identified
"prohibited" and "restricted" zones for alien enemies
[tenBroek, et al., 1954: 104], they also submit to the Justice Department
"detailed plans for evacuation and resettlement." The Army began
to submit lists of prohibited and restricted areas in late January 1942.
As the number and size of the prohibited areas grew, the Justice Department
began to object that the removal of enemy aliens from such large areas,
for example, from the entire city of Los Angeles, would violate their
rights and would be logistically impossible.
The simmering conflict came to a head in early February, and the Justice
Department ceded authority for the control of enemy aliens to the War
Department. Throughout late December and January 1942, calls appeared
in the press and in the internal government memoranda for the arrest and
removal of 'the Japanese' from the West Coast, not just alien Japanese.
On February 19, 1942, the President issued Executive Order 9066, which
authorized the Western Defense Command to remove Japanese American aliens
and citizens from the West Coast.
The Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA) had the responsibility
of managing the removal, and as we have already noted, the Final Report
of the Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942 claimed that the
"most important single source of information prior to the evacuation
was the 1940 Census of Population" [US Army, 1943: 352]. Once the
government expanded the enemy alien control program to include citizens
of Japanese ancestry, the registration systems built for enemy alien control
were no longer sufficient.
The "Statistical Summary" in the Final Report, written by
Dedrick, makes the issue plain. "Consideration was given by the Wartime
Civil Control Administration to the possibility of conducting a general
compulsory registration of all enemy aliens and of native-born persons
of Japanese ancestry prior to, and in preparation for, the evacuation
program." The WCCA decided against such a registration for several
reasons [US Army, 1943: 355]:
1. A registration would require some time for organization and tabulation
before it would yield results useful in the evacuation program.
2. A registration of all enemy aliens had been conducted in February by
the Department of Justice, and copies of the forms were on file with the
local offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and at the Alien
Registration Division, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Philadelphia,
Penna. Certain preliminary data were made available to the Wartime Civil
Control Administration from local counts of these registrations, but no
detailed classified information, such as the distribution by small geographical
units, age, sex, occupations, family size, etc., were available.
3. The Japanese community already anticipated evacuation, and it was felt
doubtful that accurate information would be given in all cases.
4. A complete evacuation of the coastal area was contemplated, and a preliminary
verification with Federal Bureau of Investigation and Military Intelligence
data showed that the Census of 1940 would be sufficiently accurate for
the controlled movement.
In other words, the 1940 Census data for Japanese Americans came to
serve as the population registration system necessary for "the controlled
movement."
IV. General Population Registration for Military and Statistical
Purposes
As already recounted, Dedrick's primary duties in San Francisco were
to provide on behalf of the Census Bureau his considerable technical and
managerial skills to assist the military authorities in planning and implementing
the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Nevertheless,
he also fostered initial work on a broader effort that potentially effected
all Americans - a scheme for registering every American. The specific
background of this effort is not clear.
On the one hand, Col. Karl Bendetsen, then Assistant Chief of Staff,
Civil Affairs Division, WCCA, has indicated that the initial work on the
idea was carried out at his behest [Bendetsen, 1942b]. (The WCCA was the
temporary military organization established under the Western Defense
Command and Fourth Army to plan and carry out the evacuation of Japanese
Americans. Bendetsen, who eventually became an Under Secretary of the
Army, has been considered by many to be the person most responsible for
turning the idea of internment into a reality.) On the other hand, just
prior to his departure for San Francisco in late February 1942, Dedrick
drafted a letter that Census Director Capt sent to Professor William K.
Ogburn of The University of Chicago as the new Chair of the Census Advisory
Committee that contained the following [Capt, 1942a]
There is a growing feeling that a general registration of the inhabitants
of the United States may become necessary. The Bureau has given some thought
to this problem and has assisted other agencies, most notably the Immigration
and Naturalization Service, Alien Registration Division, in the preparation
of forms and the working out of satisfactory office procedures....Should
the legislative authority be given and sufficient funds made available,
I believe the Census Bureau is in a position to assemble the data and
keep a registration file for every inhabitant in the United States. There
is no question but that we are better prepared to do this work than any
other agency.
In any event, on May 9, 1942, Forrest E. Linder, a Census Bureau expert
in the area of demographic statistics, completed a short mission to the
West Coast for the WCCA and submitted a 35 page report, "Memorandum
Relating to a General Population Identity Registration for Military Purposes,"
along with a brief covering memorandum to Dedrick [Linder, 1942]. At this
point Dedrick was still a Census Bureau staff member and Chief, Statistical
Division, WCCA, working under Col. Bendetsen. The Census War History draft
chapter covering the work of the Vital Statistics Division, which was
based on drafts prepared by that Division, indicate that Linder's mission
was undertaken at the request of Dedrick "to assist Dr. Dedrick in
studying the problems involved in a general identity registration for
military purposes" [Dobbin, 1946b: 25].
Despite the relatively narrow focus implied by the title of Linder's
report, its contents were far broader, covering a range of identity, administrative,
and statistical functions that could be accomplished by different sorts
of population registration systems. It is clear from both Linder's covering
memorandum and his detailed report that whoever initiated the idea of
population registration had a mixture of specific interests and only a
vague awareness of realistic possibilities. (In his covering memorandum
Linder observed, "as you know, the techniques and procedures for
a registration can be planned only in general terms until a policy regarding
the extent and the objectives of the system is more clearly formulated.")
It also becomes clear, as one reads Linder's detailed report, that at
least one military goal was to institute a universal civilian identity
card [Linder, 1942: 4-5].
The introductory section to Linder's full report first stressed the
"magnitude and complexity of the problem" of even "a general
population identity registration" system, it then went on to reiterate
the "necessity for a clear definition of purpose" [Linder, 1942:
1-3]. After examining and rejecting two alternatives Linder then concluded
that
if military necessity or national policy requires that each person carry
an identification certificate, then a new registration must be had for
this purpose.
He then observed such a new registration and identity system would be
of great value in other future registrations [1942: 4-5]. However, before
turning to the body of his report, Linder continued [1942: 5]
Emphasis has already been given to the technical and administrative
difficulties of general population registration for identity purposes.
Mention should be made, also, of the political and psychological dangers.
Traditional American thinking regarding freedom of action and thought
might consider a mandatory identification register as an infringement
of that liberty and the beginning of an American "gestapo."
The political implications or effects of a compulsory identity registration
might be considerable, unless a substantial part of the public clearly
saw the necessity for it. Also the possibilities of "blacklist"
inherent in an identification system are certain to arouse the opposition
of labor groups.
The weight to be given such considerations by the War Department during
time of war is a policy matter beyond the scope of this memorandum. However
during peacetime, they have appeared to be effective barriers in the minds
of population statisticians who have always been interested in creating
a population register.
The balance of Linder's report is a detailed 30 page technical exposition
with sections on "Types of registration systems," "Specific
functions of registration systems," "Possible developments which
might necessitate an identity registration," "The desirable
functions of a registration system for each assumed condition," "A
minimum identity registration system," "An optimum identity
registration system," and "Additional technical problems to
be considered."
Only two aspects this material seems pertinent to the present paper.
First, it referred in several places to issues related to the statistical,
demographic and analytical uses of data that might be generated from a
population registration system [Linder, 1942: 6, 11,13, 25, and 30-33].
Second, it included among the 22 items listed in the final section for
further consideration one surprising topic, "5. Value of loyalty
oath" [1942: 34]. Although Linder's inclusion of material related
to analytical uses of data seems a logical part of his report, the matter
of the loyalty oath does not. We can only conclude that the issue arose
because the idea of including a loyalty oath as part of the proposed general
population registration system was suggested by someone who supported
the system and was in a position to raise the matter with Linder.
Immediately upon receipt of Linder's report, Dedrick wrote to Bendetsen
to give his own "findings and recommendations as an independent judgement
of some of the factors involved in a general population registration"
[Dedrick, 1942]. Not surprisingly given the letter he had drafted for
Capt some months earlier [Capt, 1942a], Dedrick [1942] stressed the usefulness
of a general registration of population to meet many military and civilian
needs, including the provision of "quantitative population data on
a current basis." He also considered that such a system was "administratively
feasible" and could be accomplished at "relatively low cost."
Emphasizing that the policy problems were of more immediate importance
than the technical ones, Dedrick urged that the matter be approached so
as allow for the possibility of establishing an integrated national system
and avoiding uncoordinated efforts. "To accomplish this," he
concluded, "will require consultation with other agencies in Washington
and may require Presidential or Congressional approval."
In accordance with Dedrick's assessment, the locus of further work on
the proposal for a national population registration system then shifted
back to Washington, DC. For example, in early June, Professor Ogburn,
perhaps by pre-arrangement wrote to Census Director Capt [Ogburn, 1942]
When I was in Washington recently, I heard several suggestions about
the desirability of the U.S. Census Bureau keeping its central registration
file for every individual in the United States. I wonder if this matter
has ever been given any consideration by yourself or the other members
and officers of the census [advisory] committee?
Capt [1942c] responded quickly by calling a meeting of the Census Advisory
Committee for July 10-11 on the "general subject of national registration
and its possible implications for the Census Bureau." Capt's letter,
which was drafted by Halbert L. Dunn, Chief Statistician of the Bureau's
Division of Vital Statistics, indicated the possibility that closely allied
subjects such as delayed registration of births, the annual sample census,
and population estimates might also be considered. Capt [1942d] also wrote
to Professor Lowell J. Reed of Johns Hopkins, to invite him participate
in the meeting to express his "point of view and thinking" as
Chair of the Commission of Vital Records and indicating that
the purpose of the discussion will be to explore the need for and the
feasibility of a general population registration, the urgency of such
a program in the war effort, the interests of various agencies in special
and general registrations, and the role of the Census Bureau in a population
registration system.
Katherine Parker, not Dunn, drafted this letter. At that time Parker
was in the Statistical Research Division, the Division Dedrick formerly
headed.
Beginning with the July 1942 Census Advisory Committee meeting, a year-long
battle then followed that turned on issues of statistical needs and policies,
administrative needs and the public's response to those needs, bureaucratic
rivalries, and human rights and privacy concerns. There were three primary
sides to the ensuing controversies and, at least in nascent form, each
was reflected in the July 1942 meeting of the Census Advisory Committee.
The first position, reflected most clearly in the views of Halbert Dunn
[CAC, July 1942: 1-2, and 4; US Census Bureau, 1943c; and CAC, January
1943: 10-11], was that the primary registration problem facing the country
was the burden placed on the existing local and state registration offices
by the thousands of native born Americans who were attempting to establish
their citizenship by seeking a delayed certificate of birth. Proof of
citizenship was required for most war-related work and since prior to
1935, most births went unregistered, large numbers of adults were filing
applications for the delayed registration of their own birth.
The second position strongly and consistently advocated by Lowell J.
Reed, both individually and as chairman of the Commission on Vital Records,
was that population registration was very important for administrative
and statistical purposes [CAC, July 1942: 3-5; Commission on Vital Records,
1942; Reed, 1942; and Commission on Vital Records, 1943: Forward by the
Chairman]. In his zeal to advance the cause of general population registration,
Reed often seemed to be hampered by a Commission that, like Dunn, gave
priority to issues related to birth and death registration.
The third position, reflecting the views of senior Census Bureau management,
was that general population registration simply represented an opportunity
for the Census Bureau to both gain resources and "provide the nation
with much needed current statistical information" [Capt, 1942f].
In advocating this position the Bureau was also hampered by the fact that
those with primary over-all substantive responsibility for work in the
area of population and vital statistics within the Bureau had at best
quite mixed views on the advantages of general population registration
(see, for example, Dunn [CAC, July 1942: 3], Linder [1942], and Truesdell
[1943].
These conflicting positions were ultimately resolved in the Bureau of
the Budget in the first few months of 1943. In the end, there was no general
population registration system, the major urgently needed improvements
in the system of vital registration were introduced, and the Census Bureau
lost its responsibilities for vital statistics and related registration
work [US Bureau of the Budget, 1943]. In reaching its decision the Bureau
of the Budget was greatly assisted by Dunn, who was assigned to work in
that agency to help resolve the issues on a half-time basis between September
1942 and March 1943.
Most of the details of these controversies are beyond the scope of this
paper. Two aspects, however, seem particularly relevant and are therefore
summarized here: (a) information on the possible historical roots of the
proposal for population registration in the population statistics community
and (b) the role of the non-technical policy issues raised in Forrest
Linder's mission report.
If the origins of the idea of pursuing general population registration
at the early stages of World War II had a civilian rather a military basis,
as the evidence seems to indicate (see, for example, Capt [1942a] and
Dobbin [1946b: 25]), how did the senior leadership of the Census Bureau
decide the idea was worth pursuing? We offer two possibilities. First,
as already indicated articles about the successful implementation of such
comprehensive registration systems in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands,
had recently appeared in American statistical and demographic journals.
Second, one of the sessions at the December 1940 annual meeting of the
American Statistical Association (ASA) was organized around the topic,
"Problems of statistical control of the defense program." The
lead paper in that session [Lang, 1941], by the Chief Statistician in
the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War, cited in its opening paragraph
the presidential address by the ASA president in 1917, Allyn A. Young.
This address discussed analogous challenges for the statistical community
occasioned by World War I [Young, 1918]. Decrying the lack of statistical
preparedness he found when the country entered that war, Young speculated
on "what might have been accomplished ... when we entered the war,
or even when our participation in the war came to be a serious possibility"
[1918: 878-879]. After first calling for an up-to-date population census,
Young went on to suggest that
The population census, even, might well have been used as a starting
point for continuous local population registers, under the control of
the police or of local registration officials. In all this work it would
be sufficient if the general tabulations showed classes only, but information
respecting individuals ... ought to be available, by means of proper formalities,
to the appropriate branches of the War administration. [1918: 879]
Given the active role that Dedrick and others in the Bureau played in
both the ASA and the PAA, it seems highly likely that they were aware
of both sets of papers. What is not clear is whether Young's comment about
making "information respecting individuals ... available ... to the
appropriate branches of the War administration," also had an impact.
Linder's report was one of the basic documents before the Census Advisory
Committee meeting of July 1942 when the population registration proposal
was first discussed [CAC, July 1942: 2] and his report framed many of
the subsequent technical and policy discussions about the proposal. Two
policy issues stand out from Linder's report (a) the need for clarity
about objectives and (b) the potential privacy and human rights threats
lurking in the population registration proposal. The first point was acknowledged
by Dedrick [1942], stressed by Truesdell [CAC July 1942: 5], and became
a major focus of the work of the Commission of Vital Records.
The privacy and human rights issues raised by Linder were ignored by Dedrick
and Capt. Nevertheless, they were taken up, one way or another, by the
other major participants in the registration proposal policy debates.
For example, Dunn included the relationship between the proposed registration
activities to the "police function and espionage in the minds of
the public" among a list of dangers for the Bureau related to the
proposal [CAC July 1942: 3]. On the other hand, the Commission on Vital
Records [1942:11-12] and Reed [1942: 3-4] in arguing for the population
registration proposal, considered it necessary to attempt to counter Linder's
"American gestapo" comment. Finally, the report of the Bureau
of Budget, which marked the formal end of the population registration
proposal, referred to the need to avoid any system that would "lead
to the compilation of a secret dossier on the American people" [US
Bureau of the Budget, 1943: 6].
V. Long-term Consequences
We now turn to the utilitarian question of whether failures by a statistical
agency to aggressively defend the rights of all respondents, even those
perceived to be "enemies" or members of a despicable class,
have any long-term implications for the agency's mission. Specifically,
did the Census Bureau's actions in 1941 and 1942 with respect to Japanese
Americans and its subsequent treatment of the issue have any consequences
for population censuses in later decades? We can provide no clear-cut
answer to this question, because neither the Bureau nor anyone else seems
to have investigated the issue explicitly. Limited anecdotal evidence
coupled with suggestive results from two quantitative studies make clear
that it is a subject that should be investigated explicitly.
Although the Census Bureau has repeatedly denied that it betrayed its
confidentiality pledges to respondents in the 1940 Census, citing a range
of legal authorities for its position, the issue has never gone away in
the press and in segments of the responding public. For example, at the
eve of the 1980 Census director Barabba was quoted in the NY Times (3/31/80,
B1) referring to the use of 1940 Census results to assist in the detention
of Japanese Americans, "With all the hysteria of Pearl Harbor, we
were not allowed to give up personal information." Less than a month
later, the same paper (4/27/80, 62) reported the following exchange at
a meeting of the Community Census Committee of Chinatown,
Ruby Schaar of the Japanese-American Citizens League said, "There
have been a lot of rumors about the use of the census data." She
questioned Government assurances that it would not be used against citizens
or illegal aliens. "During World War II, printed reports were used
to identify where Japanese people lived," Mr. Barabba responded.
"But we never gave out any specific names and addresses."
A similar picture of people talking past each other - a mixture of carefully-phrased
legal distinctions and inaccurate language on the one hand, and concerns
over real harms arising from cooperation with the census, on the other
hand - may be found in the sharp colloquy between Dr. Dedrick and Judge
William M. Marutani, the only Japanese-American member of the Commission
on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, at the conclusion of
Dedrick's testimony before the Commission [Dedrick, 1981b: 187-190].
During the course of preparing this paper, the authors have also heard
from some African Americans, who grew up on the West Coast, that their
parents tried to avoid being enumerated in the census, citing the experience
of the Japanese Americans and the 1940 Census. Whether this source of
census omission had or has a measurable impact on the high over-all omission
rate of African Americans in U.S. population censuses is not known. Others
have commented on the same phenomenon among Japanese Americans and other
Asian-Americans living on the West Coast [Kondo, 1999]
Census workers say that even some longtime Asian American residents
[in Los Angeles county] distrust the government tally. Some Japanese Americans
who are first or second generation still harbor fears that census numbers
were used to identify them for placement in internment camps.... Convincing
perennially reluctant respondents will not be easy.
"I talked to one older Filipino couple at a festival, and they
had been living in the Valley for 50 years and never filled out the forms,"
said Susan Ng, a Census Bureau community specialist for the Asian community.
"That's amazing - they missed about five censuses."
Fan [1999] reported similar concerns about the census among Asian Americans
in central California.
Relevant published studies of empirical data on census and survey omissions
tend to be so broadly focused that the results provide few answers, although
a few underscore the need for new studies or at least a re-analysis of
existing data. No study providing specific estimates of the coverage of
Japanese Americans in a recent census was identified. Fein's study of
racial and ethnic differences in census omissions based on estimated gross
omission rates from the 1980 Census found over-all omission rates for
Asian Americans (6.7 percent) substantially above that for non-Hispanic
white (4.0 percent) [1990: 290]. Similarly, the omission rate for the
total population in the Pacific census division (6.1) was higher than
that encountered in six of the eight other census divisions [1990: 291].
No estimates of omission rates cross-classified by race/ethnicity and
census division were presented. If the anecdotal evidence just discussed
reflects a general pattern one would expect that such cross classifications
would show particularly high omission rates for a number of individual
non-white racial/ethnic categories in the Pacific division.
Although Singer, Mathiowetz, and Couper [1993: 479] concluded that confidentiality
concerns had a significant but minor direct impact on nonresponse among
whites and a more complex impact among African Americans, their findings
were based on research into generic concerns held by broad population
groups. Again the more salient research question to the problem at hand
is to ask about concerns and behavior related the internment of the Japanese
Americans and would specifically test hypotheses related to individual
census racial/ethnic categories controlled for West Coast residence.
International survey research experience may also provide insights into
the long-term persistence of mistrust and the degree to which this mistrust
may effect response behavior both in specific communities and the population
at large. Again the matter has never been explicitly studied, but one
suggestive example is worth considering. One may recall the extensive
and direct use of population data systems in the Netherlands in targeting
Jews and gypsies for the Holocaust and that the death rates among Jews
and gypsies was higher in the Netherlands than in any other occupied Western
European country [Moore, 1997; Seltzer, 1998]. Is it a coincidence or
is there a causal link between the Dutch experience with the adaptation
of their population data systems to serve the Holocaust and the response
problems that Statistics Netherlands has faced for decades? These problems
include such massive nonresponse to the 1973 population census that the
census had to be canceled. No subsequent general enumeration was ever
attempted. Moreover, in a recent study of trends in survey response among
16 industrialized countries over the period 1983-1997, the Netherlands
had the highest labor force survey nonresponse and refusal rates [de Heer,
1999: tables 1 and 3]. For example, in 1997 the refusal rate was 28 percent,
with little variation over time. A similar pattern was found in expenditure
surveys [1999, table 4]. By contrast, the corresponding rates for all
other countries studied were far lower and many displayed clear secular
trends. The experience of Statistics Netherlands is certainly consistent
with the conclusion of Singer, Mathiowetz, and Couper [1993: 479] that
"the crucial variable appears to be trust in the integrity of the
data collection agency, not the nature of the assurance given to respondents."
VI. Discussion
(1) Why did this happen?
It is not easy to sort out the multiple motivations of those whose actions
seem to actively assist human rights abuses. Moreover, such an effort
at understanding motivation is in many senses irrelevant to those who
suffered from the abuse. Nevertheless, some examination of motivation
can be helpful in preventing future abuses. In the present case, such
a discussion may contribute to the heightened awareness by all those working
on the collection and use of population statistics that various of their
well-intentioned actions and inactions can have human rights-related consequences.
This is an important matter for all of us to be aware of since our field
and the institutions in which most of work are generally considered to
be far-removed from such concerns.
Statisticians and demographers, and others working in and leading agencies
responsible for major population statistics programs are motivated by
numerous personal, institutional, and societal factors. For example, as
the record reviewed in this papers shows, we can the following motivating
factors seemed to be at work in the Bureau's contributions to the targeting
and the interning of Japanese Americans: (a) importance of serving military
needs in wartime, (b) it was the Director's decision, (c) the need for
the Bureau to establish its continued relevance in time of war, (d) opportunity
to develop and test new methods, (e) expanding the use Census Bureau outputs,
(f) we followed the law, (g) concerns over the level of funding for the
Bureau's programs, and (h) dedication to the ideal of the Bureau's objectively
providing data to all users without regard to the nature of the use. These
motivations can be grouped under three broad headings: patriotism, professionalism,
and institutional loyalty.
During the period in the late 1930's and early 1940's when the United
States was moving from defense preparations to actual war, these of three
broad factors interacted in changing and complex ways. Through 1941, as
the likelihood of war increased, the data from the new registration systems
poured in. Meanwhile the processing of the other major population collection,
the 1940 Census, slowed. Budgets were cut for the census, and requests
for data from national defense grew. (Anderson, 1988). War was clearly
on the horizon, and the officials knew it. It is hard not to feel the
sense of impending war in the routine memos and documents of the agencies,
as the officials expressed fear of the coming threat, disappointment at
the likelihood that the ambitious publication and evaluation plans for
the 1940 Census might have to be scrapped, and worry whether the nation
was up to the task of defending itself. The emerging results of the 1940
Census were not completely satisfying in that regard either. The decline
in the population growth rate, the damage to the human capital of the
nation, were all too evident in the reports being released in 1941.
Nevertheless, to this point, the basic tone of Bureau officials was
one of respect for the rights of individuals on whom data was to be collected,
and concern for need to maintain standards of privacy and confidentiality
of individual records. Old hands remembered that selective service officials
had asked for, and received, information on individuals from the 1910
Census for the prosecution of draft evaders. William Mott Steuart, Census
Director during the 1920s, and then serving on the American Statistical
Association-American Economic Association Census Advisory Committee (CAC)
was aware of these incidents. At a meeting in the fall of 1940, he asked
the current Director, William Lane Austin, to report if the Justice Department
had requested names of individual aliens from the bureau, or requests
from the Army or the Navy for names of individual manufacturers. Austin
reported there had been no such requests [CAC, October 1940].
The concern with confidentiality, the protection of individual information,
and respect for the sensitivity of the data did not survive the outbreak
of war in tact. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941
transformed the relationship between the statistical system and the other
agencies of the federal government. The declaration of war against Japan
on December 8, and on December 11 against Germany and Italy, placed fundamental
new challenges on the population data systems of the nation. At a stroke,
it turned roughly one million aliens from Germany, Japan and Italy into
'enemy aliens,' liable under international law to increased scrutiny,
surveillance and possible internment. And after two years of the coverage
of war in Europe and Asia, Congressional debate and media coverage about
the loyalty of aliens, the devastation of Pearl Harbor inspired fear in
many quarters that enemy agents within the country had prepared Germany
submarines or Japanese air strikes on additional domestic targets. At
this point, all the operative forces within the Bureau appeared to be
aligned toward the use of Census Bureau data and expertise against the
Japanese Americans on the West Coast. In any event, we could not find
a record of even a single voice within the Bureau or its advisory committee
raising a doubt about the actions taken. (The Bureau was aware of doubts
by at least one external source within the profession: Dedrick's "sociological
friends at Berkeley.")
Many of the same factors that led the Bureau to actively assist in the
internment effort also seemed to be at work in its support for the proposal
for a general population registration system. Only in the case of the
registration proposal, one Census Bureau statistician (Linder) raised
a set of policy issues that clearly added to the baggage that the advocates
of the proposal had to deal with. Linder, while demonstrating the same
broad motivations of patriotism, professionalism, and institutional loyalty
as did his colleagues when they dealt with internment, defined these concepts
more broadly. As we have seen, relatively quickly other voices reiterated
his points about the population registration proposal and raised other
questions about it. Nevertheless, his initiative and courage also remains
an example of the power of a single voice to raise an issue and effect
an outcome.
(2) Critical decision points
The pressure of total war usually puts great strains on normal decision-making
processes. In such fast-moving circumstances, there are also often opportunities
for changes in direction. We now turn to an examination of a series of
critical decisions involving both the Census Bureau's involvement with
the internment program and the early stages of the effort to establish
a general population registration system for military and statistical
purposes. This examination illustrates, with respect to the Bureau's involvement
in the internment issue, the many opportunities that existed for the outcome
to have turned out quite differently. It is also useful to contrast the
history of the two events discussed in this paper - the Census Bureau's
involvement with the internment of the Japanese Americans and its aftermath
and the Bureau's involvement with the proposal for population registration
- in terms of a review of critical decisions.
(a) Japanese-American internment
$ Monday morning, December 8, 1941 the decision to tabulate the "Japanese"
using the item on race rather than the item on country of birth, as was
done for the Germans and Italians two days later.
$ Balance of December 1941, the failure to reconsider this decision.
$ January 10-11, 1942, the failure of anyone present at the Census Advisory
Committee meeting to question the use of small area census data to target
Japanese Americans based on their 1940 Census responses or to question
the Director's willingness to provide names and addresses to the military,
if requested.
$ February 1942, the decision by the Census Bureau to send Dedrick,
a senior division chief, to the West Coast as Bureau staff member to assist
an operational program (i.e., the Army's Wartime Civil Control Administration)
and use 1940 Census results to target Japanese American members of the
responding public for forced migration and internment.
$ February 1942, the related decision by the Census Bureau to provide
Dedrick and the WCCA with mesodata and maps from the 1940 Census down
to the block and enumeration district level.
$ January-March 1942, the decision to base the internment on the1940
Census concept rather than using the alien registration lists corrected
for omissions.
$ 1943, the decision by Dedrick to obfuscate in the Army's final report
of the internment, how information from the 1940 Census was used.
$ 1946, the decision by Dedrick to continue the obfuscation in his contributions
to the Census War History project.
$ 1975, the decision by the Census history staff to do no independent
research to respond to a query from Roger Daniels, leading to the first
story, attributed to Dedrick, of the Bureau's effort to protect of Japanese
Americans.
$ 1980-1982, the failure the Census history staff, successive Census
directors, and the larger population statistics community to adequately
re-examine the historical record in light of repeated questions by members
of the Japanese American community and others, including the US Commission
on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, about the Bureau's
involvement in the internment effort.
$ 1991, the decision by the Census history staff again to do no new
research in writing about the Bureau's historical record on privacy and
confidentiality issues.
$ 1995, the decision by former Census Director Bryant to acknowledge
that however valid the Bureau's legal position may have been, the Japanese
American community had justifiable reasons for believing that the spirit
of the confidentiality assurances that accompanied the 1940 Census had
been violated.
$ 1999, the decision of the Census Bureau to reuse the old 1980 story
about its defense of Japanese American interests at the time of the internment
in some of the training materials used in the 2000 Census.
We are pleased to note that in the current year (i.e., 2000) the Census
Bureau has made several decisions that seem to indicate that Bureau is
ready to revisit the past and learn from it. They have already attempted
to correct the mistaken information that appeared in the census training
materials.
(b) The population registration proposal
$ February 1942, the decision by Capt and Dedrick to begin pursuing
the idea of general population registration.
$ Spring 1942, the decision by Dedrick and Bendetsen to arrange for
Forrest Linder's mission to the West Coast to examine population registration.
$ May 1942, the decision by Linder in his initial mission report to
address policy issues in addition to technical issues.
$ July 1942, the decision by Dunn to again raise Linder's policy concerns
in presenting the proposal for the population registration system to the
Census Advisory Committee and the decision by Committee after discussing
the matter that further consideration was necessary.
Although a number of important decisions remained, including the ultimate
one by the Bureau of the Budget in June 1943 to formally abandon the proposal,
it appears that the die had already been cast once the rush to action
had been delayed by the series of policy and technical questions raised
by Linder, Dunn and Truesdell.
(3) Some implications of our findings for statistical policy and research
Although the past is interesting in its own right, it also has implications
for the present and the future. Accordingly, we have drawn two sets of
conclusions from the work done so far. The first set relates to statistical
policy and the second set to needed further research. At this point, these
conclusions and recommendations are set out with little or no argumentation
since we consider they flow naturally from the findings presented earlier
in the paper.
(a) Statistical policy
$ Strengthen the historical staff so that they have both the mandate
and capability to move beyond simply documenting the census and survey
procedural histories.
$ Observe the same degree of forthrightness with regard to policy errors
that major statistical agencies, such as the Census Bureau, have traditionally
practiced with regard to statistical errors.
$ Continue to strengthen technical protections against inadvertent and
intentional response disclosure, including the use of mesodata to target
out-of-favor and vulnerable populations.
$ Develop new legal safeguards that will protect against the abrogation
of the confidentiality provisions of Title 13, such those enacted through
the War Powers Act of 1942.
$ Drawing on such normative documents as the United Nations Fundamental
Principles of Official Statistics (which may be found at www.cbs.nl/isi/fundamental.htm),
the International Statistical Institute's Declaration of Professional
Ethics (which may be found at www.cbs.nl/isi/ethics.htm), and the American
Statistical Association's Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice,
strengthen training that promotes awareness of ethical issues and thinking
among the staff and leadership of federal statistical agencies.
$ Until strong technical and legal safeguards are developed and are
in place, do not collect characteristics that define and identify "potentially
censurable or vulnerable" groups [Begeer, de Vries, and Dukker,1986]
on a full-count basis. In other words, the census item on "race,"
and certainly information on detailed racial categories, should no longer
be collected or stored on a 100 percent basis. We recognize that, in the
present circumstances, some may be tempted to reject this recommendation
out of hand. We note, however, that our recommendation is far more limited
than the position taken by the American Anthropological Association(AAA)
on this subject. The AAA has recommended that the item on race be totally
dropped from the census [Anderson and Fienberg, 1999: 173-174]. Limiting
of collection of data on race, particularly involving detailed racial/ethnic
categories, to samples will reduce substantially the possible misuse of
such data, although it will not completely eliminate the all possible
types of misuse. The approach we recommend would also enable the continued
availability of a considerable body of data cross-classified by race,
particularly at higher levels of geographic aggregation. This approach
represents, in our view, a reasonable balance between the needs of many
users for data classified by race/ethnicity and a prudent concern for
public safety, given the failures of the past in the United States and
elsewhere.
(b) Further research
As we indicated at the outset, our present paper is an interim report
of a larger ongoing study of how population data systems were used to
assist in the military defense of the United States between 1940 and 1943
and the human rights and statistical policy implications of this involvement.
A related issue, also explored, was how those working with these systems,
whether as technicians, managers, or members of advisory committees, used
the national emergency to assist in the further development of the data
systems themselves. Given the findings to date and our interim listing
of statistical policy conclusions, several quite different areas for further
research seem important. We have grouped the under three broad headings:
(1) statistical research, (2) legal research, and (3) historical research.
However, the final category could also have been called human rights research
or statistical policy research.
(1) Statistical research
Research in two specific areas is suggested:
$ First, research into nonresponse and refusals aimed at improving our
"understanding of nonresponse" [de Leeuw, 1999: 127], particularly
in circumstances where population subgroups may perceive that harm was
associated with past response. In the United States such research would
include (a) a reanalysis of existing census and survey evaluation data
to explicitly test the hypothesis of a relationship between internment
and response behavior and (b) explicitly asking Pacific Coast populations
about their response behavior and the possible impact of internment on
such behavior.
$ Second, studies of the accuracy and precision of alternative methods
of developing census coverage estimates if race/ethnicity were not available
on a complete count basis. The absence of the race/ethnicity item on a
complete count basis would have an impact on the present method of estimating
the differential undercount by race, although it would not preclude estimates
of the differential. It would be important to understand what impact the
potential loss of complete-count race data might have on the quality of
undercount estimates for the total population and for individual race/ethnicity
groups and for different types of geographic aggregates. On the basis
of this information alternative approaches to coverage estimation could
be explored with a view to minimizing this loss.
(2) Legal research
Again research in two areas is suggested:
$ Both Dedrick in his testimony before US Commission on Wartime Relocation
and Internment of Civilians [Dedrick, 1981b] and Census Director Barabba
in a letter to Okamura [1980] referred to the possible impact on census
confidentiality posed by the Second War Powers Act of 1942. Although Dedrick
stated that he was not aware that the act was invoked in connection with
individual data provided in the population census, that issue plus the
related one of whether the possibility of such a use figured in the legislative
history of the Act or the development of related Executive Order No. 9157
of May 13, 1942, that provided regulations for making disclosures of individual
census schedules as permitted by the 1942 War Powers Act [US Census Bureau,
1942a: 29-30], could usefully be explored (see Seltzer [1999b]).
$ Research into legal mechanisms to protect against future legislative
waiver's of the confidentiality protections of Title 13 should be undertaken.
(3) Historical research
What we label here as historical research, but could equally well be
termed statistical policy or human rights research, is really the continuation
of the present research that led to this paper. At a number of junctures
in the paper we have indicated the specific research questions to be addressed.
At this point, we would simply summarize the next steps in terms of data
sources to be examined.
$ Further federal archival research covering: Record Group 29 (Census
Bureau); the War Department, including the Office of the Assistant Secretary
of War, the Office of the Provost General, and Western Defense Command;
the intelligence agencies, both military and civilian; the WCCA and the
WRA, particularly the statistical units of both organizations; the Office
of the Solicitor, Department of Commerce; and the Commission on Vital
Records.
$ Other archives: State of California; Earl Warren Oral History project
and other holdings at Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley;
and the collections of the personal and professional papers of key individuals.
$ California newspaper research: the set of California newspapers papers
covered by Grodzins in his study of the role of the California press in
the internment [Grodzins, 1949].
We would submit that further research along these lines is important for
two reasons. First, to be clear about how the tools of our profession
and how some of our former colleagues assisted in an acknowledged human
right abuse. As former President Bush wrote to each recipient of redress
payments
A monetary sum and words alone cannot restore lost years or erase painful
memories; neither can they fully convey our Nation's resolve to rectify
injustice and to uphold the rights of individuals. We can never fully
right the wrongs of the past. But we can take a clear stand for justice
and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans
during World War II. [Quoted by Tetsuden Kashima in his new forward to
CWRIC, 1997].
Second, as one concerned statistical administrator has observed, "it
is important to let light shine on the past so as to avoid possible mistakes
in the future."
NOTES
The authors would like to acknowledge the research assistance provided
by Ms Chieko Maene, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
We would also like to thank Jane Berger, Roger Daniels, Steve Fienberg,
John Macisco, Mary G. Powers, Herb Spirer, and Maurice Van Arsdol for
research leads and suggestions provided at various stages of this work.
Finally, we would like to thank Kenneth Prewitt and Paula J. Schneider
of the Census Bureau for their encouragement to continue in the research
underlying this paper. Although we are deeply grateful for the help received,
it should be emphasized that the authors alone are responsible for the
contents of the paper.
- While not discounting the value of mesodata, the specific numeric
example cited by Director Capt seems absurd. No one should attempt to
expend any investigative resources to resolve a discrepancy of one person
out of 800 in a specific community between an April 1940 census count
and a January 1942 count or registration, given the possibility of births,
deaths and migration during the intervening period or coverage or classification
discrepancies between the two figures. Capt was an experience federal
administrator who led the Bureau in one of its most creative periods.
He himself, however, was not a statistician or a quantitatively oriented
social scientist.
- The issue has sometimes become more complex with respect to copies
of census returns held by corporations, but the protection afforded the
census information provided by individual persons has not been seriously
questioned by any court after the modern protections were codified with
the adoption of the Census Act of 1929. Over the decades, these legal
protections have been strengthened.
- In fact Schmid appears to have been opposed to internment himself,
even though he worked for the WCCA for several months during 1942 before
returning to Seattle. According to Van Arsdol and Wendling [1995: 13],
Schmid befriended interned colleagues and worked to limit the geographic
scope of one of the exclusion zones. In his study Social Trends in Seattle
[Schmid, 1944] he certainly presented a positive picture of the excluded
population even as he demonstrated the same graphic and cartographic skills
in data presentation that can also be found in many of the reports of
the WCCA and the Western Defense Command's Final Report [US Army, 1943].
- For example, the WRA's Headquarters' Statistics Section consisted of
four units: Operating Statistics, Analysis, Master File, and Evacuee Records
[US War Relocation Authority, [1946a:16]. Equally suggestive are the two,
and only two, subentries under the term "statistics" in the
detailed subject-matter index to the WRA's Administrative Manual. These
subentries are: "Individual Evacuee File" and "Individual
File, Contents of" [US War Relocation Authority, 1945: xix].
- Dedrick's misstatement about the purpose of Linder's 1942 mission to
California was almost certainly deliberate. Later the same year, the Census
Director had immediately agreed [Capt, 1942e] to the Army's request [Bendetsen,
1942b] that "no publicity should be given which would in any way
indicate that we are or were at any time considering general registration."
- The illustrations on pages 7 and 8 this Bureau publication are remarkably
similar to some of those put out in the 1930's by the German affiliate
of the Hollerith company and reproduced in Aly and Roth [1984]. The parallelism
here we believe is not due to any direct connection, but to a common awe
in the power of a new technology to assist in the tasks of the state.
- By September 1947, Dedrick had been named as Coordinator, International
Statistics for the Bureau. He served in this capacity for several decades
making outstanding contributions in the field of technical cooperation
and training in the field of statistics.
- The language used here is remarkably similar to that used by Dedrick
in 1946, and quoted in section I.D. above, to describe the War Department's
request for his services.
- The apparent contradiction between Dedrick's 1975 and 1981 statements
may be explained in several different ways: for example, (a) by the slightly
different terminology used in each statement (i.e., Census Bureau vs.
Commerce Department), (b) because Bohme seriously misquoted him in 1975,
or (c) by Dedrick's use of the Census War History project materials to
refresh his recollection prior to his 1981 appearance before the Commission
on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians.
- It appears that Frederick Bohme is also largely responsible for this
account [US Census Bureau, 1980: xviii].
- Implicit in this approach is the assumption that those who made the
selection of materials used in the existing archival compilations were
neither aware of or particularly interested in data issues, since these
issues would have been overwhelmed by other more pressing priorities for
inclusion.
- Prewitt [1987: 269-270] made much the same point when he observed that
"for two centuries we have had a statistical practice of racial classification
which undoubtedly has contributed the continuing salience of race in American
society."
- Census data provided an aggregate check and comparison with the alien
registration data. The 1940 Census included questions on place of birth
and citizenship status. Tabulations for the alien foreign born (reported
in 1943) also reported many fewer aliens than did the 1940 registration.
The census reported about 3.5 million aliens and 835,000 foreign born
residents with no citizenship status reported [U.S. Census Bureau, 1943b:10].
- In 1942 Dr. Linder was Assistant Chief Statistician for Vital Statistics
at the Bureau. His mission to San Francisco lasted from May 1 to 10. Subsequently,
he joined the U.S. Navy on military leave and assisted in the establishment
of the Medical Statistics Branch in the Office of the Surgeon General,
U.S. Navy [Dobbin, 1946b: 23 and 25]. After the end of the War, he created
and led (a) the population and vital statistics program in the United
Nations Statistics Division, (b) U.S. National Center for Health Statistics,
and (c) the international PopLab program of the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
- During his mission Linder was reported to have discussed the general
subject of registration "with officials of the Western Defense Command
and with the Assistant Superintendent of the California State Department
of Education, who had been requested ... to develop plans for a general
registration" [Dobbin, 1946b: 26]. Subsequently, in February 1943,
an effort to introduce a new registration form containing a "loyalty
oath" among the interned Japanese-Americans was a major source of
discontent for many among this detained and loyal population [CWIRC, 1982:
191-197; Weglyn, 1996: 134-155].
- Estimates of the net undercount have been prepared by the Census Bureau
for the 1990 Census by race and Hispanic origin for each state based on
the unadjusted and Public Law 94-171 adjusted census data and released
on the Bureau's web site (see www.census.gov/dmd
). These estimates for the 1990 Census indicate that net omissions of
Asian and Pacific Islanders in California and Washington (2.2 percent)
were at about the same level as this group nationally (2.3 percent). Further
research is required to determine whether or not this represents a change
from the experience of the previous censuses.
- On a closely related subject, Congress has barred items on religion
from all population-based federal censuses and surveys.
- Although we made extensive use of the material in particular parts
of Record Group 29, in the time available most of Record Group 29 could
not be examined.
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