MANZANAR Historic Resource Study/Special History Study

SECOND STAGE OF EVACUATION

On June 2, 1942, a second stage of the government's Japanese evacuation program began when, by Public Proclamation No. 6, DeWitt ordered the exclusion of Japanese aliens and American citizens of Japanese ancestry from the California portion of Military Area No. 2 on the grounds of military necessity. [68] This order left undisturbed those Japanese then living in eastern Oregon and Washington, southern Arizona, and in other states of the Western Defense Command — except as DeWitt applied to them his new authority to exclude suspected individuals from sensitive areas. The first civilian exclusion order [No. 100] for this area was issued on June 27, and by August 8 all persons of Japanese ancestry had been removed from the eastern part of California. In all, 9,337 evacuees were encompassed in Civilian Exclusion Orders Nos. 100-08. This final phase of the mass evacuation was carried out by direct movements from places of residence to relocation centers. More than half of these were Japanese who had moved voluntarily, with the encouragement of the military, into the interior of California from Military Area No. 1, the majority of whom moved on the two days between the issuance of the "freeze order" [Public Proclamation No. 4] of March 27 and its effective date of March 29. [69]

The exclusion from the California portion of Military Area No. 2 appears to have been decided without any additional evidence of threat or danger in the area. The aforementioned War Department's Final Report observed:

Military Area No. 2 in California was evacuated because (1) geographically and strategically the eastern boundary of the State of California approximates the easterly limit of Military Area No. 1 in Washington and Oregon . . . and because (2) the natural forests and mountain barriers, from which it was determined to exclude all Japanese, lie in Military Area No. 2 in California, although these lie in Military Area No. 1 of Washington and Oregon. [70]

Analysis of this second exclusion decision belies the lame military rationale on which it was presumably based. The eastern boundary of California lies more than 100 miles east of Military Area No. 1 at the Oregon border. If there had been a general decision to exclude the ethnic Japanese from forests and mountains, why had they been allowed to resettle in Military Area No. 2? Morton Grodzins, an authority on the Japanese evacuation has concluded that this second exclusion decision was another example of the Western Defense Command's adoption of an unsound military rationale to carry out the program of politicians, agriculturalists, and agitators in eastern California who were determined to remove all ethnic Japanese from the state. [71]

Whatever the motivation, this second exclusion decision had two principal results. The voluntary evacuees who had resettled in eastern California were uprooted a second time, and, by August 8, 1942, everyone of Japanese descent had been expelled from the entire state of California except for those under guard at the Manzanar and Tule Lake relocation centers and a small handful under constant supervision in hospitals and prisons. The anti-Japanese forces in California had finally triumphed in their historic crusade. [72]

COMPLETION OF EVACUATION

Public Proclamation No. 7, issued by DeWitt on June 8, provided for the exclusion of any Japanese in Military Area No. 1, "should there be any areas remaining ... from which Japanese have not been excluded." Under this proclamation, any ethnic Japanese remaining in the area and not exempt from evacuation were ordered to report to the nearest assembly center. [73]

With the implementation of Public Proclamations Nos. 6 and 7, the compulsory evacuation of Japanese Americans from the west coast was completed. Bendetsen's staff later calculated that precisely 111,999 "persons of Japanese ancestry" had been placed under detention in relocation centers by October 30, 1942. The Army, through the auspices of the WCCA, kept control of the evacuees at the assembly centers until November 3, 1942, when, with the last movement from an assembly center to a relocation center, the WRA took over general responsibility for the care and disposition of evacuated Japanese. [74]