That military program is not directed against alien enemies. It is not an alien enemy program. It is a program for all persons of Japanese ancestry, whether they are United States citizens or aliens.

And, very briefly-it is of course a very long program that has been going on since February 1942-but, in a sentence, this is what it amounts to:

The military authorities under powers derived from an Executive order of the President determined that all persons of Japanese ancestry should be evacuated from the west coast.

The original determination was merely that they should be evacuated, which was all the Army was interested in, not that they should be interned or detained.

They were placed in relocation centers and detention was the result. The purpose was to provide them with places where they could go.

Mr. MILLER. They voluntarily went?

Mr. ENNIS. No. That is not true.

The Governors inland all started to say that they could not be responsible for maintenance of peace and order because they would not accept the west coast's problem, as they put it.

All the Army wanted to do for the purposes of military necessity was to get them off the coast.

They had forbidden them to go out freely and find their own places to live and they required them under the sanction of a penal statute (18 U. S. C. 97A) to go into assembly centers and to be shifted from assembly centers along the coast to relocation centers in various States where the gates were guarded by soldiers.

But it was never the original purpose of the Army to have them detained.

As General DeWitt said in his report, all he was interested in was in getting them off the west coast, and the situation arose because of the resistance to their being placed in other locations.

Then they did wind up in relocation centers where they were under guard.

Then in December, last December 1944, the military authorities. determined that there was no longer any military necessity for keeping all of the Japanese population off the west coast.

So they substituted for a general exclusion order against all persons of Japanese ancestry several thousand individual exclusion orders directed against certain Japanese persons, whether alien or citizens, concerning whom the Army believed it had sufficient military reasons for not returning them to the west coast.

The remaining Japanese, whether they are alien or citizens, against whom the Army has not issued individual exclusion orders are eligible to return to the west coast.

Mr. MILLER. Well, there is an Army screening then.

Mr. ENNIS. Yes. There is an Army screening.

Mr. MILLER. And that is of course directed against those 2,460 parolees, I assume.

Mr. ENNIS. That Army screening is directed against all persons of Japanese ancestry, which would include Japanese aliens on parole. Mr. MILLER. It includes both of them.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Mr. HEDRICK. What is the length of the parole period?

Mr. ENNIS. It is indefinite. Any German alien enemy who is on parole stays on parole until we give him a release.

Mr. MILLER. Well, will that run beyond the period of the declaration of peace?

Mr. ENNIS. No.

Mr. MILLER. Your authority falls with the declaration of peace? Mr. ENNIS. It falls with the formal status of peace.

Now, you gentlemen will recall that although we anticipated peace in 1919 when we got this new legislation, we did not actually get it until 1921 or 1922.

And it is generally believed that at the termination of hostilities in the present war that there will be a period of military government imposed by the United Nations upon the Axis Nations for a considerable period of time.

And under modern conditions of warfare there is no proposal to sit down and make a peace treaty with the Axis Powers. The very terms of unconditional surrender will bar the idea that we are going to sit down and make any peace treaty for several years.

Personally, I would not be surprised if there never was a peace. treaty with the Axis Nations. We will impose the conditions we wish. Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Ennis, something was said a few minutes ago about these parolees being in good behavior and so forth.

I want to express the hope that you and your coworkers will be very very careful about paroling persons.

Just for an individual to express his intention of being good means very little if he has been avowed-whether he has avowed or notif he has been actually at heart a Nazi or Communist or Fascist, his present declaration would carry very little weight.

I do not mean to say we do not grant a man the right to change his mind and reform, but I think the real Fascist or Communist or Nazi at heart does not change very much.

And I hope that you gentlemen will be very very careful about paroling anybody who has been tainted with those philosophies.

Mr. ENNIS. Well, we have that of course, Mr. Allen, in mind constantly in reviewing the cases, but there are a few basic considerations which we must all keep in mind, and that is that an alien enemy program is not intended to be punitive.

Our basic purpose in interning aliens of enemy nationality is not to punish them for their views, much as we abhor them, but to secure the safety of the country in time of war by putting out of the way persons whom we believe adhere to our enemies to a degree sufficient that they are likely to do something about it if they get an opportunity.

Mr. ALLEN. Well, you should deport them though-sure, it is not for our protection, but we should deport them to get rid of them, and that will be our protection.

Mr. ENNIS. That is true; the repatriation raises some factors and considerations different from internment.

You must also have in mind, however, that a great many aliens of enemy nationality have already been interned and been imprisoned for several years, just on the basis of our suspicions that they had

indicated some adherence to Nazi or Fascist ideology and might possibly do something to aid the enemy if the enemy ever got close enough to our shores to be aided, and this internment is a pretty serious and severe sanction, and we do try in reviewing the cases

Mr. ALLEN. Well, may I add there, it is a severe sanction for an innocent man, but it is very mild for one who is guilty and who entertains those philosophies which are destructive to the things we hold near and dear in this country.

Mr. ENNIS. Well, we agree with you entirely, Mr. Allen, but I wanted to bring out that it is not an easy thing to decide how long you should intern a man for an expression of view, for example, many of them before we got into the war.

Next, you must remember that most of the evidence upon which we rely is evidence gathered by the FBI before the war, because we acted on December 7, and in that week picked up literally thousands of persons, and we have had Germans interned who expressed a view that we should not get into the war, that Hitler had done a lot of good in building up Germany, and we should not go in on behalf of Britain; and many of these aliens so expressed themselves before the war in reliance on the great policy of freedom of speech in this country.

We intern such persons for a very considerable length of time. I only bring that out to show both sides of the picture and the kind of a problem we have to weigh in exercising this summary power. I suppose the power of internment which the Department of Justice exercises is just about the most summary power that any agency of the American Government exercises.

The CHAIRMAN. I think so.

Mr. DOLLIVER. Mr. Chairman?
The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. DOLLIVER. I take it that most of the internees-perhaps none of them have gone to the extent of any treasonable acts.

If they had committed treasonable acts they would be tried for that crime before the courts.

Mr. ENNIS. Well, the answer is treason in one technical sense can be committed only by a citizen of the United States. But if any of these persons have committed any act of sabotage, espionage, or any act within our many statutes, they of course would have been prosecuted and given a prison sentence, and after they got out of prison we intern them, put a detainer on them.

Mr. DOLLIVER. The point I am trying to bring out is this:
These internees are not people who have committed crimes.
Mr. ENNIS. That is correct.

Mr. DOLLIVER. And they are people who have not had a formal trial.

Mr. ENNIS. That is correct.

Mr. HEDRICK. Do any of these persons become eligible for citizenship after they have been in detention camp and paroled?

Mr. ENNIS. Well, during the war, we will not grant citizenship to alien enemies who have been interned or are on parole.

That is our general policy.

Now, I am sure, although I do not know of any cases, that after the last war people who were interned or paroled eventually got citizenship.

Our present Nationality Act does not completely bar an alien enemy from being naturalized even during the war. What it provides is that aliens of enemy nationality who have not had a petition on file for a certain period of time before the war began may not be naturalized, but alien enemies whose cases have been processed and are ready for naturalization-of course, they are all reviewed again and scrutinized very carefully-but some alien enemies have been naturalized.

Mr. HEDRICK. Did any of them ever become eligible for citizenship after they had been interned?

Mr. ENNIS. There is no statutory provision. That lies, so far as I know, wholly within the administrative discretion of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in applying the law.

Let us take a hypothetical case of a man who had his petition for naturalization filed sufficiently in advance of the declaration of war to be eligible to be naturalized and, on the outbreak of war he is picked up and interned.

The CHAIRMAN. On the basis that he has expressed some other views?

Mr. ENNIS. Yes.

Now, we parole him.

Now, for him to go into the Immigration and Naturalization Service and ask that his petition be acted upon, of course the Service would have in the files all of the facts as to why he was interned.

Now, in the regular course of the daily work such a person would not be naturalized. He would be told to go away and wait until the war is over and we will see.

Now, I am not prepared to say that absolutely no person who was on parole has been naturalized.

I am confident that if anybody had been naturalized, then there have been some very exceptional circumstances such as that he has been able to establish that his arrest was a mistake.

But outside of a possible case of a mistake, alien enemies during wartime who are on parole are not naturalized.

Because the very facts which led us to place them on parole would lead the Immigration Service to deny the naturalization.

Mr. ALLEN. But would you say the internment standing alone would not necessarily be a bar to future naturalization?

Mr. ENNIS. That is right.

Mr. ALLEN. They would scrutinize them very, very carefully.

Mr. ENNIS. That is right.

Mr. HEDRICK. It is a hurdle that he has to get over.

Mr. ALLEN. That is correct.

Mr. MILLER. Of the figures you have given us of internees. are all in the continental United States? Or do these figures include the Japanese in Hawaii? Or were there any interned out there?

Mr. ENNIS. The answer is this:

The military authorities in Hawaii under martial law interned not only alien enemies but also citizens.

Mr. MILLER. Citizens.

Mr. ENNIS. Which is a power that is generally recognized under martial law.

Some of those alien internees, for purposes of the most convenient safekeeping, were brought to this country and held in internment,

first by the Army, then by us, just as a courtesy to the Army, because Hawaii is a very crowded, busy place fighting the war, and we have had some internees from Hawaii here. And they will go back to Hawaii. Some of them have already gone back.

The CHAIRMAN. How many alien Japanese have we in Hawaii?
Mr. ENNIS. How many alien Japanese have we in Hawaii?
Mr. CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. ENNIS. I think that perhaps Mr. Farrington's recollection would be better than my own on that.

Mr. FARRINGTON. Between 25,000 and 30,000.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there any supervision there over the Japanese aliens, the Justice Department or

Mr. ENNIS. The military forces-Lieutenant General Richardson's military personnel-run the entire alien-enemy-control program over there, and it is a very complete and thorough system of control of alien enemies.

But you must remember that under martial law everybody in Hawaii for several years was under very strict control.

The CHAIRMAN. I have one important question I want to clear up. We passed a statute here whereby a native of American-born Japanese expatriated himself by signing a certain declaration. Now then, for all intents and purposes he is a man without a country. So far as this country is concerned, he is out.

Now, he is born here, and he has waived his birthright.

On the question of deportation what act would you use on this kind of an individual? Would you use an alien act which you have on that, or the Alien Enemy Act? Could you use that? Or would you need additional acts in order to deport him?

Mr. ENNIS. Mr. Chairman, our thinking on the subject so far has got to this point:

The statute you have in mind, the act of July 1, 1944, 8 U. S. C. 801, to provide for the voluntary remunciation of citizenship in time of war, by any American citizen, regardless of his ancentry, was proposed by us, and I think it was passed by the Congress primarily because we found that as result of this evacuation or detention of the Japanese population a number of American citizens of Japanese ancestry, either because of political loyalty to Japan, or because of their reaction to the way they felt they were treated, expressed the desire to drop their United States citizenship.

And the law prior to the amendment did not permit a man in the United States in time of war to lose his citizenship except by conviction of treason or conviction of desertion from the armed forces.

So this statute was passed.

Now, the results under the statute to date have been as follows: Out of approximately 7,200 United States citizens of Japanese ancestry in the Tule Lake segregation center at Tule Lake, Calif., over 18 years of age, 5,700 of them have applied to expatriate themselves.

The CHAIRMAN. That is, native-born?

Mr. ENNIS. Yes. Native-born.

The CHAIRMAN. There you are.

Mr. ALLEN. In other words, signed a statement

Mr. ENNIS. Well, let me go on.