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