and the control of all avenues of information. They carried a misguided and uninformed people into a mad adventure which could have but one end. When their immunity to criticism was stripped away by defeat, liberal elements of Japan could once more emerge; nowhere in history has the repudiation of a defeated leadership been so complete.

"Many observers have likened the reception accorded our initial occupation of Japan to the liberation of a friendly territory. How long this spirit may be expected to continue can hardly be forecast. The final outcome will depend upon Japanese leadership, for nothing is more certain than that at last all American troops will be withdrawn.

"In the meantime, we have our opportunity to assist in the development of leadership which will solidify the present trend of friendship toward this country. "When Japanese military might was at its zenith, it was unable to induce the Tnited States to amend its immigration law. Now it is possible to accomplish as a matter of principle what then would have been considered appeasement. "There is a quality of loyalty about the Japanese which lies very deep, and I know the Japanese pretty well. You cannot help knowing them when you live among them for 10 years. I knew the good with the bad. The Japanese are not all good nor all bad as some of our countrymen have felt at one time that there were no good elements there.

"I know of no finer people in the world-and I have lived in a great many Countries-than what I call the good. Japanese-the Japanese who want to keep away from war, who want friendship with other countries, who especially want mutual cooperative friendship with the United States. "There were plenty of them in the old days. ilitary. There are plenty of them there today. and they know it is genuine and sincere, they will need have no doubt about that.

They were overridden by the And if we offer our friendship, come to us like a magnet. We

"We have found the Japanese to be a desperate and implacable foe. Japan can be an equally valuable friend if mutual confidence can be built between us. There are realities in the world situation today which should impel us to strengthen by all means our bonds with nations whose friendship can be ours. * * *""

Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers, who served as psychological warfare officer and military secretary to Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the war, wrote the House subcommittee considering the Judd bill (H. R. 5004) 3 years ago:

"The Japanese are a proud and sensitive race. They regard our Exclusion Act of 1924 as a national insult; in my opinion, this Exclusion Act was one ef the remote causes of the war. Japanese Christian friends in Tokyo advised De during the latter part of the 1920's that they personally, knowing the Amerien people, realized they meant no insult in passing the Exclusion Act. At the same time, however, they said they were unable to explain it to their closest Japanese friends.

"I am convinced the Exclusion Act was a mistake which should be corrected. This does not mean that I advocate large-scale Japanese immigration; quite to the contrary. Moreover, the Japanese neither expect nor desire this. What they do want is not to be discriminated against as a race. The United States as a Cristian democratic country should give the Japanese this consideration. The passage of H. R. 5004 would have a most beneficial effect among all apanese people. Unless we blunder, we are rapidly winning the friendship the Japanese. The passage of this bill will materially assist the objectives our present military occupation. The day will come when we shall need the friendship of the Japanese. Passage of H. R. 5004 therefore would not only erect an injustice but it would further our own national interest." Presidential envoy John Foster Dulles has just returned from the Orient, where he discussed a peace treaty with Japan. He has reported to the Presient and the President has urged the conclusion of a treaty of peace with Japan the earliest possible moment.

What more appropriate time than now to enact legislation welcoming Japan to the family of democratic nations by repealing a quarter-century slight and viting token immigration from her shores to ours.

The problem of Korea also brings into sharp focus the urgency which this Nation must give to its relationships in Asia.

For some reason, our accent has been on military measures in the Far East since the end of World War II. No matter how important these measures ay be, they leave a tremendous void on both the moral and propaganda levels that the military cannot fill.

Place, for example, Korea against the background of our own Revolutionary War. Suppose that, at this country's request, France had offered troops and equipment to aid in our fight to win independence. Let us then assume the French troops provided the overwhelming fighting power and that our freedom depended upon the ability of French troops fighting on American soil against the British.

If, at the same time, however, French home policy excluded Americans from emigrating to France and denied to Americans legally resident in that country the right to become citizens of France, how would Americans of Revolutionary War days have evaluated the sincerity of French intentions?

Imagine how the British might have exploited the argument that at least they accepted Americans as equals for immigration and citizenship purposes, which the French did not.

Would, in all honesty, our hearts have been solidly with the French in the struggle? Or would the Americans of 1776 have entertained secret fears the French were simply using the war for military and economic gain, solely to preserve a French system in which the United States would have been an ally' not, of course for the eventual benefit of Americans but of France.

This analogy is not true in an absolute sense today in Korea, but it certainly bears a germ of truth which we must not blind ourselves to.

The Communists have been inordinately successful in exploiting dissensions in Asia.

It may be more accurate to describe the present turmoil in Asia today not so much as revolutions and uprisings inspired by the Communists but as vast upheavals of peoples who, in turn, are exploited by Communists.

Because of the color line we draw in immigration and naturalization against Asiatic and Pacific peoples, the Communists pose as the true friends of the Asians and charge the Americans with bigotry and prejudice and even imperialism.

Dean Rusk, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, testified to these conclusions 2 years ago when he appeared before a Senate Subcommittee of Immigration and Naturalization considering the Judd bill for equality in immigration and naturalization.

As with Ambassador Grew's statement, the intervening years have increased the potency of his arguments.

At that time, he said:

"The Department of State is in complete sympathy with and fully supports the objectives (of the Judd bill) to give all peoples, regardless of race or color access to the privilege of American citizenship and to provide, within the frame work of our existing quota system, equitable opportunities for the immigration into the United States of all Asian and Pacific peoples. I might say that a special committee within the Department of State has been studying this problem for over 2 years. * * *""

"The general consideration which led the Department of State strongly to support the objectives (of equality in immigration and naturalization) are, 1 believe, well known to your committee. The racial discrimination embodied in our immigration and naturalization laws has for many years been a cause of dissatisfaction abroad and uneasy concern among many of our own citizens This situation has greatly complicated our relations with Asia, the area sub jected to discrimination. The strain thus placed on the basically friendly feeling: between our peoples and those of Asia has never been in our national interes and certainly is not today."

Secretary Rusk then discussed two important issues.

We

"One is that world communism is trying throughout Asia to identify in the minds of Asiatic people communism with their own national aspirations. believe that that attempt is fraudulent on the part of the Soviet Union, because we believe that their purposes are to subject these people to dictatorship and to forms of tyranny which go far beyond any dictatorships or tyrannies which they have ever known in the past. Therefore, we cannot believe that the interest of the peoples of Asia in self-government, self-determination, and free institutions has anything to do with association with communism. We have seen tha demonstrated time after time in our debates in the United Nations, where the Soviet delegation has exposed its real attitude toward these peoples by its unconscionable refusal to go forward with the unification of a free Korea, by its refusal to assist in the admission of Ceylon to membership in the United Nations, and by the persistent effort it has made to destroy the position of the moderate leaders of the people of Indonesia.

1

"However, we in our past record on the point of naturalization are handing to world communism a cheap and easy weapon, which we should like to take out of their hands. We should like to make it possible for the peoples of Asia to turn to the United States as a center of freedom, without coming immediately up against this principle which they do not understand and which they cannot accept.

"The change looks almost trivial from the point of view of this great Nation, as seen from inside this country, but as a principle affecting these great peoples of the other part of the world it is a major element in their relations with this country.

And

"I should like to make one other point. In this struggle for freedom and for the minds of men around the world, the United States and its western friends and many of our Asiatic friends are on the constructive side of the fight. the constructive side, I suggest, is the difficult and the tough side. You can build a bridge for a half-million dollars with great effort, but you can destroy it with a $25 bomb. You can organize a riot very easily, but it is difficult to organize production and organize democratic systems of government. "You can throw a brick through a window, but it is difficult to take cholera serum around the world or to move fertilizer around the world to help people get health and food for themselves.

"Now, because this is a tough job, we are going to be up against disappointments from time to time. We cannot help it, because that is the nature of the job. And we must be able to call upon all of the spiritual and psychological and political resources that are available to us to consolidate the world in the direction of peace and freedom and economic well-being for its peoples.

"Therefore, as an element in the consolidation of the non-Communist world, or the consolidation of the peoples of the world toward freedom, we think this [principle of equality in immigration and naturalization] is of exceedingly great importance.

"Almost all of Asia has recently attained or is in the process of attaining self-government. The Asian governments, reflecting the deep-seated sentiments of their peoples, regard the existence of the racial bar in our immigration and naturalization laws an impediment to the fuller development of friendly and cooperative relationships between themselves and the United States. Both the United States and Asia have much to gain from the strengthening of such relationships, and the early passage of the Judd bill or similar legislation would be an important step forward.

"In short, gentlemen, we are here considering positive action which this government can take quickly to give to the peoples of Asia concrete evidence of our good will and friendly interests. ****

The House Committee on the Judiciary recognized the importance of these factors, for, in reporting the Judd bill to the House for its consideration in the Eighty-first Congress, its report observed:

The committee believes that enactment of this bill [for equality in immigration and naturalization] will strongly benefit the foreign relations of the United States."

The House, incidentally, passed the Judd bill in the Eighty-first Congress by an overwhelming majority, 336 to 39 (with the 39 voting against the bill for technical reasons that had nothing to do with the principle of equality in immigration and naturalization), thereby demonstrating its complete repudiation of the 1924 doctrine of Asian inferiority.

IV.

ELIMINATION OF RACE AS A QUALIFICATION FOR NATURALIZATION

JACL also endorses the principle of racial equality in naturalization which is included in the three omnibus bills now under consideration by this joint committee. Racial equality in this case means that all aliens, regardless of their ancestry or national origin, lawfully admitted into this country for permanent residence, may become naturalized citizens of the United States. For the first time in American history, an alien's national origin cannot serve as an absolute bar to his naturalization. All aliens may now share in the citizenship of their children and the land of their adoption.

Who and how many are affected?

Using the 1940 census as a source, and subtracting 10 percent as the approxiate diminution caused by the naturally advancing years of the ineligible aliens, there are resident today in the United States and its Territories only 76,000 aliens of Japanese ancestory, 2,700 Koreans, and 130 listed as "Polynesians and other Asians." The total number affected is less than 80,000.

Under our laws, these aliens have never been permitted to become naturalized, although all are lawfully admitted permanent residents of the United States and virtually all of them came to this country prior to July 1, 1924, the effective date of the Oriental Exclusion Acts. None are subject to deportation.

Notwithstanding the justice and merit that is basic in the elimination of racial qualifications for naturalization, there is another fundamental question that needs to be answered: Is it to the best interests of the United States to continue to deny these aliens the privilege of seeking naturalization?

There is only one possible reply: No.

There is not a single conceivable benefit which can accrue to the United States by continuing to bar these resident aliens from citizenship. It sets them apart as a second-class group; it creates an indigestible and marked segment of our population; it impugns their character and indirectly causes a discordant note in our relationships with their mother countries; it cheapens and restricts the American-born citizenship of their children and inflicts embarrassment and humiliation on the latter. And, as with racial barriers to immigration, it gives a powerful propaganda weapon to the Communists.

On the other hand, to allow these resident aliens the benefit of naturalization would be a signal to all the world that nowhere in Federal law does the United States recognize any artificial distinctions based upon race and national origin. It would also be a personal welcome to citizenship to a group which has suffered more legal discrimination and persecution than any other people in the United States, with the possible exception of the American Indian.

Most of these aliens came to the United States more than 40 years ago, before the so-called gentlemen's agreement between this Government and Japan in 1908 discourage immigration from the latter country. This exclusion was formalized into law in 1924.

The only recent newcomers, numbering perhaps 1,500, have been the wives and fiancées of American veterans and servicemen who have entered this country since the end of World War II under special congressional acts.

What kind of residents have these aliens been? What about the Japanese, the largest single group and the one most often maligned?

As members of this joint committee are aware, extensive hearings were held by the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization in the spring of 1948 and by the Special Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization in the summer of 1949.

Although most of the members of this joint committee are familiar with the facts and arguments presented in those hearings, for the sake of the record we shall summarize them.

Since the alien Japanese are the largest group to benefit from this legislative change in our naturalization laws and since we are in a better position to discuss their qualifications for citizenship, we shall confine our comments to this group.

At the same time, however, we want to acknowledge the magnificent contributions of the immigrant Koreans and other Asian and Pacific peoples. Our failure to include them in our discussion is not to minimize their outstanding record of loyalty and allegiance to this country or to suggest that they will be less capable citizens than the immigrants from Japan.

There is a tremendous wealth of authoritative studies from which one can draw to show that alien resident Japanese as a whole have been law-abiding. thrifty, industrious, and skilled farmers and businessmen. In every community where they live, they participate in such activities as the Community Chest, the Red Cross, and other philanthropic community programs.

Their history in this country, and their record as residents, is not unlike those of other first-generation immigrant nationalities that came to the United States seeking better opportunities and greater freedoms.

But they are best known perhaps for their contributions in the fields of agriculture and horticulture. No menu is complete today without the truck-garden crops in which the Japanese farmer has specialized. No florist can boast of a true profusion of flowers without the blooms and plants which Japanese nursery men have introduced and popularized.

Even during the period immediately following World War I, when antiJapanese sentiment was at its highest, a great Californian surveyed his State and found nothing but praise for the contributions of the alien Japanese farmer Col. John P. Irish, president of the California Delta Association, representing the non-Japanese farmers of 250,000 acres of marsh lands, reported to Gov William B. Stevens in 1921:

* They [the Californians] had seen the Japanese convert the barren land like that at Florin and Livingston into productive and profitable fields, orchards, and vineyards, by the persistence and intelligence of their industry. They had seen the hardpan and goose lands in the Sacramento Valley, gray and black with our two destructive alkalis, cursed with barrenness like the fig tree of Bethany, and not worth paying taxes on, until Ikuta, the Japanese, decided that those lands would raise rice. After years of persistent toil, enduring heartbreaking losses and disappointments, he conquered that rebellious soil and raised the first commercial crop of rice in California. Due to the work of this great Japanese pioneer, this State now has a rice crop worth $60,000,000 (in 1921; now worth several times this amount), and the land that he found worthless now sells for $200 per acre. (Today, these lands are worth $500 an acre.)

* * (these Californians) had seen the repulsive 'hog wallow' in the thermal belt of the west slope of the Sierra, avoided by white men, so unproductive and forbidding that they defaced the scenery, reclaimed by the genius and toil of the Japanese Sakamoto, and now transformed into beautiful vineyards and citrus orchards from Seville to Lemon Cove. They had seen that 70 percent of the total 74,000 acres owned by Japanese were these lands that disfigured the State until they had been reclaimed by Japanese genius and industry." Actually, however, as Bradford Smith evaluated it in his recent definitive book, Americans From Japan:

* the Issei (immigrant Japanese) contribution to America was not in great men, but in the anonymous little men who made the desert spaces green with the labor of their hands, who kept the track even so that Americans could ride comfortably across the land, who tended the comfort of the well-to-do and grew vegetables the poor could afford to buy, who sacrificed everything for the welfare of their children."

By their contributions to the development of the West, by their day-to-day conduct as individuals, by the attainments of their citizen children (Nisei), these resident alien Japanese have earned the privilege of sharing in the citizenship of their adopted land.

Others, too, have testified as to the character and loyalty of the alien Japanese. Among some of the more noted Americans who have appeared in the past before Congressional committees urging passage of general legislation enabling all Japanese immigrants to become naturalized citizens have been such personages as Gen. Mark W. Clark, wartime commander of the Fifth Army in Italy and present chief of the Army Ground Forces; Gen. Bonner Fellers, former psychological warfare officer and military secretary to General MacArthur; and John J. McCloy, wartime Assistant Secretary of War, former president of the World Bank, and now American high commissioner to Germany.

General Clark testified:

"The supreme test of citizenship is the willingness of a man to risk his life 80 that our country may live.

"Under my command in Italy the Four Hundred and Forty-second Infantry Regiment and the One Hundredth Infantry Battalion, composed of Nisei, fought the Nazi combat forces with the valor and skill characteristic of the young Americans that they are.

"One of the brave number, Sadao S. Munemori, of Los Angeles, member of the battle-famous Four Hundred and Forty-second Infantry, symbolizes the gallantry of these Americans of Japanese ancestry in fighting for the liberty of our beloved country. In Italy he wiped out two enemy machine-gun nests and saved the lives of two of his companions by throwing himself on a hand grenade; this resulted in his death. He was awarded America's highest combat award— the United States Congressional Medal of Honor-and an American transport today bears his name.

"Surely his parents and those of the other Nisei, through the loyalty of their offspring, have earned the right to citizenship in the world's greatest Nation-a Nation that distinguishes not at all between race, creed, or color.

"As I recall the outstanding feats of valor in combat of the members of the Four Hundred and Forty-second Infantry and the One Hundredth Infantry Battalion, the number of Purple Hearts awarded to them because of wounds received in battle, and their extremely low hospital rate because of their eagerness to return to the line after having been wounded, I can only urge that the rights of citizenship in our great America be given to the parents who furnished 3 with such outstanding young manhood, men who willingly gave their all that America could live.