From: jwalter@ptra.com <jwalter@ptra.com>
>Well Phill, I just realized you sent that via the list.
Well, yeah. You sent your statement via the list. Although this is an
autocross list, if something that looks wrong, and inflammatory, is posted
here, I think we all have a duty to put it to rest.
>The census bureau only claims (on their web site) to have husbanded the
>information in a strictly confidential manner since 1950.
>
>Here's the link and the comments from my "informed source", want to guess
>his/her flavor?
What the heck does that mean?
>What follows is a link to the Census Bureau's document touting their
"dedication to confidentiality". See page two.
http://www.2000.census.gov/iqa/doc/privacy.pdf
>Note that they conveniently stopped shy of 1941-2 when the census records
>were used to identify, abduct and imprison innocent Japanese Americans.
That in itself is no evidence of your assertion. It is merely a lack of
evidence to refute your assertion. In this discussion, it is virtually
worthless.
You pushed my buttons on this because I have long believed the stories of
the Census Bureau's refusal to cooperate with other government agencies.
And I have long decried the Japanese internment as being not only inhumane
but unnecessary. So I went on a net.hunt for evidence.
I found an article in the New York Times. It saddens me.
I concede your point. In the absence of challenges to Seltzer and Anderson,
your statement appears true.
Damn, it annoys me that Census officials here in Saint Paul told me the "we
didn't cooperate" story right to my face after this paper was published and
reported.
In my dealings with the public, I always tell citizens the truth. Even when
it is not what they want to hear. Even when it annoys my superiors and the
politicians.
========================================
News/Current Events News
Source: New York Times
Published: 03/17/00 Author: By STEVEN A. HOLMES
Posted on 03/16/2000 23:21:39 PST by JohnHuang2
March 17, 2000
Census Bureau Role Reported in Internment of Japanese-Americans
By STEVEN A. HOLMES
WASHINGTON -- Two scholars say in a new research paper that despite earlier
denials, the Census Bureau was deeply involved in the roundup and internment
of Japanese-Americans at the onset of U.S. entry into World War II.
The academics say the Census Bureau's involvement included identifying
concentrations of people of Japanese ancestry in geographic units as small
as city blocks, lending a senior Census Bureau official to work with the War
Department on the relocation program and a willingness to disclose names and
address of Japanese-Americans.
While it is common today for the Census Bureau to publish reports that
detail the number of people of a given race living in an area as small as a
city block, such information was generally not available in the 1940s. But
the authors of the paper contend that the Census Bureau provided such
detailed information as well as age, sex, citizenship and country of birth
to the War Department, now the Defense Department, on only one group --
Japanese-Americans.
In 1941 and '42, the paper says, Census Bureau officials believed that such
information was valuable to the War Department's effort in rounding up
residents of Japanese ancestry.
The paper, "After Pearl Harbor: The Proper Role of Population Data Systems
in Time of War," was written by William Seltzer, a statistician and
demographer at Fordham University, and Margo Anderson, a history professor
at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee whose area of expertise is the
census.
Seltzer and Anderson plan to present the paper at the annual meeting of the
Population Association of America next week in Los Angeles. Copies of the
paper have been circulating in Washington, and one was made available to The
New York Times.
The practices described in the paper did not appear to have violated laws
governing the census, which prohibit the bureau from disclosing census
information on individuals. But the authors indicated that despite the law,
Census Bureau officials appeared to be willing to provide such data. What is
not clear is whether they were asked to do so.
"We're by law required to keep confidential information by individuals," the
paper quotes the director of the Census Bureau, J.C. Capt, as saying at a
meeting of the Census Advisory Committee in January 1942. But if the defense
authorities found 200 Japanese-Americans missing and they wanted the names
of the Japanese-Americans in that area, Capt said, "I would give them
further means of checking individuals."
The Census Bureau often boasted that its conduct in the relocation of
Japanese-Americans had been its finest hour because it resisted pressure to
provide explicit data to the War and Justice Departments.
But Census Bureau officials do not dispute the findings of the paper. They
say, however, that the strengthening of the laws protecting the
confidentiality of data on individuals and the environment today would make
a repeat of those abuses unlikely.
Japanese-Americans have long suspected that the Census Bureau played a
prominent role in the roundup and relocation of 120,000 residents of
Japanese ancestry, most from the West Coast, to detention camps in the
interior.
"We've always suspected this," said Norman Mineta, a former California
Congressman who was relocated with his family from San Jose to a detention
camp in Wyoming. "After all, they are the keeper of this kind of
information. I was a little over 10 years old when all this happened. I
remember years later becoming aware of the fact that this kind of
information could not have come from any other source than the Census
Bureau."
On Dec. 9, 1941, two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Census
Bureau produced a report titled, "Japanese Population of the United States,
Its Territories and Possessions." The next day the bureau issued a report on
the Japanese population by citizenship and place of birth in selected cities
across the country. The next day it published another report, this one on
the Japanese population by counties in states on the West Coast. All reports
were based on data from the 1940 census.
Capt, the Census Bureau director, justified the speed with which the bureau
produced these reports by saying at meeting of the Census Advisory Committee
in January 1942: "We didn't want to wait for the declaration of war. On
Monday morning we put our people to work on the Japanese thing."
The United States declared war on Japan that Monday afternoon.
Subsequent reports became even more detailed. In 1942, Tom Clark, a Justice
Department official working with the War Department, was quoted in the paper
as saying that Census Bureau officials 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."
The paper's disclosures come at a ticklish time for the Census Bureau
because they coincide with the mailing this month of census forms to about
120 million households. Bureau officials say they fear that the scholars'
paper may frighten people into not returning the forms.
========================================
Phil Ethier Saint Paul Minnesota USA
1970 Lotus Europa, 1992 Saturn SL2, 1986 Chev Suburban
LOON, MAC pethier@isd.net http://www.mnautox.com/
"If I can do it, it's not art" - Red Green
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