Thread by @SurfCityWriter

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga (1925-2018) discovered a copy of "Final Report" produced by the Civil Affairs Division of the Western Defense Command in April 1943. Every copy of the report, drafts and notes, was directed to be destroyed.

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The Final Report stated it was "impossible to establish the identity of the loyal and the disloyal with any degree of safety." Meaning all Japanese Americans, the majority of whom were US citizens, were to be judged solely on their ethnicity/ancestry.

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Final Report stated: It wasnt' that there was insufficient time in which to make such a determination; it was simply a matter of facing the realities that a positive determination could not be made, that an exact separation of the 'sheep from the goats' was unfeasible. #history

Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy & his team had the copies, drafts destroyed. In the early 1980s, Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga found evidence that a tenth copy of the original report had never been found.
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In the .@USNatArchives in 1982, she noticed a copy of the Final Report on a desk that had a different binding than the copies she had seen. It was the missing copy of the Final Report.
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This is the document that re-opened Korematsu v. US. It revealed the reasons behind forced removal & incarceration had no military or strategic necessity.
None.
Yet, 120,000 people told there were not American enough & confined.

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During the redress movement, Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga explained to the LA Times the significance of the one lost copy of the Final Report, hidden in the archives, forgotten.
It was monumental.
~Los Angeles Times, June 2, 1988

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She added that she hoped America had learned the lesson. "It is what studying history is all about."

When the world is turned upside down, there will be someone quietly, determinedly digging up history to turn it right.

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Photo courtesy of .@DenshoProject, is of Aiko during the redress hearings.
That is a researcher, historian, and a survivor of WWII incarceration, armed with the facts of history, ready to turn things right.
Thank you, Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga.

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@threadreaderapp please unroll.