Episode 2: The Jitters

Summary

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Rachel Maddow Presents: Burn Order

Episode 2: The Jitters

Date: December 1, 2025
Host: Rachel Maddow
Production: Ms. NOW

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Episode Overview

Main Theme:
Episode 2, “The Jitters,” explores the climate of chaos and paranoia on the U.S. West Coast after Pearl Harbor, spotlighting how military leaders’ personal fears, incompetence, rumors, and racist ideologies fueled the push to remove and incarcerate Japanese Americans. The episode zeroes in on the characters of General John DeWitt and his ambitious aide Carl Bendetsen, tracking how unchecked authority and false intelligence combined to justify a disastrous and unconstitutional executive order.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Immediate Aftermath of Pearl Harbor: Coastal Terror and Suspicion

• Wartime Attacks Spur Panic
  • Interviews with merchant ship captains about Japanese submarine attacks just off the California coast further stoked public fear.
  • Rachel Maddow narrates: "There’s acute awareness that our Pacific coast is vulnerable to this Pacific power, Japan, that has just horrifically demonstrated its capacity to cross that ocean and hit us here at home." (02:15)
• Escalation
  • After December 1941, occasional attacks on shipping escalate to a Japanese sub shelling California’s shore in February 1942 (04:14–04:30).

2. Leadership in Crisis: General John DeWitt’s “Jitters”

• Erratic and Paranoid Conduct
  • DeWitt’s staff describe him as "jittery" and guilty of "amateur imaginings."
  • He frequently spread false reports: phantom air raids, uprisings by Japanese Americans, Japanese fleets just offshore, all untrue.
  • Maddow: "It did kind of seem like Lieutenant General John DeWitt’s screws might have come a little loose." (05:05)
  • Subordinate’s diary: "[DeWitt] a jackass."
• Why Was He In Charge?
  • Despite mismanagement, as a career military man he remained the point person for Western Defense Command.

3. Enter Carl Bendetsen: The Right Hand Man with a Racial Agenda

• Ambition Meets Chaos
  • Army lawyer Carl Bendetsen joins as DeWitt’s aide; quickly rises through the ranks.
  • He is "cool, logical," and strategically ambitious but "a bad, bad fellow" and "the architect of the program of forced removal and imprisonment." (11:03, 22:42)
• Ruthless Policy Planning
  • Bendetsen drafts new policies for mass removal and indefinite detention, eliminating due process even for American citizens.
  • “He was not just a cipher... What a dreadful man.” (12:05)

4. Government Responses: Resistance from the Justice Department

• Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act

  • Non-citizen Japanese residents could not naturalize, making them uniquely vulnerable to detention.
  • Immediate FBI sweeps arrest thousands of Japanese community leaders.
  • Personal testimonies from Japanese American family members highlight the terror and confusion:
    • "They told my father to get dressed and come with them... he didn’t come back." (17:18, 18:14)

• Justice Department Insists on Due Process

  • Edward Ennis oversees implementation at Justice and ensures arrestees receive individual hearings.
    • "A minimum program was required which sought what wartime security was necessary without becoming 100% patriots at the expense of the alien enemy population..." (19:45)

5. Army Pushes for Mass Incarceration Without Process

• Bendetsen’s Plan for Racial Removal
  • Policy would forcibly relocate all Japanese Americans from the West Coast, regardless of citizenship, on racial grounds with no hearings or appeals.
  • "Carl Bendetsen’s plan would eliminate not only any idea of individuated justice, it would also eliminate the distinction between Japanese Americans who were U.S. citizens and those who were not." (21:58)
• Weaponizing DeWitt’s Prejudice
  • DeWitt’s own anti-Black and anti-Asian bigotry is established—he refuses Black units, opposes Asian Americans serving even in segregated units, and states, "a Jap’s a Jap." (25:57)
  • DeWitt and Bendetsen feed wild, already-debunked conspiracy theories to the public and politicians, fueling public hysteria.

6. Facts vs. Fear: The Ringle Report’s Suppressed Truth

• Naval Intelligence Officer Ken Ringle
  • Fluent in Japanese, deeply familiar with Japanese American communities.
  • His research finds no threat—"Japanese Americans might be our best defense against that kind of threat." (35:05)
  • Bendetsen refuses to meet with Ringle or consider his findings.
• Desperation to Stop a Catastrophe
  • Ringle pens the Ringle Report, warning: "The entire Japanese problem has been magnified out of its true proportion largely because of the physical characteristics of the people... it should be handled... on an individual and not on a racial basis." (36:43–37:04)

7. Showdown at the Attorney General’s Living Room (43:15–48:48)

• High-Stakes Confrontation
  • Key officials—AG Biddle, Justice lawyers Ennis and Rowe, and Bendetsen—meet in Biddle’s home.
  • War Department brings a draft of what will become Executive Order 9066.
  • Justice lawyers argue it’s unconstitutional. Biddle offers no support, having already agreed to go along with the Army.
  • Maddow: "Bendetson and DeWitt’s false claims... were being derided inside the government... but still, it became clear that day... that DeWitt and Ben Debson were going to get their way on this." (47:21)
  • Emotional impact: Justice lawyers "beside themselves," "angry and hurt," with Ennis near tears.
  • Ennis: “Perhaps the greatest violation of civil liberties in the United States.” (48:30)

8. Aftermath and Consequences

• Fateful Timing
  • Ringle’s report reaches the White House two days after the living room meeting—too late, as FDR signs Executive Order 9066 that same day.
    • "My father was haunted all his life... he felt an inadvertent betrayer of the Japanese Americans." (49:17)
• The Cost
  • Maddow: "What was going to happen on the streets of the United States... Carl Ben Dtsen and John DeWitt’s America was coming. And it would be every bit as bad as they had feared." (49:35)
  • Testimony: “My mother said in her diary, I wonder if today’s the day they’re going to line us up and shoot us.” (50:17)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with timestamps)

• On DeWitt’s fitness for command:

  • "DeWitt and his headquarters staff suffered from, quote, amateur imaginings." (05:20)
  • “He thought DeWitt had, quote, gone crazy.” (05:20)

• On Bendetsen’s role:

  • “This fellow Bendetz was a bad, bad fellow.” (11:40)
  • “He was a guy of real ability... The cool, you know, logical mind.” (11:07, 11:08)
  • “Carl Bendeson was absolutely the architect of the program of forced removal and imprisonment.” (22:42)

• On the logic of mass removal:

  • Bendetsen’s memo: "The Japanese race is an enemy race. Racial affinities are not severed by migration... there is no ground for assuming that any Japanese, though born and raised in the United States, will not turn against this nation." (32:11–33:24)

• On the Army's evidence:

  • Historian: “The army had absolutely no intelligence at all. They didn’t know bullshit on anything.” (33:24)

• On the missed intervention:

  • Frank Abe: “My father was haunted all his life that he should have... he felt an inadvertent betrayer of the Japanese Americans, in spite of his best efforts.” (49:17)

• On the trauma of arrest:

  • “They told my father to get dressed and come with them... he didn’t come back.” (17:18)
  • “My mother said in her diary, I wonder if today’s the day they’re going to line us up and shoot us.” (50:17)

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Key Timestamps

• Wartime attacks & public panic: 01:00–04:30
• Profile of DeWitt & office chaos: 05:05–11:00
• Carl Bendetsen introduced: 10:20–12:05
• Alien Enemies Act enforcement & family arrests: 14:12–19:13
• Push for mass incarceration: 20:59–25:57
• DeWitt’s explicit racism: 25:14–26:10
• Wild rumors debunked: 26:42–28:57
• Bendetsen systematizes race-based policy: 29:22–33:24
• Ken Ringle’s report & ignored warnings: 33:24–38:06
• Attorney General’s living room showdown: 43:15–48:48
• Enactment of Executive Order 9066: 44:45–47:21
• Emotional fallout of decision: 48:30–50:17

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Conclusion

“The Jitters” exposes the dangerous blend of anxiety, racism, bureaucratic dysfunction, and unchecked ambition that led to the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. Through vivid archival testimony, internal government debate, and personal stories of those affected, Maddow meticulously lays out how a radical, unnecessary, and unconstitutional policy took effect—when wiser, fairer voices went ignored or unheard. The episode foreshadows the devastation to follow and highlights the lasting personal and collective scars from “perhaps the greatest violation of civil liberties in the United States.” (Edward Ennis, 48:30)

Next Episode Teaser:
The story continues with the harrowing experiences of Japanese Americans forced behind barbed wire, not knowing their fate, and fearing the worst.

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For more information and resources, visit the show's official site at Ms. NOW / Burn Order.

Transcript

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That's why you wreck.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

First of all, where was your ship at the time of the attack?

[Ship Captain / Witness]

About 20 miles off Santa Cruz.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

And what time of day was it?

[Ship Captain / Witness]

2:15, Saturday afternoon.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

What sort of weather were you having?

[Ship Captain / Witness]

Oh, it was fine weather, nice and clear, and the sun was shining.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

And how about the sea?

[Ship Captain / Witness]

The sea was a little rough, maybe for submarines and some wind.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

The sea was a little rough, maybe for submarines is what he said there.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

Captain, where were you personally when you first discovered the sub?

[Ship Captain / Witness]

I was in my bathroom and I happened to look through the porthole and I saw a black strip on the surface, and I ran at the bridge and recognized a submarine.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

Would you make an estimate of how big the sub was?

[Ship Captain / Witness]

About 300ft long.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

Well, it wasn't one of those tiny subs.

[Ship Captain / Witness]

No, sir.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

Tell me, what nationality was it?

[Ship Captain / Witness]

Well, to my estimation, there's only one kind of nation could do that, and that's Japanese. The same as they did Pearl harbor.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

This was December 21, 1941. The United States was just attacked by Japan at Pearl harbor two weeks ago.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

About 50 planes participated in the attack on the Hawaiian Islands. Many, according to a bulletin that has just come in, were shot down.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

More than 2,000Americans were killed. The whole country, of course, is now at war with Germany and Italy and Japan. But in the western United States specifically, there's acute awareness that our Pacific coast is vulnerable to this Pacific power, Japan, that has just horrifically demonstrated its capacity to cross that ocean and hit us here at home. And right after Pearl harbor, indeed, Japanese subs did sail further east, further across the Pacific, right to the US West Coast.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

Japanese submarines have for some time been en route to their stations for the attack on the United States.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Japanese submarines harassed a half dozen commercial ships, oil tankers and cargo freighters off the California coast. Ships that were carrying things like oil and lumber. These Japanese subs fired at those ships with guns and torpedoes.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

Captain, how many times did they fire at you?

[Ship Captain / Witness]

Eight times.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

Eight times. There were no casualties of any kind?

[Ship Captain / Witness]

No casualties of any kind.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

I want to say right now that it was a good deal of marvelous work on your part, Captain. A lot of people might say that it was poor shooting, but I think that it was good maneuvering.

[Ship Captain / Witness]

Well, I wouldn't say so. I say more of our good luck.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

That flurry of Japanese subs shooting at commercial ships off the California coast. It happened in mid December 1941. There were about half dozen ships that were targeted. Two ships were badly damaged. Two ships were sunk. But then it stopped. The subs apparently went home at least for a couple of months. Then in February it started up again.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

A three hour alert was ordered at dusk last night because of the presence of a Japanese submarine off the Southern California coast.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

In February 1942, another Japanese sub surfaced and this time it didn't fire at a passing ship. This time it fired at the shore.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

The Japanese submarines pumped 25 shells into an oil field north of Santa Barbara.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Monday evening it fired at an oil facility in Galita, California, just near Santa Barbara. And no one was hurt. There were no casualties. There was only about $500 worth of property damage at the oil field. But still this was an enemy submarine shooting into California, firing on the mainland. They may not have done all that much damage yet, but they were demonstrating their presence, their ability to hit us. What was next?

[Interviewer / Military Official]

The army and Navy went on a war basis on the Pacific seaboard. Today every man was ordered to report to his station.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

The part of the U.S. army that was responsible for defending the western United States was called the Western Defense Command. And the Western Defense Command was led by a very experienced three star general.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

Lieutenant General John De Witt headed the Western defense.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Commander, Lieutenant General John DeWitt was a career army officer. His father had also been a general. His brother was a General. His other brother was also a general. John DeWitt was very experienced. He was older. He had served with distinction in World War I. But here at the very outset of World War II, there are early rumblings of worry, early concerns about him and about the state of the Western Defense command under John DeWitt's leadership. One of DeWitt's top subordinates kept A diary at the time. In his diary, he described DeWitt as, quote, jittery and said DeWitt and his headquarters staff suffered from, quote, amateur imaginings. The head of field operations for the army also seemed a little bit bewildered by DeWitt. He told DeWitt's subordinate officer that he thought DeWitt had, quote, gone crazy. And maybe it was the shock of that terrible surprise Japanese attack at Pearl harbor, maybe it was something else. But at the very outset of America's involvement in World War II, it did kind of seem like Lieutenant General John DeWitt's screws might have come a little loose. The day of the Pearl harbor attack, Dec. 7, 1941, DeWitt's headquarters in San Francisco reported that Japanese planes had launched an air raid against that city, against San Francisco, which, of course, was not true. The next day, DeWitt told San Francisco elected officials that he thought it might be a good thing if San Francisco got bombed by Japan. He. He said it would awaken this city. He told them, if I can't knock these facts into your heads with words, I will have to turn you over to the police and let them knock them into you with clubs. The next day, DeWitt's headquarters reported that there were 34 Japanese warships just off the California coast. That also was not true. The next day, DeWitt's office reported that an armed uprising was about to happen that day in San Francisco. 20,000 Japanese Americans were about to rise up in armed revolt in San Francisco. Never mind that there weren't 20,000 Japanese Americans in the whole San Francisco Bay area, even if you counted the elderly and the babies. But nevertheless, John DeWitt believed it. He said he had a source. The FBI told General DeWitt they were familiar with his source for this uprising, claim they, in fact, had banned that guy from local FBI offices. Offices for his propensity to make up wild and totally untrue stories about the Japanese. Undaunted, the very next day, DeWitt's headquarters reported that the entire Japanese Imperial Navy, the whole Japanese fleet, was precisely 164 miles off the coast of San Francisco. And again, perhaps needless to say, that was not true either. Two days after that, DeWitt said that Los Angeles was about to be attacked. He said the attack was imminent. That was not true either. But that was John DeWitt. Day after day after day, the U.S. attorney General said he thought maybe the problem with DeWitt was that DeWitt was suggestible, that he had a tendency to reflect the views of the last man to whom he talked. And that, of course, is never a good Sign in a leader. DeWitt's subordinate officer, the one with the diary, eventually confided there that DeWitt didn't just seem jittery. He eventually wrote in his diary that in his view DeWitt was quote, a jackass. How is it possible that this is the man who was in charge of the defense of the whole western United States in wartime? What do you do when you realize that's the man in charge of something that important? Well, in any good bureaucracy, when the going gets tough, the tough get staff. The army delivered unto General John DeWitt a new right hand man. A very able right hand man. Someone to come into John DeWitt's Western Defense Command and get the place in order in the in over his head chaotic aftermath of Pearl Harbor. John DeWitt's new senior staff officer was a young, confident, Stanford educated lawyer. A captain who would quickly be promoted through multiple ranks to become a full bird colonel. Working at John DeWitt's side, Army Colonel Carl Ben Dutchen.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

Very able fellow. Oh, he's able. He's a smart boy and he had good charm. If he wanted to turn it on. I said, what was his name?

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

And he said, carl Bendetsen.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

And I go, I thought to myself, oh, crap.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Carl Bendetsen. Under DeWitt's leadership, the Western Defense Command had become known for having a notoriously bad case of the jitters. DeWitt's own senior leadership was deriding his command as amateurish, deriding DeWitt himself as maybe even being a little bit around the bend. This new senior staff officer he had been given, Carl Bendetson was the exact opposite of all of that.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

He had a very able assistant in Colonel Bendetson.

[Historian / Commentator]

He was a guy of real ability.

The cool, you know, logical mind.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

When young, smart, able Carl Bendetsen arrived at this chaotic headquarters to become the right hand man to this older, bewildered, rash, easily led man in charge. Ben Debson took a look at that mess, this dangerous stew of incompetence and poor judgment and authority. And in that mess he saw for himself opportunity.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

And this fellow Bendetz was a bad, bad fellow.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

And America was about to find out just how dangerous that could be.

[Historian / Commentator]

Van Denson is an evil man, but he's very, very clever. He was the guy with had more than a little bit of ability. He was not just a cipher. Which all kind of makes it worse. What a dreadful man.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

I'm your host Rachel Maddow and you're listening to Rachel Maddow presents Burn Order.

[Historian / Commentator]

If you can imagine it, the Japanese.

Were doing it the army had absolutely no intelligence at all.

The Wildest conspiracy theories based on nothing. Based on nothing.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

We were just telling the army we're.

[Ship Captain / Witness]

Not gonna do this.

[Historian / Commentator]

They didn't know on anything.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

All turned out to be nonsense.

[Japanese American Family Member / Witness]

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[Japanese American Family Member / Witness]

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[Japanese American Family Member / Witness]

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[Historian / Commentator]

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[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Episode 2 the Jitters There are crowds.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

Right now gathered in front of the White House and the State Department and the Japanese Embassy. They are sober, quiet crowds. The President is dictating the first draft of a message to Congress. That much is announced at the White House. And this means that a joint session of Congress will be held probably as early as tomorrow, at which the President will announce the Japanese attack upon the United States and ask for a declaration of war.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Right after Pearl harbor, the U.S. government invoked the Alien Enemies act to immediately arrest citizens of the countries we were now officially fighting. Citizens of Germany and Italy and Japan who were here in the United States.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

If you believe you have knowledge of any improper activity of any alien, you should report the fact to the nearest FBI office.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

That is all you should do.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

Don't try to be the law yourself.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

When the Alien Enemies act was invoked, it was the FBI and the Justice Department that were empowered to begin enforcing it.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced today that it is completely mobilized.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Inside the Justice Department was a lawyer named Edward Ennis who was tasked to oversee it.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

I drafted the orders for the Attorney General bringing the alien enemy thing into effect, and since I'd been working on it, I was placed in charge of it.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

The Alien Enemies act on paper was about non citizens from any of the countries with which we were now at war. But for immigrants from Germany, Italy and Japan, the citizenship issue didn't cut exactly the same way. Under US law before World War II, immigrants to the US from Germany and from Italy, they were legally allowed to apply to become US Citizens just like anybody else. But immigrants from Japan did not have that option. Here's writer and historian Frank Abe.

[Historian / Commentator]

The Japanese who have immigrated to America cannot become naturalized U.S. citizens.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

For years there were laws in place that banned Japanese immigrants from obtaining American citizenship by any means, even if they came to the country legally, even if they had been here for years or decades. U.S. citizenship by law was off limits to anyone who had been born in Japan.

[Historian / Commentator]

They were barred from applying for naturalized U.S. citizenship.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

So when the Alien Enemies act was invoked, that put every single person in the US who had immigrated from Japan at immediate risk of arrest, at immediate risk of just being seized and held indefinitely by the government.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

I have ordered all Japanese subjects to remain in their homes until their status is determined by our federal government.

[Historian / Commentator]

The FBI swept in the night of Pearl harbor and had lists of names and arrested thousands of community leaders and took them away from their families and took them to the immigration detention station and held them there for several months, incommunicado.

[Japanese American Family Member / Witness]

They told my father to get dressed and come with them. And I know I was crying and I think I was hysterical because at 2 o' clock in the morning without any explanation, I didn't know what they were trying to do. And they said they were FBI agents, but I didn't see any proof of it. And my father got dressed and they whisked him away.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

This was a confusing and terrorizing process for many of the individuals and the families who were affected by these actions of the Justice Department. Right after Pearl harbor, they came with guns.

[Japanese American Family Member / Witness]

Two men came with guns, you know, pointed.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

And they won't allow him to even.

[Japanese American Family Member / Witness]

Come in to change his yard clothes. They took him, yeah.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

And never saw him after that. For the rest of the war years.

[Japanese American Family Member / Witness]

He was searched, bodily searched. They searched all the kids room, the back room, and then they came back to him and they told him to put something together. And the only thing I just a regular brown bag. He threw his toilet articles in and then he was off. The way they would tell you is, oh, you know, we just need to take him down to the office to interrogate him a little further. And that was it. I mean, we thought, well, you know, he hasn't done anything wrong. He'll be back. I mean, that's what I told myself. He'll be back. He didn't come back.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

I remember coming home from school and the FBI was there ransacking the house.

[Japanese American Family Member / Witness]

Just going through everything.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

And I was so scared when I saw that. What's happening? And then they said they had to.

[Japanese American Family Member / Witness]

Take my father in for questioning and.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Just took him like that without packing anything.

[Japanese American Family Member / Witness]

He never came home. Never came home.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Harriet Sato Masanaga Marion Sudokawa Kanemoto and Grace Sukita Hawley they all saw their fathers arrested and taken away in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor. This was not a perfect process by any stretch of the imagination. But the Justice Department did at least concede that there should eventually be some chance to be heard. There should be some kind of process.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

It was our view that really a minimum program was required which sought what wartime security was necessary without becoming 100% patriots at the expense of the alien enemy population, which on the whole was on America's side.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

At the Justice Department, Edward Ennis and his colleagues devised a system in which everyone arrested under the Alien Enemies act, they would at least eventually have an individual hearing.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

We appointed hearing officers, civilians throughout the entire country and every alien enemy who was arrested got a hearing to determine whether he should be released, unconditionally, paroled, subject to reporting or in turn for the duration.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Even that little bit of process would be seen as too much a by the geniuses over at the Army's Western Defense command, led by General John DeWitt and Captain and then Major and then Lieutenant Colonel and then Colonel Carl Ben Detsen. His rapidly climbing bright young aide, Carl.

[Historian / Commentator]

Ben Detzen came up with a plan.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Within a couple of weeks of his arrival at Western Defense Command headquarters in San Francisco, Carl Bendetsen had drafted a new plan, a much more ambitious radical plan. One that would not be run by the Justice Department. It would be run by him.

[Historian / Commentator]

Carl Bendetsen was more the logistical expert who could make things happen.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Under Bendetson's plan. It would be the army in charge from here on out, rounding up a vastly larger number of people and with none of the semblance of due process that the Justice Department had tried for. There would be no hearings, no review, no chance to be heard ever for anyone.

[Historian / Commentator]

Carl Bendetsen provided the General with a plan and a policy for mass removal.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

To achieve so called mass removal, removal of the entire Japanese American population. Carl Bendetsen's plan would eliminate not only any idea of individuated justice, it would also eliminate the distinction between Japanese Americans who were U.S. citizens and those who were not. He wanted, in other words, a process purely based on race. There would be no hearing, no assessment of any kind as to whether or not a person posed a risk to the country. What Carl Bendetzen envisioned was purely racially based, indefinite imprisonment.

[Historian / Commentator]

Carl Bendeson was absolutely the architect of the program of forced removal and imprisonment.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

If you're someone who wants the government to do truly radical things, things that a lot of people might consider unthinkable, if that's what you're trying to make happen, then being the man behind the man might be a really fortuitous place to be. Especially if the man who fronts the operation, the guy who's purportedly in charge, is a bit of a buffoon, one who, yes, may have instincts and prejudices that can be tapped for your larger project, sure, but what you're hoping for is a man who is supposedly in charge and who therefore gets all the attention.

[Historian / Commentator]

A lot of the historians have just zeroed in on DeWitt.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

But a man who couldn't actually organize himself out of a paper bag. You want somebody who looks like he's in charge but he's not good at his job, he's not good at running anything. And so he's likely to leave all of the actual work, the actual policy, the actual implementation to you.

[Historian / Commentator]

Carl Ben Datson, he was the fixer.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

If Carl Ben Debson was going to radicalize the US Government's treatment of Japanese Americans into a system of, of racially based mass imprisonment, including of U.S. citizens, well, there were worse places to plan something like that than the offices of John DeWitt at the Western Defense Command in the US Army.

[Historian / Commentator]

Van Densen saw himself in this power vacuum thing, but DeWitt was an idiot. So he could essentially run the machinery anyway and work.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

DeWitt was not well regarded in his leadership role, but his feelings on the subject of race were very well known. DeWitt had protested up the chain that he didn't want black units. He didn't want African American soldiers under his command. He told Washington that on the west coast people, quote, feel that they've got enough black skinned people around them as it is. DeWitt was vociferously opposed to Asian Americans being allowed to serve in the military at all. Even in segregated units. DeWitt had special vitriol for Japanese Americans.

[Historian / Commentator]

He consistently believed the loyalty of Japanese Americans could never be determined.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

He told members of Congress, quote, you needn't worry about the Italians at all, except in certain cases, same for the Germans, but we must worry about the Japanese or all the time until he is wiped off the map. DeWitt said, The Japanese, I have no confidence in their loyalty whatsoever. I'm speaking now of the native born Japanese, by which he means US born American citizens. The way he put it to Congress was, and forgive me here, but this is a direct quote. He said, a Jap's a Japanese.

[Historian / Commentator]

He was quoted saying, you can't allow Japanese Americans to enlist in the army because after all, a Jap's a Jap. There is no such thing as a loyal Japanese.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

The combination of prejudice and ineptitude under DeWitt's command soon made his headquarters in San Francisco a sort of clearinghouse for wild false information about Japanese Americans. DeWitt's office, for example, became convinced that in Oregon Japanese saboteurs were planning to cause a huge power outage in the Pacific Northwest, all to provide cover for a Japanese military attack on the Bonneville Dam.

[Historian / Commentator]

Word quickly spread that the Japanese were planning to bomb the Bonneville Dam, destroy the Bonneville Dam east of Portland and the Columbia River River.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

DeWitt's evidence for this supposed plot by Japanese saboteurs was a report of damaged power lines in rural Oregon. The damaged power lines were investigated. It turned out that this supposed Japanese sabotage activity was actually cows. Cows scratching their backs on the power lines, something that wily Oregon cows had always done. In Washington state, DeWitt's Western Defense Command became convinced that Japanese saboteurs were secretly setting fires out in the fields. Fires burning in the shape of arrows that would point Japanese pilots toward targets on the ground that they should bomb. After a mad search for these Japanese saboteurs lighting these arrows of fire out in the fields, the FBI reported that it was actually just farmers out in their own fields burning brush to clear those fields like they had always done.

[Historian / Commentator]

If you can imagine it, the Japanese were doing it. The wildest conspiracy theories based on nothing. Based on nothing.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

DeWitt's office claimed that Japanese Americans on the west coast were using flashlights to to secretly signal Japanese planes in the sky at night. And there were reports of people with flashlights out at night in rural areas on the West Coast. Turns out it was farmhands using flashlights in the night to find their outhouses, just like they always had. One night in Los Angeles, a US weather blimp was mistaken for an enemy aircraft. It caused hours of panic in Southern California and more than a thousand anti aircraft rounds were fired into the sky at this thing.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

Watchers on the rooftop could plainly see the flashes of guns and searchlight sweeping the skies in a wide arc along the coastal area. Concussion of the shells could be felt in downtown Los Angeles, 15 miles away.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

The next day, the Navy apologized and said that it had been a false alarm. John DeWitt, though at the army he insisted that the threat had been real, that all of the panic, all of the anti aircraft rounds, that was all justified because it really was an enemy attack. It was definitely not an enemy attack. It was a weather balloon.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

Army officials declined to comment on the possibility that the object might have been a blip.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

That was John DeWitt. This kind of thing just went on and on and on with him to the point where even FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, not known as the calmest and most rational man in any given room, Hoover himself began to warn people inside the government that at John DeWitt's Western Defense Command, they seemed to be, quote, getting a bit hysterical and losing their heads. So DeWitt's headquarters was pushing this stuff. The rest of the government knew it to be nonsense, but it was not just nonsensical, it was also toxic. DeWitt not only seemed to believe every unfounded rumor he heard about Japanese Americans, even the ones that were explicitly debunked by official investigations, he also on the side conveyed what he believed to west coast politicians, who in some cases then told the press what they had learned from the US Army. So US Military authority was being cited to accuse Japanese Americans of terrible treachery, treachery that they really hadn't had anything to do with, that in fact wasn't happening at all. And while Lieutenant General John DeWitt trafficked these false claims to politicians and thereby to the public, telling California's Attorney General, for example, that Japanese Americans were using radio transmitters to signal to enemy ships, DeWitt's more strategic, more savvy deputy, Carl Ben Debson, he didn't just gossip about that stuff. He really committed to the bit. He put those same false claims in a formal memo to the War Department's chief of Staff in Washington, despite the fact that intelligence reports in his own office proved that those claims weren't true. Bendetsen also conveyed in writing up the chain of command to Washington the false claim that every time any ship of any kind left any west coast port, it was being attacked by Japanese submarines. Bendetson's boss, John DeWitt, would exaggerate things and spread false or unchecked inflammatory rumors in conversations, official and otherwise, with just about anyone he spoke to. Ben Debson was the one who systematized these false claims and started shaping them into a coherent radical policy. In February 1942, in one memo under his own name and then a second one in the name of General DeWitt. Carl Bendetsen laid it out plainly. Quote, the Japanese race is an enemy race. Racial affinities are not severed by migration. While many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of American citizenship, have become Americanized, the racial strains are undiluted. There is no ground for assuming that any Japanese, though born and raised in the United States, will not turn against this nation. He said the vast majority of those who have studied the Oriental mind assert that a substantial majority of Nisei bear allegiance to Japan and will engage in orientation, organized sabotage. Nisei meaning Japanese Americans born in this country, U.S. citizens. Again, what he cited for that conclusion was a vast majority of those who have studied the Oriental mind. Carl Benson had made no such study of the Oriental mind, whatever that is.

[Historian / Commentator]

The army had absolutely no intelligence at any at all. They didn't know bullshit on anything.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

The US Military though, did have an acknowledged expert on Japanese American communities on the west coast, especially on the Nisei on Japanese Americans born here. And that US military expert had been desperately trying to get in to see Carl Ben Debson.

[Historian / Commentator]

My father is extremely frustrated because the army is starting to get batshit. They don't know anything. So he goes to try to see Ben Dessen.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Naval Intelligence officer Kent Ringle is reportedly one of only a dozen men in the whole US Military who speaks Japanese. He had been assigned to immerse himself in Japanese American communities on the west coast to try to find any reason for concern about espionage or sabotage. He's actually done the work on behalf of the US Military to establish firmly and factually that Japanese Americans on the west coast posed no threat, that they were eager to help, that they were in fact intensely loyal to this country. But the man now seizing control of the government's policy toward Japanese Americans, this Carl Ben debetson had no interest in, in meeting with Ken Ringle, had no interest in listening to him. He wouldn't even see him three times.

[Historian / Commentator]

I think he went up there all the way to San Francisco to try to get, get to see Ben Datson and Ben Ditson. Wouldn't see him, would not even talk to him.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Ken Ringle had spent years in Japan. He had spent months studying this exact issue for the US Military. He had himself busted open the Japanese government's real spying efforts in California. And he knew that Japanese Americans had nothing to do with that. In fact, he believed he had found in his work that Japanese Americans might be our best defense against that kind of threat. Japanese Americans in Southern California had been eager to give Ken Ringle as much help as they could in his counter espionage work against Japan. There they had been his best sources and assets. Ringel knew from experience that the army's plan, Ben Debson's plan, was not only based on lies. It would be bad for the United States. It would be bad for our national security. When Ben Debson refused to hear him out, when Ben Debson refused to even see him, Ringle decided he would somehow keep pushing. He had to find some other way to get his findings in front of the people who would make the call on a radical and consequential decision like this. Ringgo decided that he would put his findings into a formal report that he could run all the way up the chain to Washington, all the way to the West White House to try to stop this car crash from happening in what eventually becomes known as the Ringle Report. Ken Ringle begins it by writing, quote.

[Historian / Commentator]

The entire Japanese problem has been magnified out of its true proportion largely because of the physical characteristics of the people.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

It is no more serious than the problems of the German and Italian populations.

[Historian / Commentator]

And it should be handled on the basis of the individual and not on a racial basis.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Speaking of those Japanese Americans who were not legally allowed to become citizens, Ringle writes, these people have been in the.

[Historian / Commentator]

United States for most of their adult life. They have their businesses and livelihoods here. They have raised their children in the United States, and many of them have some in the United States Army.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Ken Ringle writes that this mass incarceration policy that's being contemplated is, quote, not only unwarranted, but very unwise. He says loyalty can be determined with individual hearings, with individuated justice, which happens to be what the Constitution demands.

[Historian / Commentator]

He tried to get public expression of support for the Japanese Americans. Somebody high up who would say, these are loyal people, these are good people, these are American citizens. Let's support them and don't look upon them with suspicion.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Ken Ringel at Naval Intelligence was racing to get this report finished and delivered to Washington to try to stop what Carl Bendetsen and John DeWitt were trying to do. At the same time, at the Justice Department, lawyer Edward Ennis was trying to stop it as well.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

The Department of Justice would have nothing to do with evacuating American citizens to the west coast because we thought it was wrong.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Ennis was personally lobbying the Attorney General to do more, to put himself firmly in the way of the government trying anything like this.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

I said, as Attorney General, please say it's unconstitutional as well as unnecessary.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Edward Ennis did have the number three official at the Justice Department, James Rowe, on his side. And the two of them started to treat this as a five alarm constitutional fire.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

I was working from about eight in the morning until midnight and flying back and forth several times in California trying to stop this.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

They were just telling the army, we're.

[Ship Captain / Witness]

Not going to do this.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

And they were going to say, you have, I have to deal with military necessity. If I ever hear that phrase again in my sleep, I'll scream.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

I said, the President may turn to the military on what's necessary and to you on what's unconstitutional. So please say it's unconstitutional.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Edward Ennis and James Rowe are waging this increasingly furious fight from the Justice Department. Ken Ringle at Naval Intelligence has been banging on the door at the Western Defense Command when they don't let him in. He's then trying to get a report to the White House to show that what Ben Debtson and John DeWitt are trying to do is going to be a disaster. This is the wrong plan. All of it will come to a head. The fate of tens of thousands of American families in an intense, high stakes confrontation in person, face to face. And for some reason that's going to take place in the Attorney General's house in his living room. That's next.

[Historian / Commentator]

Welcome back to Listen to youo Heart.

I'm Jerry and I'm Jerry's Heart.

Today's topic, Repatha Evolokimab Heart. Why'd you pick this one?

Well, Jerry, for people who have had a heart attack like us, diet and exercise might not be enough to lower the risk of another one.

Okay.

To help know if we're at risk, we should be getting our LDL C, our bad cholesterol checked and talking to our doctor.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

I'm listening.

[Historian / Commentator]

And if it's still too high, Repatha can be added to a statin to lower our LDL C and our heart attack risk.

Hmm. Guess it's time to ask about Repatha.

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[Historian / Commentator]

Listen to your heart.

Ask your doctor about Repatha. Learn [e-mail] or call 1-844-repatha the holidays.

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[Historian / Commentator]

The of the War Department folks were making the argument that the internment of Japanese Americans was a military necessity.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

That's former Justice Department official Chuck Rosenberg.

[Historian / Commentator]

Ennis and Roe were adamant that what the War Department was suggesting was a bad idea and unlawful. Biddle listened to both sides, listened carefully. He didn't really speak up very much at that meeting.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

The Attorney General is sitting there not speaking really, as the two sides start to battle it out in front of him. The Justice Department is supposed to be a combatant in this fight But Attorney General Francis Biddle, in this argument, in this meeting, is not saying anything. And with the Attorney General's silence looming with evidence, Edward Ennis and James Rowe appearing now to be on their own, Carl Bendetson and the War Department go in for the kill.

[Historian / Commentator]

At the meeting, one of the War Department representatives has a draft of what would later become executive order 9066.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

The executive order 9066.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Executive order 9066.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

Executive order 6066.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

The War Department official reaches into his pocket, pocket, and he pulls out a draft of an executive order for the President to sign. It gives the military the authority to target US Citizens, to take them out of their homes, to ship them off, to imprison them indefinitely under military guard. It's here in this moment, that it's unveiled. Justice Department official James Rowe recalls that he laughed in disbelief when they started to read that draft. Ridiculous was his initial impression. He and Edward Ennis voiced their complete opposition. Both of them turned to Attorney General Francis Biddle for backup. But Attorney General Francis Biddle does not back them up.

[Historian / Commentator]

Biddle, at the end of the day, capitulated to the military.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

His colleagues at the Justice Department, these lawyers who worked for him, they didn't know sitting in that meeting that their boss, the Attorney General, had already that day called up the President and told him that he would go along, he would accede to whatever it was the army wanted to do.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

I like to think that if I had been Attorney General, I would have screamed that it was unconstitutional and tried to persuade the President to follow me on that ground.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

The United States army for months had been pushing debunked conspiracy theories about Japanese Americans being traitors and saboteurs. In reality, the only Americans ever caught spying or working for Japan were not Japanese Americans. They were Americans who either just liked the paycheck that Japan was offering or they liked the ideology of arguably fascist imperial Japan for the same reason they liked the ideology of fascist Germany or Fascist Italy. But there were no Japanese Americans among them. Japanese Americans were not signaling to Japanese submarines or setting fires to guide Japanese bombers or sending secret radio transmissions or sabotaging crops or any of the other fantasies that Carl Ben Debetson and and John DeWitt were citing now as justification for their plans.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

All false. There was no evidence of any sabotage, nothing which would warrant an evacuation.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

Bendetson and DeWitt's false claims about Japanese Americans were being derided inside the government, even by the FBI, as hysterical and preposterous. Bendettson and DeWitt were pushing a policy that the Justice Department knew was unconstitutional and reckless and wrong. They also knew it was the brainchild of two men who seemed pretty clearly motivated by their own fixed racial ideas about who was really an American and who never could be. But still, it became clear that day in the Attorney General's living room that DeWitt and Ben Debson were going to get their way on this. Accounts from that meeting described James Rowe as beside himself, as angry and hurt. He himself said, quote, I was so mad that I could not speak at all. Edward Ennis was described as near tears, a characterization Dennis himself did not dispute even decades later.

[Justice Department Lawyer / Official]

I certainly will not deny that I was profoundly disturbed at the idea that all Americans of Japanese ancestry were to be evacuated from their homes was an unnecessary military act and perhaps the greatest violation of civil liberties in the United States.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

As for Ken Ringleader, the Ringle report that he had been desperately trying to finish, trying to get up the chain of command to stop What Bendetson and DeWitt were doing, Ringel's report did finally make it to the White House. It got there two days after the living room meeting. It got there the same day that FDR signed the executive order to put this radical new policy in place.

[Historian / Commentator]

My father was haunted all his life that he should have. He was a slow writer and he felt like he should have done that report quicker. He felt an inadvertent betrayer of the Japanese Americans. In spite of his best efforts.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

It was clear to Ken Ringle and Edward Ennis and James Rowe what was going to happen next, what was going to happen on the streets of the United states. Carl, Ben Dtsen and John DeWitt's America was coming. And it would be every bit as bad as they had feared.

[Japanese American Family Member / Witness]

While they were behind the barbed wire fence, they had no idea what their future held for them, how long they would be held. They had no idea. And my mother, mother said in her diary, I wonder if today's the day they're going to line us up and shoot us.

[Narrator / Rachel Maddow]

That's next time on Rachel Maddow Presents Burn Order. Rachel Maddow presents Burn Order is a production of Ms. Now. This episode was written by myself and Mike Jarvitz. The series is executive produced by myself and Matt. Mike Jarvitz. It's produced by Kelsey Desiderio and Jen Mulraney Donovan. Our associate producer is Vasilios Karsilakis. Archival support from Holly Klopchin. Katie Lau is the senior manager of audio production for Ms. Now. Additional audio engineering and sound design by Bob Mallory Bryson Barnes is the Director of Podcasts and Live Streaming for Versant Media. Our web producer is the great Will Femia. Our senior executive producers are Cory Nazzo and Laura Conaway. Aisha Turner is the Executive Producer for Ms. Now Audio and Madeline Herringer is the Senior Vice President for Audio, Digital and Long Form. Our theme music and additional composing is by New York based Japanese composer Miyu Sato. Special thanks to writer and historian Frank Abe. Mr. Abe's work includes a fantastic graphic novel. Whether or not you usually read read graphic novels, you should seek this one out. It's called We Hereby Japanese American Resistance to Wartime incarceration. Phenomenal book. Mr. Abe is also one of the editors of an important anthology called the Literature of Japanese American Incarceration. Archival radio material is from RX NBC News via the Library of Congress. Additional archival material is courtesy of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. An enormous thanks to the organization Densho for providing archival material for the series and for everything that they do. You can find out much more about this series at our website, Ms. Now. Burnorder.

[Interviewer / Military Official]

San Francisco's air raid alarm signals were officially changed tonight, according to this story. As we told you a moment ago, this has just been grabbed off the news wires very hurriedly. Our newsroom is entirely blacked out, so if we read something that is not too important, please forgive us.

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