Burn Order - Ep. 2: The Jitters

Summary

Podcast Summary: Rachel Maddow Presents – Burn Order

Episode 2: The Jitters
Host: Rachel Maddow
Release Date: January 19, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this riveting episode, Rachel Maddow unpacks the sense of panic, confusion, and racially-charged decision making that swept the United States’ West Coast in the early months following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. “The Jitters” explores the descent of U.S. military leadership into paranoia and incompetence, the rise of Carl Bendetsen alongside Gen. John DeWitt in the Western Defense Command, and their radical, ultimately devastating plans for Japanese American communities. Through archival audio, expert commentary, and moving personal testimony, Maddow reveals how “military necessity” became the justification for one of America’s darkest civil liberties crises: the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. State of Fear and Paranoia Following Pearl Harbor

• Location and Timeline:
  • In December 1941, the U.S. West Coast was gripped by panic. Japanese submarines fired on commercial vessels and even shelled an oil field in California ([03:01]–[04:25]).
• Public and Government Response:
  • The U.S. military feared further attacks and reports of sabotage or espionage were rampant, fueling mass suspicion and anxiety among the public.

2. Leadership Crisis at Western Defense Command

• Gen. John DeWitt:
  • Led Western Defense Command; seen as experienced but rapidly viewed as erratic and unfit ([05:07]–[09:00]).
  • Memorable Quotes:
    • "Jittery" and prone to “amateur imaginings” ([06:23]).
    • “His headquarters reported [false attacks and uprisings] day after day” – Rachel Maddow [07:29].
    • DeWitt’s actions included unverified reports of Japanese attacks on San Francisco and fearmongering about Japanese American uprisings.
  • DeWitt is described with terms like “jackass”, “suggestible”, and “a bit around the bend” ([09:00]).

3. The Rise of Carl Bendetsen: The “Able Right Hand”

• Carl Bendetsen:
  • A young, ambitious, and shrewd Stanford-educated lawyer brought in to bring order ([10:21]–[11:47]).
  • Seen as the sharp, logical, and dangerous foil to DeWitt’s chaos.
  • Historian: “A bad damn fellow… an evil man, but very, very clever.” ([11:42], [12:06])
• Dynamic:
  • DeWitt’s incompetence provided the opening for Bendetsen to implement radical policies without scrutiny.

4. Implementation of the Alien Enemies Act and Targeting of Japanese Americans

• Legal Background:
  • U.S. invoked the Alien Enemies Act to arrest citizens of Germany, Italy, and Japan, but laws uniquely blocked Japanese immigrants from naturalization ([14:50]–[17:01]).
  • Because of prewar laws, all Japanese immigrants, regardless of residency or loyalty, were classified as “aliens” and thus immediately vulnerable.
• FBI Raids and Family Trauma:
  • Moving accounts from Japanese Americans who saw their fathers and community leaders taken at night — "He never came home. Never came home." ([19:29])

5. Justice Department’s Minimal Due Process vs. Army Ambition

• Edward Ennis and the Justice Dept.:
  • Tried to ensure hearings for those arrested ([20:23]–[21:13]).
  • Emphasized individual justice, not collective punishment.
• Army Pushes for Bolder Action:
  • Bendetsen designs a plan for mass, racially-based removal and detention, discarding all due process ([21:37]–[23:30]).
  • No distinction between citizen and non-citizen; blanket imprisonment.

6. Racial Prejudice and Policy Formation

• DeWitt’s Prejudices:
  • “You needn’t worry about the Italians... But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map… a Jap’s a Jap” ([25:53], [26:35]).
  • Refusal to allow Black or Asian American soldiers; open hostility towards Japanese Americans’ loyalty ([25:13]–[25:53]).

7. Conspiracy Theories and Military Hysteria

• Examples:
  • Wild rumors: Japanese Americans signaling to submarines with flashlights (actually farmhands), burning arrows in fields (actually brush clearing), and bombing threats (caused by cows) ([27:20]–[29:22]).
  • “If you can imagine it, the Japanese were doing it. The wildest conspiracy theories based on nothing. Based on nothing.” – Frank Abe [28:32].
• Backlash Even Inside Government:
  • Even J. Edgar Hoover derides the Western Defense Command as “getting a bit hysterical and losing their heads.” ([30:00])

8. The Drive for Mass Incarceration

• Bendetsen’s Radicalization of Policy:
  • Internal memos claim: “The Japanese race is an enemy race. Racial affinities are not severed by migration.” ([32:58])
  • No basis in fact; instead rooted in pseudoscience and racism.

9. Counter-Efforts by Military and Justice Department Insiders

• Ken Ringle (Naval Intelligence):
  • Only a handful in the military could read Japanese; Ringle had studied the community and found Japanese Americans intensely loyal ([34:09]–[38:23]).
  • Ringle’s report: “The entire Japanese problem has been magnified out of its true proportion largely because of [race]... [It] should be handled on the basis of the individual and not on a racial basis.” ([37:24]–[37:42])
  • Ringle is ignored by Bendetsen, but rushes to get his findings to the White House, only to be too late ([38:44]–[49:09]).
• Justice Lawyers:
  • Edward Ennis and James Rowe (DOJ) argue fiercely against the army's “military necessity” argument for mass removal ([39:03]–[40:04]).
• Clash at the Attorney General’s House (The Living Room Showdown):
  • Both sides make their impassioned arguments directly to Attorney General Francis Biddle; he stays silent and finally, shockingly, capitulates: “Biddle... capitulated to the military.” ([45:32])
  • DOJ lawyers were “angry and hurt... near tears” as the President prepared to sign Executive Order 9066 ([48:22]).

10. Aftermath and Human Cost

• Signing Executive Order 9066:
  • “It was clear to Ken Ringle and Edward Ennis and James Rowe what was going to happen next... Carl Bendetsen and John DeWitt’s America was coming, and it would be every bit as bad as they had feared.” ([49:27])
• Scarred Families:
  • “My mother said in her diary, ‘I wonder if today’s the day they’re going to line us up and shoot us.’” ([49:49])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Day after day after day... DeWitt’s headquarters reported that there were [phantom threats]. None of it was true.” – Rachel Maddow ([07:29])
• “We must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map.” – Gen. John DeWitt ([25:57])
• “A Jap’s a Japanese. There is no such thing as a loyal Japanese.” – Gen. John DeWitt, recounted by Frank Abe ([26:48])
• “The army had absolutely no intelligence at all. They didn't know bullshit on anything.” – Historian/Commentator ([34:02])
• “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.” – Rachel Maddow ([08:05])
• “The entire Japanese problem has been magnified out of its true proportion largely because of the physical characteristics of the people.” – Ken Ringle, the Ringle Report ([37:24])
• “I like to think that if I had been Attorney General, I would have screamed that it was unconstitutional...” – Edward Ennis ([45:58])
• “Perhaps the greatest violation of civil liberties in the United States.” – Edward Ennis ([48:22])
• “They had no idea what their future held... I wonder if today’s the day they’re going to line us up and shoot us.” – Japanese American diarist ([49:49])

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Key Timestamps

• [01:06–04:25]: Description of Japanese submarine attacks on the West Coast
• [05:07–11:47]: Crisis of leadership under DeWitt; Bendetsen’s entry
• [14:50–17:01]: Implementation of Alien Enemies Act; unique vulnerability of Japanese immigrants
• [19:29]: Testimony: “He never came home. Never came home.”
• [21:37–23:30]: Bendetsen’s racially-based mass removal plan
• [25:13–26:48]: DeWitt’s racism in command policy
• [27:20–29:22]: Absurd reports of sabotage and government hysteria
• [34:09–38:44]: Ringle’s findings on Japanese American loyalty; attempt to stop mass incarceration
• [43:29–47:04]: The Attorney General’s house confrontation; Executive Order 9066 pushed
• [48:22–49:49]: “Perhaps the greatest violation of civil liberties”; impact on families

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Tone & Storytelling

Maddow’s style is fact-heavy but urgent and often personal, using original testimony and archival material to create emotional impact. The episode weaves together the bumbling, blustering incompetence of officialdom, the calculated ambition of Bendetsen, and the breathtaking human cost that follows prejudice and mass hysteria.

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Conclusion

Episode 2 of “Burn Order” chronicles how fear, racism, and bureaucratic weakness combined to set the stage for one of the most notorious episodes of injustice in American history. Through interwoven narratives—government panic, individual ambition, bureaucratic battles, and the trauma inflicted on thousands—Maddow lays bare how Japanese American incarceration was engineered not out of necessity, but out of prejudice and the failures of leadership.

Next Episode Preview: The next installment will continue to follow the human and legal fallout of Executive Order 9066, as rationals unravel and families endure the unknown.

Transcript

[Rachel Maddow]

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[Interviewer/Reporter]

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

[Captain (Witness)]

About 20 miles off Santa Cruz.

[Interviewer/Reporter]

And what time of day was it?

[Captain (Witness)]

2:15 on Saturday afternoon.

[Interviewer/Reporter]

What sort of weather were you having?

[Captain (Witness)]

It was fine weather, nice and clear, and the sun was shining.

[Interviewer/Reporter]

And how about the sea?

[Captain (Witness)]

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

[Rachel Maddow]

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

[Interviewer/Reporter]

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

[Captain (Witness)]

I was in my bath 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/Reporter]

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

[Captain (Witness)]

About 300ft long?

[Interviewer/Reporter]

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

[Captain (Witness)]

No, sir.

[Interviewer/Reporter]

Tell me, what nationality was it?

[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.

[Rachel Maddow]

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

[Interviewer/Reporter]

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

[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/Reporter]

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

[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/Reporter]

Captain, how many times did they fire at you?

[Captain (Witness)]

Eight times.

[Interviewer/Reporter]

Eight times. There were no casualties of any kind.

[Captain (Witness)]

No casualty of any kind.

[Interviewer/Reporter]

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.

[Captain (Witness)]

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

[Rachel Maddow]

That flurry of Japanese subs shooting at commercial ships off the California coast, it happened in, 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/Reporter]

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

[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/Reporter]

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

[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/Reporter]

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

[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/Reporter]

Lieutenant General John DeWitt headed the Western Defense Command.

[Rachel Maddow]

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 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 officers 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.

[Captain (Witness)]

Very able fellow.

[Interviewer/Reporter]

Oh, he's able. He's a smart boy and he had good charm.

[Rachel Maddow]

If he wanted to turn it on.

[Interviewer/Reporter]

I said what was his name? And he said Carl Ben debetson. And I go, I thought to myself, oh crap.

[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.

[Edward Ennis]

He had a very able assistant in Colonel Bendetzen.

[Historian/Commentator]

He was a guy of real ability.

[Frank Abe]

The cool, you know, logical mind.

[Rachel Maddow]

When young, smart, able Carl Bendetson 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/Reporter]

And this fellow Bendettsk was a bad damn fellow.

[Rachel Maddow]

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

[Historian/Commentator]

Van Den 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.

[Rachel Maddow]

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

[Frank Abe]

If you can imagine it, the Japanese were doing it.

[Historian/Commentator]

The army had absolutely no intelligence at all.

[Frank Abe]

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

[Rachel Maddow]

We were just telling the army, we're.

[Captain (Witness)]

Not going to do this.

[Historian/Commentator]

They didn't know on anything.

[Edward Ennis]

All turned out to be nonsense.

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[Rachel Maddow]

Episode 2 the.

[Interviewer/Reporter]

Jitters There are crowds 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 drafts 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.

[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 and Italy and Japan who were here in the United States.

[Edward Ennis]

If you believe you have knowledge of any improper activity of any alien, you should report the fact to the Nearest FBI office. That is all you should do. Don't try to be the law yourself.

[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/Reporter]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced today that it is completely mobilized inside the Justice Department.

[Rachel Maddow]

It was a lawyer named Edward Ennis who was tasked to oversee it.

[Edward Ennis]

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.

[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.

[Frank Abe]

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

[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.

[Frank Abe]

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

[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/Reporter]

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

[Frank Abe]

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.

[Narrator/Interviewee]

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.

[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.

[Edward Ennis]

Two men came with guns, you know, disappointed. And they won't allow him to even.

[Rachel Maddow]

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

[Edward Ennis]

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

[Narrator/Interviewee]

He was searched, bodily searched. They searched all the kids room, the back room, and then they came back to him and he told them 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, he, you know, he hasn't done anything wrong. He'll be back. I mean, that's what I told myself, he'll be back. Why he didn't come back?

[Rachel Maddow]

I remember coming home from school and the FBI was there ransacking the house, just going through everything. And I was so scared when I saw that, what's happening? And then they said they had to take my father in for questioning and just took him like that without packing anything. He never came home. Never came home. Harriet Seido Masanaga, Marion Sudokawa Kanemoto and Grace Tsukita 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.

[Edward Ennis]

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.

[Rachel Maddow]

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

[Edward Ennis]

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.

[Rachel Maddow]

Even that little bit of process would be seen as too much 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 Debson. His rapidly climbing, bright young aide, Carl.

[Frank Abe]

Benson, came up with a plan.

[Rachel Maddow]

Within a couple of weeks of his arrival at Western Defense Command headquarters in San Francisco, Carl Bendetson 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.

[Frank Abe]

Carl Ben debetson was more the logistical.

[Rachel Maddow]

Expert who could make things happen 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.

[Frank Abe]

Carl Ben Detzel provided the general with a plan and a policy for mass.

[Rachel Maddow]

Removal 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.

[Frank Abe]

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

[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. 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, but a man.

[Rachel Maddow]

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.

[Frank Abe]

Carl Ben Datsun, he was the fixer.

[Rachel Maddow]

If Carl Ben Debson was going to radicalize the US government's treatment of Japanese Americans into a system 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 any way you want.

[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.

[Frank Abe]

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

[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.

[Frank Abe]

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.

[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.

[Frank Abe]

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

[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.

[Frank Abe]

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

[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/Reporter]

Watchers on the rooftop could plainly see the flashes of guns and searchlights 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.

[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/Reporter]

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

[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 Bendetsen, 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 or 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 Bendetsen had made no such study of the Oriental mind, whatever that is.

[Historian/Commentator]

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

[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 Bendetsen.

[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.

[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 Bendetsen, had no interest 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 Datson wouldn't see him, would not even talk to him.

[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 Debtson'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 Debtson refused to hear him out, when Ben Debtson 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. Ringgold 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 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, the entire Japanese problem has.

[Historian/Commentator]

Been magnified out of its true proportion largely because of the physical characteristics of the people.

[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.

[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.

[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 American. 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.

[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.

[Edward Ennis]

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

[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.

[Edward Ennis]

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

[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.

[Edward Ennis]

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

[Rachel Maddow]

We were just telling the army we're.

[Captain (Witness)]

Not going to do this.

[Rachel Maddow]

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

[Edward Ennis]

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.

[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.

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[Rachel Maddow]

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[Rachel Maddow]

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[Rachel Maddow]

The meeting is pulled together at the last minute, and for some reason, it's going to be inside the home of the Attorney General, Francis Biddle. It's February 1942, and all of the main players are the Attorney General himself, Justice Department lawyer Edward Ennis, who's been running the Alien Enemies act enforcement at the Justice Department. Also James Rowe, who is the department's number three official. On the other side for the army, there's two high ranking officials from the War Department and also, of course, Carl Bendetson. These two sides have been sniping at each other for weeks over Bendetson's push for more aggressive treatment of Japanese Americans. The Justice Department sees what Bendetson wants to do not just as unconstitutional. They see it as unnecessary. They see it as flatly wrong. And now here they are. Attorney General Biddle is seated at the head of the room with his own Justice Department lawyers on one side of him and the War Department guys on the other side.

[Frank Abe]

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

[Rachel Maddow]

That's former Justice Department official Chuck Rosenberg.

[Frank Abe]

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

[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 Edward Ennis and James Rowe appearing now to be on their own, Carl Bendetsen and the War Department go in for the kill.

[Frank Abe]

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

[Interviewer/Reporter]

The Executive Order 9066.

[Rachel Maddow]

Executive Order 9066.

[Interviewer/Reporter]

Executive Order 6066.

[Rachel Maddow]

The War Department official reaches into his 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.

[Frank Abe]

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

[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.

[Edward Ennis]

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.

[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 Bendetson and John DeWitt were citing now as justification for their plans.

[Edward Ennis]

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

[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. Bendetson 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, that I could not speak at all. Edward Ennis was described as near tears, a characterization Ennis himself did not dispute even decades later.

[Edward Ennis]

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.

[Rachel Maddow]

As for Ken Ringle, 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.

[Rachel Maddow]

It was clear to Ken Ringleader 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 Bendetsen and John DeWitt's America Was Coming and it would be every bit as bad as they had feared.

[Narrator/Interviewee]

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 said in her diary, I wonder if today's the day they're going to line us up and shoot us.

[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 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 Nazo 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 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/Reporter]

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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