DeWitt’s Final Report

It wasn’t easy editing racism.

July 19, 1943: DeWitt’s “Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942,” first submitted three months earlier, was published

In April of 1943, General John L. DeWitt submitted a 618-page report justifying the forced removal and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans during WWII. It was titled Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942. But it wasn’t final.

The original report was filled with overt racism. It claimed that Japanese Americans could never be trusted, stating:

“The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship… the racial strains are undiluted.”

John L. DeWitt
Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt: The man behind the incarceration of 120,000 Americans. He led the campaign to remove and imprison anyone of Japanese ancestry.
The first group of Japanese-Americans arrive at the Manzanar Camp, March 21, 1942. Photo by Eliot Elisofon
The first group of Japanese-Americans arrive at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, one of ten major incarceration camps during WWII, 1942
The cover of Gen. John L. DeWitt’s "Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast"
Gen. DeWitt had ten copies of Final Report printed in April 1943 without authorization from the War Department. It was filled with sweeping, racist claims.
Introductory pages to the edited Final Report, dated July 19, 1943. The original version was deemed too inflammatory for public release.
Fred Korematsu at a press conference, 1983, credit Wikimedia Commons
Fred Korematsu speaks after his wartime conviction was overturned — a decision made possible by the decades-long efforts.

It also claimed that the lack of sabotage on the West Coast actually proved that an attack was imminent. This backwards logic would be cited again and again as a justification for the incarceration. In other words, the Japanese Americans were guilty until proven guilty.

The War Department quietly shelved the original. It was too racist — even in 1943.

A heavily edited version was finally published on July 19, 1943. Gone were the most overtly racist claims. In their place: sanitized language, carefully crafted to sound neutral and military-driven.

That edited version still defended incarceration — and it became a key piece of evidence in Korematsu v. United States, the infamous Supreme Court case that upheld the camps’ constitutionality.

What the public didn’t know: The original report had been buried. Until a political activist, Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, found it decades later in the National Archives.

Civil rights attorneys A.L. Wirin and Wayne Collins referenced the original, unredacted draft in 1944 while preparing legal challenges to the Japanese American incarceration. The differences between the two versions were undeniable.

It proved the government had tried to erase its own racism.

DeWitt’s racism was known to be unfiltered. In this transcript of his phone conversation with his superior, he fully admits to making public racist remarks.
General DeWitt testifying before a subcommittee of the House Naval Affairs Committee. Courtesy of the National Archives
This wasn’t a private remark. General DeWitt was regularly making these statements publicly, justifying the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans.

The original “Final” Report became a powerful tool in unraveling the myth that incarceration was a military necessity. It helped fuel the redress movement. It helped win apologies and reparations.

Because the truth never needed editing.

Racism did.

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