The report provided information so crucial that it was disregarded.
November 7, 1941: One month before the Pearl Harbor attack, the Munson Report concluded that Japanese Americans largely posed no security risk and that there would be no armed uprising.
In early 1941, Roosevelt was unsatisfied with the intelligence he was getting on Japanese Americans as relations between Japan and the United States deteriorated. He asked his friend, journalist John Franklin Carter, to put together a thorough investigation.
Carter hired several investigators. One of them was Curtis B. Munson, a wealthy businessman from the Midwest. Munson had no formal training in intelligence work, but he had done investigative work for the president before, reporting on Martinique to Roosevelt’s satisfaction.
Munson headed to the West Coast in the fall of 1941. He spent about a week each in the 11th, 12th and 13th Naval Districts, which together covered the entire coast. He met with investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of Naval Intelligence, and he interviewed Japanese Americans and the people who knew them.
He filed a preliminary report to Carter in October. His final report went to the president on November 7.
What He Found
Munson sorted Japanese Americans into four groups. He set aside the Sansei, the third generation, because they were mostly children.
He wrote that the Issei, the first generation, had weakened their ties to Japan by making the United States their home and raising their children here. He described the Nisei as universally estimated at 90 to 98 percent loyal to the United States, with the Japanese-educated Kibei excluded. The Kibei he called the most dangerous element, though he also noted that many who visited Japan came back with added loyalty to the United States.
He did not claim there would be no sabotage. He expected some, financed by Japan and carried out by imported agents. But he argued that Japanese Americans were poorly suited to the role because their appearance made them easy to spot, and that the bulk of them would stay quiet because they were content with life in America.
His bottom line was blunt: “There is no Japanese ‘problem’ on the Coast.”
The One-Page “Summary”
Carter sent the findings to Roosevelt with a one-page summary of his own, and the copy in the files of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians is dated December 19, 1941. Historian Greg Robinson’s reading of it is not flattering to the summary. It highlighted the possibility of fanatical sabotage and the fact that some Japanese in the United States were willing to strap dynamite to themselves, though few. It also stressed that dams, bridges, harbors and power stations were dangerously unguarded.
What the summary left out was a sentence in Munson’s original that appears to show the dynamite remark referred to paid Japanese agents, not Japanese Americans. Roosevelt read Carter’s statement right away and passed the report along to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson with a note about guarding key points.
The summary may be all the president read. It largely buried Munson’s conclusions and may have alarmed him further.
After Pearl Harbor
Munson went on to Hawai’i. His report there reached largely the same conclusions and arrived on December 8, the day after the attack. Another report, received by the president on December 22, noted that the attack had produced no fifth column activity. Munson wrote that the attack itself had proved his conclusions right.
Munson, Carter and Kenneth Ringle of the Office of Naval Intelligence then recommended that the president publicly support the Nisei and let them take responsibility for policing their own community. Roosevelt expressed support for the idea, but nothing came of it. No public statement was issued, and Western Defense Command head John L. DeWitt refused to meet with them.
On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. More than 125,000 people of Japanese descent were incarcerated. Years later, a federal commission concluded that the incarceration was not justified by military necessity and was the product of prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.
The Munson Report itself was largely forgotten until historian Michi Weglyn highlighted it in her 1976 book, Years of Infamy.