Safety Valve

To the Editor
A few weeks ago, General DeWitt announced the evacuation inland of certain classes of aliens and citizens as well. To many of those who are not affected by this order, it is easy to make such trite remarks as ‘why worry about moving several hundred aliens and disrupting their lives?’ as one Bob Twiss in Daily column said. Does he and others like him realize that it is not a mere hundred aliens who are affected by this order? Close to 200,000 are involved…of which 70 percent are citizens of the country…citizens who have know n no other country besides the United States and who have learned to love and cherish the high ideals of American democracy?
For the citizens who are so affected, this evacuation announcement has been a severe blow to all that we have been taught to love. It is unprecedented in the history of the United States that even notwithstanding wartime our rights as citizens have been temporarily suspended without the establishment of martial law. It is not so much over the great trouble of moving and resettling that we are so greatly concerned now as over the question of regaining our rights as citizens when this war is ended. We have faith in our government that it will still have faith in us to let us regain our rights as citizens, and that the resettlement will not result in a permanent racial distinction, one of the things against which our country is now fighting.
It is true that there are those who are taking economic advantage of those affected by this evacuation order, but there are still those who have been extremely kind and felt sincerely concerned for us, and it is from those people that we have obtained the strength to carry on as well as we can. To our fellow students who will be the future leaders of our country, may you still keep your faith in us as good and industrious citizens. It is with such hope and faith that we shall evacuate.

Chiyo Nakate
Tamako Inouye