A Guest Editorial…

If evacuation is a must in an unimpeded war-effort set-up, I don’t see how anyone with the awareness of what we are fighting for can be against it. Considering the sudden uprooting and backstraining that are certainly in store for the evacuees, their responsibilities will demand of them a toughness of fibre tempered only by a long view of the deal allotted them. This is how the evacuee will feel if he sees our war effort as one to preserve what the Axis nations have been systematically breaking down: racial and religious tolerance, territorial integrity, freedom of speech, press and radio, labor’s right to organize, etc.
But the evacuee has rights. What he demands of those who remain is that his evacuation will serve the purpose intended. Some of the clamor for a mass exodus comes from those who hope to gain from the evacuees’ losses. Others are impelled by racial reasons. This business-and-prejudice-as-usual set-up has no place in our war effort.
Discriminate evacuation, difficult at anytime, seems hardly possible today. But at the least, keep it in your mind: the old world refugee is here not for the love of Hitler; some of them have fought this battle as far back as Spain when some of the fine and current “patriots” went beyond words to aid Hitler’s Spanish yes-man, Franco; and there are among us those who for years knew who were turning deaf ears to demands that the flow of scrap iron to Japan be stopped.
But the time for reproach and settling scores went with the first weeks of Dec. 7. All out for defense is the order of the day. Whether their family trees reach back to Benedict Arnold or to the Tokugawas, fifth columnists must be weeded out. Citizens who put defense second after their pocketbooks or their political ends should be handed a jolt. That they are in Congress from Texas should not mean immunity. They line up for defense or else …
The evacuee leaves hoping that something like this is in the minds of all.

–Daiki Miyagawa