READ
THE CRITIQUE THAT CHANGED A SMITHSONIAN EXHIBIT
ATHENA PRESS
ANNOUNCES THE PUBLICATION OF:
MAGIC:
The Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of Japanese
Residents from the West Coast during WW II
By David
D. Lowman
Former Special Assistant to the Director, National
Security Agency
A year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
a select group of cryptanalysts working in the
Army's Signal Intelligence Service broke Japan's
highest-level diplomatic code. The messages
they recovered from this effort, cover-named
MAGIC,
revealed the existence of widespread Japanese
espionage networks along the West Coast of the
United States.
Using reproductions of the MAGIC
messages, David
Lowman paints a compelling picture
of the wartime situation which led President
Roosevelt to order the unfortunate evacuation
of all residents of Japanese ancestry from America's
vital and vulnerable West Coast.
Forty years after the fact a group of Japanese-Americans,
in an effort to obtain punitive damages from
the U.S. government, convinced Congress and
the American public that the evacuation was
not the result of military necessity but that
it was the result of "racism, war hysteria
and a lack of political will." More than
82,000 former evacuees were paid $20,000 in
addition to compensation previously received.
Former U.S. Senator S. I. Hayakawa, a Japanese-American,
felt that this "wolf-pack of dissident
young Japanese-Americans" was making an
unconscionable raid upon the U.S. Treasury.
He, in turn, was called a banana, yellow on
the outside and white on the inside.
Lowman reveals in this book for the first time
how this group ignored declassified intelligence
that supported the governmentĂs actions even
as they fabricated evidence to support their
own cause.
In addition to providing copies of the MAGIC
intercepts that first revealed the existence
of a widespread domestic Japanese threat, Lowman
provides reproductions of declassified reports
from three U.S. intelligence organizations that
were charged with discovering the true scope
of the problem the United States faced.
These reports discuss the use of U.S. based
Japanese businesses, societies, churches, language
schools, clubs, fishing boats, labor unions
and individuals in the Japanese war effort.
Like Germany, Japan believed in total intelligence
and, according to one estimate by an intelligence
officer sympathetic to Japanese residents, the
loyalty to the United States of about a fifth
of the Japanese population could not be trusted.
Lowman's book, which is published posthumously,
is sure to reopen the debate concerning America's
actions during WW II. In doing so, it will inevitably
help restore the reputations of our wartime
leaders and the honor of our country.
No one is better qualified to tell this story
than David D. Lowman, a former high ranking
intelligence officer with the National Security
Agency, a specialist on World War II signal
intelligence and a participant in the congressional
hearing and court cases relating to this issue.
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