Japs In Hawaii

Evacuation Plan Condemned

From “Far Eastern Survey,” published in New York IT is not the general opinion of the people of Hawaii that the 100,000 Japanese in that group should be evacuated, although at least one indivi dual, Mr. John A. Balch, is advocating such a policy.

Such important groups as Hawaiian business interests, the Hawaiian Chinese, and the military authorities have in dicated clearly where they stand on the matter of Japanese evacuation; they are not in Mr. Balch’s camp.

The Honolulu Inter-Church Federation seeks the interest and co-operation of Federations on the mainland “in,inform ing and arousing an American and a Christian attitude in dealing with the situation.” It questions the constitu tionality of such evacuation, which it feels would partake of the “very ideals and principles of Nazism”; it feels that the proposal conflicts with our funda mental war aims; it quotes the Military Governor to the effect that “mass evacuation is neither intended nor cur rently possible”; and it points out the serious economic problem which would be created in the islands by the removal of thousands of Japanese labourers.

The Federation makes the important point that the Balch proposals and those of the California Joint Immigration Committee—the latter has proposed a Constitutional Amendment to deprive American-born Japanese of their Ameri can citizenship—would provide powerful ammunition for anti-American pro paganda in the Orient, and would raise doubts in the minds of Chinese and Indians with regard to America's real war aims.