The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-06-05

attempted to return to their pre- war homes after being released from War Relocation Authority centers. Sixty-five of the incidents have been in California.
 Nineteen of these cases have in- volved shooting. Ninety per cent of the shootings have been in four cen- tral California counties - Merced, Fresno, Madeira and Tulare.
 None of the shootings has been fatal, but there have been several near misses, an attempted dynamit- ing, several cases of setting fire to houses in which JapaneSe-Amer- jeans were living, labor disturbances in which men refused to work along side descendants of Japanese, and a number of visits by local citizens who have threatened bodily harm to the anese-Americans if they remained in the> area.
 TERRORISM RAMPANT
 The significant thing about all these incidents is that there have been no convictions of the offenders.
 To w. R. Cozzens, Deputy Direc- tor of the War Relocation Author ity, in charge of it's western opera tions throughout the war. these in cidents are looked upon as the pos sible beginning of what he calls Local option on citizenship
 Tn themselves, the TO incidents may not be considered terribly inn portant," says Cozzens. But if this kind of terrorism is allowed to go unchecked, it can easily lead to eX- ceSses.
 Hitler got his start" Cozzens points out, by sanctioning abuses against one group of native-born German citizens. First they were de- prived of their citizenship and de- nied it's rights. Then there was ter rorism against them and conflsca- tion of their property. These abuses grew until they became the atro- cities committed against the Poles, the Dutch and ali the German-en- slaVed people of Europe"
 The time to check such violation of the rights of citizenship is ob- viously before the practice gets out of hand. None of the victims of the 70 incidents has been a Japanese citizen that could be called an alien enemy, some have actually been eX- servicemen.
 LAPS HAVE DONE
 THEIR PART
 Analysis of the motivation behind the 70 incidents reveals several curious factors. Only a few of the acts of terrorism have been com mltted by outrgiht hoOdlums, though such incidents have been perhaps the worst. In a majority of the cases, there has been a motive of selfish economic gain, the per- petratorS being other American citi- zens who have been profting by wartime operation of land or prop erty belonging to the Japanese Americans while the owners were detained in war relocation centers. As soon as the rightful owners re- turn to reclaim and resume posses sion of their property, or their jobs, the trouble begins to brew.
 Another curious fact is that there appears to be little real resentment against the people coming from the relocation centers by the families of service men, or by the service men themselves. American soldiers and Marines who have been taught and have had natural reasons to hate and kill all Japanese might be eX- pected to be hostile towards Jap anese- American civilians, but aren't. The reason for this is simply that over 10000 of these American born citizens of Japanese extraction have made combat records in Italy and France and in the Army Intelli- gence Services in the Pacific, of which any American soldier or sailor who knows the facts can well be proud.