Here's the explanation for this film.
In President Roosevelt's judgment, the 110,000 American citizens of Japanese descent living on the West Coat were a terrible threat to national security during ww2. Accordingly, they had been interned in concentration camps, suddenly and brutally.
Obviously, the 160,000 Japanese-Americans on Hawaii posed an even greater threat, since Hawaii was the most critical American base in the Pacific. Roosevelt wanted these potential subversives locked up as well, and the task of December 7th was to argue for this necessity by indicting the loyalty of 160,000 Hawaiian citizens.
But something rare in recent American history occurred. The military governor of Hawaii, General Delos Emmons said, in so many words, "Nuts, I won't do it!" And he prevailed. The Nisei stayed free. Accordingly, December 7th's denunciation of their disloyalty was replaced with a tribute to their patriotism. And not a single hostile act by a Japanese- American was reported during the war.
Hawaii's successful defiance of Roosevelt is an ignored event in American history — not surprisingly, because it gives the lie to the excuse that continued internment of 110,000 people (mostly Californians) through almost four years of war (and the effective confiscation of their property to the profit of their neighbors) was an understandable precaution in the heat of the moment.
Ford and Toland, whatever their sentiments at the time, were following orders. A year after the war was over, in December 1946, Ford made a point of depositing in the National Archives an 82-minute print, unreleased (but now on DVD), containing Toland's unreleased sequences preceding the 34- minute released sequences. As a single film it makes no sense: the second part contradicts the first, blatantly. Yet it documents a government policy that we have forgotten ever even happened.
In President Roosevelt's judgment, the 110,000 American citizens of Japanese descent living on the West Coat were a terrible threat to national security during ww2. Accordingly, they had been interned in concentration camps, suddenly and brutally.
Obviously, the 160,000 Japanese-Americans on Hawaii posed an even greater threat, since Hawaii was the most critical American base in the Pacific. Roosevelt wanted these potential subversives locked up as well, and the task of December 7th was to argue for this necessity by indicting the loyalty of 160,000 Hawaiian citizens.
But something rare in recent American history occurred. The military governor of Hawaii, General Delos Emmons said, in so many words, "Nuts, I won't do it!" And he prevailed. The Nisei stayed free. Accordingly, December 7th's denunciation of their disloyalty was replaced with a tribute to their patriotism. And not a single hostile act by a Japanese- American was reported during the war.
Hawaii's successful defiance of Roosevelt is an ignored event in American history — not surprisingly, because it gives the lie to the excuse that continued internment of 110,000 people (mostly Californians) through almost four years of war (and the effective confiscation of their property to the profit of their neighbors) was an understandable precaution in the heat of the moment.
Ford and Toland, whatever their sentiments at the time, were following orders. A year after the war was over, in December 1946, Ford made a point of depositing in the National Archives an 82-minute print, unreleased (but now on DVD), containing Toland's unreleased sequences preceding the 34- minute released sequences. As a single film it makes no sense: the second part contradicts the first, blatantly. Yet it documents a government policy that we have forgotten ever even happened.