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Keeper of concentration camps: Dillon S. Myer and American racism
Analyzing the career of Dillon S. Myer, Director of the War Relocation Authority during WWII and Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1950-53, Richard Drinnon shows that the pattern for the Japanese internment was set a century earlier by the removal, confinement, and scattering of Native Americans.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 5, 2007
Richard Drinnon’s book is a vengeful biography of Dillon S. Myer. The significance of the title becomes clear in the final pages where Dillon S. Myer objects to the use of concentration camp in the congressional debates of redress, pleading almost literally from his death bed not to go down in history as a Keeper of Concentration Camps. Not only does Drinnon’s book serve to ensure that is exactly how Myer should go down, the book ultimately serves as a length indictment against one man, even compared to other bureaucrats.
As such, the book raises real questions about historical agency it does not address. Certainly, Myer’s intentions and beliefs were problematic. Yet how much blame individually should he receive for his roles in these various institutions, all of which were created before his appointments? I say this not as a defense of Myer but rather to raise the issue of power relationships. The unintentional focus of the book becomes whether Myer to blame or not, was he a good guy or a bad guy? Its not clear to me that the focus on Myer does not obscure an attack on the wider systems in which Myer so successfully operated.
If you don’t know much about Native American legal history and struggles in the post-WWII era or about the concentration camps, you will find the book very informative. I think there are more informative and engaging books out there if you are going for straight up context.
The strength of this book, however, is the way Myer, as a US government bureaucratic physically links US racist practices with US imperialist practices through his jobs at the BIA, the Concentration Camps, representing US economic interests in Latin America, and even a mission to the Middle East. The book is able to link those projects and their shared ideologies more convincingly through Myer’s biography than almost any other methodology I can currently imagine.
As such, the book raises real questions about historical agency it does not address. Certainly, Myer’s intentions and beliefs were problematic. Yet how much blame individually should he receive for his roles in these various institutions, all of which were created before his appointments? I say this not as a defense of Myer but rather to raise the issue of power relationships. The unintentional focus of the book becomes whether Myer to blame or not, was he a good guy or a bad guy? Its not clear to me that the focus on Myer does not obscure an attack on the wider systems in which Myer so successfully operated.
If you don’t know much about Native American legal history and struggles in the post-WWII era or about the concentration camps, you will find the book very informative. I think there are more informative and engaging books out there if you are going for straight up context.
The strength of this book, however, is the way Myer, as a US government bureaucratic physically links US racist practices with US imperialist practices through his jobs at the BIA, the Concentration Camps, representing US economic interests in Latin America, and even a mission to the Middle East. The book is able to link those projects and their shared ideologies more convincingly through Myer’s biography than almost any other methodology I can currently imagine.
January 22, 2016
Richard Drinnon, 1987
The book begins by comparing, in a way, the way the Native Americans were gathered up and put into reservations and the way the Japanese-Americans were gathered up and put into internment camps. The book itself is about Dillon s. Myer who was the head of the WRA from 1942 to 1946, and actually also headed the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1950 through 1953.
Myer was not the first head of the WRA, though, and the book talks about Milton Eisenhower and how he was the first head of the organization and eventually quit.
The book proceeds to provide some information on Myer as a director, and then as a person backing the idea of scattering the Japanese Americans through the eastern and mid-western part of the country (but keeping them under surveillance at the same time). The author also does not speak well of the JACL during that time.
To put it mildly.
The next chapter starts out talking about the draft resisters using specific individuals and what happened to them. Some of the individuals were forced to perform slave labor. In addition, Myer was not even aware of when selective service registration was being required and when it wasn't. Specific groups of individuals from different camps that were imprisoned are also examined and the whole thing is almost enough to make one ill the way the government officials twisted things and lied.
More of the trouble at Tule Lake (after it became a segregation center) is covered. When an ACLU lawyer came to the camp to try and find out what was going on he received less than friendly welcome and was thrown out of the camp after only two days, but it was long enough to begin to clue him in to just how badly the locked-up internees were being treated.
There's a lot of very upsetting information in this portion of the book, some of the greatest violations of rights of individuals that have ever occurred in the U.S. (outside of the institution of slavery itself.)
The rest of the book deals with Myer's time with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and he did no better there than he did in the WRA.
This is a very hard-hitting, upsetting book but one that is important in any study of the Japanese-American internment program.
The book begins by comparing, in a way, the way the Native Americans were gathered up and put into reservations and the way the Japanese-Americans were gathered up and put into internment camps. The book itself is about Dillon s. Myer who was the head of the WRA from 1942 to 1946, and actually also headed the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1950 through 1953.
Myer was not the first head of the WRA, though, and the book talks about Milton Eisenhower and how he was the first head of the organization and eventually quit.
The book proceeds to provide some information on Myer as a director, and then as a person backing the idea of scattering the Japanese Americans through the eastern and mid-western part of the country (but keeping them under surveillance at the same time). The author also does not speak well of the JACL during that time.
To put it mildly.
The next chapter starts out talking about the draft resisters using specific individuals and what happened to them. Some of the individuals were forced to perform slave labor. In addition, Myer was not even aware of when selective service registration was being required and when it wasn't. Specific groups of individuals from different camps that were imprisoned are also examined and the whole thing is almost enough to make one ill the way the government officials twisted things and lied.
More of the trouble at Tule Lake (after it became a segregation center) is covered. When an ACLU lawyer came to the camp to try and find out what was going on he received less than friendly welcome and was thrown out of the camp after only two days, but it was long enough to begin to clue him in to just how badly the locked-up internees were being treated.
There's a lot of very upsetting information in this portion of the book, some of the greatest violations of rights of individuals that have ever occurred in the U.S. (outside of the institution of slavery itself.)
The rest of the book deals with Myer's time with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and he did no better there than he did in the WRA.
This is a very hard-hitting, upsetting book but one that is important in any study of the Japanese-American internment program.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews