Memo to FBI concerning the American Friends Service Committee dated September 3, 1942

Western Defense Command and Fourth Army memo to FBI concerning the American Friends Service Committee dated September 3, 1942. IN Federal Bureau of Investigation. American Friends Service Committee. FOIA file 100-11392, section 1. ONLINE. Available http://foia.fbi.gov/committe/committe1.pdf [29 July 2002].


Page 1, Memo, 3 September 1942, American Friends Service Committee Page 2, Memo, 3 September 1942, American Friends Service Committee

 

WAR DEPARTMENT
G-2, HQ. WESTERN DEFENSE COMMAND & FOURTH ARMY
Office of Headquarters)
Presidio of San Francisco, California
September 3, 1942 Subject: AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE

Summary of Information

  1. References:
    1. Letter this office, file 7790 (7-2-42), July 18, 1942, subject "Colorado Council of Churches".
    2. Letter this office, file 7790 (7-2-42), August 15, 1942, subject "Church Interest in Japanese Evacuees".
    3. Summary of Information this office file (CIB) IX/0-X-7661, August 27, 1942, subject "American Friends Service Committee".

     

  2. In Seattle, Washington as in the San Francisco Area, the FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE and the FELLOWSHIP OF RECONCILIATION are working togehter in the interest of conscientious objectors and the evacuated Japanese. FLOYD W. SCHMOE, former instructor at the University of Washington, is director of the Seattle Branch, FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE, and a member of the FELLOWSHIP OF RECONCILIATION. In the columns of the "Pacific Cable", a pro-Japanese bi-monthly pamphlet published jointly by both organizations, SCHMOE has unfavorably compared the Army's administration of Camp Harmony, at Puyallup, Washington with the WAR RELOCATION AUTHORITY'S management of TULE LAKE RELOCATION CENTER. KENJI OKUDA, Japanese agitator and reported member of an alleged subversive group at Camp Harmony, is a staff writer for the "Pacific Cable", whose material necessarily is submitted by mail. His father, "HENRY OKUDA, is considered by the F.B.I. to have been the most dangerous Japanese propagandist in the Seattle Area.

     

  3. In 1940, SCHMOE was executive secretary, Seattle Branch, KEEP AMERICA OUT OF WAR CONGRESS. He was quoted in the April 15, 1942, issue of the Seattle "Post-Intelligencer", as having told a group of University of Washington alumnae at a meeting on the campus, that he had visited an enemy alien internment camp in Montana, the Santa Anita Assembly Center, near Los Angeles California, Camp Harmony, Puyallup, Washington, and the assembly center at Toppenish, Washington, where he found that conditions were "terrible".

     

  4. FRED BERT FARQUHARSON, University of Washington Civil Engineering Professor, notorious for his long record of radical and pacifist activities, is head of the Seattle FELLOWSHIP OF RECONCILIATION. He is also a member of the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION in Seattle. His wife, MARY FARQUHARSON, Washington State Senator and member of the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, was instrumental in obtaining CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION counsel for GORDON KIYOSHI HIRABAYASHI, presently awaiting trial for violation of the evacuation order. Should HIRABAYASHI, who has requested classification as a conscientious objector, be so classified by his draft board, the FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE will provide financial assistance to him when he enters a CIVILIAN PUBLIC SERVICE CAMP.

     

  5. While SCHMOE has not actually urged Japanese evacuees to become conscientious objectors, as indicated erroneously in paragraph 4, reference letter paragraph 1b above, both the FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE and the FELLOWSHIP OF RECONCILIATION in Seattle have been attempting to convert potential conscientious objectors to pacificist views, according to MARK S. SULLIVAN, Seattle "Times" writer, who has made a study of activities of conscientious objectors at the University of Washington. SULLIVAN further stated in an interview with a Special Agent from the Seattle Branch Offices, AS OF S, G-2, WDC and 4th Army, that representatives of the FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE and the FELLOWSHIP OF RECONCILIATION are apparently deliberately misrepresenting conditions as Camp Harmony to other persons as being bad.

     

  6. At a meeting in the ENGINEERS' CLUB in Seattle on August 27, 1942, SCHMOE denounced the Japanese evacuation and claimed it was making Fifth-Columnists of 70,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry.