Ralph Carr

Carr started his career by writing for several different Colorado newspapers before he earned his law degree from the University of Colorado. He then began work as an attorney with a focus in irrigation and other water rights issues, eventually using his expertise as an assistant attorney general of Colorado. President Herbert Hoover later selected Carr to serve as the US federal attorney for Colorado in 1929. An effective water rights attorney was invaluable for Colorado at the time, as it was a headwater state with no rivers flowing into its borders.

In 1938, the Colorado Republican Party's leadership viewed Ralph Carr as the prime candidate to run for the governor's office because of his record as a water rights attorney. Carr, however, was far from enthusiastic about the prospect. He did everything he could to get out of running for governor, but eventually it became clear that he had little choice in the matter and allowed his name to be submitted as a potential Republican candidate for the Colorado gubernatorial race. ^[1]

The reluctant candidate would win the Republican nomination in a landslide, netting 733 delegate votes to the next best's 442. Despite Carr's reluctance for the position, he set forth on the gubernatorial campaign trail with a strong message that resonated with his own party, undecided voters, and even people with allegiances to the Democrats. Carr's rhetoric railed against the so-called "political monster" that incumbent Democrat governor Teller Ammons had created, and ridiculed his promise to destroy the very thing he created. The result was as the Republicans had expected when they pressured Carr to become a candidate. He won the gubernatorial race in November 1938, defeating Ammons with nearly 60% of the vote.

Carr's first term in office (1939-1940) was wholly dedicated to getting Colorado's state budget back under control, as it had racked up a $1.6 million deficit before Carr arrived. The balancing primarily came by way of re-appropriating funds from the state's education department. Carr's administration also vetoed every bill intending to levy new taxes against property owners still reeling from the Great Depression. Colorado's budget was balanced by the end of Carr's first term without a single raise in taxes, which caught national attention. The incumbent governor sought and won re-election in 1940, riding the enthusiasm of his first term to an easy victory. Carr's achievements had begun to generate even more political buzz outside of Colorado, with prominent whispers of the governor potentially seeking a U.S. senate seat or being the vice presidential candidate for an upcoming Republican nominee in the 1944 elections.

Whatever plans Carr had for his own political career were immediately put on hold after the Japanese empire's bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 . The US was now at war and Carr's duties as a governor were now dedicated to supporting the war effort. While this naturally included meeting with Colorado's Council of Defense and mobilizing the Colorado Home Guard as state defense measures, Carr would also soon be tasked with social defense against the rising tide of anti-Japanese hysteria.

From the moment the US entered World War II, Carr urged his people to have restraint when it came to anti-Japanese rhetoric and action. The day after Pearl Harbor, Carr told his defense council, "we have among us many of a new generation of Japanese people born in the United States—sincere, earnest, and loyal people." He would then caution "against taking the attitude that because a man may be brown skinned, he is our enemy. We must be sensible about these things." ^[2] Unfortunately, while Carr preached a message of tolerance and level-headedness, American society was quickly slipping in the opposite direction. Rising antagonism toward Japanese Coloradoans was already on the verge of spiraling out of control. Carr received reports out of Alamosa, Colorado (a Japanese farming enclave in the San Luis Valley) that a highway patrol guard needed to be placed in the area when Captain Joseph Monnig uncovered a plot to burn down a Buddhist chapel and that other threats of violence had also been reported. ^[3]

In the face of this growing tension, Carr once again preached for calm, quiet, and logic in a speech to his people. In the same speech, Carr made a strong plea, "We cannot test the degree of a man's affection for his fellows or his devotion to his country by the birthplace of his grandfathers. All Americans had their origin beyond the borders of the United States.... Let us, as products of this philosophy of government and life, be Americans first of all in the crisis which confronts us tonight." ^[4] Such a statement that came to the defense of both non-citizen and citizen Japanese alike stood apart as uniquely tolerant and principled from the rhetoric of federal and state politicians following Pearl Harbor.

In a January 1942 edition of Pacific Citizen , the official print organ of the JACL , Carr wrote a column titled "A Time That Tries Men's Souls" alongside essays from other governors and politicians from all levels of government. In the column he stated, "To the American born citizen of Japanese parentage, we look for example and guidance. To those who have not been so fortunate as to have been born in this country, we offer the hand of friendship, secure in the knowledge that they will be as truly American as the rest of us." ^[5] The other columns had specifically praised and attested to the loyalty of Japanese Americans. However, they also made non-citizen Japanese keenly aware that their rights were unprotected and that any acts of disloyalty from one could result in the punishment of the whole. By extending the "hand of friendship" toward non-citizen Japanese while upholding the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans, Carr took a unique stance of tolerance and acceptance toward all people of Japanese ancestry.

While Governor Carr was initially vocal in his defenses of Japanese American rights and trust of non-citizen Japanese, he was uncharacteristically silent when it came to the prospect of allowing West Coast Japanese into Colorado. Following Pearl Harbor, politicians on the West Coast began to make calls for a mass removal of all people of Japanese ancestry from the region. Combined with the new wave of anti-Japanese hysteria, Coloradoans bombarded Carr's office with calls and letters vehemently demanding that he not allow a single person of Japanese descent to step foot in the state (despite the existence of several pre-existing Japanese communities). Robert Warren, who had worked to promote tourism to Colorado, went on a one-man campaign to generate opposition against allowing Japanese into the state. Local media, especially the Denver Post , ran viciously racist opinion columns aimed at "keeping Colorado American."

The tempo of anti-Japanese hysteria and hatred was growing in Colorado, but Carr remained publicly silent on the subject throughout most of February 1942. Privately, however, Carr walked back his earlier "hand of friendship" comments after President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 into law. When the news of the executive order hit Carr's office, the governor was irate that the US government was poised to throw its own citizens into prisons. However, when it came to non-citizen Japanese, Carr told his staff, "I'd put them in [jail] in a minute and be tickled to death to do it, but I'm not going to put any United States citizens in jail." ^[6]

The public would finally hear Carr's position on the prospect of a mass removal of all Japanese Americans from the West Coast. In a radio address broadcasted late in the evening of February 28th, 1942, Carr spoke to his people. His overarching message that the state of Colorado would cooperate in any capacity to meet the needs of the nation's war effort. Whether the West Coast Japanese entered Colorado "voluntarily" or were forcefully imprisoned there, Carr made it clear that he was willing to cooperate if the US military designated it as a necessity. The governor preached fairness toward German, Italian, and Japanese citizens, though his words lacked the same friendly attitude toward non-citizens. Instead, the suspicion of non-citizen Japanese being potential fifth columnists that Carr avoided in his Pacific Citizen column was now fully present in his address to Colorado. While Carr urged citizens not to engage in any forms of violence or threats against the incoming Japanese, he also referred to them as "unwelcome guests" in the process. ^[7] Carr, at least publicly, wished to make it clear that his and Colorado's acceptance of any West Coast Japanese was purely out of a perceived duty to the war effort.

Among the governors of the Interior West, Carr's response to the federal government's proposal to remove all people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast was mostly an isolated instance. In April 1942 at the Salt Lake City governors' meeting , Carr re-affirmed his stance to the WRA and fellow governors of the Interior West. He stated, "If Colorado's part in the war is to take 100,000 of them, then Colorado will take care of them." Ironically, as a Republican who had spent his career railing against overreach of the federal government and warning about the New Deal's path to Totalitarianism in the US, Carr openly walked in lockstep with the federal's decision making. Ultimately it would not matter where a western governor stood on the issue, the federal government's mass removal and incarceration program would be established at a breakneck pace with Interior West states bearing the burden regardless of where they stood on the issue. When the WRA constructed the Granada Relocation Center in the far southeast of Colorado, allegedly without Carr's approval, the governor did not publicly protest. In fact, he accepted it.

In 1942, seeking to take his talents to the US Senate, Carr ran against the incumbent Democrat Edwin Johnson for his chance at political ascendance. Over the previous few election cycles leading up to 1942, Colorado quickly transformed into a Republican stronghold. Overall momentum for the party was in Carr's favor, but Carr ended up losing the senate race by a narrow margin in an election cycle that saw Republicans in Colorado sweep the ballot otherwise.

Carr retreated into private life following the senate defeat and the end of his term as governor in 1943, going back to work at his private law firm. Despite Carr's defeat in the senate race, the Colorado Republican party still viewed Carr as an incredibly powerful candidate for the governor's seat. Colorado Republican leaders repeatedly pushed for Carr to run for the governor's seat every election cycle for eight years following the failed senate bid. Eventually, much like his first run, Carr gave in and ran for governor in 1950. Unfortunately, he suffered an ankle injury just before he accepted the Republican Party nomination for the gubernatorial race. For the first four weeks of his campaign in September 1950, Carr dealt with a serious infection in his foot stemming from the injury. On September 22, 1950 he passed away from a heart attack resulting from complications with the infection.

A prevailing characterization of Carr is that of a "principled politician" who sacrificed his high-aspiration political career to defend Japanese Americans during World War II. The senate race loss in 1942 is treated as symbolic of the former governor's political downfall. Carr was very active in spreading the idea that the loss was a direct result of his tolerant stance toward Japanese Americans, which his admirers quickly took up and cemented into his popular legacy. However, scholars such as Greg Robinson have begun to push back on this idealized depiction of Ralph Carr. Indeed, the former governor was slandered in the press and public as a "Jap lover" and was subject to a firestorm of criticism as a result of his opinions. However, Robinson argues that this was not the reason why Carr lost the senate election in 1942. The negative reactions to Carr's stance obscure those who stood behind the governor. Even virulently anti-Japanese newspapers like the Denver Post ended up supporting Carr's senate campaign. In addition, Carr was not the lone Coloradoan who was more tolerant of Japanese Americans. In 1944, Colorado politicians twice tried to pass an alien land law aimed at Japanese Americans through the bicameral state congress and later a popular vote, but failed to secure a majority vote both times. Even if the defeats were by narrow margins, at least in the political arena, fewer Colorado politicians and voters were enthralled by anti-Japanese hysteria than Carr's tale would have one believe.

The secondary issue was that Carr, instead of seeking re-election for the governor's office, decided to run against the incumbent (and popular) Democrat, Edwin Johnson, for a senate seat. This was a political feat that Carr would have had a hard time accomplishing regardless of circumstance. Furthermore, even after the loss, the Republican party continuously turned to Carr as their top candidate every election cycle after 1942. However, it was Carr who voluntarily refused to re-enter the political arena after 1942, choosing to remain a private citizen until 1950. Should Carr have ever felt the desire to return to public service before 1950, he likely would have been welcomed back rather than shunned.

Regardless of the veracity of Carr's legacy, Japanese Americans have remembered Carr quite fondly for how he handled the anti-Japanese hysteria in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Many Japanese Coloradoans like Min Yasui and Bill Hosokawa credited Carr's handling of the situation for what they perceived as a more favorable racial climate in the state compared to others both during and after the war (though this is not to suggest that discrimination and violence were absent by any means). Bob Sakata, a prominent Japanese American farmer, specifically cited Carr's messaging as his reason for resettling in Colorado after being granted leave from Topaz . In 1946, the JACL invited Carr to address the league first postwar convention held in Denver. Colorado's Japanese American community presented a plaque memorializing Carr to the Colorado state capitol in 1974. Then, in 1976, the community placed a bust of Carr in Denver's Japanese enclave at Sakura Square. In 2012, construction finished on the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center which houses the Colorado Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, the Colorado Supreme Court Library, the Clerk of Courts, and a visitors center under one roof.

A Thousand Paper Cranes: How Denver's Japanese American Community Emerged from Internment . Video produced by Amanda Zitzman and Roxana A. Soto for the City and County of Denver, 2020. 39 minutes.

Robinson, Greg. The Great Unknown: Japanese American Sketches . Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016.

Schrager, Adam. The Principled Politician: The Ralph Carr Story . Golden, Colo: Fulcrum Publishing, 2008.

The Untold Story of Ralph Carr and the Japanese: The Fate of 3 Japanese-Americans and the Internment . Video produced by Yasumi Urabe for Fujisankei Communications International, Inc., 2011. 49 minutes.