RD: Apart from the initial stupidity -- and it was stupid and counterproductive -- of putting Japanese Americans en masse in camps and leaving alone the whole moral thing, perhaps the most stupid thing, the second most stupid thing was this questionnaire for leave clearance. The motives were not really bad. The WRA, it was a bureaucratic organization, they said, "Well, let's, we can let loyal Japanese Americans go out," so they hand out this goddamn questionnaire, as if that were a way to do it. In addition, they didn't bother to make up their own questionnaire, but they simply adapted a questionnaire that the military was already using to segregate draft age Japanese Americans who had volunteered -- because there was no draft for Japanese Americans at that time -- to make sure that they didn't get the quote "wrong kinds" into the armed forces, you can say about this or that. And they used this questionnaire and gave it to everybody. These were people who hadn't volunteered to do anything, and it created a whole series of problems.

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