[The Avon Lady]

Malkin already handled the question here:

Part 6: Eric is unimpressed by my explanation for the disparate treatment of ethnic Germans and ethnic Japanese. Let's break this down:

• Item: "Japan was the only Axis country with the capability of launching a major attack on the United States?" Here Michelle contradicts herself, because the book emphasizes repeatedly that Roosevelt, Stimson, and McCloy had good reason (from MAGIC) to worry about potential Nisei involvement not just in a full-blown Japanese attack on the West Coast, but in more ordinary kinds of domestic spying, disruptions of war production, and the like. So why would it appropriately have mattered (if it were true) to the MAGIC-reading trio of Roosevelt, McCloy, and Stimson that Japan could mount a full-blown assault on the West Coast but Germany could not mount a full-blown assault on the East Coast?

What on earth is he talking about? There is no contradiction in what I argue. The West Coast, where the vast majority of ethnic Japanese were concentrated, was uniquely vulnerable to attack, invasion, spot raids, sabotage, and surveillance that could potentially cripple the war effort. As I write:

The West Coast was home to many strategic army and naval installations, aircraft factories, shipyards, and other war plants and vital defense resources and utilities. The region was home to one-fourth of the nation's aircraft production and one-third of its shipbuilding capacity. Through the three major ports of Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, vast quantities of men and material were being shipped to the war zones of the Pacific. Immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack, Gen. George Marshall and his staff "worked feverishly to strengthen the west coast defenses as rapidly as they could," according to Army historian Stetson Conn.

Spies on the West Coast, where the movements of our aircraft carriers could be easily monitored and where the risk of hit-and-run attacks like the one at Pearl Harbor was substantial, posed a greater threat than spies on the East Coast, where there were no aircraft carriers and no risk of a major attack. This lesson was underscored by the pre-Pearl Harbor activities of Richard Kotoshirodo and other Japanese agents in Honolulu, who gathered intelligence for Japan that was used to design the attack on Oahu.

The increased vulnerability of the West Coast to espionage seems obvious, as does the strategic value of moving ethnic Japanese to the interior to reduce the threat--a measure taken not only by the U.S., by the way, but by Canada and Mexico.

Reason and logic does not a fascist make. Fascist - another abused word, like shill.