A Wrong Partially Righted

There seems to be a De Tocqueville quote to fit almost every action in contemporary America. But it was particularly apt to record last week that he wrote, in 1835, that "the great privilege of the Americans does not consist in being more enlightened than other nations, but in being able to repair the faults they may commit."

One particularly grievous fault committed by Americans was the World War II internment of 112,985 Japanese-Americans in dreary camps for as long as four years. They lost an estimated $400 million in confiscated property, earned no more than $19 a month in the camps. Although not a single Japanese-American was convicted during the war of spying, and many served in the famous Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat team, which won more decorations than any outfit in U.S. Army history for its exploits in Italy and France, the detainees were not released until just before the end of the war--and then with neither apologies nor abodes to ease their anguish. More than 71,000 of the Japanese-Americans put behind barbed wire were born in Amer ica and thus were U.S. citizens.

Slowly, often grudgingly, the Government settled the Japanese-Americans' claims after the war--generally at the rate of 100 on the dollar. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court finally concluded the last suit still pending from World War II seizure of property--and on more generous terms. The court ruled that 4,100 Japanese-Americans who, for one reason or another, were late in filing for return of their savings should receive them anyway.

Presiding over the court was Chief Justice Earl Warren, who as attorney general of California in 1942 had been vocal in demanding that Japanese-Americans be evacuated from their West Coast homes. On the bench was Justice Abe Fortas, who as wartime Under Secretary of the Interior had protested the mass lockups. Justice Tom Clark, who had been the Justice Department's representative in California a quarter of a century ago and worked with the military in detaining the Japanese-Americans, did not participate in the decision.

Justice Without Bitterness. The court ruling will return to the petitioners--without interest--some $4,000,000 in savings that the Government confiscated from U.S. branches of Japanese banks. Mrs. Ayako Honda, 68, of Redwood City, Calif., who spent three years in a Utah camp while one of her sons was serving in the U.S. Army, estimates that she may receive about $500. She says she feels no bitterness, is elated that finally "justice was done." Said Los Angeles Attorney A. L. Wirin, who represented some of the plaintiffs: "This decision brings to an end the last injustice visited by the U.S. Government on Americans of Japanese descent during the war."

Not quite. In last week's decision--as in all previous ones--the court sidestepped the prickly problem of the legality of the Government's 1942 action in interning U.S. citizens without benefit of charges or trial. That precedent thus remains intact.

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