WARTIME HYSTERIA

n February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which called for the evacuation of any person thought to be a threat to national security from the West Coast. In the Los Angeles area, the FBI and police conducted searches of Japanese and Japanese-Americans’ homes and seized items such as radios and cameras thought to be “suspect.” Persons “of Japanese ancestry” were rounded up and transported to assembly centers and then to internment camps. Local news headlines boasted “Roundup of Japs” and posted photographs of Japanese citizens’ property being searched, confiscated and their families separated and evacuated. Some Italian and German residents of the United States were also interned, but those of Japanese descent were most feared, targeted and restricted.

In this climate of fear, and with the Japanese removed, Mexican citizens who had come to Los Angeles in great waves of immigration, and Mexican-Americans, became the target of the press. By the time José Diaz was found dead on August 2, 1942 near the “Sleepy Lagoon,” there were already other types of roundups reported in the local press-those of Mexican youth, coined “gangs,” “young hoodlums,” “baby gangsters” and “pachucos.” Headlines such as “Gangs Warned Kid Gloves Off” put young Mexicans on notice that the police were about to “make the streets safe for everyone”.

Carey McWilliams described these roundups of Mexican-American youth:

If one spreads out the span of one’s right hand and puts the palm down on the center of a map of Los Angeles County with the thumb pointing north, at the tip of each finger will be found a community where the population is predominantly Mexican. In each of these neighborhoods, moreover, a majority of the juveniles living in the area will be found to be first-generation Mexican-Americans, sons and daughters of the Mexican immigrants who came to Southern California during the 1920's.

. the police selected the neighborhoods which lay at our fingertips on the maps and then blockaded the main streets running through these neighborhoods. All cars containing Mexican occupants, entering or leaving the neighborhoods, were stopped. The occupants were then ordered to the sidewalks where they were searched. With the occupants removed, other officers searched the cars for weapons or other illicit goods.

Carey McWilliams. North from Mexico, 1948.

Following the death of José Diaz, more than six hundred youth were arrested. About two weeks later, Sheriff E. W. Biscailuz submitted a cover letter headed, “Statistics” to the Grand Jury in which he thanked them for their cooperation “in endeavoring to find a solution to the present juvenile problem,” and asking them to endorse the recommendations made in related reports by Clem Peoples, Chief of the Criminal Division, statements of the Los Angeles Police Department, and what came to be known as the “Ayres Report.” Captain E. Duran Ayres, chief of the Foreign Relations Bureau of the Los Angeles sheriff's office presented a special report on “the Mexican problem” to a committee of the Grand Jury. This report compared the character of “the Caucausian, especially the Anglo-Saxon” to that of the “Indian or even the Latin.” Referring to the “Mexican element,” it was stated, “.all he knows and feels is a desire to use a knife or some lethal weapon. In other words, his desire is to kill, or at least let blood. And, “When there is added to this inborn characteristic that has come down through the ages, the use of liquor, then we certainly have crimes of violence.” This report then came to represent the view of law enforcement in Los Angeles.

A subsequent open Grand Jury hearing (October 8, 1942) was arranged by one of its members, Harry Braverman, to allow the Grand Jury to consider statements made in opposition to the Ayres Report. Presenting at this hearing were Carey McWilliams, Dr. Harry Hoijer of UCLA, and others who represented various organizations such as the CIO and the Mexican consulate, having the effect of influencing the press to de-emphasize the word “Mexican,” but only for a brief period.

With twenty-two indicted in the Diaz case, seventeen were tried en masse and five tried individually. On January 12, 1943, the verdicts were announced: three were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, nine were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to five years to life, and five were convicted of assault and released for time served. The five who were tried individually were acquitted. The twelve convicted of first- or second-degree murder began serving their sentences in January 1943 at San Quentin Prison.

Notice Alien Enemy Prohibited Area, ca. 1942

FBI searching home of Japanese-American family, Terminal Island, 1942

FBI searching home of Japanese-American family, Terminal Island, 1942

Surrendering "suspect" radio to authorities, 1942

Civilian Evacuation Order for West Los Angeles and Santa Monica, April 1942

Japanese-American men gathering for transport to Assembly Centers, 1942

Japanese- American women boarding bus to Assembly Centers, 1942

Japanese-American men boarding bus to Assembly Centers, 1942

Wartime segregation, ca. 1942

"Boy gang" roundups, 1942

"Girl gang" roundups, 1942

Teens rounded up in "gang crackdown", 1942

"Zoot suiters" in jail, 1942

‘Mexican-American female gangs,” 1942

"Henry Leyvas, ...led from an inquest yesterday...." August, 1942.

"These youths are a part of several hundred rounded up in a week-end police drive against youthful gang activities."

"Charged with murder, these young defendants filled a special section of Superior Judge Fricke's courtroom yesterday..."

"Deputy Sheriff William Cordes clears court of weeping woman after verdict in gang death trial,"