Pacific Coast Committee on American Principles and Fair Play

The Committee was formed in Jan. 1943 to preserve the constitutional rights of persons of Japanese ancestry who had been evacuated from the Pacific Coast and relocated to the interior of the U.S. by presidential proclamation in 1942. The committee was an outgrowth of the Committee on National Security and Fair Play, which had been originally constituted in Oct. 1941, under the name, Northern California Committee for Fair Play for Citizens and Aliens of Japanese Ancestry. The committee acted an an unofficial public relations repre sentative of the War Dept., the Justice Dept., the State Dept., the War Relocation Authority, and any other government body or civil servant whose responsibility it was to express a considered opinion concerning persons of Japanese ancestry in the U.S. The Committee dissolved itself in Dec. 1945.

Organization History

The Pacific Coast Committee on American Principles and Fair Play was organized in January of 1943 with the express purpose of insuring the constitutional rights of persons of Japanese ancestry who had been evacuated from the Pacific Coast and relocated to the interior of the country by presidential proclamation in 1942.

The committee was an outgrowth of the Committee on National Security and Fair Play, which had been originally constituted in October 1941, under the name of the Northern California Committee for Fair Play for Citizens and Aliens of Japanese Ancestry. Among its founders and leading members were David P. Barrows, Monroe Deutsch, Josephine Duveneck, Galen M. Fisher, Henry Francis Grady, Ruth Kingman, Alfred J. Lundberg, Robert Millikan, Chester Rowell, Robert Gordon Sproul, Paul Taylor, and Ray Lyman Wilbur.

The committee acted as an unofficial public relations representative of the War Department, the Justice Department, the State Department, the War Relocation Authority, and any other government body or civil servant whose responsibility it was to express a considered opinion concerning persons of Japanese ancestry in the United States. The work of the committee included disseminating educational materials to the public, providing public speakers, holding conferences, correcting distorted statements in the press, carrying on a dialogue with governmental officials and leaders of community groups, investigating conditions at relocation centers and monitoring the return of the evacuees after the centers were closed. Chapters were formed in Fresno, Los Angeles, Pasadena, Santa Barbara, Portland, and Seattle.

After the closing of the relocation centers, committee members decided that other, broader based interracial, intercultural community organizations could more effectively continue the work of the committee and incorporate its programs into their own. To this end, the Pacific Coast Committee for American Principles and Fair Play dissolved itself in December 1945.