Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism

In this important study Drinnon brings together evidence of the mistreatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and American Indians during the Korean War, showing how government policy in both cases grew out of ""traditional racism.'' This policy is neatly exemplified in the person of a colorless bureaucrat named Dillon Myer who headed the War Relocation Authority (19421946) and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (19501953), presiding over twin calamities for groups of American citizens about whom he was appallingly ignorant. Drinnon describes the illegal incarceration of Japanese-Americans, the systematic breaking up of families, the establishment of penal colonies for ``troublemakers'' and Myer's declaration of administrative war on Native Americans. What is most shocking about this well-told but sorry tale is the abundant evidence of serene self-righteousness with which all this was carried out. Drinnon, a history professor at Bucknell, wrote Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building. Photos. (December