Michele Bachmann again

Michele now claims that she and her family will not fill out the census form next year (which is against the law) because ACORN will be involved in collecting data for the census. She is contending that Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II based on information provided by the Census Bureau....she goes on to say that this could happen today. As always she does not bother to look at what actually happened. Internment was initiated by the military and inacurate information as seen in the following.

During the first few days after the Pearl Harbor attack the west coast was alarmed by a number of reports-all false-of enemy ships offshore. It was in the midst of this atmosphere that the first proposal for a mass evacuation of the Japanese developed. On 10 December a Treasury agent reported to Army authorities that "an estimated 20,000 Japanese in the San Francisco metropolitan area were ready for organized action." Without checking the authenticity of the report, the Ninth Corps Area staff worked until late that night on a plan for evacuation, which was then approved by the corps area commander. The next morning the Army called the local FBI chief, who "scoffed at the whole affair as the wild imaginings of a discharged former F.B.I. man." This stopped any local action for the moment, but the corps area commander duly reported the incident to Washington and expressed the hope that "it may have the effect of arousing the War Department to some action looking to the establishment of an area or areas for the detention of aliens." [3] His recommendation that "plans be made for large-scale internment" was forwarded by the Chief of Staff's office to G-2 and to the Provost Marshal General. [4]
On 19 December, and apparently as one consequence of this initial flurry, the Western Defense Command sent the following recommendation to its Washington command post, at that time General Headquarters:
1. In view of the fact that the West Coast of the United States has now been designated and is functioning as an active Theater of Operations, it is recommended that action be initiated at the earliest practicable date to collect all alien subjects fourteen years of age and over, of enemy nations and remove them to the Zone of the Interior.
2. It is also recommended that these individuals be held under restraint after removal from the Theater of Operations in order to preclude their surreptitious return.
3. Records indicate that there are approximately 40,000 of such enemy aliens and it is believed that they constitute an immediate and potential menace to vital measures of defense. [5]
In making this recommendation the Army commander on the Pacific coast, Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, was acting not only as commanding general of the Fourth Army and Western Defense Command but also as commander of the Western Theater of Operations, established on 11 December with the same territorial limits as those of the defense command.