{"id":23076,"date":"2026-08-09T20:20:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T00:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=23076"},"modified":"2026-08-09T20:36:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T00:36:57","slug":"wsj-how-the-census-bureau-sent-japanese-americans-to-concentration-camps-1989","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/09\/wsj-how-the-census-bureau-sent-japanese-americans-to-concentration-camps-1989\/","title":{"rendered":"WSJ: How the Census Bureau Sent Japanese-Americans to Concentration Camps (1989)"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this day in 1989, the Wall Street Journal<\/strong> published my essay, “Honesty May Not be Your Best Census Policy.”\u00a0 I had worked as a census taker in Illinois in 1980. But I did penance. When the 1990 census came around, I was “laying for them,” as Mark Twain would say. I exposed how the U.S. Census Bureau illegally engineered the 1942 roundup of Japanese-Americans for concentration camps (later renamed \u201cinternment centers\u201d) after Pearl Harbor. The Census Bureau used 1940 census replies to tell the Army which neighborhoods to target to round up more than a hundred thousand men, women, and children.<\/p>\n

I have regularly exposed the Census Bureau perils and abuses since then.\u00a0 Some Trump administration officials rhapsodizing about deporting 100 million people, and the Census Bureau could again provide roadmaps for a roundup.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(*text version of next article at bottom of this post)\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

DHS Tweet, December 31, 2025<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal
\nCopyright (c) 1989, Dow Jones & Co., Inc.
\nTuesday, August 8, 1989
\nHonesty May Not Be Your Best Census Policy
\nBy James Bovard<\/p>\n

Next year, the Census Bureau will conduct the nation’s
\n21st decennial census. Ironically, while the bureau collects
\nmasses of information partly to justify expanding various
\nwelfare programs, many poor people will be victimized by
\ntheir answers. While many liberal groups are worried about
\nhow the census will count the homeless, no one is paying
\nattention to how the census could create new homeless.<\/p>\n

The census forms next year will ask up to 59 compulsory
\nquestions per household, depending on whether it receives a
\nlong or short form. They will include up to 26 questions on
\nhousing — type of building, approximate number of units in
\nthe building, monthly rent or mortgage payment, whether solar
\nenergy is used, etc. Anyone who refuses to answer any
\nquestion can be fined $100.<\/p>\n

Each household will receive an official notice with its
\ncensus form next March: “Although your answers are required,
\nthe law guarantees privacy. . . . The only people allowed to
\nsee your answers to the census are Census Bureau employees.
\nNo one else — no person, government agency, police office,
\njudge, welfare agency — can see them. It’s the law.” Federal
\nlaw states that “in no case shall [census] information be
\nused to the detriment of any respondent or other persons to
\nwhom such information relates.”<\/p>\n

Yet, people have been evicted for giving honest census
\nanswers. Though the Census Bureau does not release data on
\neach household, it does release information on blocks — and
\na block can have as few as six houses on it. The average
\nblock contains 14 houses.<\/p>\n

According to the General Accounting Office, one of the
\nmost frequent ways city governments use census information is
\nto detect illegal two-family dwellings. An American Planning
\nAssociation survey reported that housing code enforcement was
\na key benefit of census data for local governments.<\/p>\n

For instance, Montgomery County, Md., and Pullman, Wash.,
\nuse census data on the number of housing units in a structure
\nto check compliance with zoning regulations. The Long Island
\nRegional Planning Board uses census “block counts . . . to
\nestimate the extent of illegal two-family home conversions,”
\naccording to a June 27, 1986, board letter. Such “illegal”
\ntwo-family dwellings are pervasive on Long Island, according
\nto Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution. Such
\ncrackdowns are especially unfortunate because, as George
\nSternlieb of Rutgers University notes, “The biggest source of
\ngood-size rental apartments in America is the illegal
\nconversion of single family houses.”<\/p>\n

Census data help housing inspectors zero in on violators.
\nBruce Stoffel of the Community Services Department of the
\ncity of Urbana, Ill., declared in an Aug. 24, 1987, letter to
\nthe Census Bureau that he “routinely used census data to
\nanalyze the development stage of neighborhoods to determine
\nthe most appropriate public intervention strategies (e.g.,
\ncode enforcement).”<\/p>\n

Obviously, the people most likely to live in overcrowded
\nsituations are poor people, especially immigrants, who often
\ncluster in the same neighborhood. Housing codes have long
\nbeen used as a means to “keep out undesirables” and to
\nexclude waves of newcomers. William Tucker, author of the
\nforthcoming “The Excluded Americans,” notes: “Code
\nenforcement has always been a very counterproductive way of
\ntrying to help the poor. It usually sacrifices the adequate
\nin favor of the ideal.”<\/p>\n

The Census Bureau denies responsibility for the eviction
\nof poor people because the bureau does not release the
\nprecise names and addresses of housing-code violators. It
\nmakes a similar argument about events that occurred in 1942,
\nwhen the Census Bureau provided the Army with a list of
\nexactly how many Japanese-Americans lived in given
\nneighborhoods, making it easy to round them up for internment
\nduring World War II.<\/p>\n

Census Bureau spokesman Ray Bancroft insists that this was
\nnot a breach of confidentiality because the bureau did not
\ngive out the names or exact addresses of Japanese-Americans.
\nThis is like someone claiming he bears no responsibility for
\nsetting loose on your block a wolf that just happened to gnaw
\non your leg — simply because he didn’t set the wolf free at
\nyour doorstep and tell the wolf to bite you personally.<\/p>\n

The IRS in 1983 attempted (largely unsuccessfully) to
\ncombine census data with private mailing lists in order to
\ntrack down people who don’t file income taxes. As computer
\ntechnology advances, the ability of the IRS to “abuse” census
\ndata will increase. As David Burnham, author of the
\nforthcoming “The IRS: A Law Unto Itself,” says: “The IRS will
\ntry it again. As marketing lists become more complete and
\naccurate, the IRS will become more able to combine them with
\ncensus information to track people down.”<\/p>\n

Information on race and home ownership is used to discover
\nallocations of housing units that are discriminatory under
\nthe Civil Rights Act of 1984. Oxnard Park, Calif., uses
\ncensus data to discover areas where landlords illegally
\ndiscriminate against families with children. Information on
\noccupations is used by corporations and government attorneys
\nto construct affirmative-action quotas for different
\nindustries. Information on “place of birth” is used by the
\nCivil Rights Commission as a baseline for determining
\ndiscrimination by national origin. Even though the census is
\nespecially inaccurate with regard to minorities (who often
\nprefer not to be counted), census data are increasingly being
\nused to construct proofs of prejudice and discrimination.<\/p>\n

But the more intrusive government becomes, the less
\ninformation it will get. The Census Bureau is expecting a
\nsharp decrease in the percentage of households that
\nvoluntarily mail back their census forms — from 83% in 1980
\nto 78% in 1990.<\/p>\n

A lower response rate will sharply increase the costs of
\ndoing the census. The cost per capita of the census has
\nincreased from $121 in 1970 to a projected $1,040 in 1990 —
\na cost spiral that almost makes the Pentagon look good. (The
\ntotal census cost next year is expected to weigh in at $2.6
\nbillion.)<\/p>\n

While most information-intensive industries utilize
\ncomputers to sharply lower their costs of operation, the
\nCensus Bureau has repeatedly botched its operations and
\nsquandered millions. The bureau will need to recruit 300,000
\ncensus takers next year to go around and knock on doors. But,
\nunless the nation has a major recession between now and then,
\nthe efforts to recruit temporary help could be a big failure,
\nand the entire census effort could run aground. Recruitment
\nis already running into difficulty in many areas.<\/p>\n

The more information the government collects on people,
\nthe more control the government will have over people. When there are hundreds of<\/p>\n

thousands of pages of federal, state, and local rules and regulations,<\/p>\n

almost every citizen must be guilty of something. and with millions of<\/p>\n

government employees in this nation, there are too many people with<\/p>\n

an incentive to abuse government information to fill their quotas<\/p>\n

of citations, arrests and investigations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this day in 1989, the Wall Street Journal published my essay, “Honesty May Not be Your Best Census Policy.”\u00a0 I had worked as a census taker in Illinois in 1980. But I did penance. When the 1990 census came around, I was “laying for them,” as Mark Twain would say. I exposed how the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[48,850,4388,1291,4237,49,283,4908,4909,119],"class_list":["post-23076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-census","tag-civil-liberties","tag-concentration-camp","tag-dhs","tag-evictions","tag-irs","tag-mark-twain","tag-penance","tag-poor-people","tag-world-war-two"],"yoast_head":"\nWSJ: How the Census Bureau Sent Japanese-Americans to Concentration Camps (1989) - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"37 years ago, WSJ published my expose on how the Census Bureau betrayed Japanese Americans & sent them to concentration camps\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/09\/wsj-how-the-census-bureau-sent-japanese-americans-to-concentration-camps-1989\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"WSJ: How the Census Bureau Sent Japanese-Americans to Concentration Camps (1989) - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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