The security risk posed by farmers was too great, as visions of a "fifth-column" of Japanese saboteurs weighed heavily upon the shoulders of those charged with protecting the United States. The amount of damage that these untrained farmers could do, especially when armed with the awesome destructive capabilities of farming equipment, was too much of a risk to go unchecked. .
A lesser Nation may have been paralyzed by such a quandary. The Nazi Government in Germany had solved a similar problem with the Jews by placing them in ghettos and, eventually, concentration camps.(There were also Death Camps where the sole purpose was to speed along the extermination process by killing Jews in droves). At these locations Jews were kept against their will behind barbed wire and under armed guard. But this kind of response was unacceptable in the United States. Lieutenant General J. L. DeWitt, Commanding General of the Western Defense Command and the Fourth Army, had an alternative to the Nazi solution. The Japanese could be placed in Evacuation Centers where barbed wires and armed guards would be placed to facilitate the process of keeping the loyal Japanese Americans safe. DeWitt was greatly concerned with the Japanese problem and was trying to implement a final solution that would keep the goals of all interested parties in mind. A cursory glance at Lt. General DeWitt's actions and statements before, during, and after the Japanese internment seem to show a man who truly believed that the Japanese living in California were a significant threat to national security. In a letter to Culbert Olson, Governor of California, DeWitt stated: "I cannot emphasize to you too strongly the very real menace at this time to the national safety which arises from the presence in the states comprising the Western Defense Command in which the State of California is included, of the considerable number of enemy aliens and possible fifth columnists.
