along practical lines. They have shown a readiness to rely to the fullest extent possible on local resources, local devices and local ability. Indeed, one of the significant features of our relations with the territorial areas is the energetic attention given to concrete economic and governmental problems, while at the same time we have engaged in the formulation of a policy looking toward a sound and realistic political relationship.

This direct approach to common problems is characteristic of the close working relationship which the Division of Territories and Island Possessions has helped to develop between the local governments and the mainland. Such activities as those of the Territorial Office of Civilian Defense in Hawaii and the Civilian Food Reserve program in Puerto Rico have strengthened these working relationships during the war. Some of these ties will be broken when the special war services are discontinued. To the normal peacetime problems of economic and governmental development will be added those of recovery from the special losses and dislocations of the war. In dealing with these problems, care must be taken to preserve mutual confidence in inter-governmental cooperation.

The Territory of Alaska, which attracts increasing attention from prospective agricultural settlers, traders, and tourists, will need further assistance in such matters as road surveys, soil management, breeding and feeding of fur animals, experimental fishing, water resources investigations, mineral surveys, topographical mapping, land classification and development of recreational resources. Only by securing such assistance, can the Territory, as well as the 48 States, derive the full benefit from the transfer of population which is likely to occur.

In Hawaii, the problems of housing and public health, which are now extremely critical, will need continued attention for some time after the war. There may be a partial reversal of the wartime influx of workers from the mainland; but, in any case, as a result of the severe impact of the war upon Hawaii's economy, the readjustment of industry and agriculture and the rehabilitation, of returning servicemen and local labor, will present problems calling for real intelligence. The insular government of Puerto Rico has gone far by its own efforts to encourage the maximum development of resources, to attract suitable industries, to improve labor-employer relations, and to develop sanitation.

In the Virgin Islands, progress is being made toward increased responsibility in the management of local affairs and toward greater economic productivity. But the postwar period will bring difficult problems of readjustment which will be only partially solved by the proposed Federal program for construction of public works, such as health and sanitation facilities. A more complete and explicit policy

is needed with respect to political status and economic development. In the Philippines, the biggest immediate jobs are the reconstruction of industry, particularly the production of sugar, and the reestablishment of the Commonwealth finances on a sound basis. Difficult questions of war damage compensation and future trade policy will call for close and farsighted cooperation of the two governments.

In every territory certain economic problems will remain for solution, no matter what form of political status may be adopted. It will be fortunate if, as discussions of "statehood," "independence," and "dominion status" proceed, leaders of opinion, in the territories and on the mainland, will continue to give attention to the common economic problems that lie before them.

The War Relocation Authority

The War Relocation Authority, created as an independent agency in the spring of 1942 and brought under the Department of the Interior in February 1944 had, at the close of this fiscal year, assisted in the permanent relocation of 51,412 persons of Japanese ancestry, from the 10 relocation centers which it originally administered.

The original population of these centers was approximately 110,000. The Tule Lake relocation center became a segregation center in the summer of 1943, as a result of the progress of relocation at that time.

The chief objective of the Authority has been to return to the main stream of American life all of those evacuees from the west coast who have not been denied the right to return by the Department of Justice or by the War Department. Most of these latter are among the 17,454 persons remaining at the Tule Lake Center.

The relocation of eligible evacuees was greatly speeded when the Western Defense Command on December 17, 1944, announced that it would rescind its evacuation order on January 2, 1945. On the day following the announcement, December 18, the Director of the Authority announced that the remaining eight relocation centers. would be closed in not less than 6 months nor more than 1 year.

The success of the relocation effort is indicated by the fact that during the year 24,679 evacuees did establish themselves outside of centers. And while the movement back to the west coast was slow immediately after the lifting of the ban, by the end of June, 4,922 individuals had resumed residence in the evacuated zone. In this same period, however, 10,176 persons had relocated in other parts of the United States.

Obstacles to a stronger movement back to the coast were met with an energetic program of assistance, and of authentic information to create a more ready acceptance of the returning evacuees. Prejudice was strong in some areas of the west coast, where acts of attempted violence against evacuees were committed, such as shooting at their

homes and planting dynamite. In other instances acts of intimidation were committed. Other serious handicaps were the acute housing shortage and the comparatively large number of evacuees who were in need of public assistance. Farmers among the evacuees also found it difficult to get the necessary equipment to operate their lands. The well-publicized military record of the more than 20,000 young Nisei men who volunteered for, or were called into the Army after the reinstitution of Selective Service for them, on January 20, 1944, did much to overcome prejudice on the west coast, as did the fact that many of the relocating evacuees went directly or indirectly into war work. Large groups of both citizens and aliens took employment with the Army Ordnance Depots at Tooele, Utah, and Sidney, Nebr. To overcome the housing difficulty, full time housing experts were attached to various area offices and field offices on the coast, and independent cooperating groups sponsored hostels in key localities in which evacuees could live while finding permanent quarters.

The Authority, in its budget requests, based its needs on an estimated population at its centers of approximately 44,000 by the beginning of the 1946 fiscal year, and as the 1945 fiscal year closed, the population figures were actually close to this total.

Population charts for the centers revealed that a great majority of those who were relocated came from the age group between 18 and 35, leaving the residue of children and older aliens, posing a greater problem in working out relocation plans. Many of the more difficult relocation problems were being solved through the cooperation of Federal, State, and county welfare agencies.

Relocation was materially speeded by the elimination or curtailment of many of the center functions. These included the closing of the schools with the end of the June term, the termination of the agricultural and construction programs, with certain exceptions, and the reduction of maintenance. Mess halls were closed whenever a block population dropped to 125 or fewer. Other functions were greatly restricted as the relocation of persons who were able to work reduced evacuee manpower to a minimum.

By the end of the year a pronounced reluctance on the part of a considerable number of evacuees to leave the centers was being gradually overcome, as they realized that the final closing of the centers was a fixed policy.

The War Relocation Authority completed its first full year of operation of the refugee shelter at Fort Ontario, N. Y., having taken over this responsibility in July of 1944, when approximately 1,000 refugees from Europe arrived there. Problems here were somewhat different from those of the relocation centers. In June the subcommittee of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization held a hearing at the shelter to determine the possibility and

advisability of extending immigration status to the residents of the shelter, but had not made its findings public as the fiscal year closed. Fourteen of the refugees returned to Europe during the year and another group was preparing to return in August.

The Office of the Solicitor

The Office of the Solicitor, while continuing to carry its regular load of normal departmental legal work and the extra burdens imposed by war activities in fuel, mineral, territorial and other fields, was able to absorb a new and increasingly heavy and important additional legal responsibility in connection with the departmental and general governmental programs incident to peacetime reconversion.

Most of the proposed reconversion programs under consideration by the Congress are closely interwoven with the regular activities of the Interior Department. For example, the regional authority bills, the bills for the disposal of surplus property, the strategic materials stock-piling bill, and the several bills for scientific research and development. The Department's attorneys examined and analyzed all of the reconversion bills, and all others affecting the Department's activities, prepared committee reports, suggested clarifying amendments, arranged for attendance and testimony of Departmental witnesses before Committees of Congress, and generally advised the interested agencies of the Department with respect to the legal significance of proposed legislation as it might affect their particular activities and existing authorizations.

Documents were drafted incident to the seizure and possession of struck coal mines under various executive orders; plans were developed for the orderly return of eligible relocation center residents to normal communities and for the prompt liquidation of war relocation centers. Bureau of Reclamation attorneys prepared 37 basin reports, to be submitted to Congress, providing for comprehensive postwar plans for the development of water, land and hydroelectric power resources, and they were actively engaged in the legal implementation of the Bureau's vast reclamation programs which had been temporarily halted by War Production Board orders during the war. An important victory was won in the case of United States v. General Petroleum Corporation, et al, involving additional oil royalties to the United States in the Kettleman Hills district, California. Regulations were drafted with respect to such matters as grazing under the Taylor Grazing Act; to provide for the reopening of the national parks on a peacetime scale; to anticipate an expected increase in hunting during the 1945-46 season; to relax wartime control of explosives; to improve the control over departmental patents, and many others. Hearings were conducted in Alaska with respect to Indian aboriginal rights

and conferences with territorial and War Department officials culminated in the terminating of martial law in Hawaii. This, briefly, is indicative of the range and variation of the legal affairs that were dealt with through the Solicitor's office.

Conclusion

The foregoing pages provide a documented basis for a truth that can be summed up in a fairly brief sentence: We lack much that we need, and we must get it or else suffer grave consequences in the not very remote future.

If anything remains to be said it is only enough to stress what "we" means, and to point out what the kind of suffering that I have referred to could mean to each one of us.

"We" does not mean the Nation in any life which it may be supposed to live apart from the people themselves. "We" means all of us, and here, if not in Webster, it means each of us. It means we who are free, but who would not be if we were conquered. It means we who have and use a thousand conveniences that are made of metals, but who would not have them if we exhausted our mineral supply.

If we suffered the worst that could befall us, under attack, for a lack of metals we would not merely suffer "an unsuccessful war," nor would we do our suffering academically on a certain page of a school history. We would suffer goosestepping, and we would suffer it in our homes, and in our schools, and in our places of business.

If our shortages of metals were acute enough, even in time of peace, we would not suffer merely from "reduced inventories," or from "a higher cost-of-living index." We would suffer from our inability to get automobiles, refrigerators, washing machines, and other luxuries that have become common place to us, because, in their scarcity, they would be available only at outrageous prices which we could not pay. All that I can set down by way of a formal conclusion is that the situation with respect to many of the minerals upon which our very manner of living depends is such as to give the United States of America real national concern. If we do not remedy that situation we will most certainly and indisputably wish that we had.

Sincerely yours,

Houold L. Ichen

Secretary of the Interior.