As one of the leading scholars on the removal and imprisonment of Japanese Americans in World War II, Eric Muller — the Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor in Jurisprudence and Ethics at the UNC School of Law — has spent decades researching and writing about the injustices suffered by these American citizens.
In his recent book, Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe: Complicity and Conscience in America’s World War II Concentration Camps, Muller focuses his moral compass on three white lawyers who worked as project attorneys for the War Relocation Authority, the civilian agency charged with handling the detention camps.
These attorneys provided legal counsel to camp prisoners while also keeping the camp running. Muller explores how Jerry Housel at Heart Mountain in Wyoming, Ted Haas at Poston in Arizona, and James Hendrick Terry at Gila River in Arizona — as well as Japanese American prisoner-lawyer Thomas Masuda, who worked alongside Hass — balanced their professional ethics with their day-to-day responsibilities which perpetuated racial injustice.
When Muller began his research for this book project, he wondered how lawyers could reconcile themselves to running internment camps. In reading the attorneys’ correspondence, Muller saw that the lawyers understood the immorality of the detention program.
Muller also uncovered how Housel, Haas, and Terry helped the prisoners and positively influenced other white administrators in the camps.
“It became clear to me that there is a role within bad systems for people trying to make them better or trying to prevent them from going further off the rails,” said Muller.
While Muller hopes for a diverse readership for his book, he has reached out to law firms to bring this story to their attorneys.
“I think that the sharpest ethical questions will emerge specifically for lawyer readers who will look at these stories and be able to say, ‘What would I have done if I had had this job?’ and ‘Is there anything about what I do in my current job that reminds me of some of the dilemmas that these guys were facing?’”
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