The article appeared in Harper's Magazine, and there was a little bit of mystery as to how it got in there.

The byline said it had been written by an intelligence officer.

But that's all it said. No other identifying information. No name.

In the spring of 1943, this anonymous article by some anonymous person purporting to be an

intelligence officer, it landed on the desk of Justice Department lawyer Edward Ennis.

Edward Ennis, at that moment, was in an unenviable and stressful position at his job.

He had been one of the most insistent, most impassioned voices inside the Justice Department

fighting to try to stop a policy that he believed was unconstitutional and immoral.

The mass incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese-American

citizens on the U.S. West Coast.

It was a not-necessary military act, and perhaps the greatest violation of civil liberties in the United

States.

Edward Ennis had lost that fight. But now,

in the spring of 1943, the policy is being fought in court. Four young Japanese Americans,

Gordon Hirabayashi, Min Yasui, Fred Korematsu, and Mitsue Endo are all challenging their incarceration, and their

cases are all heading to the U.S. Supreme Court. And in a kind of twisted irony, at the Justice

Department, it's him. It's Edward Ennis, who is put in charge of preparing the government's defense against those cases.

My office prepared the briefs for the government in Korematsu, Yasui, and Inda, which, as I say, is a curious commentary on the responsibility of the Department of Justice in defending policies, which it, in fact, opposed.

It is certainly not the job he wanted, but it's the job he has.

And so, Edward Ennis puts his feelings aside, he gets to work.

He starts looking for evidence that will help DOJ defend the incarceration policy in court.

And it is during that search when this anonymous article from Harper's Magazine lands on his desk.

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