members of the Japanese race were innately warlike and hostile by reason of their less developed skulls, which placed them lower in evolutionary development than other “races.” Roosevelt was intrigued, and he inquired about solving the “Japanese problem” through mass interbreeding. It is not entirely clear from the president's answer to Hrdlicka whether he wished to force the Japanese to interbreed with other Asian groups in order to dilute their alleged innate aggressiveness or wanted to ensure that other Asian groups interbred with superior European racial stock in order to give them a leg up against the Japanese.
Impressed with Hrdlicka's ideas on the question of reshaping the Asian Pacific population through efficient programs of racial mixing, FDR invited Hrdlicka to meet with him in late May 1942 to discuss the general problem of postwar migration. Some idea of Roosevelt's interest in planning to overcome intergroup hostility can be inferred from a letter he wrote at the time to Canadian prime minister W. L. Mackenzie King about the endemic conflicts between English Canadians and French Canadians. Canada was undergoing a crisis over conscription, which was heavily opposed by French Canadians unenthusiastic about fighting for England and empire. Roosevelt confided to Mackenzie King that joint efforts might be necessary to remove the opposition:
All of this leads me to wonder whether by some sort of planning Canada and the United States, working toward the same end, cannot do some planning—perhaps some unwritten planning which need not even be a public policy—by which we can hasten the objective of assimilating the New England French Canadians and Canada's French Canadians into the whole of our respective bodies politic. There are, of course, many methods for doing this which depend upon local circumstances. Wider opportunities can perhaps be given to them in other parts of Canada and the U.S.; and at the same time, certain opportunities can probably be given to non-French Canadian stock to mingle more greatly with them in their own centers.
In other words, after nearly two hundred years with you and after seventy-five years with us, there would seem to be no good reason for great differentials between the French population elements and the rest of the racial stocks.
It is on the same basis that I am trying to work out post-war plans for the encouragement of the distribution of certain other nationalities on our large congested centers. There ought not to be such a concentration of Italians and Jews, and even of Germans as we have today in New York City. I have started my National Resources Planning Commission to work on a survey of this kind.10
In May 1942, FDR met with Ales Hrdlicka at the White House. The anthropologist swiftly pronounced himself willing to organize a concerted initiative to arrange postwar migration and contact according to “scientific principles of demographic movements and race mixtures.” Hrdlicka suggested holding a “Pan-American Congress on Post-War Immigration,” to be followed by the creation of an international migration center to coordinate policy. He no doubt recognized that this might sound unrealistic, for he then suggested as an alternative the formation of a body of experts to plan population shifts. “This body should chart the problem from the anthropological, medical, and economical points of view. It would determine the countries that will have to discharge their surplus peoples, and those that might receive them; learn by direct observation, through brief field trips, the conditions of the prospective receiving regions; and lay foundations for rational selection and direction of the migrants.”11 Hrdlicka offered to set up such a body at the Smithsonian if private foundation money could be secured. “Such a body could begin to function without delay, and begin to furnish or publish its reports within a few months.”12
Realizing the foreign policy implications of such an action, Roosevelt immediately sent Hrdlicka's proposal to Secretary of State Cordell Hull and asked Hull to speak to him about it.13 At the same time, Roosevelt discussed his postwar migration plans with Vice President Henry Wallace, who expressed great interest.14 After receiving these endorsements, Roosevelt decided to proceed with the formation of what he called an “Institute of Population,” and he called again on Isaiah Bowman for assistance in directing the project. Bowman explained that he was too busy to take on any more activity but agreed to lend his name to the project.15
Meanwhile, Roosevelt turned for administrative support to another trusted advisor, the journalist and former State Department official John Franklin Carter. Carter was the chief of a special White House political intelligence network Roosevelt had established in early 1941, which collected information on everything from experimental weapons to political conditions in Martinique. In particular, at the president's orders Carter sent a team of agents, led by Curtis B. Munson and Warren Irwin, to the western states and Hawaii during fall 1941 to inquire into the loyalty of Japanese communities. Following reports from his agents that Japanese Americans were overwhelmingly loyal—Munson estimated Nisei as “90-98% loyal” and pitifully anxious to demonstrate their patriotism—Carter had tried to organize efforts to defend Japanese communities from potential race rioting, and had lobbied Roosevelt against mass removal after Pearl Harbor.16
Carter agreed to act as organizer and paymaster for the migration project. However, since he had no anthropological knowledge or experience, he deputized his assistant Henry Field, an anthropologist from the Field Museum in Chicago who specialized in Near Eastern civilizations, to manage the intellectual side of the project. At the end of July 1942, Carter and Field met with Roosevelt to receive his directions, and then visited Hrdlicka. What the president wanted, Carter explained, was to bring to Washington “a small, informal committee of leading anthropologists from the United States, Mexico and Canada,” who would “discuss plans for an Institute of Population and report on the ethnological problems anticipated in postwar population movements.”17 Their mission was “specifically…to formulate agreed opinions as to problems arising out of racial admixtures and to consider the scientific principles involved in the process of miscegenation as contrasted with the opposing policies of so-called ‘racialism.’” Once this was accomplished they would “submit a report in writing for the confidential guidance of the President of the United States.”18 Carter explained that the office of the president would provide funds for travel and other expenses, and he and Field would administer the project. Hrdlicka expressed agreement with the plan. However, following the meeting Carter mentioned to Roosevelt that he had grave doubts as to Hrdlicka's suitability, and warned the president that “unless, through me, you maintain a firm grip on this agenda, he will stop at little to twist it into precisely what it should not be allowed to become: a mandate for him to impose his dogmatic anthropological convictions upon national policy.”19
FDR replied that he appreciated Carter's concerns, but told him to go ahead anyway, commenting playfully about his goals for the project: “I know that you and Henry Field can carry out this project unofficially, exploratorially, ethnologically, racially, admixturally, miscegenationally, confidentially, and above all, budgetarily. Any person connected herewith whose name appears in the public print will suffer guillotinally.”20
Hrdlicka soon produced a list of potential committee members—a dream team of anthropological brains. With Field's help, Carter added some new names to keep the committee from being “an Ales Hrdlicka cheering section,” and to ensure the committee's unofficial nature he took out the government employees Hrdlicka had suggested. He then passed the list on to Roosevelt.21 After looking over the plans, the president decided that a formal committee would be cumbersome and probably lead to leaks. FDR instead asked Hrdlicka to join with Bowman and Field in a committee of three, to be aided by whichever consultants the committee wished to invite. Carter transmitted the request to Hrdlicka, explaining that the committee was to address itself to the general questions of finding vacant places suitable for postwar settlement (specifically South America and Central Africa) and identifying the kinds of people who would be sent to live there. He then added some specific questions of racial eugenics personally posed by Roosevelt:
In consideration of this problem the President wished the committee to keep especially in mind the political fact that the South American nations will insist on a base stock of their own in regions opened to settlement,
