The U.S. Census Bureau provided information to S. surveillance agen­cies during World War II to identify persons of Japanese ancestry, according to a new study by two scholars of census history, who say their research confirms the bureau’s actions, despite decades of official denials.

Margo Anderson, professor of history and urban studies at the University of Wis­consin–Milwaukee (UWM), and William Seltzer, a senior research scholar in the Department of Sociology and Anthropol­ogy at Fordham University, will present findings from their study, “Census Confi­dentiality under the Second War Powers Act (1942-1947)” Friday at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America in New York City.

Seltzer and Anderson say the Census Bureau complied with a 1943 request by the U.S. Treasury Department for a list of all persons of Japanese ancestry in the Washington, D.C., area as recorded in the 1940 census. This information, collected under a pledge of confidential­ity, was handed over in only seven days, according to the researchers.

The bureau also disclosed informa­tion about other persons counted in the 1940 census to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, say Seltzer and Anderson, as well as information about businesses and other establishments to war plan­ning agencies, such as the Office of Emergency Management.

Whether the Census Bureau provided individually identifiable information on Japanese Americans during World War has been a highly contested matter for decades, say Seltzer and the controversy was reignited in 2004 when it was reported that the Census Bureau had provided zip-code level data from the 2000 census on persons of Arab American ancestry to the Department of Homeland Security.

Although the bureau broke no law, since the Second War Powers Act permit­ted such disclosures, ethical questions lin­ger about these World War disclosures and about the Census Bureau providing small-area geographical data pertaining to potentially vulnerable populations to other governmental agencies.

The case has important implications for the upcoming 2010 census because the Census Bureau depends on public trust to succeed in its mission. Seltzer and Ander­son also call for the bureau to disavow its denials of the disclosures and to set the bureau’s historical record straight.

The paper also documents the vigor­ous and ultimately successful efforts made by the Census Bureau, in the post World War period, to re-establish sta­tistical confidentiality after the Second War Powers was repealed in 1947.

But, as the authors observe, “… this was not always an easy task as a number of investigative agencies had grown ac­customed to the relatively easy access they had had to Census Bureau micro-data during the war years.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Japanese Citizens League (JACL) and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) urged Congress to investigate and ensure that such practices do not occur today.

“This another slap in the face to Japanese Americans,” said Floyd Mori, National Director of JACL. “During World War II, 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, the majority of whom were U.S. citizens, were forced into concentration camps. Many others were immediately plucked from their homes by the FBI and carted off to undisclosed imprisonment facilities. Like this recent revelation that our privacy was also vio­lated, internment was also deemed ‘legal.’ In America, not all ‘legal’ actions are consistent with the values and freedoms enshrined in our Constitution.”