By Ravi Chandra
Rachel Maddow’s six-episode podcast Burn Order, released in December, 2025, is an outstanding contribution to knowledge of American history and psyche, and absolutely vital listening in our imperiled era. Maddow grippingly relates the flawed decision-making behind the unconstitutional, unethical, and immoral imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the remarkable discovery of the failed attempts to prevent this national trauma, which were covered up for decades with a “burn order” to destroy a report that irrefutably documented the loyalty of Japanese Americans.
The series begins in media res, with Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga combing through records at the National Archives in 1982. Herzig-Yoshinaga was a “a retired housewife living in suburban Washington, D.C., and she started coming to the Archives basically as a hobby,” looking to understand her own family’s history in the wartime prison camps. She made copies of relevant documents with her own portable copy machine, and created a meticulous index with copious notes. By 1981, she became a researcher for the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to uncover the motives behind Executive Order 9066 (the relocation order) and to document its impact. The CWRIC was created by an act of Congress, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, but propelled by the demands and persistence of Japanese American survivors of the camps and legislators including Senators Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga.
On that day in 1982, Herzig-Yoshinaga spotted a report and an indication that it should have been destroyed. The documents revealed that the American government had lied to the courts and illegally withheld information that might have changed history in 1942. The “Ringle report,” produced by Naval Intelligence officer Ken Ringle, provided deep evidence of Japanese American loyalty, contradicting the biased – and delusional – imaginings and insistence of men like John L. DeWitt, Commanding General of the Western Command, and his assistant, lawyer Karl Bendetsen.
To read the entire AsAmNews article: https://asamnews.com/2026/01/27/burn-order-rachel-maddow-japanese-american-incarceration/
For more information on the series and to listen to all 6 episodes: https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-presents-burn-order
Photo credit: MS Now
