But Carr, Colo., isn't named for Ralph Carr, and something in Colorado should be. He stood for the American way amid panic and frenzy. To date, there hasn't even been a biography, but that will soon change. Adam Schrager, a reporter for KUSA-TV in Denver, has written one, "The Principled Politician: The Story of Ralph Carr," which will be published early next year.
I look forward to reading it, because I'd love to learn more about Carr. And I look forward to seeing something named after him, whether it's the new Denver Justice Center or something else. After all, we have two 14ers named for A.D. Wilson, an 1874 surveyor, and one ought to be enough.

Gov. Carr's courage lit a fire in author
In early 1942, when he first read Executive Order 9066, which allowed the federal government to round up the Japanese living on the West Coast and force them into inland camps, Colorado Gov. Ralph Carr thundered, "Now, that's wrong! Some of these Japanese are citizens of the United States." Coloradans, already fearful of the Japanese who were living in this country, were stunned at their governor's response.
Later, as other Western governors refused to allow relocation camps to be built in their states — Wyoming's governor threatened to hang from a pine tree any Japanese entering his state — Carr announced that Colorado would do its duty, and more.
Colorado became the site of one of 10 World War II Japanese internment camps, Amache, near Granada. State residents were outraged at Carr's words, although they had no bearing on Amache's location, since the federal government didn't care whether the states wanted the camps. "We had the JAPS crammed down our throats whether we liked it or not," a writer signing herself "A Mother" wrote the governor. Another letter-writer insisted, "If it were left to a vote of every citizen of this State . . . you would find out that we don't want the yellow devils."
Carr's fierce stand supporting constitutional rights for Japanese in this country ruined his political career.
Once considered as Wendell Wilkie's vice presidential running mate and even touted as presidential material by The New York Times, the Colorado Republican governor never again was elected to public office.
Carr "stood up when everybody else sat down," says Adam Schrager, author of "The Principled Politician: The Ralph Carr Story." A political reporter at Channel 9, Schrager contends there are parallels between Carr's time and our own: "The Patriot Act, Guantanamo, calling out the National Guard are all issues Ralph Carr dealt with."
What differs from today is the former governor's response. "Carr stood up for someone else and risked his career to do it. It's so rare when a politician faces (the kind of fear that existed in 1942) and not only doesn't back down but takes the fight to the people," says Schrager, who has an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Michigan.
"As a student of American history, I've tried to find a comparison." In fact, Schrager began the Carr book soon after reading John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage," and "even the stances those folks took did not compare."
"The Principled Politician" is an outstanding biography of a governor who is little known today, even in Colorado. Carr was a successful water-rights attorney when he was drafted to run for the state's highest office. He initially dealt with budget deficits and overspending, but when war was declared, he found himself enmeshed in human rights issues. No one should have been surprised at his position on the Japanese because it could have been deduced from his first days as governor in 1939, when he hired an African-American to work in his front office. Until that time, blacks had been employed only as valets.
Carr was molded by three factors, Schrager says. "Politically, he was a fan of Lincoln. He believed the Constitution was the law of the land and the greatest document outside the Bible. He had a strong moral code. He thought it was offensive to look down on people because of where their grandparents were born. And culturally, he never understood why some people were treated better than others based on class or race."
His belief that he was right helped Carr withstand the barrage of venom aimed at him. In addition to thousands of letters from citizens, Carr had to contend with the state's newspapers. The Denver Post called the Japanese "yellow devils" on its front page and opined, "Once a Jap, Always a Jap." The Rocky Mountain News called Carr a "neutral in anti-Jap row."
The reaction to Carr was based in large part on fear. And it was "just how scared the country was" in the early 1940s that surprised Schrager, 38, when he researched the book. Because he wasn't born until long after the war, "The only thing I can relate it to is 9/11. Pearl Harbor was 9/11 times 10," says Schrager. "Instead of caving in (to that fear), Carr stood up, and he fought. At the end of the day, he was comfortable with his stand."
The author believes Americans today want the kind of politician Carr was. "It's fair to ask people running at the presidential level, 'Do you walk away from principles?' It's fair to pose it to people seeking the highest office, and I think I'll ask it of the next city council candidate who comes knocking at the door," he says.
Schrager first heard about Carr in 2002 when the Colorado legislature considered a bill making the former governor's birthday a state holiday. (The bill was defeated in a senate committee.) He asked a Capitol tour guide about Carr and became intrigued with the man who was then only "a footnote in history," he says. Schrager became obsessed with becoming the foremost scholar on Carr. He writes about Carr's strengths, as well as his faults. "He had a temper, was pig-headed by his own admission, and flawed in the practice of his religion," he says. A Christian Scientist, Carr took insulin for diabetes.
Schrager, whose second book, "Beyond Cowboy Politics," is about the importance of Colorado and the West in national politics and due out in August, believes that if he had lived long enough, Carr would have resurrected himself.
During the war, Carr was defeated in his bid for the U.S. Senate and went back to his law practice. But in 1950, five years after the war ended, he ran again for governor. By then, Carr's stand on the Japanese seemed heroic to many Coloradans. He died shortly before the election. Would he have won? "Yes," says Schrager.

Former govenor's story tells tale of principles and politics
..."The Principled Politician" is a well-researched book that all Coloradans should read. In a time when voters routinely question their lawmakers, it's refreshing to read about a politician who put the good of all the people ahead of his own political career.
Schrager, whose second book, "Beyond Cowboy Politics: Colorado and the New West," is due in August, should be commended for his writing Carr's long-overdue story. His exhaustive research is evident with the turning of every page. Although everyone knows how the overall story turns out--the Allies win WWII and the Japanese-Americans are eventually released--each page brings new, oftentimes chilling details of how a nation wantonly stripped the civil rights of a people simply because of their ethnic background.

A legacy of principled politics
You might think that covering the state Legislature would provide more than one's daily minimum requirement for politics. But for 9News political reporter Adam Schrager, more is better. Schrager spent most of his spare time over the past several years researching and writing about former Colorado Gov. Ralph Carr, whose support for the constitutional rights of Japanese-Americans during World War II was highly unpopular and now largely forgotten. But it still animates Schrager, who has written the biography The Principled Politician: The Ralph Carr Story. Schrager met with writer Dan Danbom at a coffee shop one recent morning and talked about Carr with such enthusiasm that Danbom was certain people around them started ordering decaf.
Why Ralph Carr?
I'd seen his bust outside the governor's office and was intrigued by his story. This was about the time that the state Legislature was considering designating a day in his honor. I'd also been reading John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage and kept thinking that there was no one else in American history truly comparable to Ralph Carr. I loved his story so much, I didn't want him to be a footnote in our history; I wanted him to be celebrated.
What set Carr apart?
To Ralph Carr, the Constitution was people, and he applied it at a time when people were terrified. Carr believed that Japanese- Americans had protections under the Constitution that events could not change. He stood up for them when everyone else was sitting down. The more I thought about it, the more I thought this is exactly the kind of person we say we want, but this doesn't always work for political figures. Ralph Carr kept his conscience.
Carr was intensely interested in anything anyone said or wrote about him, and he saved every speech and every letter and memo he received as governor. That must have been a great benefit to you.
It was; all his materials are in the official archive. It would be very hard to capture that kind of information today. Carr was also an attorney, and I know from having attorneys in my family that they save everything.
What was the most surprising thing you uncovered?
I was stunned by the fear Coloradans had in 1942. We all know the intensity of feeling after 9/11, but it was many times that after Pearl Harbor. When you see the letters he received and read the newspapers of the time, you're struck by the emotion of the day. Polls taken at DU showed that Americans feared the Japanese more than the Germans or Italians by a two-to-one margin. Carr knew this. He had no doubt how his support for Japanese-Americans would play out politically, but he would not behave otherwise. Every other Western governor knew that the federal government was going to relocate West Coast Japanese-Americans to their states. They knew they couldn't do a thing about it, yet they still fought it to benefit their political careers. Carr shared the fears of everyone else, but he never exploited them.
Were there parallels between 1942 and now?
Eerie parallels. We're having some of the same debates today - personal privacy vs. public safety, immigration, states rights vs. federal authority and the role of the federal government in time of war. (Former Gov. Bill Owens' spokesman) Dan Hopkins read an early version of the book and told me it read like his daily e-mail.
How did Carr deal with the disconnect between his principles and public opinion?
He had faith in the public. He believed that if you were honest, all you needed to do was to explain yourself to people, and they'd get it. That he came so close to winning in the 1942 Senate race is testament to the fact that he was right. "Principled politician" is not an oxymoron. Ralph Carr proved it.
But this is more than a story about politicians, isn't it?
Yes. Kids and students are my most important audience. We all remember times when we didn't stand up for someone, maybe in a playground fight, when we should have. Those things stay with us because we know we should have done something. Ralph Carr didn't have to wonder. He lost an election, but won his conscience.
The Principled Politician: The Ralph Carr Story
*Nonfiction. By Adam Schrager. Fulcrum, $26.95. Grade: A-
Book in a nutshell: Ralph Carr was an unassuming Republican attorney from southern Colorado who was a compromise candidate for governor in 1938. His first term was marked by his ability to reduce the state's debt and his visceral objection to virtually anything emanating from the Roosevelt administration, both of which ensured his re-election.
But what gave Carr distinction, and motivated this long-overdue biography, was his moderate stance toward the internment of Americans of Japanese descent in the early days of World War II. The federal government wanted to move Japanese from the West Coast to places where they presumably could not spy or sabotage on behalf of Japan.
Although Carr called internees "unwelcome guests" and "undesirables," he was opposed to putting them in internment camps. By not pandering to the vitriolic racial hysteria of the time, Carr probably doomed his political career, which essentially ended in 1942 when he was defeated in a run for Senate.
What's most striking about the book, though, is the intensity of racism directed at both Issei (first-generation Japanese who had never been naturalized) and Nisei (second-generation Japanese-Americans). No one seemed to make any distinction between them and the Japanese nation.
One newspaper columnist wrote, "You walk up and down the streets and you bump into Japanese in every block. They take the parking stations. They get ahead of you in the stamp line at the post office. They have their share of seats on the bus and streetcar lines. This doesn't make sense . . . Everywhere that the Japanese have attacked to date, the Japanese population has risen to aid the attackers. Pearl Harbor, Manila. What is there to make the government believe that the same wouldn't be true in California?"
The Denver Post calmly suggested, "TO HELL WITH THE JAPS! KEEP COLORADO AMERICAN!" Another publication urged that men and women in internment camps be separated to prevent Japanese women from having babies " . . . loyal to their blood and to the souls of their honorable ancestors."
Best tidbit: Carr explained his position this way: "The Constitution starts out by saying "We the people of the United States.' It doesn't say 'We the people, who are descendants of the English or the Scandinavians or the French.' It says, 'We the people.' "
Pros: This is a readable and fascinating story.
Cons: Some of Schrager's points are belabored. When five examples would do, he sometimes gives 10.
Final word: A well-done story about a public figure few remember who lived at a time we'd like to forget.

Colorado honors Gov. Carr’s courage
During WWII, he defended Japanese-Americans
Imagine the governor standing inside Durango's Strater Hotel and telling the people of Colorado, "For God's sake, shut up!"
Ralph Carr actually did that in 1942. During the terrifying early days of World War II, Carr was touring the state to try to quell fears about Japanese-Americans.
"Let's have no more loose talk," Carr said at the Strater Hotel. "Let's have no more threats of what we would like to do to the Japs. For every idle threat that gets publicity, a hundred Americans may suffer. For God's sake, shut up!"
Carr stood almost alone in speaking out for tolerance and fairness toward Japanese-Americans, at a time when most others were calling for their imprisonment or worse.
The speech in Durango and dozens of others like it cost Carr his political career. He died in 1950, and two generations later, most Coloradans don't even know his name.
But this year, a reporter and a state lawmaker have resurrected Carr's memory.
On March 14, the Legislature voted to rename U.S. Highway 285 from the New Mexico border to southwest Denver in honor of Carr. A commemorative plaque will be put on top of Kenosha Pass.
Rep. Rob Witwer came up with the idea after reading a new biography of Carr by Adam Schrager, a reporter for 9News in Denver.
Legislators voted unanimously for Witwer's resolution and paused from their morning debates to pay tribute to Carr. Sen. Ken Gordon put the governor's deeds into terms that make sense today.
"It would be like saying something positive about Muslim fundamentalists right after 9/11," Gordon said.
A profile in courage
Schrager first learned about Carr when covering a 2002 bill that would have made his birthday a state holiday. At the time, he was reading Profiles in Courage, by John. F. Kennedy, which was about eight courageous U.S. senators.
Schrager found Carr's story more compelling than anything in Kennedy's book.
"I started looking into it, and I couldn't believe no one had ever shared what I think is the most powerful profile in courage in my studies," he said.
Five years later, the result is Schrager's book: The Principled Politician: The Ralph Carr Story. It was released this month and has been on local bestseller lists. (All the details of Carr's life in this article come from the book.)
As a reporter, Schrager hears a lot of cynicism about the government, so he was eager to share Carr's fine example.
"Gov. Carr is the kind of politician we always say we want," he said.
Promising career
Carr, a Republican, rose to national prominence almost as fast as Barack Obama. He started his career as a small-town lawyer in Antonito and quickly became the state's top water lawyer. He successfully defended the La Plata River Compact before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Republicans cajoled him into running for governor in 1938. He won, and his swift reforms of state government made him one of America's most popular governors. In 1940, he turned down the offer to run as vice president on the GOP ticket with Wendel Willkie.
But everything changed for Carr after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Fear of anyone with Japanese ancestry took hold across America.
When President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, removing people of Japanese descent from the West Coast, Carr erupted to his staff: "Now that's wrong! Some of these Japanese are citizens of the United States!"
Other politicians in the Mountain West tried to keep West Coast Japanese out of their states, and many Coloradans demanded the same. The Denver Post hammered Carr day after day during early 1942.
"While there is war between the United States and Japan, every Jap in this country is either an actual or potential enemy. They should be treated as such," the Post wrote. Another Post opinion column screamed: "TO HELL WITH THE JAPS! KEEP COLORADO AMERICAN!"
But Carr pleaded for calm and urged Coloradans to do their part for the war effort by accepting West Coast evacuees.
He paid the price
Very few leaders stood with Carr, and some played to fear and hate.
Wyoming Gov. Nels Smith said if Japanese-Americans were brought to his state, "There would be Japs hanging from every pine tree."
Idaho Attorney General Bart Miller was blunt. "We want to keep this a white man's country," Miller said.
More than 20 years before the Civil Rights Act, Carr spoke up for the principle that all citizens have equal rights, no matter their ancestry.
He also had pragmatic reasons for urging calm. Japanese forces were squeezing Gen. Douglas MacArthur's army in the Philippines in spring 1942, when Carr gave his Durango speech.
Later that year, Carr ran for U.S. Senate against "Big Ed" Johnson, a popular Democratic incumbent. Johnson sided with public opinion in opposing the rights of Japanese-Americans - citizens or not - to move freely around Colorado.
Carr lost that race. He died in 1950 when he was attempting a political comeback, making one more run at the governor's race.
The south bore of the Eisenhower Tunnel is named for Ed Johnson. Until Witwer's resolution, Carr had only a small bronze plaque in the state Capitol to keep his memory alive.
"Now we have an opportunity, however modest, to set the record straight," Witwer said.
When the Kenosha Pass sign is built, anyone driving U.S. 285 to Denver will be reminded of the courage of a long-forgotten governor.
"It's not often that we see this," said Rep. Alice Madden. "And, frankly, we don't see it anymore. I think we broke the mold with Ralph Carr, and for all of our sakes, I hope we can fix that mold."

Ralph Carr is a true political hero, a governor who showed rare moral courage in the face of the wartime hysteria that followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It is an underappreciated story, even in Colorado. A small-town Republican water lawyer elected by conservatives stood up against public opinion and harsh criticism to ensure humane treatment for Japanese enemy aliens and protested the internment of Japanese-American citizens.
Award-winning television journalist Adam Schrager vividly recounts Carr’s story in his new book, The Principled Politician. In it we learn how Carr—the nation’s only politician to defend the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans—kept a cool head and stood fi rm on principle while everyone seemed to be losing his or her reason.
Schrager tells the story well, and the reader can feel the hate and hostility that inevitably follows the start of a war, made worse in the case of Japan by its sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. On February 19, 1942, with the nation still traumatized, Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry along with Japanese enemy aliens in camps scattered throughout the West. Similar treatment was visited upon German and Italian enemy aliens, but no one dreamed of putting Americans with German and Italian background in relocation centers. Yet Japanese American citizens—who should have been protected by the U.S. Constitution—made up approximately two-thirds of the 120,000 relocated internees. The episode refl ected deep racism and violated basic human rights standards.
Schrager does a fine job of showing that Ralph Carr was an unlikely hero. Born in Rosita, Colorado, in 1887, Carr practiced law in Antonito, Colorado, for eleven years before his expertise in water law bought him to Denver as the state’s Assistant Attorney General. He ran for and was elected governor in 1938 and won re-election easily in 1940. He was riding high as a popular, effective governor until the events following Pearl Harbor. Schrager shows that Carr was even considered for the vice presidency by Wendell Willkie in 1940 and was clearly the state’s most popular Republican.
When Executive Order 9066 was issued, a large segment of the Colorado public, and virtually all other western governors, protested the relocation to their states and even threatened violence if the “Japs” should appear. There was little or no differentiation between foreign nationals and citizens of Japanese extractation. Ralph Carr stood alone among political figures, and was severely criticized for it. He felt that Colorado had a duty in wartime to cooperate with the federal government (the camps were on federal land) and as part of the war effort, to shoulder the responsibility of keeping the internees safe and community hysteria muted as much as possible. But he protested by words and actions the inclusion of American citizens of Japanese descent in the plans. Schrager shows how Carr was a scholar of Abraham Lincoln and had spent enough time in the San Luis Valley amidst its diverse population to develop a deep understanding and respect for the multiethnic fabric of America.
In the echo-chamber of racism and war time passion, Carr lost the 1942 U.S. Senate race to Senator “Big Ed” Johnson in a year that was otherwise a Republican sweep. Schrager shows clearly that the one and only reason was Carr’s defense of the Japanese Americans. He knew his stand was costing him politically, but it made no difference. He knew what was right. By the 1942 election, indeed, before a single person had set foot in the relocation camps, the U.S. had won the Battle of Midway and essentially removed any threat of Japanese attack on our west coast.
The Japanese Americans were held in violation of numerous articles of the U.S. Constitution without any evidence of disloyalty. They suffered incalculable financial and emotional trauma, but the only acting out of their frustrations was to furnish a number of their sons to the 442nd Infantry Regiment (the most decorated Regiment in WWII) where they died in record numbers defending the country that was violating their families’ human rights. Some internees were held as late as October 1946 and all suffered massive disruptions in their lives. There were bright spots in the Colorado reaction to everything Japanese. Schrager tells of the Japanese language training developed at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and how the school stood firm against a backlash and helped adjust their Japanese American faculty into the community. History was on Carr’s side. The 1981 Presidential Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians report to Congress stated: “The broad historical causes which shaped the decision to relocate and detain Japanese-Americans were race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.”
One U.S. governor stood against this war hysteria and Schrager’s book is a wonderful memorial to a man who held firm to a north star amidst that hysteria.
Richard D. Lamm is a former governor of Colorado (1975–1987).

At this time, as we continue to be at war in Iraq, and maintain the prisons at Guantanamo to house for suspected combatants, many of whom have never been charged, we see no politician from either side of the aisle who has shown true leadership and principle on the issue. Would that we could have a Ralph Carr in our midst again.
Ralph Carr was the governor of the state of Colorado from 1939 to 1943. He was the first Republican governor in Colorado since the mid-20s. Carr served as governor in a turbulent time, when the United States was deeply entrenched in World War II, with Japan bombing Pearl Harbor and the internment and evacuation of individuals of Japanese descent from California. He staked everything to do the right thing during the hysteria of those times. Adam Schrager, a reporter covering politics on the NBC affiliate in Denver, Colorado, gives this relatively unknown politician his due. Schrager is the son of former CBA president and John Marshall Law School Dean Leonard Schrager.
Carr was the preeminent water rights attorney in Colorado before becoming governor. At the time he became a candidate for governor, somewhat reluctantly, as he was just establishing his private practice after serving as the U.S. Attorney for Colorado. After much discussion and convincing and setting out his terms for running, Carr became a gubernatorial candidate in 1938.
At his inauguration, Carr gave a controversial and blunt speech. He categorized the fiscal problems of the state as "symptoms of poor organization and bad management." Nine days later, he followed up with a radio address that was somber. It began, "Because you have refused to face the facts and because some of your representatives ... seem inclined to dodge the issue." Upon taking office, Carr began to issue commutations and grant parole in cases he thought worthy, refusing to give in to "blistering public criticism."
Carr's good friend Lowell Thomas was a radio commentator who started pitching Carr as a Vice Presidential candidate in 1940. Thomas' efforts succeeded, but Carr refused the nomination. He felt that he had more reforming to do at home in Colorado.
Running for re-election in 1940, Carr won by 55,000 votes. At his second inaugural address, he stated: "We are not Republicans, we are not Democrats. We cannot be in this crisis. We are Coloradans. We are Americans." Carr strongly disliked the New Deal that FDR was implementing. Carr wanted less government, not more.
On December 7, 1941, America was attacked by Japanese war planes at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Within 24 hours of the attacks, Carr went on the radio again. He cautioned those in Colorado that "we have among us many of a new generation of Japanese people born in the United States-sincere, earnest, and loyal people." Despite the public's movement toward addressing what to do with the Japanese during 1942, Carr "was convinced any talk of internment, confinement, imprisonment-whatever word was used to describe what was being suggested for American citizens was simply wrong." The views of many state citizens started coming in via telegrams to Governor Carr. At the same time, pressure from the public demanded evacuation from California.
In late February 1942, Carr once again went to the airwaves, as public opinion continued to convey to Carr that Colorado should not be the moving location of the California evacuees. In defense of his opening Colorado to the evacuees, he firmly stated that "Colorado must never be charged with a failure to cooperate in the gravest moment of our country's history ... Colorado will not complain because she is asked to take care of a handful of undesirables whose presence on the coast might prove the difference between a successful invasion and the saving of our country."
Carr welcomed evacuees, while the oner western states closed theirs to the evacuees. The Denver Post, the paper in the state with the largest circulation, disagreed strongly with Carr's position the day after the speech, attacking Carr in many of its pages. His response was that he was to state what was true, not political sentiment.
In 1942, Carr ran for the United States Senate against Edwin C. Johnson, the incumbent. In a statement to the Federation of Labor, he supported his principles: "The Constitution starts out by saying, 'We the people of the United States.' .... When it is suggested that American citizens be thrown into concentration camps, where they lose all the privileges of citizenship under that Constitution, then the principles of that great document are violated and lost."
The race for the Senate, which Carr lost, was one of the closest in Colorado history. One columnist stated what many in the state strongly believe: "Had Pearl Harbor never occurred.. .it is quite likely that Carr would have won." Yet Carr stuck to his principles, willing to lose it all for what he truly believed in. After the war, he noted that "[t]here is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism."
In 1950, Carr ran again for governor. He won the primary, but thereafter died from complications resulting from diabetes. His 1950 campaign "embraced his Japanese American stand of 1942." At his wake, the Japanese American Citizen's League sent a floral arrangement in the shape of boxing gloves, which was placed near Carr's coffin. The Denver Post chose Carr as the Person of the Century in 1999, stating, "What he did was take a stand. In one of America's darkest hours, he defended humanity and decency, a move that cost him a career and sent ripples of goodwill rolling through Colorado for years."
Schrager provides us with the story of "the principled politician." Carr's courage and leadership in a turbulent time of hysteria is a story that we all should be familiar with, providing us with some guidance on how our politicians might act principled.

A Treu Compassionate Conservative
WWII-Era Colorado Governor Ralph Carr
On Feb. 8, 1942, two months and a day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 13-year-old Herbert Inouye, his mother, his brother and three others shoved as much of their lives as they could into a car, a truck and a pick-up and left their homes in Los Angeles. The county sheriff had quietly warned them they needed to get out of California as quickly as possible. There were rumors of camps being built. Soon Japanese-Americans like them would be rounded up and sent to live behind barbed wire.
As the little caravan bound for Colorado made its way across the California desert, through Arizona, into New Mexico, rifle-toting state troopers tracked their every move. One even jumped onto the car fender and rode on it, pointing his gun inside at the terrified occupants. Local radio stations broadcast their route, bringing out angry mobs that hurled racial slurs and garbage at them. Over and over they were hauled into police interrogation rooms for questioning. When at last they entered Colorado, Inouye's brother spotted a state trooper and pulled the truck to the side of the road. Inouye remembers thinking, "Here we go again..."
But then something remarkable happened. The trooper strolled over to the parked truck and smiled into the open window. "Governor Carr and the people of Colorado welcome you."
It was the first time Inouye, now 79, had ever heard of Ralph Carr, the Colorado governor who would soon sacrifice a rising political career and die denounced and forgotten because he defended the rights of Japanese Americans.
By coincidence it was only days after Inouye and his family arrived in Colorado's San Luis Valley to start a farm that Carr, a second-term Republican, would receive Executive Order 9066. In that infamous document, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized the removal of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans from their homes and businesses on the West Coast because they were viewed as a possible threat during wartime. More than 110,000 would eventually be sent to detention camps for the duration of the war. One camp called Amache would be opened on Colorado's desolate southeastern plain not far from the Kansas border.
"What kind of man would put this out?" Carr is said to have thundered at his staff. Clutching the executive order in his hand, he was furious. "Now that's wrong! Some of these Japanese are citizens of the United States."
"He believed there was no greater infringement of the Bill of Rights than the executive order he was holding in his hands," says Adam Schrager, a Denver political reporter and author of the newly released biography, The Principled Politician: The Ralph Carr Story.
Born on Dec. 11, 1887, Carr was a political conservative who revered the Constitution and was guided by a deep religious compass that abhorred discrimination. As a child he had watched his father defend the rights of Mexican farm workers during the Depression. As Colorado's 29th governor Carr's political star was on the rise. In 1940 he turned down the chance to be Wendell Willkie's vice presidential running mate. There was even talk of his own future run for the White House. But then he took a principled stand that forever quieted talk of such possibilities.
As anti-Japanese sentiments escalated around him he became even more resolute. "If we imprison American citizens without evidence or trial, what's to say six months from now we wouldn't follow them into that same prison?" he asked.
It infuriated him that citizens could have their rights so trampled by their own government, Schrager says. Carr once declared that the U.S. Constitution begins with "We the people..." It doesn't, he said, begin with: "We the people who are descendants of the English or the Scandinavians or the French."
His was a voice in the wilderness. In the neighboring state of Wyoming the governor there promised "A Jap hanging from every tree." In Kansas, the governor vowed to call out the National Guard to keep Japanese- Americans out of his state. Within Colorado the hysteria was also mounting. A front-page headline in the Denver Post called the Japanese "yellow devils." Some called for Carr's impeachment.
In 1942 he lost an election to the U.S. Senate and retired from public life. He died in 1950 at age 62. "He was unapologetic and remained proud of what he did. He was principled to the end," says Colorado historian Tom Noel.
Earlier this year Carr finally got his due. In March, with World War II veterans and Japanese- Americans standing side by side, Colorado legislators honored the forgotten governor by naming a stretch of state highway after him. The Ralph Carr Memorial Highway runs past the abandoned site of the Amache camp.
"I wish more people knew about him," says Inouye, "and what a great man he was."

Lincoln inspired courage in wartime Colorado governor
A fervent admirer of Abraham Lincoln, Ralph Carr would turn for inspiration in tough times to his treasured collection of books and articles about the 16th president.
As governor of Colorado at the onset of World War II, Carr wasn't afraid to say what he meant, to mean what he said, and to list his telephone number in the city directory.
The crisis that sent him often to the solitude of his Lincoln memorabilia, and eventually precipitated the end of his career in politics, was the government's decision to intern Japanese residents of the West Coast.
As fears grew in Americans and threats increased against fellow citizens who happened to be of Japanese heritage, Carr worked on his 1942 Lincoln Day speech in the context of what the Great Emancipator might have done in a similar situation.
"We know Lincoln today as a man of strength as well as tenderness," he wrote, "and we know that in his efforts to be sympathetic, to be fair and to be just with his fellow men, he often violated the human rules set up by those who called themselves strong."
Executive Order 9066, which unleashed the governor's intemperate outrage, arrived on Feb. 19, 1942, by telegram from the White House. It gave the military virtually unlimited authority to remove anybody from a designated security area.
Carr inferred that the targets were anybody of Japanese descent. Subsequent rumers said 3,500 of the evacuees might be sent from California to Colorado.
His response was a speech that author Adam Schrager says would define Carr's career. In it, he asked for justice and fairness to German, Italian and Japanese citizens who "are as loyal to American institutions as you or I" and have no connection to enemies of the U.S.
"The world's greatest melting pot is peopled by the descendents of every nation in the globe," he continued. "It is not fair for the rest of us to segregate the people from one or two or three nations and to brand them as unpatriotic or disloyal."
Carr urged Coloradoans to accept evacuees, if so ordered, and resolve ensuing problems intelligently. "We are at war. We must realize that...Let us all be good soldiers."
But the governor was adamant in his belief that the U.S. Constitution did not allow American citizens to be incarcerated only because they had been born to Japanese parents.
"The suggestion that an American citizen should be placed under restraint without charge of misconduct and a hearing is unthinkable," he wrote to the U.S. attorney.
In a letter to Christian Century magazine, Carr warned that "If these people are not to be accorded all the rights and privileges the Constitution gives them, then those same rights and privileges may be denied to you and me six months from now for another just as poor reason."
Frustrated, and at times disillusioned, Carr opted to run for the U.S. Senate in November 1942. He was the only Republican defeated in that election, although by a mere half of one percent.
Schrager writes that Carr's "stand on 'the Japanese question' had kept him from Congress. It was his forcefulness and principle that had even kept it close."
He believed in what Lincoln said about justice. "I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have."
By 1950, however, the negative issue from 1942 had become positive for Carr. Although hampered by diabetes and a foot infection, he won the Republican gubernatorial primary overwhelmingly on Sept. 12.
Within a month, he had died at age 62 from a combination of afflictions.
In December 1999, Ralph Carr was chosen Colorado's "Person of the Century" by the Denver Post. The vindicating editorial summary concluded:
"What he did was take a stand. In one of America's darkest hours, he defended humanity and decency, a move that cost him a career and sent ripples of goodwill rolling through Colorado for years."
Adam Schrager, formerly of Evanston, has a master's degree in broadcast journalism from Northwestern University. He covers politics for KUSA-TV, an NBC affliate. He is the son of John Marshall Law School Prof. Leonard Jay Schrager, a past president of the Chicago Bar Association.

At this time, as we continue to be at war in Iraq, and maintain the prisons at Guantanamo to house for suspected combatants, many of whom have never been charged, we see no politician from either side of the aisle who has shown true leadership and principle on the issue. Would that we could have a Ralph Carr in our midst again.
Ralph Carr was the governor of the state of Colorado from 1939 to 1943. He was the first Republican governor in Colorado since the mid-20s. Carr served as governor in a turbulent time, when the United States was deeply entrenched in World War II, with Japan bombing Pearl Harbor and the internment and evacuation of individuals of Japanese descent from California. He staked everything to do the right thing during the hysteria of those times. Adam Schrager, a reporter covering politics on the NBC affiliate in Denver, Colorado, gives this relatively unknown politician his due. Schrager is the son of former CBA president and John Marshall Law School Dean Leonard Schrager.
Carr was the preeminent water rights attorney in Colorado before becoming governor. At the time he became a candidate for governor, somewhat reluctantly, as he was just establishing his private practice after serving as the U.S. Attorney for Colorado. After much discussion and convincing and setting out his terms for running, Carr became a gubernatorial candidate in 1938.
At his inauguration, Carr gave a controversial and blunt speech. He categorized the fiscal problems of the state as "symptoms of poor organization and bad management." Nine days later, he followed up with a radio address that was somber. It began, "Because you have refused to face the facts and because some of your representatives... seem inclined to dodge the issue." Upon taking office, Carr began to issue commutations and grant parole in cases he thought worthy, refusing to give in to "blistering public criticism."
Carr's good friend Lowell Thomas was a radio commentator who started pitching Carr as a Vice Presidential candidate in 1940. Thomas' efforts succeeded, but Carr refused the nomination. He felt that he had more reforming to do at home in Colorado.
Running for re-election in 1940, Carr won by 55,000 votes. At his second inaugural address, he stated: "We are not Republicans, we are not Democrats. We cannot be in this crisis. We are Coloradans. We are Americans." Carr strongly disliked the New Deal that FDR was implementing. Carr wanted less government, not more.
On December 7, 1941, America was attacked by Japanese war planes at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Within 24 hours of the attacks, Carr went on the radio again. He cautioned those in Colorado that "we have among us many of a new generation of Japanese people born in the United States-sincere, earnest, and loyal people." Despite the public's movement toward addressing what to do with the Japanese during 1942, Carr "was convinced any talk of internment--whatever word was being describe what was being suggested for American citizens--was simply wrong." The views of many state citizens started coming in via telegrams to Governor Carr. At the same time, pressure from the public demanded evacuation from California.
In late February 1942, Carr once again went to the airwaves, as public opinion continued to convey to Carr that Colorado should not be the moving location of the California evacuees. In defense of his opening Colorado to the evacuees, he firmly stated that "Colorado must never be charged with failure to cooperate in the gravest moment of our country's history. ...Colorado will not complain because she is asked to take care of a handful of undesirables whose presense on the coast might prove the difference between a successful invasion and the saving of our country..."
Carr welcomed the evacuees, while other western states closed theirs to the evacuees. The Denver Post, the paper in the state with the largest circulation, disagreed strongly with Carr's position the day after the speech, attacking Carr on many of its pages. His response was that he was to state what was true, not political sentiment.
In 1942, Carr ran for the United States Senate against Edwin C. Johnson, the incumbent. In a statement to the Federation of Labor, he supported his principles: "The Constitution starts out by saying, "We the people of the United States.' ...When it is suggested that American citizens be thrown into concentration camps, where they lose all the privileges of citizenship under that Constitution, then the principles of that great document are violated and lost."
The race for the Senate, which Carr lost, was one of the closest in Colorado state history. One columnist stated what many in the state strongly believe: "Had Pearl Harbor never occured...it is quite likely that Carr would have won." Yet Carr stuck to his principles, willing to lose it all for what he truly believed in. After that war, he noted that "[t]here is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism."
In 1950, Carr ran again for governor. He won the primary, but thereafter died from complications resulting from diabetes. His 1950 campaign "embraced his Japanese American stand of 1942." At his wake, the Japanese American Citizen's League sent a floral arrangement in the shape of boxing gloves, which was placed near Carr's coffin. The Denver Post chose Carr as the person of the century in 1999, stating, "What he did was take a stand. In one of America's darkest hours, he defended humanity and descency, a move that cost him a career and sent ripples of goodwill rolling through Colorado for years."
Schrager provides us with the story of "the principled politician." Carr's courage and leadership in a turbulent time of hysteria is a story that we all should be familiar with, providing us with some guidance on how our politicians might act principled.

[Carr] has richly earned his place in history as a man who defended liberty. We thank [author Adam] Schrager for telling his inspiring story.