LOS ANGELES (UP) Roger Baldwin, American Civil Liberties union national director, predicted Monday army orders evacuating Japanese-Americans from the west coast soon would be lifted either by the U.S. supreme court or by the army itself.

Less than half the evacuees would return to the coast, he estimated, pointing out several thousand already had settled in large eastern cities.

He declared the exclusion order was not based on military necessity but was the "unfortunate result of the ancient prejudice of such groups as the Associated Farmers . . . and certain labor unions which resented the competing cheap labor of the Japanese."

Baldwin sharply criticized treatment of Mexican nationals in California and the southwest, which he said made the Good Neighbor policy look like a "good inferior neighbor policy."