The Case of Japanese Americans During World War II: Suppression of Civil Liberty
The book is part of a Symposium Series, and consists of six essays relating to the internment of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II. The editor of the book was himself an internee.
The first paper is “Individual Dissent and Personal Growth: A Kibei's Version,” written by the editor of the book. A kibei is a PJA (person of Japanese Ancestry) who was born in the U.S., but was sent back to Japan for a while to receive all or some of their education, and then they returned to the U.S. This was the group that was least trusted by U.S. authorities during the war.
The author says that the exclusion order violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, and he quotes it: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The exclusion proclamations managed to violate just about every part of that amendment, especially since the PJAs were not formally charged with anything, were not tried, and were not allowed to give any kind of defense.
The 1790 Naturalization Act permitted only Europeans to become naturalized. It was modified in 1870 to allow blacks to be naturalized. Orientals were not part of the act. The 1913 Alien Land Law prohibited Japanese from owning land in California. The 1924 Immigration Act prohibited Japanese from even entering the country.
Something I had not found elsewhere; in 1919, the state of California was trying to propose to Congress a new law that would strip the second-generation PJAs, who had citizenship in the U.S. by virtue of being born here, of that citizenship.
The author then talks about how racism led to the internment. Dillion S. Myer, the head of the WRA, apparently believed that Japanese Americans were not Americans at all, but were prisoners of war.
The author was at Topaz, and says he was treated harshly by an FBI agent since he was a kibei. The author was transferred to the Tule Lake camp when he answered “no” to the two controversial loyalty questionnaire questions. He says the camp was guarded by 31 officers, 899 troops, six tanks, various armed vehicles, and dozens of jeeps mounted with machine guns.
”On one occasion, about 400 young internees were thrown into the stockade, a prison within the prison. The security guards dragged many of them by their feet like animals, beat their heads with baseball bats, and left them unconscious on the concrete floor.”
On July 1, 1944, the Renunciation Bill was passed which allowed Americans to renounce their citizenship during time of war. The author also talks about the Internal Security Act of 1950, which would have given the government the authority to intern whoever they wanted, basically. It was repealed in 1971.
The second paper is “Tule Lake Concentration Camp and Educational Growth: A Christian's Version.”
The author was another of the internees. While at Tule Lake, the loyalty questionnaire was administered, and the camp director threatened the people with twenty years in prison if they did not complete the questionnaire.
The author talks about life at Tule Lake, and discusses the relocation office that listed jobs anywhere in the U.S. except for the west coast. Much of the information that was listed proved to be inaccurate. He then talks about the post-war period and how the PJAs still faced a lot of discrimination in California.
The third paper is “War-time Evacuation and Educational Growth.”
The author talks about his life before the internment and how his family was affected by the hatreds and by the pre-internment process. He includes information on some of the typical newspaper articles, with one saying that the PJA in California should be “under guard to the last man and woman and to hell with habeas corpus.” Another said that he had “no patience with the enemy or with anyone whose veins carrier his blood.”
A California congressman said that all the PJAs should be placed in “concentration camps,” and that the Nisei should consider it their contribution to the war effort.
He also writes about the war years and how he ended up in the U.S. military, and his family's return to California after the war. He also includes details on how the family was still met by tremendous discrimination.
The fourth essay is “Treason Against the U.S. Government? The Case of Tomoya Kawakita.”
This is a very significant chapter. It concerns a Nisei who was stranded in Japan at the start of the war. He ended up employed as a translator at a POW camp. After the war, when he returned to the U.S., he was charged with treason, found guilty, and sentenced to death.
The paper talks about what Kawakita did while at the camp. When the mines where the POWs worked were closed, Kawakita was transferred to clerical duties. At the close of the war he helped guide former POWs , a scenic area, and stayed at the camp until all the POWs had left, despite the fact that the camp controllers had all left.
There were around 3000 Nisei that had been trapped in Japan at the start of the war, and they were not allowed to return to the U.S. at first. The paper then details how Kawakita ended up being accused and tried, even though he was not actually employed by the Japanese government but by a Nickel Industry firm.
The JACL was indifferent to his case, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars actively worked against him. So did the American Legion of California. The paper then goes on about how he spent sixteen years in prison before finally being expelled from the U.S. and returning to Japan.
Part of the problem was some information he had about corruption going on and it was those people who were involved with that who worked to get Kawakita charged and convicted. The POWs from the camp were actually in support of him.
The last article is “Japanese American Internment in Arkansas: A Dilemma in National Loyalty and State Identity.
One reason two camps were made far to the east of the of the others was that the U.S. government already owned some land in Arkansas. The camps were not finished being built by the time the refugees arrived. The surrounding area was swampy rather than desert, and had numerous poisonous snakes and malaria-carrying mosquitos.
The various news media seemed to be against the internees in Arkansas. This includes instances of internees being shot by the locals. A state senator from Arkansas said that, if it were up to him, he would “put them all on a ship and have the ship torpedoed.”
The state passed an anti-alien land law like California's, where PJAs would not be allowed to own land in Arkansas, but the law was deemed unconstitutional and was overturned.
The paper talks about how various state Governors reacted to the news that their states would be housing the internees, with the governor of Kansas saying he would use state police to stop them from entering.
One thing that made the camps in Arkansas different was the rigid caste system that was already in place; namely, the fact that the blacks were strongly discriminated against with separate facilities. This, then, raised the question of the natural order of things; instead of Whites on top, then Blacks, it was now a more complicated issue. Did PJAs come above the blacks, or below the blacks, in the caste system?
The internees were even called “yellow Negroes” by some in the state. A state senator wanted to ban all members of the “Mongolian” race from state schools. The higher-education facilities in Arkansas refused to admit PJAs. When German and Italian POWs were brought into the state, the locals treated them better than they did the PJA internees.
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