Issei and Nisei: The Internment Years

1967

Issei were the first-generation Japanese Americans, those who were not entitled to American citizenship. The Nisei are their children, who were fully American citizens since they were born in this country.

The book is written by a Japanese minister who had done pastoral work in Japan for four years prior to the war. He came to Seattle and would be staying there (in theory) for two years, then returning to Japan.

He was to find that many of the Japanese-Americans he ministered to could not speak Japanese. A major cultural split had already occurred, the Issei speaking Japanese, primarily, and the Nisei speaking English.

He then goes in to a little of the history of Japanese immigration into the U.S., noting that they, like other potential immigrants, viewed coming to the U.S. as a chance to make their fortune, so to say. Yet even though the immigrants lived in the U.S., they were not really of the U.S.:

"He was in American but not of America. The Japanese community came to be an insulated cultural island in American society, not by choice but as a result of rejection and social ostracism by American society."

(My comment: This paralleled, to some degree, what every immigrant group faced when they came to the U.S. which is why there would be sections of Irish, sections of Italians, sections of Germans and so on in the cities. The advantage they had, though, was that these groups, albeit from foreign countries, were still white; the Japanese-Americans were distinctly "other" by their appearance.)

"The Japanese was enthusiastically welcomed both in Hawaii and in California-as a source of cheap labor. So long as he remained cheap labor-a human machine, as it were-he continued to be welcome. When he began to show more than casual signs that he was not forever going to be cheap labor and to indicate that he would assert his economic independence, self-respect, and human dignity, the anti-Japanese propaganda started."

The Japanese who emigrated felt, in general, that Western culture was superior to their own. They wanted to be accepted by American society and thus mimicked the U.S. cultural approach rather than their own Japanese approach. The more than liked the American society, the less they tended to like their own.

The author notes that the immigrants were so focused on their future in America (with a possible retirement back to Japan, maybe), that they even paid little attention to what was going on in Japan. (This helped lead to the later distrust by the Japanese government of the Japanese-American immigrants, so they ended up being distrusted by Japan and the U.S., both, at the same time.)

Apparently a lot of the Japanese were not as closely linked as one would think; there was a lot of divisiveness in the community where people from a particular area would link up with people from the same area and avoid people from different areas of Japan. He also notes the Japanese had a sense of inferiority to the white people, but felt superior to other ethnic groups in the U.S.

For the Issei, they knew there were Japanese born and would be treated differently and adapted to that; the Nisei, on the other hand, were born in this country, were citizens of this country but weren't treated by the non-Japanese population as if they were still anything but Japanese. The dreams the Issei had for their children, expecting things to improve once they became full American citizens, did not come to pass.

This also resulted in the Nisei tendency to distance themselves from anything Japanese, hoping it would speed their acceptance into American society. This, of course, led to some tensions with the Issei.

Another source of division was age. The Issei were getting older while the Nisei were not yet old enough to be fully adult and the normal differences in perception based on age in any society were worsened by the orientation of the Issei towards an idealized version of Japan and the Nisei's acceptance of American society and rejection of Japanese society.

He recounts an incident when he was driving at night and his car was hit head-on by a drunk driver. Neither man was injured, but he was later arrested by the Army for being on the road late at night (and being Japanese).

He then goes into the hearings about relocation and the reaction of the Japanese-American community. He goes into the preparations for departure, something which involved even him as he was being relocated also.

He's then moved from the assembly area to an actual internment camp. He ended up at the Tule Lake camp and shortly after arriving there the military asked him to take part in a propaganda broadcast to Japan where he would say how well they were being treated at the camp (at which he had just arrived). This was supposed to help cause the Japanese to treat American POWs better. He didn't care for the idea and neither did the others who were called to the meeting with him.

He goes into a lot of very interesting details on how the camp was organized and the effect of demoralization and breakdown of family units at the camp. Everything and everyone was affected. Issei males, who had been used to being the rulers of the family and the breadwinners were now left with nothing to rule over. The Issei women, freed of the drudgery of their daily housework (to some degree, at least), began to expand their own horizons. The schoolchildren did not behave as well as they would have in Japan since the parents no longer took much interest in the schools and the schools themselves were not that great, not counting the fact they were all behind barbed wire with guns pointed at them.

There was also a third group of people, the Kibei, who had been born in America but were sent to Japan for their schooling, and then they returned to America. They had been in the schools, though, during a militant period in Japan and when they came back to the U.S. their loyalties were more with Japan than with the U.S.

He writes about the beginning of the relocations outside of the camps, starting with the college students and then those who were needed for seasonal work.

The next major shake-up for the camps was the military trying to recruit some of the young men to join the American military. Although many of the Nisei volunteered (especially to be interpreters), the Issei opposed their volunteering but could do nothing to actually stop it.

The next thing he discusses is the loyalty questionnaire and the problems it caused. He later visited a number of cities where the Nisei from the camps would be resettled. When he returned, though, it was to the fact that Tule Lake was being changed from an internment camp to a segregated center for "disloyals."

He eventually left Tule Lake (before the riot) and visited the other centers, reporting on them to the WRA.

This is a fascinating book, a first-person tale and an excellent examination of the psychology behind the life at the relocation centers. It also reads easily; it's not a dry academic examination of the problem but a personal recounting of someone who had been through it.

---

Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page