America's Japanese Hostages: The World War II Plan for a Japanese-Free Latin America

Thomas Connell, 2002

The book starts off describing the type of anti-Japanese-American hysteria that was taking place on the West Coast prior to the internment program. The book, he says, will deal with the Issei and Nisei in Latin America and how they were treated, ending up being shipped to U.S. internment camps and what happened to them afterwards.

The author starts off by noting that a lot of the anti-Japanese feeling right after Pearl Harbor was really a way of refusing to admit that the U.S. military simply was unprepared and, to a degree, incompetent as far as being prepared for a possible attack on Hawaii. Easier to blame "sneaky Japanese" then take personal blame for not doing what was necessary to prevent such an attack from taking place.

"The United States managed to manipulate domestic and international agencies and laws, under the auspices of ‘hemispheric security,' in order to assemble a Japanese human resource pool from which the United States could draw from and trade for nonofficial U.S. civilians."

In other words, we were getting together a group of hostages to trade for other hostages.

Around 2,264 Japanese were deported from Latin America and brought to the U.S. against their will and then interned. Peru didn't want their's back and so many of the Peruvian Japanese were sent to Japan.

This is not the first book to tie a particular radio program to the climate in which the internments took place. The program? H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" which caused thousands to panic. People who turned in after the opening missed the fact that it was a radio play and many thought that there were actually Martians invading the U.S. (They didn't notice that the events were telescoped together and couldn't have been taking place real-time anyhow.) It was so bad that the police came to the studio during the play and had them make another announcement that it was just a program, not an actual event.

Anyhow, this play helped to generate a climate of fear and fear of a Martian invasion and fear of a Japanese invasion ended up sort of blurring into one great fear. The author also notes various Hollywood productions that led to a growing distrust of the Japanese.

The basic program was based on a law from 1798, the Alien Enemy Act.

The author next covers what happened in Panama, and how there was a fear that the Japanese would sabotage and/or attack the Panama Canal to slow down the movement of U.S. military ships.

The author then discusses the history of Japanese immigration into Latin America. He also writes about the Peruvian hostility towards the Japanese, and is dealing with this is an historical fashion, going all the way back to around 1900. The "barber's incident" is explained and how this further complicated the situation for the Japanese immigrants. Meanwhile the FBI began gathering data on Latin American Japanese.

The author goes into considerable detail examining the relationship of Japan to Peru, in particular, and whether or not they were threatening Peru. Then he goes into the history of how Peru took over Japanese businesses and how the Japanese sort of disappeared into U.S. custody. Where they were shipped and what life was like once they got there is the next thing covered in the book.

Photos of some of the holding camps are included.

The book then continues with the history of the movement of Japanese from Latin American, and especially Peru, to the U.S., what happened once they got here and how Peru did not want them back and someone had to figure out what to do with the internees then; ship them to Japan or what?

A very, very detailed book and a book covering a little-examined aspect of the internment camp program.



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