Beyond Prejudice: A Story of the Church and Japanese Americans
1946
The book was published for the Home Missions Council of North America, the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, and the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America.
The book starts right off with a very interesting statement: "We have become accustomed to doing things in wartime that are contradictory to Christian thinking and action, and the danger is that we may come to accept them as the normal procedure of life. This has happened within the United States of America."
It goes on: "Our treatment of the Japanese Americans is one of the most tragic stories in our history. Upon no other minority group in our midst have we inflicted a greater injustice in such a brief period of time. Upon a group of people whose only offense was their racial visibility we inflicted shame and suffering. We are now beginning to see the injustice of these hardships, and to seek some means of restitution. We took them from their homes without due process of the law; we put them behind barbed wire with a soldier every hundred yards to keep them in; in many instances these people lost the savings of a lifetime. We are told that this was ‘protective custody.' This sounds more humane than a concentration camp, but have we thought of the implications? From whom were we protecting these people? From you and me."
The book starts off recounting the basics of Japanese-American internment history. The book notes "There is no group of citizens that has borne more mental and economic hardship during this war than the Japanese Americans."
The author says that many Christian churches "...have risen above the hysteria of war and rendered services to the evacuee...", although not all churches acted in such a good manner.
The book notes that the first Japanese church in America was in San Francisco in 1877. By the time Japanese immigration was stopped there were 40 Japanese churches in California and a few in other states covering a wide variety of the Christian faiths.
The author says the Japanese ministers were evangelical and he has great praise for them. The Japanese churches were strongly against gambling and prostitution. During the time they came out strongly against those two things the had their first martyr, someone on the West Coast assassinated during the campaign.
The author then says that there was a general indifference of Christian leaders in the U.S. at the time to the problems of the Japanese and other Orientals and that this helped contribute to their segregation. The three churches mentioned earlier put out a statement after Dec. 7 calling for the public to remember that many of the Japanese Americans were loyal citizens. One thing that would have caused a greater need for help from the churches, among the Christian Japanese-Americans, was fact that FBI roundups were taking away heads of families, leaving their wives and children in chaos and great uncertainty.
He then describes what happened on Terminal Island to the fishermen. Her describes how some people took advantage of the Japanese Americans and offered them very little money for their household goods when they had to get ready to leave.
The book spends a lot of time talking about how the church was involved in aid efforts in the assembly centers and internment camps, and how the Army allowed only 3 religions to be practiced - Protestant, Catholic and Buddhist.
J.Edgar Hoover apparently reported that there had been no sabotage committed in Hawaii prior to December 7, on that date, or after that date despite the rumors to the contrary. In 1942, sugar beet growers in some areas found themselves critically short of workers due to the war, so they contacted the WRA and asked if some of the internees could be released to help in the fields. The project was a major success.
The author then talks about resettlement programs and the involvement of the church. There was a program to have ministers talk from their pulpits during services about the resettlement of the Japanese-Americans. The author notes there were some ministers refused to go along because they hated the Japanese.
There are numerous specific incidents cited where various Christian groups and individuals did what they could to help out on the resettlement program. The author notes there was an incident in New Jersey where a farmer hired four Issei farmers to work for him, but neighbors didn't like that and someone started fires in his outbuildings and threatened violence against him. This led to newspapers covering the Japanese Americans coming to the East part of the country. The governor of New Jersey said that they were not welcome in his state. The governor of Ohio followed suit. New York also had some protests against resettling Japanese-Americans there.
The book talks about Colorado and efforts there, noting that the governor was the opposite of the others, speaking out for the internees and the Colorado Council of Churches in early summer 1942 also spoke out on helping them. There was political trouble there as in other areas, though, to try and block Japanese from owning land in the state. In the end the amendment to the constitution of the state was defeated.
The book then talks about the Japanese Americans who were resettled being integrated into existing Caucasian Christian churches and the problems that existed in doing that. After that the book talks about the relocation of students from the camps.
The book then discusses Japanese-Americans in the military, including the 100th battalion, and the loyalty questionnaire that caused so much trouble. The scheduled closing days for the camps were as follows: Oct. 1, 1945: A Gila unit and two units of Poston. Oct. 15th: Granada. Nov. 1st: Heart Mountain and another Gila unit. Dec. 1st: Another Poston unit; Manzanar; Dec. 15th: Rohwer (Jerome had already been closed.)
The book quotes a Yale Law School Professor talking about the exclusion process, and it's very significant what he says:
"The Japanese exclusion program rests on five propositions of the utmost potential menace:
"1. Protective custody, extending over three or four years, is a permitted form of imprisonment in the United States.
"2. Political opinions, not criminal acts, may contain enough danger to justify such imprisonment.
"3. Men, women, and children of a given racial group, both Americans and resident aliens, can be presumed to possess the kind of dangerous ideas which require their imprisonment.
"4. In time of war or emergency the military-perhaps without even the concurrence of the legislature-can decide what political opinions require imprisonment, and which groups are infected with them.
"5. The decision of the military can be carried out without indictment, trial, examination, jury, the confrontation of witnesses, counsel for the defense, or any of the other safeguards of the Bill of Rights."
( Which is something we need to be concerned about today, still.)
This is a very interesting book, especially since it was written right after the events and provides some insights not found in books written decades later. It's also a very specific-subject book, namely, the work of the Christian churches in relation to the entire Japanese-American "problem" of the times and it shows how, in many cases, individuals from the various Christian churches did their best to help out the internees. Definitely an interesting book.
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