Preface Hating people is something that has become sort of a fine art in the human race. It extends probably as far back as human history goes, and it continues right on to the present day. People have hated other people for any number of reasons. There are a different nationality; their skin color is different; they are a different gender; they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered; they are of a different political party; they are of a different religion; they are of a different age; they talk different; they are of a different social class; they are immigrants; the list goes on and on and on. In today's world we see hatred directed particularly against illegal immigrants and those who are gay/lesbian/bi-sexual/transgendered and, to what is still a fairly high degree, people who are black. Remember how many people opposed the election of Obama because he was black? You can go back just a little in history, to the election of John F. Kennedy, when many people opposed him because he was, gasp, a Catholic. If you go back to the late 1800's on up though World War II, many people in western states hated the Chinese and, after them, the Japanese. There is absolutely no doubt at all that such racial hatred played a role in the internment of 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were actually full-blown American citizens. So, in this work, we'll examine how the camp newsletters carried reports of prejudice against persons of Japanese ancestry. However, prejudice does not arise full-blown overnight, so we will also examine some older history works (briefly) that relate to prejudice against the Japanese, and those should help the reader see how California and other western states ended up wanting the Japanese in their midst kicked out. We'll see how groups like the Asiatic Exclusion League led their own campaign of hate. We'll see how some writers, even in the early 1900's, fully expected a war between the United States and Japan, long before such a war actually occurred. The world may be a big place, but there is no room in it for hatreds of this sort. None at all. It is my firm opinion that the human race can never been considered truly civilized until all traces of such hatred vanish from all over the globe. We'll start out by noting examples of prejudice during the internment camp years in the Western states. After that will be a section on the record-keeping-obsessed Asiatic Exclusion League who not only hated Asiatics but other groups as well. Then we'll look at examples of prejudice from the Eastern states. Next will come a brief review of some books from 1900 through 1919, then examples of prejudice in Canada and Hawaii. A 1920 book will be next, and then after that we'll look at prejudice groups and individuals such as the certain American Legion posts. 1921 books follow, then examples of prejudice amongst governmental individuals. More old books after that, a misc. section, and then reviews of books written after the internment camps were closed. It's a good bit to cover, and I'll admit freely I don't have every single here that I would like to have, but I still want to get out what I do have so others can read the history of this prejudice and, perhaps, realize that prejudice is not just a present-day problem, that it is something that has always been and, until we change our way of thinking, something that may always continue to be. Live long and prosper.
I found articles covering examples of prejudice from eight different states west of the Mississippi River. California, of course, had the most examples, as that state was basically the leader in the anti-Japanese campaign waged both before the internment camps and even during the internment camps. The prejudice did not develop out of whole cloth. First came the Chinese immigrants who settled in this country, who succeeded fairly well, and who were met with racial prejudice resulting in their being dumped to the bottom of the social ladder. Then the Japanese came, first settling in Hawaii in good numbers, and then in the continental United States. There was then a most interesting split in the destiny of the two groups. Those who settled in Hawaii worked hard, succeeded, and became a large part of the labor group of the area. There was already a mix of peoples in Hawaii and the Japanese who settled there did not have to suffer from any great amount of prejudice. There was some, yes, but nothing compared to what went on in the continental states. There was a tremendous amount of suspicion and accusations against them when Pearl Harbor happened, but efficient work on the part of the military coupled with some very intelligent leadership resulted in a relatively small number of persons of Japanese ancestry being rounded up. The vast majority lived under martial law, as did everything else. They did their jobs. They helped repair Pearl Harbor. When the time came for the Nisei to be allowed to serve in the Armed Forces, they volunteered freely and fought bravely. Hawaii was not a paradise, but it was a situation that did work well for everyone concerned. Matters were approached differently, and the end result was different. There were a few people around, though, who wanted all those of Japanese ancestry shipped out of Hawaii and to the mainland camps, but those with more than bricks inside their skulls realized that (1) such an effort would take a great number of ships that were needed far more in fighting the war, and that (2)these people formed a major portion of the labor force on the islands. Removing all of them to the mainland would crippled the Hawaiian economy and could very well have a very bad effect on the war effort. So, it was pretty much live-and-let live on the islands. The west coast of the U.S., though, was totally different. The states along the coastline had the most ingrained prejudice against the Japanese. The immigrants had proved they could work hard and succeed economically. They could work with farmland white farmers didn't want and make it produce. They made money. So, the white farmers who couldn't do the same grew to envy and hate the Japanese more and more. There was also a fear that there would be a Japanese invasion of the West Coast early in the war. Our western coastal area was very poorly defended. If there had been a full-scale invasion there is little doubt that the Japanese Army would have triumphed, at least for a while. But Japan was thousands of miles away. There were no islands in the middle of the ocean, like the Hawaiian islands, that the Japanese could use as a supply base. The Aleutians proved to be far more difficult and much more inhospitable weather-wise than the Japanese expected. Neither country was ever able to use those islands off the Alaskan coastline as a path towards invasion of the other country. So, there was no way that Japan could have carried out an effective invasion over that vast ocean distance with no main supply base. They did make a few raids, of a type, on the coast, but those never amounted to much of anything at all. They did try to use their balloon bombs to set the forests on fire, but those also were basically a massive failure. As the war went on it became more and more obvious that Japan would never been able to wage a direct attack on the West Coast, as the U.S. forces were now engaging Japan on their defensive perimeter and then further inwards, moving ever forward towards the Japanese main islands themselves. If the Japanese had made their attack on Pearl Harbor a much more complete attack (such as blowing up the oil storage tanks), and then followed it with an actual invasion of the island, and managed to take over the Hawaiian islands, then a west coast invasion might have become possible, but the Japanese attack was to sink ships and destroy planes, all of which could and were replaced. It was pretty much the high point of the war for Japan, as far as the U.S. was concerned, since they never really got closer to the U.S. than they had at that time. Like the battle of Gettysburg was the South's highest point in the Civil War, only to be followed by a steady decline afterwards, Pearl Harbor was the Japanese high point, only to be followed by a steady and very, very bloody decline. One of the interesting lapses of logic in the whole internment thing was the idea that the Japanese were not loyal to the U.S. and needed to be put away somewhere safe. If that were true, then why weren't the Japanese east of the Mississippi similarly put into internment camps? If the Japanese weren't trustworthy in the west, then why would they be trustworthy in the east? Yet this was never done. Another interesting matter of logic is this. The Germans and the Italians had started the war in the first place. The Germans made speedy progress and seemed almost invincible. There was a fairly strong pro-German movement in this country called The Bund. Yet there was no call for rounding up people of German or Italian heritage. That one fact alone shows that the rounding up of the Japanese was, at least in part, motivated by racial prejudice. (Yes, some Germans and Italians were rounded up, as were the original group of Japanese business leaders, preachers, teachers, etc. The Germans and Italians were not rounded in the the numbers or with the same efficiency as the Japanese, though.) One can go on and on trying to figure out the whys, but the basic fact is that it happened, period. Looking at specific examples of prejudice from the time can help us try to understanding the thinking of the people of that time. So, let's get this underway by looking at the state of Arizona, much in the news in these days due to their effort to deal with illegal immigration of Mexicans. The same types of arguments used against them today are the ones used against the Japanese back in the first half of the last century. I. Arizona
Examples of Prejudice from States West of the Mississippi
Asiatic Exclusion League
Examples of Prejudice from States East of the Mississippi
Books from 1900 to 1920
Examples of Prejudice from Canada and Hawaii
Groups and Specific People
Books of the 1920's
Material dealing with politicians, the government, etc.
Books About Canada and Internment
Books about Specific Internment Camps
Books about Internment Camps in General
Books that are Anti-Japanese books
Books about Legal Matters
Books on Military Matters
Books about Japanese Americans in General
Books on Specific Individuals
Wartime Exile: The Exclusion of the Japanese Americans from the West Coast
Conclusion
Preface
Examples of Prejudice from States West of the Mississippi.
From the Gila News-Courier of May 27,1943 comes this article:
ARIZONA STATE LAW AIMED AT EVACUEE ENTERPRISES: An Arizona State law which states that anyone having business dealings with any persons whose movements are restricted must give notice of such business transactions by triple publication in a newspaper and file a copy of the notices in the office of the Secretary of State, was enacted in the closing session of the 16th legislature. The law had been in effect since March 23.
'The law applies to any person who enters into any contract, agreement or understanding written or verbal, involving business relations with persons of restricted movement, or who purchases, sells, trades or or exchanges with such a person any real personal property, commodity or thing, except goods, wares or merchandise for personal consumption', according to the Phoenix Gazette.
Attorneys say the statute is so broad in its prohibitions that a Japanese cannot have a tooth pulled or a haircut without a publication of notice.
The Standard Oil Company was fined the maximum fee of $1000 for selling $9.25 worth of gasoline to a Japanese without publishing notice of transaction.
Another economic way to try and deal with those you don't like is to make sure that they are not allowed to live anywhere you don't want them. The Minidoka Irrigator of May 29,1943, carried such an article, again about Arizona.
ARIZONA PROTESTS EVACUEE INFLUX INTO RICH LANDS: Stating that 'Arizona must be determined to repress a developing Japanese community within the very heard of our fertile valleys' a special committee called on Governor Sidney P. Osborn and asked him to appoint a group to study the problems growing out of the release of Japanese from relocation camps.
The government's program provides for release of about 100 Japanese per week from Rivers, Ariz. and 250 per week from Poston, Ariz. the two centers which house 50,000 of the evacuees. 'Already the Japanese population in Arizona far exceeds the Japanese population before the war' the committee said.
Arizona faces grave dancer of 'racial antagonism and economic disaster through settlement of the irrigated areas by large numbers of Japanese, the committee reported.
Okay. So now you can't sell much of anything to the Japanese Americans, and you don't want them moving into certain areas. the next logical step, then, is to block them from resettling in anywhere in the state at all. The Gila News-Courier of June 22, 1943, carries such an article:
NO EVACUEES IN STATE AFTER WAR. Senator Ernest W. McFarland of Arizona, who visited Rivers Friday and Poston Thursday last week, declared on Sunday that 'it is most important that the Japanese who were residents of other states prior to Pearl Harbor shall not be permitted to locate in Arizona after the war.'
Senator McFarland's statement-often stated by Arizona officials-made no dent on the project consciousness. It was recalled here that the WRA had issued orders that evacuees would no longer be permitted to relocate in Arizona from the relocation centers. Issuance of day passes to Phoenix and other Arizona cities remained on the absolute minimum basis.
(The same article was carried in the Poston Chronicle of July 6, 1943.)
So, if trying to block out people legally isn't enough, then what is next? Violence. Good old American-grown violence as noted in this article from the Granada Pioneer of June 23, 1943, in relations to a group testifying in front of the Dies committee, which was about as rabid an anti-Japanese committee as Washington, D. C. could come up with.
VIEWS DIVIDED: A delegation of citizens from Phoenix, Ariz. warned the Dies sub-committee that bloodshed will follow continued release of Japanese from relocation centers to settle in Arizona.
A group of ministers pleaded for tolerance, and a church group said most of the opposition to the Japanese had been whipped up by the press.
Then there was the, to me, infamous incident of the barber shop. The Gila News-Courier of November 18, 1944 carried an article on what happened. A more complete article was carried on the same day in the Granada Pioneer newsletter. Following is the one from Granada:
CRIPPED JOE NISEI EJECTED BY A BARBER: Poston, Ariz.-A crippled Japanese American Army private, wearing many service ribbons, was forcibly ejected from a civilian barber shop in Parker, Ariz., because the owner objected to his ancestry, reported the War relocation Authority last Saturday.
Andy Hale, the barber, admitted he had ordered the nisei soldier Thursday (Nov.9) not to come into his shop but denied shoving or forcing the infantryman. However, the WRA stated theveteran, walking with a crutch, had been shoved from the establishment.
Hale, a native of Fort Worth, Texas, and a father of three sons in the armed services, said a sign on the front of his shop reads: 'Japs keep out, you rat.'
'I didn't want none of their business,' he asserted. 'They may close me up but I sure as hell won't work on a Jap.' He said it made no difference to him whether they (nisei) were civilians or soldiers, 'they look just alike to me.'
The soldier was Pvt. Raymond Matsuda, 25, former resident of Hawaii, who was shot in the knee on the Italian front July 22, according to Mrs. Pauline brown, Poston relocation center reports officer.
Matsuda was searing seven army ribbons and badges including the combat Infantryman's Badge and the Purple Heart. He came here from the Army's Hammond General Hospital at Modesto, Calif. to visit his friends. He had served two years overseas.
Matsuda is reported to have given the following version of the incident: Matsuda went into the shop without notice the sign and was confronted by Hale, who said 'Can't you see that sign?'
The nisei soldier replied he hadn't noticed it but even so he was wearing a US Army uniform. Hale then showed him out the door.
The Manzanar Free Press in its article of November 22, 1944, added that Matsuda had served with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
This rather rude act did not go unnoticed. The Gila News-Courier of December 13, 1944, ran this article:
READERS SYMPATHIZE: Many letters of sympathy from nearly every state were received by Pvt. Raymond Matsuda of Poston who had been ejected from a barber shop in Parker, Ariz., recently, according to an AP release.
Parts of the letters from some of the people to Matsuda, a war-crippled Nisei, read;
'You are just as good an American as any of us.'
'There are a good many boys like you who are or will be coming home again. Some of them are mixed nationalities, some German, some Japanese, some Chinese...You're all our boys.'
'I would like to have you spend your convalescence at our farm home where you would be most welcome.'
'It is not the color of the skin or the shape of the nose that makes people decent or good Americans.'
This is, of course, very similar to the type of discrimination that Blacks encountered all the time, especially in the South, what with the separate water fountains, separate facilities, riding on the back of the bus and so on. It involves the issue of what rights does a person who owns a public business have vs. what rights does the general public have.
It's a complex issue and reminds me of a statement from Ambassador Kosh in the science fiction series Babylon 5. He said something like this: 'Truth is a three-edged sword. There is one side's truth, the other side's truth, and finally what the real truth is.'
To my mind, if a person runs a public business then they should serve the public. If you aren't willing to do that, then make your business totally private or stay out of business all together. Matsuda had served his country well, and had been badly injured in the process. He deserved respect, not hate. The problem is that there are some people to whom common courtesy and decency don't apply, who allow their own hatreds to overcome them. I wonder why the barber didn't have a sign in his front window saying 'No Germans or Italians allowed inside.'
II. California
This state will take the most time of all to cover since they were without doubt the leaders in the anti-Japanese movement in this country. They led in hate and they led in incidences of violence towards Japanese Americans released from the internment camps with a sizable number of shootings, house burnings, and even an attempt to blow up a house. (This is all covered in my work on Violence in this interment camp series.)
The first article I found was in the January 3, 1943 issue of the Heart Mountain Sentinel.
CALIFORNIA RUNS TRUE TO FORM BY TOPPING RACE BAITING 'CROP': The sun which Californians claim casts its rays of health and vitality only on the Golden State continues to shine out west. And a good thing it does, for California crackpots and rabble-rousers burning up energy, ranging and fuming to 'keep the Japs out of California' can bask in their salubrious sunshine and replenish their state of precious energy.
And all the while evacuees in relocation centers look with bored amusement upon the antics of Californians who have run amuck in the 'good' of race hysteria.
The rantings are all so much wasted energy now. Californians need not exert themselves to prevent the return of evacuees.
Evacuees know when they are not wanted. They are not looking back. Their eyes are projected eastward, where people are in control of their emotions, where gred, avarice and spite play minor roles in the drama of human relations.
A small nisei girl, in the days before evacuation, asked her mother 'Why do we have to go?”
'Because we're not wanted.'
'Why aren't we wanted?'
'Because we raise better crops, catch more fish, operate better markets and grow more beautiful flowers,' replied the mother.
It is sickening to realize that evacuation was the price for industry, for enterprise, for doing things better than the whites.
And evacuees knew that if accomplishment is to be rewarded with covetousness and hate, there is no incentive to live and to achieve in such a state.
And once you're not wanted, you'll never be wanted again.
California's pattern of living and thinking is designed to hate Japanese. It's a new and different California, in an ugly, unbelievable sort of way.
A nisei girl relocatee in the midwest was invited to take part in an International Fellowship program at which participants were to speak on a foreign country.
The nisei girl was asked to speak about Japan. 'I don't know anything about Japan,' she said. 'But I'll tell you about another foreign country. I'll talk about California.'
California is foreign, and will always be to evacuees. In the seething cauldron that is California since Pearl Harbor, the scum has risen to the surface, overflowing and overrunning the Golden State contaminating and putrefying, giving it a sour, diseased, unrecognizable complexion.
'It sure is desolating to realize that your native state has turned against you, that you're not wanted,' said a nisei. 'Once we loved California, but now...'
The trouble with California is that it doesn't do anything in half measures,' said another. 'It always goes for the jackpot. It builds the biggest racetrack, the roomiest stadium, the most sprawling estates. It grows the biggest oranges and grapefruits. And even if they aren't the biggest and the best, California really believes they are. It's a complex. And so when they go in for race hatred, watch out; they really do it up brown.'
At this distance, evacuees can see straight through California as though it were cellophane. And they said to themselves 'No wonder California was held up for ridicule among the family of states as a simple child worshiping dazzling glory and imaginary fame and colossal figures.'
Today it is making a first-class spectacle of itself by leading the parade in race hysterical. California wants to grab front page space, been at the cost of making a fool of itself.
...Evacuees would do well to forget California completely, to lock its memory in their chamber of horrors. They've just lost a friend who ran true to form in the pinch; they will find a better and truer friend on the rockbound Atlantic, on the rolling plains of the expansive midwest, and on the hills and dales of the stretching Alleghenies.'
One of the ways to try to get people to hate a certain group is to make it look like that group gets special treatment and is better off. This was done in a series of attacks charging that the internees got better food and more money than those on the outside. I found a good example of this is the Nevada State Journal of January 10, 1943. Rep. F. Leroy Johnson, a republican of California, charged tat there were numerous reports 'that huge shipments of scare foods-including eggs, butter, sugar, coffee and meats' were being given to the internees. He claimed the teachers in the camp schools received higher pay than those outside. He claimed there were immoral conditions in some of the camps. Johnson wanted an official investigation into his charges.
Investigations were not enough for the Californians, though. They wanted legal action and they move to get it. The Rohwer Outpost of January 23, 1943, can an article called CAL POLITICIANS DRAFT RACIAL LAWS.' They wanted the U.S. Congress to amend the U.S. constitution so that no citizens of Japanese descent could become citizens, even those born here, and any of them still holding citizenship in Japan would be stopped from becoming a citizen in the U.S.
They also wanted Congress to 'enact adequate legislation to prohibit all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and native born, from owning, enjoying, using or occupying agricultural lands, and to restrict all persons of Japanese ancestry from becoming citizens of the United States.'
Another California Senator wanted the state personnel board to 'push disbarment proceedings against the state's discharged civil service workers.'
The first article dealing with a section of California banning the return of the evacuees was in the Granada Pioneer of April 12, 1943.
SANTA BARBARA BANS RETURN: Unanimous objections to any move to release interned Japanese and return them to the Pacific coast was voiced by the County Board of Supervisors.
C.W. Bradbury, first district supervisor, stated it would hurt the morale of local farm workers and be injurious to the food production program.
Harold Ickes was the Secretary of the Interior and he took a pretty fair and solid stand on the evacuees, and did not approve of the prejudice. He hired some Japanese to work on his farm which didn't go over well with people in Los Angeles. A group called The Pacific League wrote him, saying they wanted him to return the workers to the camps. 'How do you think the mothers and fathers of these gallant lads (who fought at Bataan and Corregidor)...will feel about your coddling of the Japs on your farm...?'
This was in an article entitled GROUP DEMANDS ICKES RETURN JAPS TO CAMP in the Granada Pioneer issue of May 5, 1943.
The May 15, 1943 issue of the Grnada Pioneer covered yet another California hate group and its demands.
PACIFIC COAST-MOVE TO PREVENT RETURN: (Los Angeles)Under the sponsorship of the Americanism Education League, a campaign designed to enlist the cooperation of all Pacific coast cities and counties in a movement to block the return of the Japanese to the coastal area was launched here.
The program which the league is asking Coast cities and counties to support has the following objectives:
1. To prevent the return of Japanese to any coastal area for the duration.
2. To transfer control of all Japanese in America to the U.S. Army.
3. Abandonment of the idea of creating Japanese combat units.
4. Place every able-bodied Japanese male in agricultural work in the interior, under strict Army control.
5. Release all Japanese farm implements, cars and tires on Cost for wartime use under the law of 'eminent domain.'
6. Release impounded money (nearly 200 million) belonging to the government of Japan for use in above projects.
7. Create a commission to study the economic and sociological factors involved in the postwar disposition of the Japanese.
The same article was run in the Minidoka Irrigator of May 22, 1943, but with a slightly different title.
Let's see what they didn't think of. Say the males composed about half the internment camp population, maybe 50,000 or so. That's a lot of guys. Now, just how many Army personnel would be required to watch over them, scattered all over the place on different farms? These would be Army personnel who were sorely needed at the time for the fight in Europe against the Nazis, and the battles in the Pacific ocean against the Japanese.
How much money would such a program have cost? I'm sure it was cheaper to do things the way they were done with the camps and with the workers, on a volunteer basis, going out from there to help farmers harvest their crops.
Time for another specific city to state it's position. That city – Los Angeles itself.
LA MAYOR WOULD BAN CITIZENSHIP: Mayor Bowron in his weekly radio address said that he hoped that when the war ends it would not mean that Los Angeles' former Japanese would return.
'By that time,' said the Mayor, 'some legal method may be worked out to deprive the native-born Japanese of citizenship.'
The Mayor said that the Japanese could never be assimilated as American citizens; that they were a 'race apart' and could never be Americans in the true sense.
Next we have an interesting statement from San Francisco. This would involve granting the Japanese Americans in the U.S. a psychic ability; bilocation, the ability to be in two places at exactly the same time.
The article was from the Gila News-Courier of June 3, 1943.
S.F. 'EXAMINER RANTS, RAVES': .. In an accompanying article, Frederic Woodmen, chairman of the Alien Problem Committee of the Pacific League was quoted as saying that he “Japanese' had received all the advantage according American citizens, and in return had bombed Pearl Harbor.'
Excuse me, oh great and mighty chairman, but are you really saying that the Nisei in the U.S. were the ones that bombed Pearl Harbor? Unless my understanding of World War II is totally off, it was the Japanese Military, and not the Nisei, who attacked Pearl Harbor. I don't believe that the Nisei, or the Issei in the U.S., for that matter, possessed carriers and carrier planes, went out to bomb Pearl Harbor, and then came back to California. And they did this while they were all still in California? Still under examination by the FBI who had been working on the 'Japanese problem' since before the war actually started? My, what abilities they have.
There was yet another way to express one's prejudice against the persons of Japanese ancestry in the U.S. If you had to be around them while working, then STRIKE! From the Granada Pioneer of June 16, 1943:
NISEI SOLDIER CAUSES STRIKE: The presence of a Japanese-American soldier caused a sit-down strike at the Nash-DeCamp company warehouse.
Fruit pickers refused to work when Wilson Makabe, Loomis-born Japanese and a private in the U.S. Army, visited the plant while on a furlough.
The packers did not protest Makabe, but Sheriff's deputies took the soldier into protective custody and the work was resumed.
The Granada Pioneer of June 19, 1943, ran an article entitled COMBA TEAM, JAP RETURN OPPOSED. It listed other cities in California that did not want the Japanese back.
Marysville, California: The district Chamber of Congress protested the return of the Japanese and vigorously opposed the incorporation of American-born Japanese into the U.S. Army.
Vallejo, Calif. Deportation of all persons of Japanese ancestry after the conclusion of the war was urged in a resolution adopted by the Vallejo City council.
Auburn, Calif.-Lowell Sparks, secretary of the District Attorneys Association of California, made public a resolution adopted by the state prosecutors opposing the return of Japanese alien and American-born to the Pacific Coast.
Grass Valley, Calif. The City Council adopted a resolution unalterably opposing the return of the Japanese.'
So city-by-city, the state of California lined up against the evacuees. The Granada Pioneer of June 26, 1943, ran an article about J.W. Buzzell, secretary of the Los Angeles Central Labor Council, who testified to the Dies committee.
'All Japanese look alike,' Buzzell said. 'If they are permitted to return here, what is to prevent a Japanese submarine from landing saboteurs who could easily change places with the evacuees?
Many of the Japs are in Army uniform. This uniform could be donned by Japanese so landed, giving them access to our Army camps.
There is no way to judge their loyalty or disloyalty,' he said, 'and we are strongly opposed to taking chances with any of them.'
By this time in the War, the Japanese advance in the Pacific had been stopped at Guadalcanal and the Japanese military machine was beginning to be pushed back, closer and closer to the home islands. His statement also brought up the bugaboo about Japanese sabotage, of which none was found.
Another route of hate propaganda was to attack the centers themselves. In an article in the Granada Pioneer of July 3, 1943, Representative Contello of California said that disloyal Japanese had taken over the camps. This, I am sure, would have been of great interest to the various camp administrations who were still in control of every camp. Granted, Tule Lake presented a fairly major problem for a short while, but it still remained under the control of the administration. Eventually the disloyals were all put into Tule Lake, but they never actually ran the place.
Still, if you are going to tell a lie, why not tell a big one?
Not every single organization in California hated the Japanese. The Minidoka Irrigator of September 18, 1943, ran an article about the San Francisco CIO backing the return of loyal Japanese whenever the military authorities said it was okay for them to return.
Time to add another California city to those wanting to ban the Japanese. The Granada Pioneer of September 29, 1943, ran this article.
SALINAS WOULD BAN JAPS: Salinas, a California community high on the list of those which suffered most from Japanese aggression appealed to President Roosevelt to prevent the return of the so-called 'loyal' Japanese on the Pacific Coast, according to a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The plea was in behalf of 142 Salinas boys who fell into Jap hands on Bataan, and, said E. M. Siefert, acting chairman of the Bataan Relief Committee, 'feeling against Japanese is bitter on the West Coast and bloodshed cold be expected if any Japs were returned to the Salinas area.'
Now, what would happen if only a very, very small number of people from an internment camp were to go to California, say to see their ill father in the hospital? And then went under WRA escort?
Nothing good, as this article from the Granada Pioneer of December 1, 1943 shows.
TAKAHASHIS FACE HOSTILITY IN RECENT WEST COAST VISIT. Japanese find it uncomfortable to visit California just now when under military permit and escorted by WRA.
That's the statement of Mrs. Yoshiko Takahashi, 56, Japanese alien, formerly a resident of Oakland, who has asked for immediate return to the WRA camp at Topaz, Utah, on the ground that much hostility has been shown her.
Mrs. Takahashi, who lived in Oakland for 25 years before being excluded from the defense area, came to Oakland with her two sons, Frank 21 and Yeneo, 19, under a permit from Western Defense Command to visit her husband, Chiyazaimon Takahashi, ill in a hospital at Sal Leandro since 1939.
Mrs. Frances M. Farrell of the WRA accompanied the Japanese family. Mrs. Farrell complained to WRA in San Francisco that hotel accommodations which had been reserved in advance by WRA were denied at San Leandro, and that the Japanese felt that in general so much hostility had been displayed that they wished to return to Topaz at once.
Notice it was not the Japanese woman who made this statement, but the WRA escort woman who made it.
Not every single city in California was so prejudiced, though. Martinez was one of these. The article is from the Heart Mountain Sentinel of February 5, 1944. Note; by this time, the Battle of Guadalcanal was almost totally over.
MARTINEZ RESIDENTS PROTESTING DISCRIMINATION AGAINST NISEI: Six Martinez residents signed an open letter in support of Mrs. June Terry, 22, American-born Japanese wife of Horton Terry, a Caucasian construction worker, when she was forced to vacate her home following violent protests by her neighbors.
Mrs. Terry is the former June Azil, graduate of Martinez schools, who was evacuated from her home after the outbreak of the war. She was given permission to join her husband by Lt. Gen. Deloe C. Emmons, commander of the Western Defense Command.
The article noted that her brother had been inducted into the U.S. Army.
The Manzanar Irrigator of February 5, 1944, ran an article titled LAUNCH DRIVE TO DENATIONALIZE NISEIS that was about California legislators launching a drive to strip 'hostile' Japanese Americans of their citizenship. They wanted all the 'disloyals' arrested and offered in exchange for Americans held by Japan.
On the same day the Granada Pioneer ran an article on a conference of West Coast mayors that were opposed to the return of Japanese to the Pacific Coast area and were working on a letter to Gen. Emmons stating their opposition to any such move.
Some churches tended to support the Japanese. An article in the Heart Mountain Sentinel of Feb. 19, 1944, noted that members of the Los Angeles Presbytery were 'urged to oppose through their local and national legislators all legislation proposing to cancel or deny to loyal citizens of Japanese ancestry the rights and duties of their citizenship...'
Los Angeles was in the news again in the Gila News-Courier of May 18, 1944. Note: by this time in the war the U.S. had attacked the Solomon Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Marshall Islands, the Caroline Islands and New Guinea and had driven the Japanese from the Aleutian Islands. The Emperor of Japan had announced that Japan's position was 'truly grave.'
ANGELENOS PROTEST RETURN OF JAPANESE AT MASS MEET. In a protest mass meeting held in the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles Sunday it was declared that the return of Japanese to the West Coast will poise economic and social problems unprecedented in California history, according the the L.A. Times....
James J. Barrett, executive of the shipbuilding Corporation, called for 'Americanism first, last, and always.'
The Gila News Courier of June 29, 1944, noted that a John Phillips, a Republican representative from California, presented the House of Representatives with a petition from people in his district asking it to 'take the necessary action' to prevent the return of Japanese and people of Japanese ancestry who were removed from California after Pearl Harbor.
There were various organizations opposing the Japanese, and we'll look at some of those later. One of them, though, we'll examine now, and they are the Grangers. The Gila News-Courier of August 22, 1944 (by this time the Marianas Islands had been retaken).
GRANGERS OPPOSE RESETTLEMENT. George Schlmeyer, master of the California State Grange, said Friday he would ask a conference of State Grange masters at Portland, Oregon, to support the California Grange in opposing resettlement of Japanese in the West, the U.P. reported.
Schlmeyer said the conference was called to discuss the infiltration of Japanese who he said were buying land at premium prices for resettlement purposes.
States which are to be represented at the conference include California, Oregon, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Washington and Wyoming.
Another visit went wrong when George Malteno, who had owned a nursery near Palo Alto, revisited. His two former employees, both of who were Filipino, 'treated Makane coldly and, as an aftermath were muttering that there might be another dead Jap if he came again.' They also happened to be carrying guns.
So far those protesting the Japanese seem to have admitted, even indirectly, that at least a few of them were loyal, but in an article in the October 11, 1944 issue of the Manzanar Free Press, entitled ASSEMBLYMAN R. DICKEY SLAMS NISEI IN SPEECH, it turns that that said Dickey, speaking before the Lions Club, claimed that was not a single loyal American of Japanese ancestry. He also denied that any Japanese Americans had fought loyally for the United States during the war. He apparently had not heard of the 100th and 442nd, and how they were basically spearheading the attack through Italy.
(By this time the U.S. was bombing Okinawa.)
Another way to keep a group of people from returning is to make sure they can't buy a place to live on. An article in the October 18, 1944 issue of the Granada Pioneer covers this:
TO FORBID POSTWAR LAND SALE TO NISEI; About 1200 farmers in Santa Maria and Lompoo valleys signed a pledge to forbid sale or lease of lands in the northern part of the county to Japanese after the war.
The committee also seemed to be working with the American Legion to enlighten the people of California about the Japanese problem.
So, that takes of places they can live. Now, how about barring them from working. The Gila News-Courier of December 20, 1944, ran this article:
HOSPITAL BARS NISEI NURSES. the country hospital advisory committee in San Diego, Calif. opposed the acceptance of Nisei girls for training in the hospital's nursing school last Tuesday...
A similar article was run in the Granada Pioneer on the 23rd of December.
So, nurses out. Now, how about fishermen?
PROTEST ATTEMPT LICENSE RESTORATION TO NISEI FISHERMAN. Reported attempts of WRA Director Dillon S. Myer to restore commercial fishing licenses to Japanese operating out of California ports were protested recently by Senator Hugh P. Donnelly of Turlock, according to the L.A. Daily News.
That was from the Manzanar Free Press of January 27, 1945. (By this time the attack on the Philippines had begun.)
Now it's time to add yet another city to the California anti-Japanese group. This time the article is from the Manzanar Free Press of February 3, 1945.
TELL TULARE COUNTRY AGAINST NISEI RETURN: Strong feeling against the return of Japanese to Tulare county was reported this week by Tulare sheriffs, the Los Angeles Times stated.
The story revealed that a delegation of 30 to 34 men paid a night-time 'visitation' to Orosi-Cutler district where the Japanese occupied and assertedly urged the Japanese to stay out of the area until after the war.
John Yamamoto and K. Tashiro asked for time to harvest their crops while Yo Katayama, whose brother Sho is in the U.S. Army, reportedly joined the Army after being advised to stay away.
So, now it's sort of door-to-door 'get the heck out of here' approach to bigotry.
Now, let's assume you want to show disrespect towards someone, but someone who isn't going to turn around and thrash you at the same time. How do you manage that. Why, the answer is easy. Disrespect a dead person.
And this is just what was done as was reported in the Manzanar Free Press of March 31, 1945. (By this time Manila in the Philippines had been retaken, along with Corregidor, Bataan, and B-29's were laying mines off Japan's shoreline while other B-29's were bringing burned out fifteen square miles of Tokyo in one raid.)
VANDALS DISTURB JAPANESE GRAVES IN FRESNO AREA. Grave stones of 16 persons of Japanese ancestry and of four persons of German ancestry buried in Mountain View Cemetery were toppled recently by vandals...At the same time, the sexton disclosed that attempts to disturb the ashes of nearly 100 Japanese were made.
The Sheriff said that the weight of the stones indicated that the damage could not have been done by children. The Granada Pioneer of April 11, 1945, reported that a 10-year-old boy had been implicated in the desecration of the cemetery. Whether there were any other boys involved was not clear at the time.
The time went on and some labor unions still wanted nothing to do with returning Japanese Americans. The Granada Pioneer of May 23, 1945, ran an article about the Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union (CIO) that had voted to refuse to work with returning nisei. Three Nisei had been removed from a warehouse where they had been working in order to prevent a work stoppage.
In San Francisco, bus mechanics threatened to strike when a Nisei was hired, as reported in the Gila News-Courier of Sept. 1, 1945, this being after the two atomic bombings and the actual end of the war.
III. Colorado
I only found one article dealing with prejudice in Colorado, and it was from a group of people that I didn't really expect to act that way. It was from a group of authors. The article is from the Granada Pioneer of April 10, 1943.
MARY OYAMA SPURNED BY AUTHORS LEAGUE. The Denver Authors League was brought face to face with a crackup when many members canceled reservations to a luncheon in honor of Mary Oyama, Nisei writer, arranged at the suggestion of Frank Clay Cross, connected with the national relocation commission.
Miss Oyama was presented to the league by Cross as a star attraction, who is as American as any of the erst of us.'
Objected Mrs. Bessie W. Ruble, one of the league:
'We have three sons in the services (all on active duty)..so not yet, after all our sleepless nights and heartaches and tears, can I do homage to a Japanese, even though she may be American-born.'
William E. Barrett, president of the league, stated that 'the fact that a woman of the Japanese race was to speak should not commit the league to any course but that of the open mind.'
'We must hold no hatred against persons because they happen to be born in anotehr land, or are representatives of another race from our own.
The honor guest ...is American and I understand her relatives are fighting for America. This is an opportunity to prove the breadth of our spirit and the sincerity of our claim that justice shall be for all.'
IV. Idaho
As with Colorado, I only found one relevant article, this one exhibiting prejudice on the part of unions, who, as we have already seemed, were supportive of the Asian Exclusion League. The article is from the Minidoka Irrigator of October 2, 1943. The Pocatello Central Labor union, passed a resolution to try to stop Japanese from working there.
'Whereas, these Japanese are a detriment to the American standard of living..are not inducted into the armed forces, but travel around the country at will..are being employed in business houses in Pocatello and in the state of Idaho in jobs vacated by our workers, now therefore
Be it resolved, that the members of the Pocatello Building and Construction Trades coucnil de hereby voice our disapproval.
Be it further resolved that we request all members of organized labor to refrain from patronizing any and all business establishments employing Japs.'
V. Nebraska
The first article is from the Manzanar Free Press of April 18, 1945, and notes that farmers in the Shelton Nebraska area successfully petitioned operators of the farm there to get rid of his Japanese American families who were working on the farm.
In what is apparently a separate action but in the same place, a petition was developed and signed by 91 people to 'discourage the migration of Japanese Americans into Platte River Valley, according to the Gila News-Courier of April 21, 1945.
The WRA arranged a meeting there to work things out and a lot of the people who attended had nothing against the Japanese Americans at all.
According to the Manzanar Free Press of April 25, 1945, a guy that spoke out against this prejudice happened to be a U.S. Navy veteran.
NAVY VETERAN PROTESTS ATTEMPT TO OUST NISEI: Protesting against attempts of some Nebraska farmers to oust persons of Japanese ancestry, Ralph C. Nash, Navy veteran, declares in a letter to the Omaha Evening World Hearld that they had read about such attempts 'with disgust.'
Nash spent three years of his service in Honolulu, saw Japanese Americans there working 'hard' to repair damage at Pearl Harbor and was on a ship with 3000 Nisei soldiers who raised funds for a non-Nisei sailor's visit to his sick wife.
One other article, against from the Manzanar Free Press, the May 9, 1945 issue, repeated the events that had happened and noted this:
As son as news of the petition appeared in the Nebraska newspapers, Caucasian committees formed to defend the Japanese Americans. They offered employment and places for boarding from every part of the state.'
It's interesting to note that as it got closer to the end of the war there were more efforts made by average citizens to counter the hate and prejudice still being directed against the Japanese Americans.
VI. New Mexico
There was only one article about New Mexico, that from the Manzanar Free Press of May 23, 1945.
NEW MEXICO GOVERNOR VOICES VIEWS ON 'JAPS'; 'New Mexico has no Japanese, never has had them, and we don't want them now,' Governor John J. Dempsey of New Mexico stated in Fresno, basing his feelings toward the Japanese on conservations with boys in the Oak Knoll Hospital in San Francisco.
Remind you of one of the governors of Arizona?
VII. Oregon
Maybe because Oregon was right next to California it seemed to have the second-highest number of anti-Japanese articles. The first article was from the Gila News-Courier of September 25, 1943, and noted that a Republican representative from Oregon was complaining that people from the relocation centers were buying land in Oregon, and that such land was basically planned for the young Oregon farmers who were then in the Army.
Perhaps the oldest group to oppose the Japanese were veterans of the Spanish-American war. This was covered in the Granada Pioneer of July 29, 1944.
SPANISH WAR VETS OPPOSE CITIZENS' RETURN TO COAST: A resolution 'unalterably opposing' the return of Japanese citizens to the Pacific Coast, or any relaxation of internment restrictions now in effect, was passed in the second morning day session of the US Spanish War Veterans here recently, according to Associated Press Reports.
As happened once before, a Japanese cemetery was targeted by vandals. The Manzanar Free Press of August 12, 1944, ran this article:
VANDALS DESECRATE JAPANESE CEMETERY: Juvenile court officers have blamed adults for the recent desecration of the Japanese cemetery at Portland, according to the Pacific Citizen. It reported this was the second to occur within the year.
'Ponderous gravestones were broken and tossed into heaps at the cemetery fence like a child's set of blocks-so scattered that officer George J. Clauss said he doubted that graves and monuments could ever be rematched, the Citizen said.
It also reported that wooden markers were splintered and set ablaze and that a nearby resident came to the cemetery to extinguish one fire with a hose.
The cemetery has been practically abandoned since the evacuation of persons of Japanese ancestry from Portland in 1942.
The Gila News-Courier of August 10, 1944, noted something quite interesting. A group of Portland church people had said they would keep the cemetery clean, but they were prevented from doing that by a group of American Legionnaires.
The Manzanar Free Press of August 26, 1944, had an article concerning a group of garage men.
GARAGE MEN SAY 'NO JAPS WANTED': Federal government was asked this week to keep all Japanese in confinement and prevent them from returning to the Pacific coast after the war, stated the Los Angeles times. The request was made by the State Garage Master representatives of Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho and Montana.
Garage spokesmen said the weekend conference (in Portland) represented approximately 125,000 Grange members.
The resolution hit the WRA for 'conducting a propaganda campaign to arouse public sympathy for persons of Japanese ancestry.' It charged further that the Japanese have failed to assimilate themselves and can never be absorbed into American community life.
So, the Japanese cannot assimilate themselves. Let's see. Groups wanted them out of California and the west coast; they didn't want them buying or renting any land, they didn't want them conducting business there, and they didn't even want them buried there, apparently. They didn't like them in the public schools, or the restaurants, or the laundries. Exactly is a group suppose to 'assimilate' when faced with that kind of opposition?
In addition, such groups seemed to fail to notice that many Japanese and Japanese Americans, particularly in the Eastern part of the U.S., had done a fine job of assimilating.
Oregon managed to come up with its own anti-Japanese group, called the Oregon Anti-Japanese Inc. They are discussed in an article in the Granada Pioneer of December 9, 1944, that noted the group was composed of 26 farmers and professional and business men. They wanted an amendment to the State constitution that would keep the Japanese out of Oregon.
The Gila News-Courier of January 20, 1945, noted that anti-Japanese signs were appearing in Oregon, such as 'no Jap trade' and 'no Japanese trade solicited for the duration.'This is in the same area as the Hood River American Legion post that removed the names of Japanese Americans from a memorial. The article notes that a Methodist Church group was trying to get the Legion to restore the names.
An article in the Manzanar Free Press of the same day was entitled ANTI-NISEI FEELING HITS COAST STORES, and mentioned the 'no Jap trade' sign, the appearance of other signs, and that repair shops, groceries, filling stations and hardware stores were joining in the sign movement.
Another anti-Japanese group that Oregon came up with is talked about in the Manzanar Free Press of April 4, 1945. It's the Oregon Property Owners Protective League. They were pushing for a nationwide movement to get a Constitutional amendment to 'send all Japs back to Japan.'
VIII. Utah
Utah did not seem to have a lot of trouble with prejudice. There was only one article and that was from the Manzanar Free Press of March 15, 1944.
RACIAL PERSECUTION HITS SALT LAKE CITY. the city, founded less than a hundred years ago by a people seeking sanctuary from religious persecution today is a hotbed of racial persecution, stated William Flynn, San Francisco Chronicle reporter.
American Federation of Labor unions in Salt Lake City...are fighting entrance of Japanese-Americans into the community....
The Utah AFL unions are fighting the resettlement trend because, the leaders state frankly, they fear their competition for jobs.
The CIO opposed the AFL, though. The Salt Lake City Council refused to take a stand on an AFL demand that business licenses be denied Japanese American applicants.
IX. Washington
The first article relating to the state of Washington is from the Granada News-Pioneer of May 26, 1943. A senator Wallgren said that he would oppose any plan to permit any Japanese, American-born or not, to return to the West Coast. In a July 31, 1943 article in the Minidoka Irrigator, the same guy said he opposed the enlistment of American Japanese in the U.S. Army. Wallgren was a member of the Senate Military Affairs Committee. His solution to the problem was to put the Japanese to work on agricultural projects under strict supervision.
The Mayor Seattle made his position known in the Minidoka Irrigator of February 5, 1944, when an article noted that he and others had sent a protest to Lieut. Gen. Delos Emmons, Western Defense Command chief, 'against any return of Japanese to the Pacific Coast.'
The AFL in Washington spoke out against the Japanese in an article in the Granada Pioneer of August 30, 1944.
TEAMSTERS OPPOSE NISEI EMPLOYMENT. AFL International vice president of the Teamster's Union Dave Beck pressed for 'unrelenting war' against the employment of Japanese Americans in the western states at the western regional conference of the Teamsters last week.
The conference delegates stated that any employer attempting to hire persons of Japanese ancestry would be courting 'trouble' with locals and members of their organization.
Now, why does this seem sort of familiar? Well, some guy named Adolph Hitler wanted to drive the Jews out of their businesses, and his goon squads went around smashing up the Jewish businesses and homes and, no doubt, making sure no one else would be so foolish as to hire them.
One of the things about a bigot is his or her consistency. We find this with our old friend Wallgren who by this time was Governor of the state of Oregon. He again stated his opposition to the return of any Japanese to the Pacific coast. He claimed there had been 'highly serious developments having to do with espionage that compelled him to take such a stand.'
Beck, of the Teamsters, made his own reappearance in an article in the Manzanar Irrigator of April 25, 1945, when he announced 'that no commission merchants or trucking firms will handle the wares of returned evacuees.'
Apparently many Seattle produce firms were refusing to handle the produce grown by Japanese Americans. It's covered in an article in the Granada Pioneer of July 21, 1945 (which was getting very near to the end of the war.)
TELLS PRODUCE FIRMS TO CORRECT SITUATION. In sharply censuring the refusal of Seattle, Wash,. produce merchants to deal in produce grown by Japanese Americans a 'unjustified discrimination,' Clinton Anderson, recently appointed Secretary of Agriculture, called on the Northwest Produce association at Seattle to correct the situation.
Anderson last week sent the following telegram to Mr. Adwin, secretary of the produce association:
'This department is receiving numerous complains against refusal of Seattle produce firms to handle produce grown by Japanese Americans. In view of present food situation, we believe such discrimination cannot be justified and urge your cooperation in correcting situation.'
The first bit comes from the book Alien Americans, published in 1936.
'In February 1908 during a period in which relations between the United States and Japan were dangerously tense because of Manchuria the Central Labor Council of Seattle sponsored the first international convention of the Asiatic Exclusion League of North America, which had a membership in California alone of 110,000. By May 1909 the League consisted of 238 affiliated bodies, mainly labor organizations. In March 1908 an Anti-Japanese Laundry League was organized which attempted to prevent the issuance of licenses to the Japanese, to reduce their patronage by skilfully appealing to race prejudice, and to prevent Japanese from securing laundry equipment.'
Actually, the group started out as the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League, but altered there name so they could include Hindus, Malays, and any other Asiatic grouping they didn't like.
Various Japanese associations were formed for protection, according to the writer, and were recognized by the Japanese government.
'The semi-official status given to the Japanese associations by their home government stamped them in the eyes of the public as tools of Japanese imperialism. Every Japanese was readily believed to be conniving with the Japanese Government for the ultimate destruction of America. This spectre made California pass the discriminatory land law of 1913, despite the opposition of President Wilson.'
In other words, it was the fault of the Japanese that the Americans had to try to keep them out, and it was there fault that they had formed organizations to protect them from the various anti-Japanese organizations that had come into being.
Blame the victim.
“Labour organizations, military and patriotic organizations (the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies with its affiliated societies), and retail merchants' organizations combined in their attack on the Japanese. The Japanese were undesirable aliens; cultural and biological assimilation was impossible. Their patriotic self conceit was an obstacle to amalgamation. Their low standard of living threatened the American workingman; their birth-rate was a danger to California as a white man's country. They introduced pagan cults into Christian America. Racial undesirability was emphasized, rather than racial inferiority. Ineligibility to citizenship was made the motivation for discrimination.'
In other words, since they were not eligible to become citizens, it was okay to discriminate against them, even though the rulings that made it impossible for them to become citizens were, themselves, results of discrimination.
So, discrimination became the motive for discrimination.
The writer does note some groups opposed to exclusion, and these included the Federal Council of Churches of Christ (exclusion would interfere with the work they were doing overseas), the California Fruit Growers, and the California Farmers Co-operative. The cannery business also opposed blocking Japanese fishermen from fishing.
Fortunately I was able to find some of the League's publications, although not many. This is one of the things about history; it really needs to be preserved. It would be really interesting to be able to go through all the League's publications and especially what they called their 'clipping service' which apparently resulted in a number of scrapbook-type books of clippings relating to the Japanese and other Asians. I don't know if those exist any more or not but, if they do, hopefully they'll be put in some library that historians will have access to.
Now, this has all been what someone else wrote about the League. Now let's let the League speak for itself.
First, from a publication and Japanese and Korean Exclusion League of August, 1906.
This issue examines the 59th Congress record on immigration and exclusion. In the Good of the League section, it talks bout some delegate discussing '...the inroads that the Japanese are making in the restaurant industry, which was affecting the white people engaged in that industry.' He's asking that the League 'discourage patronage as much as possible of such places.'
This group went after the Japanese in any occupation that they found, and that included working in a restaurant and even in a laundry.
From the September 1906 issue comes the following:
There's the usual stuff about roll call, credentials and minutes. There's a part that says 217 organizations are affiliated with the league, and then there's a confusing part about Endorsements, which total 4,377,000. I think it's the total members in each of a number of labor groups, apparently making the assumption that every single member of each group supports the league.
Then there's a rather ominous section which examines a particular district and then lists the number of Japanese and their occupations in the district. This is done in more than one of the proceedings papers, by the way. It's like they are spying on them or something.
The data had been obtained by the Police Department. However:
'Owing to the wily ways and the cunning in the nature of the Orientals the Police Department experienced great difficulty in obtaining this data.
The February, 1907 issue sees the League attacking President Teddy Roosevelt for his opposition to the San Francisco board of education trying to force all orientals into a single school. One of the sections of the issue deals with 'Coolies on Panama Canal'. The League didn't care for anyone who was Asiatic, period.
Next is the March, 1907 issue. It notes that there were 225 organizations affiliated with the League at the time. Generally around 85 to 90% of those were labor organizations. One of the things the League really seemed to enjoy doing was sending petitions to Congress. The publication notes that they had sent 102 petitions for immigration restriction and 76 against the employment of 'coolies' on the Panama Canal.
Then they display one of the weird leaps of logic that strange groups like this one can come up with. It refers to Japanese wanting to attend regular public schools.
'This insistence in demanding that they be allowed to attend white schools proves their unfitness to enjoy such a privilege.'
So, because they want very much to attend regular public schools, they are unfit for attending them? What sort of off-the-wall thinking is that? What I read in the bulletins I did find indicated, though, that the same 'logic' would apply to Blacks since the League didn't seem to care for them very much either.
Things then changed, as the League changed its name to the Asiatic Exclusion League. they explained the decision in their February 1908 newsletter.
'One of the chief reasons for the change of name of this League from 'Japanese and Korean' to that of 'Asiatic' was the knowledge that we have of the great number of Hindoos that are looking toward the Pacific Coast, especially California, as a field for exploitation.'
So the Hindoos (their spelling, by the way) were also unacceptable. As with most organizations of this type, it eventually comes out that they hate basically everybody who is not white. Equal-opportunity haters, basically.
Then there's always the argument that, one you allow 'them' into a neighborhood, the neighborhood is inevitably going to deteriorate. How many groups has this thinking been aimed at?
'The Florin District of Sacramento County affords one of the most convincing examples of the bad effects of the Japanese invasion. Formerly it was inhabited wholly by white men and their families, who built up a large strawberry industry and planted numerous small vineyards. ... But gradually the Japanese crept in, first as laborers, then as renters, until nearly all the white growers of berries either rented to the Asiatics or sold out entirely...The result has been a great change for the worse..Their wretched, unsightly shacks are blots on the face of the country were there should be flower-decked homes of American families.'
This is a perfect example that this type of thinking simply does not change over time. Only the target of the thinking changes.
Another article deals with a Mr. Levy who fired all his Japanese workers, and how that 'is a step in the right direction and should be followed by other restaurant and hotel proprietors of our city.'
An article on Monrovia orchardists and fruit-growers noted 'The insolence of the Japs' and how 'many small growers were coerced into leasing or selling their holdings to the aggressive Asiatics.'
Then there's an article from the Los Angeles Times which gave a foretaste of the thinking of people that led to the internment of the Japanese Americans during World War II.
'But, if Japan and the United States were to go to war tomorrow, or at any time beyond, almost every man Jap in the land would hie himself away to Nippon to shoulder a gun against us. Everybody knows this to be true; there is no denial of it from any source.'
Although there were some Japanese that wanted to repatriate to Japan, the vast, vast majority of them preferred the U.S. Many of them did fight-against Japan. the 442nd Infantry Battalion became the most decorated battalion in the military. They fought the Nazis in Italy, France, and Germany. They suffered a very high rate of casualties because it seemed they were almost always put out on the front lines to attack the hardest positions to take.
Yet they succeeded and were proud of the service they were able to render to the United States.
Another article in the same issue deals with the biology of the Asiatics.
'As Mr. Manson has shown, the different between the Caucasian and the Mongolian or the Malayan races amounts to a difference of species, and that nature herself puts a ban upon the assimilation of different species throughout the whole animal kingdom of the world.”
This, of course, was exactly the same type of argument used against Blacks; that there were not really human.
Let's make something perfectly clear. THERE IS ONLY ONE SURVIVING HUMAN SPECIES. PERIOD.
There were species of humans that died out along the evolutionary tree, yes. But there is only one single species of human being today. Every man, woman and child came from this species which arose in Africa, and them migrated out to Europe, Asia, and eventually the Americas.
Now, what is a species? It's a group of living organisms that can have sex with each other and produce an offspring that will survive (barring some kind of disaster/illness/ etc.) If any two persons of opposite sex of any race, be it Black, White, Asiatic, Native American, or Brown, have sex, and both parents are healthy, there is a chance they will have a child that will grow up and be able to reproduce when it gets old enough.
That is the mark of a species. If any of the races were actually of different species, then they could not reproduce, period. But the fact is they can reproduce, SO GET OVER THE SPECIES ARGUMENT!
It is interesting to see the number of books and other written materials in the first couple decades of the 1900's that referred to an eventual war between the United States and Japan. Not all of those were written by Japanese haters, either.
The League, in its June, 1908 publication, figured on such a war happening.
'On the 15th, during a discussion of the bill in the House, Mr. Hobson of Alabama called attention to the invasion of the Pacific Coast by the Japanese and the imminent danger of a clash between the races, which may be precipitated through assaults by Japanese upon white women.'
He's referring, of course, to the immigrants being the 'invasion' force. He then brings up the argument about Japanese attacks on white women. Sound familiar to the argument about attacks by Blacks upon white women? That was enough to get a black person killed in the Old South. Once again the hate-filled argument remains the same, only the target differs.
The issue also refers to the Anti-Japanese Laundry League.
Another topic the League liked to talk about was intermarriage. From the October 1908 issue:
'It is not possible to contemplate with complacency any intermixture of our own people with those of Japan. Not only is intermarriage between the two races sure to be resented, but the admission of Japanese to citizenship will be fought if ever proposed.'
Does this idea of 'keeping the race pure' sound familiar? Perhaps you've heard of Adolph Hitler and World War II. It's exactly the same kind of hate-filled claptrap that he used against the Jews. Yet once again, the argument is the same, only the target of the hate is different.
The same issue had a piece from the Fresno Republican that said 'Just because the two races are unequal they must be kept physically apart.' The Mountain View Register said 'The Japs are undeniable energetic and good workers, but they are also undesirable citizens. We do not, we cannot, and we will not assimilate with them socially.'
Now, let's see. One of the arguments against the Japanese was that they could not be assimilated. How can a culture assimilate with another culture if the first one openly refuses to assimilate at all? It doesn't make sense. Then, again, arguments from such groups rarely do make sense.
The January, 1909 issue cleared up what the purpose of the white man was.
'While we, who have been placed as sentinels and guardians of the Caucasian civilization, on the west coast of American, at times become apathetic and indifferent to our task, the brown and yellow races are coming like a swarm of maggots, worming and burrowing and eating the substance out of the land.'
So, that's what white men are for! They are sentinels against the barbarian hoards that threaten to overwhelm us at any minute.
The February, 1909 issue helps to clear up just why the name is the Asiatic Exclusion League. It points out the dangers of specific groups of Asians.
'But the Japanese are only the scouts-the vanguard-of the vast Asiatic army> There are Koreans, Chinese, Manchurians, Manchus, Mongolians, Malays and Hindoos numbering OVER ONE BILLION.
Allow then to secure a foothold in the United States and they will, within a few generations, sweep like an avalanche of death from the Himalayas around the group.
The Japanese, with all his politeness and pretenses, is only a corrupted Chinaman. He is a Malay-Mongolized mongrel.'
One of the things that gets interesting is when the League bothers to enumerate it's actual objections to the Japanese. The March, 1909, had such a list, in which they pointed out some bad things about the Japanese:
1. Disgusting habits, made of living and general characteristics.
2. Possessing no regard for republican institutions, they maintain an intense loyalty to the Mikado.
3. That as a class (with few exceptions) they are contract laborers and are furnished at rates which do not supply a white man with the common necessities of life, much less enable him to maintain and educate a family.
4. That Japanese will, within a brief period, cause great distress and misery to white labor.
5. That they contribute nothing to the growth of the state, but are a blight on its prosperity.'
In reference to number 2, for you youngsters out there, the Mikado is another name for the Emperor of Japan. The Japanese considered the Emperor to actually be a divine being. At the time they held an awe of the Emperor and would do anything he would say. This type of thinking was used during the second world war to get their troops fired up to kill Americans.
The Japanese that had migrated to this country, though, did not have the same types of feelings about the Emperor, especially those who had been born here like the Nisei. They were more in awe of the President of the United States and considered themselves Americans first, which is why so many volunteered to fight for the U.S. in the war.
The concept was actually 'Emperor worship.' During the war, for example, if a Japanese ship was sunk during a fight, it was the obligation of someone to save the Emperor's portrait which hung somewhere in the ship.
The different in attitudes between the Japanese who lived in Japan and those who lived in the U.S. was considerable, and only grew with further generations.
In archeology, it's always interesting to find old tablets and papers that have lists on them of things that were bought and sold. It helps figure out what the culture was like at that time. The League actually does a lot of the same thing. They often have lists of how many organizations support them, how many members they have and what groups they come from, and so on.
One of the lists they have relates to their expenses for their publications and other activities. In the May, 1909 issue, there is such a list. It reveals that the League had published some 10,000 pamphlets of 36 pages, 4,000 monthly proceedings, 2000 constitutions, 1000 Asiatic problems & American opinions, and 1,500 letter heads.
The same month they had 238 affiliated organizations, 202 of which were labor groups. The percentage of labor groups behind the League stayed pretty much the same.
The June, 1909 issue quotes the Jackson Ledger as saying: 'It requires no particular gift of foresight to predict that the Mongolian race, whether Chinese or Japanese, must eventually be excluded from America.' The Los Angeles Evening News wrote: 'Underlying this Japanese problem is the fundamental proposition that this is a white man's country-and will remain so.'
Look over those two things again, then try to balance them with this statement by the President of the League that: '...it was never the purpose of the League to speak, ore entertain, any prejudice against Japanese, Asiatics or any other race, that the League was founded on the broad lines of patriotism, and that great admiration was shown for the Japanese, but that our admiration extended a distance of 8,000 miles, and that we preferred to see them in their own country and not in ours. We do not hate them..'
Talk about speaking out of both sides of your mouth at the same time. There is absolutely no way in the world, through any form of logic at all, that they can say that and still run the articles they do and make the other statements that they do.
The September, 1909 issue had a note about reducing the white patrons to Japanese laundries of this city by at least 50%, and similar action had been taken in other cities.
Now, don't think that the Asiatic Exclusion League was just against Asians. It's already been established that they don't care for Blacks. In the November, 1909 issue they added to this list of people they don't like the Turks, Syrians and Arabs. So their range of hate was spreading to cover a wider area of the globe.
Here again is a problem of history, and that is the loss of printed materials. From the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria on through history, narrow-minded bigots like the Nazis, along with the normal passage of time and things getting lost, have resulted in a loss of much information to the present-day world. The League itself had many publications, and I don't imagine that many have survived. the December, 1909 issue refers to one of their publications which would be interesting to read: 'Japanese Conquests of the Domestic Occupations, and Some of the Remedies that Might Be Applied.' (Back then a lot of publications had very long, very windy titles).
The same issue noted the Central California Anti-Jap Patronage League, and the San Francisco Anti-Jap Laundry League.
The March, 1910 issue added the Armenians to the list of people who the League disliked. Then there's another reference to the pure-blood (Aryan race) type of argument:
'To fulfill our obligation and accomplish this result, it is essential that the blood of the American-Europeans of this country, who together with their ancestors developed civilization to its present state, should be kept pure and free from the taint of the decadent Orientalism of China, Japan, and India.'
The May, 1910 issue lists specific reasons for exclusion of Asiatics from this country.
'1st. We cannot assimilate with them without injury to ourselves.
2nd. No large community of foreigners so cocky, with such distinct racial, social and religious prejudices can abide long in this country without serious friction.
3rd. We cannot compete with a people having a low standard of civilization living and wages.
4th. It should be against public policy to permit our women to intermarry with Asiatics, and laws should be passed prohibiting it.
5th. We cannot extend citizenship to Asiatics without serious danger to our institutions. They will combine and collude and have the political balance of power. If, while Asiatics have not the status of citizens, may not their issue, if born in the United states, become citizens and if so, what will shortly be the status of the Hawaiian Islands? Will we not have a Japanese legislature there? A Japanese Governor and Japanese judges? Will not their status in California be eventually the same if allowed to come here without restriction?
6th. If we permit the Jap to come in, what will ultimately become of our Exclusion Act with China? the Chinese will demand the same privilege, and are we prepared to give it to them?
7th. The evasion of the immigration laws in the importation of Jap women for sinister purposes by so-called picture marriages under the guise of a marriage by proxy in Japan, remarried here as a matter of form, and after a month or a year of so-called married life deserted, or caste into a crib-is another way of getting women into this country for immoral purposes. ...
8th. The United States of America as an independent power has the right to say who shall land on our shores. We do not desire the Mikado to do it for us. The exercise of this sovereign power is founded on the right of self-preservation....
So because the women are being brought here means that they automatically are being brought here for immoral purposes? This type of argument unites racism with sexism.
Unfortunately, I don't have any other issues of the publication to cover.
The states east of the Mississippi did not show any where near the level of prejudice against the persons of Japanese ancestry as did the states west of the Mississippi. In fact, in newsletter after newsletter I read articles about places in the East who were open to the internees resettling. Numerous hostels in numerous cities were being set up to house the returnees. Various companies, like Seabrook Farms, were actively recruiting workers from the camps to come to their companies.
In Ohio, Cincinnati and Cleveland seemed to lead the way in encouraging the internees to resettle there. New York seemed generally favorable, as did Illinois. Colleges like U.C. in Cincinnati opened their doors to Nisei students.
As to why the attitude in the east was different it may have been due to the fact that persons of Japanese ancestry had been living there for years and had not formed distinct groups. There is a problem when a minority group ends up settling an area and forming its own community. Actually, there are various problems.
One, it creates an easier target to attack. The Japanese who settled in California, for example, largely lived in their own areas, had their own stores, etc. In addition to automatically setting themselves up as an easy target, such an arrangement serves to limit the amount of exposure they had to American culture, and the amount of exposure Americans had to Japanese culture.
This sets up a group as 'the other.' Such a group is automatically a target, because, for many people, what we don't understand we tend to fear, and what we fear we grow to hate.
In the East, though, the persons of Japanese ancestry were largely considered as just regular people. There's a Japanese saying: 'The nail that sticks up will be hammered down.' The Japanese and the Japanese Americans in the East basically didn't 'stick up,' but the ones in the West did, and they got hammered down, hard.
That is not to say that there was no prejudice in the East. There were some examples in the various newsletters. There are some examples of what I would call anti-prejudice.
I. Illinois
The Chicago Tribute takes a very interesting view of the internment of the Japanese Americans, pointing out something which almost no one else had. The article is from the Rohwer Outpose of March 6, 1943.
TRIBUTE VIEWS THE JAPANESE: 'In this country we have 107,500 Japanese locked up in internment camps to which they were removed from their homes in the Pacific coastal area. Two thirds of them are American citizens,' stated a recent editorial from the Chicago Daily Tribute titled 'Japanese in America and Hawaii.'
'Meanwhile, we have in Hawaii 160,000 Japanese, of whom 36,000 are aliens. Lt. Gen. Emmons, the military governor of the territory, says their presence is a definite menace, but they are not locked up. Whether this is because their labor is valuable in the sugar and pineapple plantations and elsewhere, or for other reasons, is not made clear,' continued the editorial.
'Thus, we have a hundred odd thousand Japanese interspersed with close to 10,000,000 white Americans in the Pacific coast states and we have hustled them off and locked them up for fear they will do us harm. We have 170,000 Japanese, constituting a third of the population of the islands that are the keystone of our Pacific defense, and we leave them at liberty. Without committing oneself on whether any one should be locked up, it seems fairly apparent that the locking up, if it was necessary anywhere, started in the wrong place. The procedure is not without a smell of lynch law or vigilantism.'
'Two thirds of the interned Japanese are American citizens. That, also, is something new under our constitutional system. On what theory can an American citizen be locked up, with or without trial, because of his race? It is a matter of concern to all American citizens if any American citizen can be put in a concentration camp.
'The legal questions have yet to reach the Supreme court, it is as hard to see how any court can justify internment of Japanese without either laying all Americans open to the same treatment or justifying discrimination between Americans on grounds of race. The dilemma is referred to the prophets of the four freedoms,' concluded the Tribune.
However, there were, as I said, at least some incidents of prejudice. the Granada Pioneer of May 1, 1943, carried an article entitled MARENGO OBJECTS TO PRESENCE OF EVACUEES, referring to a farm in an outlying district of Chicago. There were three Japanese Americans helping do farm work, but Marengo citizens had objected to their presence.
Another Granada Pioneer article, this time of May 8, 1943, noted that the manager of the Auto Mechanics union, local 701, a Nisei that was a mechanic agreed to quit his job. The guy who owned the actual shop had been picketed for four years.
The Gila News-Courier of August 1, 1944, carried this article: WORKER PROTEST OUSTS JAPANESE. Fifty-nine Japanese American track laborers were withdrawn from the Illinois Central Railroad in the Chicago area to avert a threatened walkout of 800 AFL maintenance of way workers, according to an Associated Press report.
By August 5, 1944, according to the Heart Mountain Sentinel, some 16 unions had forced evacuees to quit jobs in the Chicago area. What I find interesting is that all of this reports center on Chicago, and do not seem to be representing any part of the rest of the state.
Then there are always the true nut-cases, the ones who are obviously looney-tunes. More than a few bricks short of a full load, as this article in the Manzanar Free press of March 31, 1945, shows so clearly:
CHICAGOAN MISTAKES CHINESE FOR NISEI; SERIOUSLY INJURED. Shouting 'I am out to get some Japs', Albert Stritzel, 25, forced his way into a Chinese laundry and attacked the Chinese owner and his helper whom he mistook for Japanese.
The owner grabbed a revolver and shot Stritzel, wounding him seriously.
If this dude was so seriously intent on killing Japanese, THEN WHY DIDN'T HE JOIN THE ARMED FORCES? He could have had himself sent to the Pacific theater and killed all the Japanese he wanted to.
II. Massachusetts
There was only one article for this state. The article is from the Manzanar Free Press of October 6, 1943.
ISSEI'S APPOINTMENT CAUSES CONTROVERSY. The Time magazine of September 20 carried an article on Shuichi Kusaka, 27-year-old mathematical physicist born in Japan who caused a controversy among the people of Northampton, Mass., on his appointment to the staff of Smith College.
'Kurasaka was in Northampton with the approval of the FBI, but some townsmen had found his presence unfair to those who have died.'
Two American Legionnaires supported by employees of the state insane asylum, members of the Hampshire County Grange, the building trades union, and the Hampshire Gazette had threatened to tar and feather Kusaka and dump him into the campus pond.
Kusaka was born in Osaka, left Japan when he was four, received his elementary education in Vancouver schools. He made a brilliant record at the Universities of British Columbia and California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He was recommended to Smith College by Miss Chien Shiung Wu, a Chinese physicist.
Tar and feather him? That goes back to the Civil War. And was that employees or inmates of the asylum? As we will see later the American Legion really seemed to have a bug up its rear end about the Japanese Americans.
III. New Jersey
The main problem in New Jersey seemed to center around farming. It can basically be referred to as the Great Meadows incident.
The first article on this is from the Granada Pioneer of April 15, 1944.
NEW JERSEY FARMERS ASSAIL EMPLOYING NISEI WORKERS. Farmers of a small farming community some 10 miles from here in Warren county demanded the immediate removal of five Japanese American workers on a Great Meadows farm at a mass meeting.
Indignation of the citizens reached fever point yesterday with the arrival of four more American citizens of Japanese parentage to join George Yamamoto, who was assigned to the 100-acre farm of Edward Kowalick two weeks ago.
The Warren County Board of Agriculture last night adopted a resolution calling for removal of the five men in the interest of community peace and announced that the WRA, which imported the four men from a center in Arizona, would be asked to comply with this request.
Henry Patterson, of the Philadelphia regional WRA office, who assigned the men to Kowalick's farm at the farmer's request, termed the protest 'a tempest in a teapot' caused by a few 'stubborn and ignorant people.'
The immediate attention of WRA, he said, was to keep the five men on the Kowalick farm. he said he had contacted the sheriff of Warren county and the New Jersey state police and was assured by those authorities that the situation would be kept under control.
This time it was the Methodist church that spoke out in favor of the internees.
GREAT MEADOWS FARMERS TAKE IT ON THE NECK AGAIN. Two hundred New Jersey clergymen at the eighty-seventh Newark Annual Conference of the Methodist Church unanimously passed a resolution Friday deploring the action of Warren County farmers who forced the departure of five Japanese evacuees to work on a Great Meadows farm, the New York Herald Tribute reported Saturday.
So, a group of 200 people spoke out against the prejudice. They did good work that day. It seems, though, that the men ended up being withdrawn from the farm and sent to work on a Pennsylvania farm. The Gila News-Courier had a long editorial on this on April 20, 1944. They quoted one of the evacuees as saying that 'We don't want to stay and cause any trouble for Eddie (their employer). We are not made at these people. We know how they feel. But we are not responsible for what Japan did. We are just Americans and we want to do our part.'
The Gila News-Courier of September 28, 1944, ran a follow-up article on the men, quoting from the Philadelphia farmer who had them working on his farm.
'Within a week after the five men came to work on my far...I know I could depend on them. I have found them to be loyal, hard-working, clean, and pleasant to work with. We like them a lot and have a high regard for them.'
New Jersey's loss, Pennsylvania's gain.
IV. New York
There wasn't much happening in New York as a far as prejudice went, at least as far as is covered in the camp newsletters. In the Granada Pioneer of May 3, 1944, there's an article about Mayor LaGuardia of New York City protesting any Japanese being relocated in New York or any state on the Eastern seaboard.
A second article in the Gila News-Courier of May 18, 1944, talked about some opposition in New York to the opening of a hostel. A family had taken up residence there and a couple of newspapers reported very nice things about them. Feelings were mixed among the people with some speaking against them, and some speaking in favor of them.
V. North Carolina
This is yet another state that there is very little about as far as prejudice goes. It comes from the Rohwer Outpost of February 3, 1943, and refers to some allegations Senator Robert R. Reynolds of North Carolina had made implying that the evacuees had basically a soft life in the camps.
The Heart Mountain Sentinel planned to invite the senator to visit the camp '...with us behind barbed wire under the watchful eyes of sentries who wear the same uniforms our brothers, husbands and sons in the United States forces...'
We should be pleased to share our one-room apartments and the rationed mess hall fare with him, and perhaps walk with him to our 'fine bathrooms' when the temperature is 30 degrees below zero.
The last part refers to the fact that the latrines were part of a communal bathroom and communal shower. There were no individual bathrooms in the barracks part of the camps.
VI. Ohio
Ohio had a few articles about it, but that's all. Most of the references to Ohio that I read in the newsletters were about hostels opening up in Cleveland and Cincinnati, and the type of positive reception most evacuees were receiving when they went to that state.
The Gila News-Courier of August 19, 1943, ran a section in its editorial part.
CINCINNATUS LIFES UP TO NAME. The Ohio state convention of the American Legion recently produced results which remind one too strongly of the California Legion. They seek the return of all released persons of Japanese ancestry to relocation centers.
A Cincinnati Post column, Cincinnatus, which has been consistently just towards loyal evacuees and believes in the worth of the resettlement proram, takes issue with the Ohio Legion. It states in the August 13 column:
'Cincinnatus can't go along with the American Legion (in convention here yesterday) which wants all Americans of Japanese ancestry sent back to concentration camps.
'The Legion, in resolutions, suggested that all people with Japanese blood in them were treacherous and away with them. This is like Japanese saying that all Americans are gangsters, on account of Al Capone, and all Americans should be locked up in Alcatraz.
'Or, it is like saying that since Nazis are awful people, all Americans of German descent should be locked up. Nobody ever thinks of being that absurd.
'A number of Americans of Japanese descent are working here now. Cincinnatus hears that their employers speak well of their fidelity. Their fellow-workers, after being suspicious, have come to respect them. They see that Americans of Japanese descent do not different from other Americans of the many races that make up America.'
One of the interesting things about that editorial is that the column uses the term 'concentration camps' for the internment camps, showing that they felt very strongly about the camps. Their argument about Germans is quite good.
The American Standard Version has a good translation of Matthew 7:16: 'By their fruits ye shall know them.'
How did the Japanese Americans act? Even though the evacuation and incarceration into the internment camps was sudden, a product of prejudice, and done without regard to our legal system, they went along peacefully. In the main they did the best they could in the camps. When the the U.S. asked for volunteers for a Nisei combat unit, the Japanese-Americans replied. They fought and died bravely.
There were a couple of labor problems that Ohio had. The Manzanar Free Press of February 3, 1945, had an article entitled USE OF NISEI IN INDUSTRIAL FIRM MEETS OPPOSITION, which was about the town of Painesville and the the Industrial Rayon Corporation plant. There was a plan to bring in about 150 Nisei women to work there but that got stopped dut to protests from a minority of the plant's workers.
The other problem was in Sheffield, where 'A proposal to bring in evacuees to work on truck farms in this city provoked stormy protests at a meeting of village council.' There was a labor shortage which necessitated more workers.
VII. Tennessee
As far as this state goes, there was only one article and that was from the Denson Tribune of May 14, 1943. It's actually a reply to something a Senator Tom Steward from Tennessee had said in the U.S. Senate. He wanted a bill to put every single person of Japanese ancestry into custody, and he wanted Congress to 'take away every single right of citizenship these people have.'
At one point he said 'I say that where there is one drop of Japanese blood that there is absolute Japanese treachery. ' He went on to make further off-the-wall statements like that. The rest of the article was a response showing just how stupid his statements were.
As I was going through the history of anti-Japanese prejudice I managed to find various books on the subject that pre-dated World War II by decades. There were books on both sides of the issue and I think this helps to point out just how much an issue it was since so many people felt it necessary to produce books on the subject.
What I will do is point out some of what I considered to be the most interesting things in these books. I don't pretend to have read every single one; I'm sure there are many more out that from that time that I was not able to find.
The first book is DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THE JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA; A REVIEW OF THE REAL SITUATION, published in 1907. (A lot of books from that time period for some reason loved to have real long titles.)
The book was written by Herbert B. Johnson, D.D., member of the National Immigration Congress, New York, 1905, Superintendent Japanese missions on the Pacific Coast.
In one point he talks about assimilation, and quotes an article from a magazine that didn't believe such a thing was possible.
The Call of December 6, 1906, says editorially: 'The National body politic can assimilate the European of whatever grade, but never the Asiatic. They are aliens always, no matter what their civil status. The proposition to naturalize them is preposterous.'
The argument of whether or not the Japanese could assimilate continued for decades. There were, of course, many roadblocks thrown in their way which actually worked to try to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy.
He gives some of the history of the anti-Japanese movement.
Sunday, May 7, 1905, in Lyric Hall, San Francisco, the first Anti-Japanese convention was held. The Chronicle of that morning said:
The meeting of the Anti-Japanese Convention at Lyric Hall this afternoon will mark an important epoch in the history of San Francisco, of California and, in fact, of the whole country. No movement of recent years has been more important to the vital interests of the country than the agitation against the unrestricted immigration of a non-assimilative horde of Asiatics. While the labor unions, the wage-earners of California, have taken the initiative in the movement, the question is one which affects every American, irrespective of occupation or affiliation.'
Again, this type of talk is very, very similar to what you read in today's publications about the situation with immigrants from Mexico.
He then talks about the history of the Exclusion League. It was organized in San Francisco. Their tactics were announced by President Tveitmoe of the league in 1907.
'It is through the Legislature that the League hopes to acquire efficiency, and numerous bills will be presented to the lawmakers at the present session. ...The need of the exclusion movement in this pat of the country is deemed obvious by the League officials, but to insure against any misunderstanding, additional pamphlets will be issued. More than 20,000 copies have already been distributed on the coast.'
As we saw in the section on the League earlier in this work, publishing pamphlets was a favorite pastime of theirs, and sending bill after bill after bill to legislatures was another ultra-favorite activity.
He also talks about the newspapers and their attack on the Japanese. Remember that, at this time. people got their news either from the radio or the newspapers (or both). There was no television, no instant news, no Internet, nothing like that at all. This made what the papers said to have much more influence than they do today.
He says that The Chronicle was the paper that had been leading in its opposition to the Japanese on the coast.
The Chronicle began its campaign in the spring of 1905, with such glaring headlines as the following: Crime and Poverty go Hand in Hand with Asiatic Labor; Brown Men Are an Evil in the Public Schools; Japanese a Menace to American Women; Brown Asiatics Steal Brains of Whites; Big Immigration may be Japanese policy, etc.
Zombie Asiatics? Brainzzzz. Plus the ever-useful 'They're out to get our helpless white women' argument. Ultra-sleazy tabloid headlines.
What's really frightening is that there were people who believed that sort of garbage back then (and, actually, still believe similar garbage even today.)
I pointed out earlier that there were a number of publications very early on that basically predicted a war between the United States and Japan. One of these was THE COMING CONFLICT OF NATIONS OR THE JAPANESE-AMERICAN WAR, A NARRATIVE, which was published in 1909.
It's a fictional story of an actual war fought in which the Japanese invade the United States and make very great progress in the western half of the country before finally being defeated. It's actually a very well done book and had a couple of things in it which seemed to predict inventions of war weapons in the future.
The next book I found that I thought was interesting was from 1914. It is entitled ASIA AT THE DOOR: A STUDY OF THE JAPANESE QUESTION IN CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES, HAWAII AND CANADA by Kiyoshi K. Kawakami.
He talks about how many Californians feel about the Japanese:
'...many Californians really believe three things about Japanese: First, that they will never become Americans if given the chance; second, that if any of them should become naturalized, they are so patriotic (to Japan) that they never would be loyal to their new government, but in an emergency would turn traitors; and third, that they are utterly unassimilable and must always remain un-American.
He does a very good job of handling the question of how the Japanese immigrants would act in case of a war between the U.S. and Japan. He uses an story from Japanese history. Note; a Daimyo is basically the lord of a certain area of Japan; the Shogun, if there was one at the time, would be above him, and above him would be the Emperor, so the daiymo was pretty important.
The retainer of a Daimyo became the adopted son of the Daimyo of another province by marrying into his family, and according to custom assumed allegiance to the new lord. Later on war arouse between the two clans. The young Samurai was in quandary. How could he take up arms against his former lord? How fight his own father? Yet, on the other hand, how could he be untrue to his new lord?He fought it out thus: To be untrue to my new lord would be an act of treachery unworthy of the respect and name of my former master. I will fight for my present chief and by my valor add to the glory of the daimyo who trained me in the principles of the samurai. Japan has ever applauded that hero as true to the spirit of Bushido.'
To show how things don't really change, there was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Riker went on board a Klingon ship to serve there for a time. There was the possibility of an attack on the Enterprise, and the Klingons wanted to know where Riker stood. Riker stood with the Klingons, his new 'masters.' just as the samurai of the story did.
Now, a story is one thing, but what about a Japanese saying it out straight. There was a speech in Honolulu by the Hon. A Hattori before a big Japanese group. He said four things, although only the first was reported in the American press. He said that the Japanese should:
1. Be loyal to Japan and your Emperor.
2. Become American citizens if you can.
3. By becoming American citizens you do not lose but enlarge your national individuality, you become cosmopolitan.
4. After becoming Americans, if war should break forth between the two nations, justify your Japanese nobility of nature by fighting right loyally for your new country against the old.
So he was telling the Japanese to fight for American if they ended up living there.
He also gives examples of various bills being considered against the Japanese in the U.S.
1. Bills prohibiting the Japanese from acquiring title to land or real property. He adds that in the 1913 session of the legislature of California some 34 anti-Japanese bills were considered. The same author wrote a book that was published in 1917, entitled JAPAN IN WORLD POLITICS. He came up with a good answer to the question of why so many anti-Japanese bills like the above were made. He said it was because the Japanese 'are not allowed to share the rights and duties of citizenship.' Keep in mind that a good part of the Japanese in the U.S. back then were Issei, who were not allowed to become citizens. If a group has no right to vote, and no political influence, then they are basically fair game for any politician who wants to make a name for himself. There were also many rumors about the Japanese and what they were doing, and he points out some of them.
1. Secretly taking photographs and making maps on the cost of Alaska. He goes on with some other rumors. Now, Japan did eventually invade Manchuria, but that was around twenty years later. Again, though, the main problem is that such rumors are gobbled up as truth by the ignorant and the prejudiced. When you add the influence of the newspapers of the time, it's easy to see how the anti-Japanese prejudice in California and the west coast stayed and grew over time. The next book in this section we'll consider is RISING JAPAN: IS SHE A MENACE OR A COMRADE TO BE WELCOMED IN THE FRATERNITY OF NATIONS? which is dated 1918. The first thing that caught my attention in the book was The Imperial Decree on Education and Morals from the Emperor, 1890. These are the things Japanese were supposed to do. See if you can find any of them in the least bit objectionable.
Be filial to your parents. In reference to the newspaper articles, a Dr. Griffis said that he found 'seven tenths of the press articles in this country hostile to Japan are downright falsehoods. They are either gross exaggerations or else pure misrepresentations and calumnies. A former U.S. ambassador to Japan said the chief cause of all the suspicions and misunderstandings that exist between the United States and Japan as being 'irresponsible utterances, sometimes malicious, of which mountains are made.' It also examines one of the rumors, that of the Magdalena Bay alarm of 1911. In the spring of that year a highly sensational report was published widely by the papers of the country to the effect that the Japanese government had purchased a large tract of land on Magdalena Bay, on the coast of Lower California, with the object of fortifying the place and establishing there a powerful naval base. This was declared to be one more evidence of the hostility of Japan and her secret design to invade our shores. The report was so widely circulated and believed that the matter was taken up by the United States Senate and the American government ordered an investigation to be made. What was the result? It was found that the Japanese government had neither made any such purchase nor taken steps looking in the direction of such a purchase. A few years later there was another wild rumor, that concerning Turtle Bay in 1915. ...the New York Herald in its issue of April 15th of the year named came out with a most sensational and detailed report to the effect that Japan had actually sent a naval and military force and was secretly establishing at Turtle Bay on the coast of Lower California...a strong military and naval base. The report was printed under big scare headings and occupied two thirds of a page of the Herald. The report said there were five Japanese warships, six colliers and supply ships, four thousand Japanese marines and sailors, a mined harbor, a wireless telegraphic plan in operation, one or more Japanese patrol ships, 600 Japanese sailors with rifles marching, and sixty tons of ammunition being landed. So, Commodore Irwin of the U.S. cruiser New Orleans went down to check it all out. This is what he found out. In the preceding December a Japanese cruiser had grounded on a mud bank in the bay and was abandoned. Recently the Japanese government had sent to the place a repair ship and a coal vessel, and these were engaged in a peaceful and wholly legitimate endeavor to rescue the stranded vessel-an endeavor in which our own government had offered to assist them if desired.
That was it. Nothing more. The book also goes into the rumor of 200,000 Japanese soldiers in Mexico. The Japanese Legation in Mexico City looked into it, and the Japan Society of New York. They were able to determine that there were 2,000 Japanese in Mexico. About 300 at least were women and children. Most of the men had never received any military training at all. Another rumor was that there 70,000 trained Japanese troops already in California, all disgused as farmers, merchants, day laborers, etc. He then does an analysis of what would happen if Japan actually did invade the U.S. The capture of San Francisco or Seattle or Los Angeles would prove the ruin of any invading army; it would arouse a nation, a hundred million strong, and fill them with a determination as relentless as death to drive the invader into the sea-an end which nothing could prevent. Remember; one of the propositions under consideration if Japan itself was to be invaded was to drop nine atomic bombs as a starter; three on the beaches where the Americans would land, three behind those to kill any Japanese troops further in and any reserves, and three more to take out any groups trying to arrive. That is what 'a determination as relentless as death' would have resulted in for Japan. There is no doubt that if the U.S. had to retake the its own land, the Japanese would have been utterly annihilated, and a military program of death would have been launched against the Japanese that would have gone on until the entire country of Japan had been utterly and thoroughly destroyed. The last book we'll look at is THE ANTI-JAPANESE AGITATION, published in 1920. It was another book that looked at the anti-Japanese prejudice and tried to show it for the claptrap it was. In relation to whether or not the Japanese can be assimilated, he says: To deprive a race of the privileges of citizenship by Federal enactment, and then abuse them for not becoming good citizens, is about the limit of unreasonableness. He notes that the anti-Japanese agitation in California had been going on since 1906, bu it was still relatively new to the Northwest.
There are a couple of other places yet to examine as far as prejudice goes. The first is Canada. In the book reviews section I have reviews of a couple of books on Canadian internment. The way Canada treated their internees was actually worse than the way the U.S. treated theirs. In the Gila News-Courier of August 10, 1944, the Canadians revealed their plans for after the war. In an article entitled NO IMMIGRATION CANADA DECLARES, it was noted that: Complete exclusion of Japanese immigration in Canada after the war was announced as a government policy by Prime Minister Mackenzie King, according to an AP report for Ottawa. So, Canada adopted a 'no more Japanese' approach which is something that surely must have pleased the anti-Japanese people on the U.S. West Coast. Canada also had an interesting way of dealing with Japanese Canadians who were working. Simply keep them out of the city they were working in. From the Manzanar Free Press of April 18, 1945, came this article: 20 JAPANESE CANADIAN DOMESTIC EMPLOYEES ASKED TO LEAVE CITY. Working as domestics without the permission from the city council, about 20 Japanese Canadian girls were issued notices to leave the city by the British Columbia Security Commission. It stated that this action followed complaints from the Lethbridge City council against evacuees who have been employed in the city. The Manzanar Free Press of May 26, 1945, had an article about another Canadian politician, The Hon. Charles Daley, Ontario member of Labor, who said about the Japanese Canadians: 'There's one good place for them. They wanted Kiska and tried hard to get it. Let's send them there now.' Next is Hawaii. Keep in mind that Hawaii was a territory of the United States at the time and was not actually a state. There was only one article dealing with prejudice in Hawaii, and this was in the Granada Pioneer of July 3, 1943. BALCH WOULD MOVE HAWAIIAN JAPANESE. J. A. Balch, former chairman of the Mutual Telephone company in Hawaii, told the Department of Interior that at least 100,000 Japanese should be moved permanently from Hawaii to the mainland. He declared that their presence would produce internal trouble and would leave the territory unsafe against political and economic domination in the future.
2. Bills increasing the license fee of Japanese fisherman from the present rate of $10 to $100 per year
3. Bills providing for the segregation of Japanese school children
4. Bills prohibiting the issuance of liquor licenses to Japanese
5. Bills forbidding the Japanese to use power engines
6. Bills providing for the imposition of a special poll tax upon the Japanese
7. Bills prohibiting the Japanese from employing white women.
2. Trying to get supreme control in Manchuria under pretense of fighting the bubonic plague
3. Conspiring with Mexican insurgents against the U.S.
4. Persecuting American missionaries in Korea and trying to abolish Christianity there.
5. Conspiring with Germany to overthrow the Monroe Doctrine.
6. Forming an alliance with west coast Native Americans against the U.S.
7. Trying to buy lower California.
8. There were 200,000 Japanese soldiers in Mexico.
Be affectionate to your brothers.
Be harmonious as husbands and wives and faithful as friends.
Conduct yourself with propriety and carefulness.
Extend generosity and benevolence to your neighbors.
Attend to your studies faithfully and practice diligently your respective callings.
Cultivate your intellects and elevate your morals.
Advance public benefits and promote the general social welfare.
Always render strict obedience to the constitution and laws of the land.
Display personal courage and public spirit in the interest of your country whenever required.
Other Places
They never got deported, of course. Hawaii was a much more tolerant society than that of the U.S. west coast and they never had any major problems with their Japanese population at all. A small number were arrested right after Pearl Harbor and locked away, and that was basically it. They caused no trouble during the war nor after the war.
There were some specific groups and specific people mentioned in the various camp newsletters. Some were very anti-prejudice, some quite prejudiced in their remarks. Some were local to the West Coast while some were national organizations.
The Minidoka Irrigator carried this article about the AFT in their September 11, 1943 newsletter.
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS PASSES RESOLUTION BACKING NISEI: Paving another milestone in restoring nisei faith in American fair play, the American Federation of Teachers adopted a resolution on American Citizens of Japanese descent and Japanese in Relocation Centers at a convention held in Chicago last month.
The resolution read:
Whereas the continued holding of American citizens of Japanese descent and loyal Japanese in relocation centers is not only destructive of their morals and faith in the ideals for which America stands but also is a practice of segregation and discrimination based on race which is contrary both toe the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution and:
Whereas in the relocation centers are thousands of loyal American citizens and loyal Japanese whose labor power is greatly needed and whose cultural contributions can enrich our civilization.
Therefore be it resolved that the American Federation of Teachers urge President Roosevelt and the War Relocation Board to release speedily from the relocation centers all loyal American citizens of Japanese whose loyalty to the United States and its democratic institutions is unquestioned and that they may enjoy the rights and privileges to which they are entitled.
The American Legion, at least the western version of it, was really prejudiced against the Japanese Americans. This eventually led to the Hood River problem which stirred up feelings. They also had the largest number of articles relating to them of any group or individual in the list.
The first thing that was done was to get rid of the Japanese American Legion outposts. This is covered in an article in the Granada Pioneer of December 12, 1942.
LEGION OUTS JAPANESE. San Francisco. Resolutions to cancel the charters of California's two Japanese American Legion posts were to be enacted Monday, Dec. 7, at the Legion's executive committee sessions, according to a story released by the INS agency here.
Declaring that 'there is no place for Japanese, supposedly loyal or otherwise, in the Legion,” Comdr. Leon Happel said that the California department would eliminate all Japanese members.
Then the Legion went after the Japanese Americans who were, well, everywhere. The Gila News-Courier of August 26, 1943, ran this article:
LEGION ADOPTS RESOLUTION: A resolution asking Army control of all released and interned Japanese and immediate discontinuance of Japanese enlistments in the army was unanimously adopted by the State convention of the California American Legion.
An article in the Zanesville Signal of January 29, 1944, that I happened to run across had this to say:
URGES DEPORTATION OF JAP SUBJECTS. Warren H. Atherton, national commander of the American Legion, said today in an interview he favored deportation of all Japanese subjects in the United States as soon as possible.
Atherton declared the American Legion believed that Japanese never could be assimilated, and add:
'That belief has been proven in 50 years of trial.'
Atherton said it would be dangerous to return to California the 150,000 Japanese who were moved to relocation camps for reason of security.
The 26th annual convention of the California Department of the American Legion opposed the return of any of the Japanese or Japanese Americans at least until the total end of the war. This was carried in the August 26, 1944 issue of the Manzanar Free Press.
Then there began the problems with Japanese Americans listed on honor rolls and monuments. The first such problem concerned Yuba country in California, and is discussed in an article entitled NISEI GI HONOR ROLL CREATES TENSION IN YUBA in the Manzanar Free Press, December 6, 1944, issue.
It seems there was an honor roll that was sponsored by the Uba-Suttor Post No. 42 of the American Legion. The first man's name on the list was Japanese because his name started with an 'A'. This caused a storm of protest, so the legion suggested putting the names of the Japanese Americans together, separate from the other names. This also caused a storm of protest because people complained the Japanese Americans were being singled out for special distinction.
This was a minor battle, though. The main problem was the Hood River incident. The first article on this is from the Gila News-Courier of December 6, 1944.
OREGON LEGION DROPS 16 NISEI: The names of 16 Nisei now serving in the U.S. Army were erased by the Hood River (Ore.) Post of the American Legion from the county's war memorial, said Jess Edington, commander, according to an AP release. Many of these soldiers were serving on overseas battle fronts.
He also stated he would try to exclude all Japanese from Hood River valley.
So, they took the names off and then promised to try to prevent any Japanese Americans from living in the area. That's a pretty strong show of prejudice, frankly.
It wasn't long before the furor began. The Granada Pioneer of December 13, 1944, carried an editorial from the Milwaukee Journal of December 5, 1944.
AN UN-AMERICAN ACT-There is nothing very American about that American Legion post in the Hood River valley of Oregon which removed from its war memorial the names of 16 Americans of Japanese ancestry now serving in the United States Army....
We are sure that this is not in the spirit of the legion as a whole, and we hope the national organization will do something about it, even though it does try to leave its post as autonomous as possible.
An article in the Heart Mountain Sentinel of December 16, 1944, noted that Secretary Stimson, the Secretary of War, criticized the post for discrimination. He said the action was not consistent with democratic ideals. The article also showed a split in Legion posts, as a Washington American Legion post condemned the action of the Hood River outpost.
The Milwaukee Journal hit with another editorial, this one quoted by the Gila News-Courier of December 27, 1944.
HOOD RIVER LEGION GETS BLACK EYE. The Capt. Belvidere Brooks post no. 450 of the American Legion in New York City has invited 16 American soldiers of Japanese ancestry to join its post after the war.
The article went on to say that not all the original 16 would be able to join the New York post, though, because some were no longer alive.
The Hood River post was now cowered by the controversy, though. They hit back with a quarter-page advertisement in the Hood River newspaper 'urging Japanese not to return to Hood River county' according to the article HOOD RIVER LEGION WANTS NO JAPANESE in the December 30, 1944 issue of the Granada Pioneer.
The situation got worse as it became a post-on-post battle. The Manzanar Free Press of January 27, 1945, carried this article:
HOLLYWOOD AMERICAN LEGION POST ACT STIRS INTRA-LEGION BATTLE AT CONFAB: Action of Hollywood Post No. 591 in inviting an American Japanese war veteran to its post and then publicizing the incident touched off an intra-legion battle, the Los Angeles Times revealed this week.
The controversy began when District Commander P.A. (Dick) Horton criticized the Hollywood post and said that the post had acted in 'bad faith.'
Horton declared that the Hollywood Post, in publicizing their action without official permission and condemning the Hood River post which had removed the names of Nisei soldiers from its honor roll, had violated the ethics of the legion and sabotaged its program.
The Heart Mountain Sentinel of January 27, 1945, carried an article about Iowa Legionnaires that protested the action of the Hood River post.
The Hood River post continued to be defiant. The Gila News-Courier of February 10, 1945, carried this article:
HOOD RIVER LEGION REFUSES TO ACT. The membership of Hood River American Legion post rejected the recommendation of the Legion's national commander that it restore the names of Japanese American servicemen erased from the county's honor roll, AP reports.
Apparently there was a new national commander who didn't like the publicity that the furor was causing. If the matter had been kept strictly to the west coast, there might not have been such an uproar, but once Hood River's action became national news, then it became almost inevitable that the Legion would have to get things under control.
Hood River managed to hold out about another month. The Gila News-Courier of March 10, 1945, carried this article:
HOOD RIVER RESTORES NISEI NAMES. National Headquarters of the American Legion announced Tuesday Hood River, Ore. post. no 22, had agreed to restore to its honor roll the names of 15 Japanese American servicemen which it voted to scratch out last December.
So they agreed to go with the letter of the American Legion law, so it were, but not the spirit of the law.
The post still opposed Japanese Americans returning to Hood River, though. The Magellan Post No. 604 was reported as reporting the return of Japanese Americans in the Granada Pioneer of April 11, 1945.
There was another group, the American War Mothers, which was noted in one article, that from the Granada Pioneer of June 9, 1943.
OPPOSE RELEASE OF JAPANESE: Vigorous opposition to the action of the WRA in releasing the Japaneses evacuees and permitting them to return to the West Coast was voiced in a resolution adopted by delegates to the 24th annual convention of American War Mothers in Long Beach.
The article also notes that Mayor Howron, I presume of Los Angeles, had made a radio broadcast 'in which he expressed hope that some legal way might be found to deprive Japs of their American citizenship.'
The next group up is the Disabled American Veterans. There were two articles about that group, the first from the Minidoka Irrigator of January 20, 1945. The first article refers to an Oregon post of the group that had voted 'never to allow a Japanese or a colored veteran' to become a member. The leader of the group said the Japanese should start an organization of their own.
The second article was from the Manzanar Free Press of February 2, 1945, and was exactly the same article.
This is one of the guys that really didn't care for the Japanese or the Japanese Americans, and he coined a phrase which is still referred to in books about that time. He's the man that came up with the 'A Jap's a Jap' phrase, and added 'it makes no difference whether he is an American citizen.'
GENERAL DEWITT OPPOSES THE RETURN OF CALIFORNIA 'JAPS': The commanding general of the Western Defense Command and Fourth Army told the House Naval Affairs Subcommittee 'I don't want any of them. We got them out. They were a dangerous element. The West coast is too vital and too vulnerable to take chances.'
This was in the Rohwer Outpost of April 17, 1943. DeWitt was applauded by the senator from Tennessee in a Granada Pioneer article of April 28, 1943. The execution by the Japanese of some American flyers had fanned the flames of hate again in this country.
Other than these two articles, though, there wasn't much about DeWitt in the newsletters that was relevant.
One of the clear heads of that time was former ambassador to Japan, Joseph C.Grew. He tried to speak some sense to people. The following article is from the Heart Mountain Sentinel of November 27,1943.
DON'T VICTIMIZE LOYAL JAPANESE BY WAR PREJUDICE, GREW SAYS. Loyal American citizens of Japanese ancestry were strongly defended by Joseph C. Grew, former ambassador to Japan and special assistant to the secretary of state, in a speech here last week at the annual dinner of the Helland society.
The former ambassador told the society that loyal American citizens of Japanese descent should not be made the victims of wartime prejudices.
'I have too great a belief in the sanctity of American citizenship to want to see those Americans of Japanese descent penalized and alienated through blind prejudice,' Grew declared.
'I want to see them given a square deal. I want to see them treated as we rightly treat all other American citizens regardless of their racial origin-with respect and support.
'That fundamental principle,' Grew said, 'should apply along the line-to every citizen of the United States of American.'
Grew said that the nation must take every proper step to protect the country from hostile acts, espionage or sabotage, but the competent official authorities were attending to that constantly and effectively.
'I do know,' he added, ' that like the Americans of German descent the overwhelming majority of Americans of Japanese origin wish to be and are wholly loyal to the United States, and not only that, but they wish to prove their loyalty in service to their native land.'
Grew quoted press reports from the 5th army in Italy saying that the first unit of American born troops went into combat 'smiling with satisfaction as if they were going to a baseball game' and that their motto is 'Remember Pearl Harbor.'
The motto of the unit eventually became Go For Broke.
The Methodists were mentioned in one article, that from the Minidoka Irrigator of May 27, 1944. The article referred to an 11-day international conference that was being held by the church.
METHODIST GROUP BACKS NISEI RIGHTS. Restoration to loyal Japanese Americans of 'their full rights as citizens' was strongly advocated by delegates to the Methodist Conference while in session here (Kansas City) for the forty-first conference of that Church. At the same time they endorsed the relocation policy of the WRA.
The group went to to say they were disturbed by the level of intolerance shown the Japanese Americans.
There were a couple of articles about this group. The first was from the Granada Pioneer of May 5, 1943.
NDGW OPPOSES NEW ARMY PLAN: Opposition to the formation of specially trained Japanese Army units was expressed by Native Daughters of the Golden West, Fresno chapter.
They also demanded that Congressional action be taken to deprive all Japs of American citizenship.
Said the group:
'More than 90 percent of the Japs, both foreign and native-born are loyal to Japan. American has no place for these people...
Where on earth they came up with the 90% figure is beyond me. The group was heard from again later, and again in the Granada Pioneer, this time on July 4, 1945.
NATIVE DAUGHTERS AGAINST RETURN OF EVACUEES: The grand officers of the Native Daughters of the Golden West at their recent three-day war conference went on record urging a military order prohibiting the return of evacuees of Japanese ancestry to the Pacific coast.
The native daughters also demanded that restrictions be placed on all valuable agricultural lands in California and that nisei not be permitted to lease or purchase any land in the state.
If you have the Native Daughters, then you are bound to have the Native Sons. The group was as anti-Japanese as the Daughters.
The first article is actually in response to something the Native Sons had already recommended. The article is from the Granada Pioneer of May 29, 1943.
FRANKENSTEIN CONDEMNS RESOLUTIONS OF NSGW: An editorial by Alfred Frankenstein, condemning the resolution made by the Native Sons of the Golden West calling for an amendment to the Federal Constitutional barring the first-generation of American-born Japanese from citizenship, appeared in a recent issue of the SF Chronicle.
Wrote Frankenstein:
'This proposal would, of course, repeal the 14th and 15th Amendments. It would also repeal science, American history, and Christianity. There is no anthropologist on earth...who will pass a moral judgment on a race. There is not a Christian teacher...who would agree that any race in inherently and unregenerately dishonest...the whole American system of law and education is based upon the principle that the individual transcends all considerations of race and class.
'That such an amendment would, if passed, establish a precedent for the disqualification of any minority group against which any other minority group might choose to raise a clamor is obvious enough.'
Guess what I've been reading online in the last couple of days? Political leaders from the right-wing saying that we should repeal the 14th amendment to deny Mexicans born in the U.S. of illegal immigrants their American citizenship. Again, nothing changes, only the target of the hate changes.
The second article was from the Granada Pioneer of February 21, 1945, and dealth with a meeting of the Native Sons of the Golden West where they recommended certain pieces of anti-Japanese legislation.
1. An act to ban coastal waters to fishing by persons of Japanese ancestry.
2. An amendment to the Alien Land Act to prohibit a Japanese-born parent from using his money to buy land for an American-born child.
3. A law giving prosecutors power to enforce rigidly the escheat provisions of the Alien Land Act so that land owned by subterfuge by Japanese-American citizens may be confiscated by the state.
4. A strict ban on Japanese language schools.
5. The deportation of any person of Japanese ancestry who has 'by work or deed sown any disloyalty to the United States, as well as those persons who have refused to renounce their allegiance to Japan.'
If you want to start a new group, at least choose a name that doesn't sound like some dry college meeting of professors. The Minidoka Irrigator of June 5, 1943, had the only article I found on this group.
The group wanted all Japanese who had relocated to be recalled by the WRA. They complained that the WRA was scattering the Japanese all over the country 'under an impractical plan of securing employment.'
Well, actually, that's one of the things that the WRA did want to do; scatter the Japanese all over the country. It would help them to assimilate better and placate, to a slight degree, the bigots in California. Other than this one article, though, I didn't find any reference to them.
This is the final group of any significance that I found covered in the newsletters. The first article is from the Minidoka Irrigator of October 23, 1943. It refers to the Twin Falls (Idaho) post of the VFW, which passed a resolution that demanded that '...all Japanese be placed in concentration camps and treated as prisoners of war,' and that there were all to be removed from the U.S. within six months following the close of the war.
An article in the Granada Pioneer of June 24, 1944, was based on the Washington State VFW. That group wanted the transfer of all persons of Japanese ancestry in the U.S. to island possessions of the U.S. such as the Gilberts and Marshall islands. They also wanted all of them to immediately be put under Army and Navy supervision.
The Manzanar Free Press of January 23, 1945, had an article entitled AUBURN RESIDENTS PLAN BOYCOTT OF JAPANESE which was about Auburn, California. The VFW post there wanted to boycott returning Nisei and 'persons do business with the Japanese.' Some women said they would withdraw their children from schools attended by Nisei.
A Spokane, Washington, VFW had rejected an application for membership from a wounded Japanese American veteran of the Italian campaign. Over 500 veterans convalescing at the Baxter General Hospital in Spokane, though, signed a petition requesting the VFW to admit the Japanese American veteran. Similar articles were run in the Heart Mountain Sentinel of July 14, 1945 and the Manzanar Free Press of August 8, 1945.
By August 16, 1945, the number of applicants that had been rejected had grown to two, according to the Granada Pioneer.
The first one is pro-Japanese, written by a man who wrote a couple of the 1900-1919 works.
1921, K. K. Kawakami
The book starts off talking about the Japanese immigrants to Hawaii, and that the relationship between them and the whites is pretty good.
Then he shows just how strange some of the anti-Japanese people were:
One afternoon last fall th Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles Country was discussion various measures in the usual fashion. Abruptly a member stood up and frothing at the mouth shouted, “They are coming-they are coming!-armed!-they are coming to drive us out!!
He had apparently been reading the newspaper hate articles on the Japanese and it finally got to be too much for him.
He talks about how some people were worried that California, Oregon and Washington would become as filled with Japanese as was Hawaii. The author then shows in tables that the Japanese owned less than 1/4 of 1% of the land in California, less than 1.3 of 1 percent (?) in Washington, and less than 1-50th of 1% in Oregon.
There's more math on the issue of how much of the money for crops goes to Japanese. He points out that they produce about 18% of the food in California. Of the money they get, 35% goes to landowners as rentals, 45% for labor, and the Japanese tenants (or contractors) get only about 20%.
The author then talks about the controversial community of Florin in California, and disputes arguments about how the Japanese had taken over the town and ruined it.
After talking about the Gentlemen's Agreement, the author then talks about the anti-Japanese groups:
The politicians and fire-eaters find a good ally in a large section of the California press, for California, and especially San Francisco and Los Angeles, is noted for its peculiar papers. Not a day passes that these newspapers do not publish anti-Japanese news stories or editorials, often absolutely groundless, always conceived to rouse suspicion or resentment towards the Japanese.
This is a good example of just how influential newspapers were in the days before television.
I particularly liked the following quote:
Left alone by busybodies, the Japanese an Americans in California can get along amicably together. This is not an assertion but a fact.
He adds:
...any community can be aroused against any race by a persistent propaganda such as been carried on against the Japanese by politicians and newspapers. In the past year or more the California Anti-Oriental League, sponsored by Senator Phelan and his political cohorts, has honeycombed the state with anti-Japanese meetings, poisoning the minds and hearts of well-meaning townsfolk and villagers. But for this agitation there would have been no sinister posters and placards in nay part of California.
This can be reflected even on a national level. The author talks about the California anti-Japanese Land Initiative Law which was passed in November of 1920 by around a 3 to 1 majority. The rest of the nation was surprised the difference was that big, but Californians were surprised the difference was that small. Apparently the prediction was that it would pass by a 9 to 1 margin.
Once that law passed, other states tried similar things. A table the author includes points out that such a move failed in Oregon (Feb. 19, 1921); Idaho (Feb. 28, 1921); Montana (March 3, 1921); Utah (Feb. 28,1921), and Nevada (no date given.)
However, the same kind of thing passed in Colorado (April 4, 1921); Nebraska (Feb. 15, 1921); Arizona (Feb. 25, 1921); Texas (March 9, 1921); and was yet to be voted on in New Mexico.
The California legislature followed up with bills that tried to do the following:
1. Abolish Japanese language schools.
2. Allow school districts to segregate Japanese schoolchildren where “such a measure is necessary.”
3. Prohibit Japanese to fish commercially.
4. Require landowners to notify the country recorder of how much land they allow ineligible aliens to cultivate.
5. Spend $50,000 for anti-Japanese propaganda to be used through the United States.
6. Determine what corporations have Japanese shareholders.
The one that really gets me is the fifth, which would have made it an official policy of the government of the state to spread hate throughout the entire country.
In a chapter on the anti-Oriental tradition in the United States, the author examines the history of Chinese immigrants and how they were treated.
The author then returns to the issue of the press, and notes how the papers bury any good news about the Japanese if they run any of it at all. He then gives a very specific and most interesting example. On December 5, 1920, the Japanese Young Men of Central California issued a resolution:
We, the Japanese young men of Central California, in consideration of the situation confronting us to-day, declare that we shall do our utmost for the Americanization of our people in America.
A few days later the Japanese Exclusion League reported the resolution stated the following:
We are firmly resolved that Central California, as the impregnable fortress of Japanese development in America, shall be defended to the deathblow at whatever sacrifice.
What I find particularly interesting about this is that we saw exactly the same type of tactics in the recent Presidential election where news stories varied incredibly depending on which news channel one watched.
The next chapter is about Japanese Language Schools, with the usual type of information on why they were set up and what they do. What the author does, though, is point out how false the information was provided by the newspapers. In one article, for example, they claimed that 8 of the schools were really Buddhist-oriented schools, and they gave specific addresses for the schools.
2 of the 8 addresses provided didn't even have any schools of any kind at the address. None. One of the schools was Christian, and one was Catholic. Three of them were non-sectarian. Of the 8 listed in the article, only 1 was actually Buddhist.
He talks about some rumors he had heard, like there were 20 million Japanese in the U.S. when, at the time, there were about 100,000. Another rumor was that Japanese children were crowding all the schools, where, at the time, there was only 1 school in the entire state of California where there were more Japanese than whites, and that was by a margin of only three students, and that at a relatively small village.
He talks about the actual positive views of Japanese schoolchildren held by teachers.
The next chapter is about Dual Citizenship, and it's followed by a chapter on Japanese Associations in America. These include:
1. The United Northwestern Japanese Association (Seattle)
2. The Japanese Association of Oregon (Portland)
3. The Japanese Association of America (San Francisco)
4. The Central Japanese Association of Southern California
The author has his own solution to the problem.
1. Japanese immigrating should be allowed economic privileges according to those from nations under the 'most favored country' status.
2. Japan should stop all new immigration into the U.S.
3. Appoint a Commission of Japanese and Americans to examine all phases of Japanese immigration, and come up with rules and regulations to cover all possibilities.
The Anti-Japanese Agitation from a Business Man's Standpoint
The next work is THE ANTI-JAPANESE AGITATION FROM A BUSINESS MAN'S STANDPOINT from 1921. The main points that book made as as follows:
1. The standard of living of Japanese laborers is below that of white Americans.
2. With the exception of some trouble in Vancouver, B.C. many years ago, the Japanese have proved themselves at all times to be law-abiding, attending to their own business entirely, and in no way interfering with anybody's legal rights.
3. The violent agitation that has been in evidence for several years now in California has been due, therefore, to a fear of economic competition, but at points where the American laborer has, after all, a lesser contact, viz, agricultural and horticultural, principally truck gardening.
4. It has been proved that part, at least, of the agitation was fostered during the war by German money.
He's referring to World War I in this instance.
5. California should realize that it has no race problem like the race problem confronting the South.This book is from 1921. In reference to a war with Japan, the author says very early in the work:
These people, mostly living on our Pacific Coast, argue that war has already become inevitable.Keep in mind this is two decades before war actually broke out. The author adds:
There chances of grave trouble with Japan in the near future are immensely greater than our chances of trouble with Germany were ten years ago.One of the things I can't quite understand about Pearl Harbor being such a surprise and Japan's war with the U.S. is that there were so many publications decades before the war that broke out that very specifically noted strong belief on the part of many people that war between the two countries was inevitable. Yet the U.S. was surprised when Japan did attack.
It's like some of the mid-war fighting when U.S. soldiers first encountered the Japanese in their extensive tunnel systems, then seems surprised when they encountered exactly the same thing later on items like Iwo Jima then acted like they hadn't expected such a thing would happen.
He later lists several reasons for the bad feelings between the two countries from Japan's viewpoint.
1. The impression about Americans and their morals which is systematically created by newspapers and motion pictures.
2. The part American has played, together with the powers of Europe, in forcing itself, its business men and its trade upon Japan.
This is, of course, a very good point. It was Admiral Perry and his gunships that forced Japan to open itself to trade with other countries.
3. The cunning and hypocritical efforts of our Government in thwarting Japan in her natural expansion on the mainland of Asia, whither her immense surplus population must overflow or perish.
Not that one, of course, is a bunch of hooey. Japan did not have any 'right' to expand itself on the Asian mainland. Nor does any country anywhere have an inherent 'right' to expand itself. Remember Adolph Hitler and his demand for room for Germany to expand? The various powers of the world had carved up other countries like so much meat or something for themselves, not paying one bit of attention to the fact that those countries they took over had a right to be themselves.
Japan did end up feeling surrounded by other powers and their interests in the region, noting in particular Great Britain, the United States, and the Dutch as 'thwarting' their 'interests' in the area.
One place he did end up being proved totally wrong was when he writes that neither Japan nor the United States could back up its interests on the other side of the Pacific. Japan was never able to actually attack the United States itself and did no harm to the vast industrial power the United States had.
The U.S. lost many ships, planes and men in the war, but the U.S. was able to replace them. Japan lost ship, planes and men also, but was unable to keep up a continual replacement of them. Admiral Yamamoto himself pointed out the problem of being unable to attack the U.S. industrial might when he warned about Japan starting a war with this country, but the military leaders wanted the war and they were going to have it.
They did.
And they lost. Bad.
The imaginary fear of an Asiatic influx, cleverly fermented by agitators, is certainly a strong cause of Japanophobia. ...This fear is inculcated and whetted among the Californians by a hideous picture of a Japanese Empire, that, like medieval Mongolia, would send a storming army of invasion. One might gather from the reports of the Hearst papers in California that the Pacific Coast of North American was invaded by a Japanese army on an average of once a month. ...it is simply amazing how large a portion of the California people honestly fear the utterly impossible eventuality of a Japanese invasion.
Some of the more virulent material came from The Annuals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, such as in this January, 1921 item. I'll note just a few of the points that they made:
1. California was made a white man's state by the Constitution of 1849. It later was amended to make Mongolians ineligible to citizenship. So, basically, California was founded as a racist state, period.
2. If a period of depression comes and the white people of this state find an element in their midst of another race, of different home standards, alien under the law and openly loyal to another country, if not disloyal to ours, a people sapping our vital strength and draining our finances when our people have need, is it to be expected that California shall again take the settlement of the question in her own hands as she did in the (18) seventies?
The author is making a state's rights type of statement with a somewhat ominous threat that Japan could decide to deal with the Japanese in its presence any way it wanted to if it felt it was necessary.
3. A Japanese born in this country married to a white woman produces a progeny not only half breed as to race but half breed as to loyalty.
He's basically saying that all the Nisei would be automatically loyal to Japan just by being born to at least one Japanese parent. It's not taking into consideration at all the actual upbringing and of the child and how that will have an effect on the child's eventual concept of loyalty. As it turned out in fact the Nisei were overwhelmingly loyal to the United States and not to Japan, as they proved with their blood in the 442nd and other groups.
The author did say that the Japanese language schools would work to counter-effect the American public schools but, again, that is not something that actually turned out to work the way he expected it to.
He then goes on to try to say that the Japanese would get their way by intermarriage which, of course, was strongly looked down upon by white society.
In the same publication there was another article, this one entitled JAPANESE IN THE MELTING-POT:CAN THEY ASSIMILATE AND MAKE GOOD CITIZENS? That author had his own points to make.
1. The Japanese can not assimilate and make good citizens because of their racial characteristics, heredity and religion.
2. The Japanese may not assimilate and make good citizens because their Government claims all Japanese, no matter where born, as its citizens.
3. There can be no effective assimilation of Japanese without intermarriage. It is perhaps not desirable for the good of either race that there should be intermarriage between whites and Japanese.
4. ...the Japanese of California show no disposition to Americanize themselves and that to this fact largely is due the antagonism which they have created.
5. One reason why the Japanese show no disposition to Americanize themselves lies in their belief, passed down through generations, grounded into them in their schools, and a part of their religion...that they are superior to any race on earth. Why, then, should they be willing to expatriate themselves and become citizens of an inferior nation?
6. ...it is not only probably but practically certain that the majority of Japanese who are now endeavoring to secure for themselves the privileges of American citizenship, are doing it not from any desire to help the American nation, or to become an integral part of it, but that they may better serve Japan and the Mikado.
In other words, Japanese immigration into the U.S. is actually a plot on the part of Japan to put a huge number of their citizens here so that, in case of trouble, they could help Japan.
Now, there is some justification in the author's argument that their non-assimilability is partly due to their isolating themselves into groups. It is natural that a group of immigrants from some other country, coming to this country, would want to stay together, at least for a while, because they would be living among people from their own country. They would not be used to the customs that the Americans have, and would turn to those of their own kind for friendship and comfort.
The problem is that this establishes them as a very easy target for bigots who hate immigrants. It also slows down the speed of their assimilation into American society, and this does not just apply to the Japanese but to each group of ethnic or religious immigrants into the U.S.
Let me give you a very basic example of this type of thing. Back in the 1950's, say, when you went out to eat you went to something like a Frish's, some kind of a diner, or some other well-established place that served traditional American food. You ate the food and you picked up American culture along with it.
These days, there is an astonishing wealth of ethnic restaurants. In any fair-sized city you can eat the traditional Italian food, of course, but you can also have Mexican food, Thai food, Vietnamese food, Japanese and Chinese food, Indian food, and food from numerous other cultures. You eat the food and, at least for those who bother to think much, you end up wanting to learn about the type of culture that produced that food.
For example, when I first started eating Indian food, I wondered why (and don't laugh) that the residue on the plate after I finished eating was yellow. A friend of mine explained to me how this was due to the types of spices that the Indians used. A series on television that I'm watching now is about Gordon Ramsey's trip to India and how he goes all over that nation learning about, sampling, and cooking the various types of food from the various areas.
I learned a lot about Japanese food by watching Iron Chef (there you go, laughing again), and watching Japanese drama series that very often had food as a main part of the plot.
Which all brings us back to the media problem again. Back in the pre-1940's period, you had newspapers and radio (and very, very few if any ethnic restaurants). Everything you learned about a country you learned from school, or from the mass media.
Nowadays, with the incredible wealth of information devices (too much information, many say), if we have a question about a country's culture, then the information can be found easily, especially on the Internet.
Yet, at the same time, we are still seeking a strong push against immigrants of a certain type, with the anti-immigrant people using the same types of arguments used against the Japanese (and the Jews, and the Irish, and the Catholics, etc, etc, etc.)
There is actually much less reason for prejudice today than ever before, because 'the other' is no longer going to be a mysterious entity.
Now the next article, again from the same publication, starts right off with an interesting title.
WHY CALIFORNIA OBJECTS TO THE JAPANESE INVASION. Invasion is not in quotes, so it's immediately obvious that the article is going to be anti-Japanese.
It says that there are 'great numbers' of Japanese now in California, using up the land, and being unfair competitors to whites.
The state, therefore, is obliged as a simple matter of self-preservation to prevent the Japanese from absorbing the soil, because the future of the white race, American institutions, and western civilization are put in peril.
So the entire future of the white race is in danger from some Japanese farmers who, through very hard work, are making a successful run of their farms? The author then adds:
We must preserve the soil for the Caucasian race.
This type of thing sounds like it should come from a KKK pamphlet and not the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences.
This book comes from the State Board of Control of California. Guess what their position on the Japanese is? The publication is dated 1922.
Once a Japanese, always a Japanese, unless each individual Japanese renounces allegiance in the manner prescribed by the Civil Code of Japan and his renunciation is accepted by the Japanese government.
Every Japanese in the United States, whether American=born or not, is a citizen of Japan and as such is subject to military duty to Japan from the age of seventeen years until forty years of age, unless expatriated. ...Under such circumstances, a Japanese, though born in America and thereby acquiring all the rights and privileges of an American citizen, owes his first obligation of allegiance and military service to Japan.
1922. As the title indicates, it goes into the history of what had been going on with the Japanese in this country.
California's attention was first attracted to Oriental labor in 1888 when a San Francisco shipowners' associated manned several of its vessels with Japanese. In 1891, a Mr. Doyle, a former resident of Japan, came to San Francisco and proposed to bring in 5000 Japanese from the Hawaiian islands-a suggestion which was immediately protested by the city Trades' Council. ..In March of that year symptoms of bubonic plague appeared in San Francisco. Immediately Mayor Phelan and the Board of Supervisors quarantined the Chinese and Japanese quarters, but no other part of the city.
Notice that, right off, the opposition started with the various labor organizations. Why? They were afraid they would lose white jobs to Oriental labor.
...the American Federation of Labor, in its convention in San Francisco, November, 1904, demanded that the exclusion laws be applied to Japanese immigrants.
So we can trace a 'let's make a law against them' approach as far back as 1904.
Then the author goes on to talk about a war between Japan and Russia which started in February of 1904. The Japanese basically staged a sudden raid on the Russian fleet and beat the Russians. The better the Japanese did, 'the enthusiasm for the yellow man, at lest along the Pacific Coast, began to wane.'
Then something very interesting comes out. The term 'Yellow Peril' has been used many, many times to describe the Oriental. One would think that the term had been invented by the Hearst newspapers of the time, but it wasn't. It was the Kaiser of Germany (at the time) who came up with the term.
The newspapers began their attack on Japanese settlers. The San Francisco Chronicle on February 23, 1901 ran a nine-column article, covering nearly two pages, on the danger of Japanese immigration.
On March 1, 1901, the senate of California 'adopted a resolution declaring against the unrestricted immigration of the Japanese, and asking the federal government for immediate protection.'
At the instigation of this newspaper, the leadership of the anti-Japanese movement now passed into the hands of union labor, which was at this time so firmly intrenched in San Francisco politics. On March 10, 1905, the Labor Council of San Francisco, then the largest labor body in the country west of Chicago, held a meeting in which the campaign against the Japanese was definitely launched.
On Sunday, May 7, 1905, a mass meeting was held at Metropolitan Hall to launch the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League.That League ended up becoming the Asiatic Exclusion League.
The federal government didn't put massive restrictions on the immigration, so ...the politicians of San Francisco resolved to take matters into their own hands; to substitute local for national action; to become town-heroes by defying the national will.'
Before anything more immediate could be done, though, the San Francisco Earthquake struck. The city survived and started to reconstruct, but this had a curious result.
But the reconstruction of the city again resurrected anti-Japanese sentiment. Ten thousand Japanese had been affected by the fire. In an effort to find homes and business locations, many invaded the western districts of San Francisco which hitherto had been 'white man's land.'
Sound familiar? How about the time, decades later, when blacks would start to move into an area that was totally white, and the protests and trouble that kind of movement started.
Then the League began its campaign against Japanese-run restaurants.
As early as June 15, 1906, the Exclusion League protested that many union men were patronizing these restaurants. With the plea 'White men and women, patronize your own race. the League unsuccessfully attempted to keep them from being frequented.
If peaceful methods don't work, then turn to violence. 'Japanese stores were burglarized and one back president murdered.'
Politicians know which side their bread is buttered on. 'In the fall of 1906...both the Democratic and Republican State Conventions declared for the exclusion of the Japanese in no uncertain terms.'
Then came the San Francisco school board incident.
On October 11, 1906, the School Board of San Francisco passed a special resolution which brought the anti-Japanese crisis to a white heat. As part of a well-organized plan, the School Board had first decided to establish separate schools for Japanese and Chinese on the day before the first convention of the Exclusion League was held (May 6, 1905). The legal right to segregate white from Mongolian school children in this manner was based on a school law which authorized school boards to establish separate schools for Indian, Chinese and Mongolian children at their own discretion.
On October 11, the board ordered all Japanese children to attend the Oriental school in Chinatown.
How many children were involved to start such a mess? Well, there were 25,000 school children in the city. There were 93 Japanese, 25 of which were Nisei. That makes around three-tenths of one percent of the school population.
One of the problem was that some of the Japanese children were older then the other kids in the same grades, and some parents really didn't like such kids, especially boys, being anywhere near their white daughters.
The U.S. government, interested in inter-national relations, didn't take well to the board's action.
President (Teddy) Roosevelt instructed the attorney-general, acting through United States Attorney Devlin, to bring an action against the School Board in the courts.
In a message to Congress, Roosevelt denounced the action of the board as 'a wicked absurdity.'
Some of the people in California seemed to expect some kind of government invasion of something of their state. Still, the end result was that the school board on March 13, 1907 backed down.
February 1908. War talk erupts on the west coast.
War-talk was also revived. Rumors were broadcast that Japanese warships were hovering near Hawaii. The mayor of Portland publicly announced that Japanese spies had secured detailed maps of the roads and pipelines leading into the city. A Japanese 'spy' was arrested at Fort Rosecrans. Captain Richmond Pearson wrote a series of articles estimating the number of men Japan could land on the Pacific Coast.
So, once again, we have talk of a war between the United States and Japan decades before the war actually took place.
The next work is from 1923, and is AGAIN THE YELLOW PERIL from Foreign Affairs magazine.
...the anti-Japanese agitation continues on the Pacific coast, under the leadership of the Exclusion League and the American Legion. It is becoming aggressive in and about Seattle, a neighborhood which hitherto has been comparatively sympathetic with the oriental. It has appeared in other parts of the state of Washington where, because of the anti-alien policy of the Department of the Interior, Japanese farmers have been unable to renew their leases of public lands. It has cropped out in the Utah, Idaho and Montana legislatures where anti-Japanese legislation has been debated. It is an endless theme in Hawaii, where the Labor Commission appointed by President Harding protested recently against the 'menace of alien domination.' It has appeared in congress, where exclusion bills are pending.
Responsible anti-Japanese leaders have opposed the use of violence. Nevertheless, the anti-Japanese movement in the west has not stopped merely with repressive legislation. Fantastic charges in regard to emperor worship, Japanese 'spies' and super-governments in California are widely circulated, and anti-Japanese novels such as Peter Kyne's Pride of Palomar are printed serially in the newspapers. Attempts of American denominations to build churches and community centers for Japanese congregations in Los Angeles, Hollywood, and Long Beach have been defeated under pressure of anti-Japanese leaders.
Then the author notes something that no other book did, at least of all the books and articles I have gone through. A new reason for not supporting Japanese assimilation into American culture. Some of the people on the Pacific coast were concerned that, if they supported such efforts, the rest of the country would then think that they favored immigration.
From American Review, 1924, comes this chestnut:
Immigration of unassimilable races must be checked and checked now, to save, for example, California for American civilization, ideals, and institutions, as the hope of the world; otherwise the cancerous growth will spread.
The article also noted that if the immigration continued '...it would wipe out American standards of living...'
One of the things that saw a battle between the mass media, certain politicians and the government was the issue of just what kind of food and other items the evacuees were receiving in the camps. Charges were made that the internees were receiving the best of everything, basically.
As an introduction to this, we'll look at a few of the newspaper articles of the time before we look at camp newsletter material.
The first article will be from the Nevada State Journal of January 10, 1943.It's a little on the longish side.
FOOD APLENTY FOR JAPS. CHARGES MADE THAT AMERICANS ARE RATIONED WHILE INTERNEES IN WAR RELOCATION CAMPS GET CREAM OF CROP. Reports that scarce foodstuffs were made available in plenty to Japanese-American war relocation camps in the far west, while residents of surrounding areas were subject to strict rationing, brought congressional demands tonight for investigation of various phases of the relocation program.
Rep. F. Leroy Johnson, R. Cal. said he had received 'numerous reports and rumors' that huge shipments of scarce foods-including eggs, butter, sugar, coffee and meats, were furnished the camps. Residents of nearby areas had difficulty in obtaining their allotted amounts under the rationing program, according to the reports.
Johnson introduced a resolution calling for an investigation of these reports, and of the allegedly 'elamorate system of education' contemplated for the relocation projects.
'We are told that teachers in these camps receive higher pay than teachers in the state public school system,' he said, 'and that extensive training in such non-essentials as art, dancing and rug-making are being offered the confined Japs.'
Rep. Harry Sheppard, D. Cal. said, however, that he personally had investigated three relocation camps and found they were receiving necessary quantities of food. He also denied that teachers' salaries were out of proportion.
Rep. Jerry Voorhis, D. Cal, reported receipt of a letter from a state official who said proposals to establish university extensions in the camps left parents of drafted American youths in 'a state of impotent exasperation.'
'These parents know their sons won't receive university credits for what they are doing', the letter said.
California State Engineer Anson Boyd informed Voorhis that officials of the Tule Lake camp requested that the state furnish plans for construction of ' small mausoleums' at the camp.
'A mausoleum is something that only the higher income group is able to afford if they happen to be ordinary citizens,' Boyd commented.
Voorhis said he felt the camps should be 'kept simple and made self-sustaining.'
Johnson said his resolution also would provide for investigation of allegedly immoral conditions at some of the camps, and of activities of disloyal elements such as led to riots at the Manzanar camp recently.
Rep. B. SW. Gearhart, R. Cal, said he had received complains from former constituents among the Japanese-Americans who said that they were being subjected to intimidation by pro-Axis Japs in the camps.
'They are consistently called on to explain how in a Democracy citizens can be interned,' he said.
Gearhart exhibited a post card from Tokie Slocum, a Japanese-born member of the American Legion, formerly confined at Manzanar. Slocum described the 'harrowing and horrible night' of Dec. 7, 1943, when pro-Axis Japs placed him on 'death list No. 1' and made an attempt on his life. Although he was taken into protective custody and later discharged from camp, all his personal property was destroyed or stolen, he wrote.
'This definitely shows that loyal and disloyal elements should be separated,' Gearhart said, 'the loyal Japanese-Americans should receive sympathy and encouragement. The other group we should put behind barbed wire.'
Shephred agreed to the necessity of segregating disloyal elements, but added:
'I personally investigated three relocation camps and found they were receiving only what foods were necessary. I also doubt that salaries of teachers in the camps are out of proportion. I think these reports are baseless rumors, and I cannot go along with them.'
First, the stories about people being intimated by pro-Axis Japanese are definitely true. We've seen that in the section on threats. As the one man suggested, the loyals were separated from the disloyals, with the 'disloyals' pretty much all ending up in the Tule Lake camp, which became known as the Tule Lake Segregation Center.
As to the teacher's salaries, what I can't understand is why the guy simply didn't ask the bookkeeper at the camp what the teachers' salaries were in camp, and then find out from the state board of education what teachers' salaries were in normal cities, and then compare them.
The first part of an article in The Times Record of January 16, 1943, also deals with pampering.
JAPANESE ALIENS BEING PAMPERED, SENATOR CHARGES. Chairman Reynolds (D-N.C.) of the Senate Military Affairs Committee announced yesterday a plan to restore Army control over Japanese relocation camps to halt what he called 'pampering' and anti-American demonstrations in these colonies.'
'Colonies,' by the way, was yet another term that was used for the internment camps.
Part of another article also dealt with the 'pampering' idea, as this shows form the Hammond Times of May 9, 1943. The article refers to charges made by Senator A. B. Chandler of Kentucky. The article says:
'He asserted that the interned Japs 'live like kings,' have better food and more of it than Americans living in the vicinity or elsewhere, that they are given all sorts of sports equipment and facilities and are paid $12 to $19 a month for waiting on themselves in mess halls although they are not required to work.'
The Granada Pioneer ran an article on this as early as December 12, 1942.
FOOD RUMOR SQUELCHED. To avoid misconceptions and rumors about 'choice' foods fed evacuees in the center, Project Director James G. Lindley released a statement to the Lamar Daily News on Wednesday afternoon.
The statement reads in part:
'Total meat consumption at the Granada relocation center is less than two-and-a-half pounds per person per week. Residents have never received over one fifth of a pound of bacon in a week, and many weeks they got none.
Coffee is served once daily to adults. Sugar rationing quotas are strictly adhered to. Consumption of bread and butter is less than the average outside the center.'
An outside newspaper, The Independent Record, ran a similar article on January 11, 1943.
DENIES CODDLING JAPANESE IN ARKANSAS CAMPS. FISH AND RICE ON MENU AT 35.5 CENTS PER DAY, PER PERSON, IS CLAIM. denying any attempt to 'coddle the Japanese Americans in two southeast Arkansas relocation camps Regional Director E. B. Whitaker of the War Relocation Authority asserted tonight no one in charge of the centers 'had any idea that they were Utopias.'
'The average American's idea of a Utopia certainly would not be a place where families eat in mess halls and where military police guard the community, keeping outsiders out and insiders in.' Whitaker said in a prepared statement answering recent published descriptions of conditions at the Jerome camp.
A lot of bureaucrats could deny the pampering rumors, but there was one person in particular whose voice carried quite a bit of weight in public affairs, and that was Mrs. Roosevelt. The Edwardsville Intelligencer of April 27, 1943, saw her weigh in on the issue.
MRS. ROOSEVELT FINDS JAPS ARE NOT PAMPERED. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt said last night she has conducted a personal investigation and found that Japanese in relocation centers are neither pampered nor mistreated.
'However, I would not choose their situation as a way to live,' she said.
She visited the Gila, Ariz. camp where about 15,000 Japanese evacuated from the west coast put in long hours of work, she said, but the type of work is a military secret.
Hundreds of letters complaining that Japanese were getting preferred treatment prompted her inspection, she said. Since she felt the Gila project was typical she will not visit others.
So, moving on. According to the Gila News-Courier of January 16, 1943, a Gallup Poll as taken in five western states as to whether persons of Japanese ancestry should be allowed to return to their homes on the Pacific coast. 53% favored their return. Making up that number was 29% favoring the return of all the PJAs, and 24% saying only citizens should return. 31% didn't want any of them back, and there was a 16% undecided group. Nationally, 61% favored the return of citizens, and 35% favored the return of all evacuees to their former homes.
A Rep. John E. Rankin of Mississippi said he didn't want the military to train Hawaiian nisei for military service.
'Instead of training these Japanese who aided in the fifth column work before the attack on Pearl Harbor, they should be put into labor battalions.'That was in the Granada Pioneer of April 21, 1943.
Soldiers get furlough from time to time. Some of the Nisei soldiers visited their relatives who were still being held in internment camps. Some wanted to visit the place they came from. West Coast congressmen didn't want this to happen. They complained to the assistant secretary of war, saying that 'if Japanese were permitted to return to the coastal areas and any sabotage were committee, their safety might be jeopardized, without regard to whether the Japanese were guilty.'
That from the Granada Pioneer of May 12, 1943.
An article in the Gila News-Courier of May 13, 1944, noted that a proposal was made in Congress to deport all persons were who Issei and were in the country before Pearl Harbor. This was proposed by Rep. James W. Mott, R. Oregon.
Earl Warren, the man who later headed the Supreme Court and was governor of California, had some things to say about the Japanese.
On January 30 of 1942, he said the following:
I have come to the conclusion that the Japanese situation as it exists in this state today may well be the Achilles heel of the entire civilian defense effort. Unless something is done it may bring about a repetition of Pearl Harbor.
On February 21, of 1942, he testified before Congress, stressing the danger of the Japanese in the U.S., saying that there was little danger from Germans or Italians, that removing the Japanese would not upset the agriculture of the area, and, if the government did not step in and do something about the Japanese on the west coast, vigiliantism might take place.
This was also covered in the Nevada State Journal of June 22, 1943, in an article entitled EARL WARREN WARNS OF NEW PEARL HARBOR, saying that release the internees could result in a 'second Pearl Harbor in California.' He seemed to firmly believe that the returning Japanese would engage in some kind of massive sabotage program and serve as a 'fifth column' on the West Coast.
The Detroit race riots, referred to earlier, were, according to the Dies committee, basically due to the Japanese. Somehow they managed, through their insidious propaganda machine, had promoted racial unrest in the Detroit area. Further, they claimed that the JACL had dictated some of the policies of the federal government.
So, somehow, the persons of Japanese ancestry who were largely living on the west coast had conspired to try and start race riots over half the continent away in order to upset war work. Wouldn't it have made more sense to cause race riots, and disrupt the war work, on the west coast where they were living than half a continent away? Didn't that occur to the people making the charges?
Oh. right. Logical thinking and bigotry are mutually exclusive.
One of the most frightening of all the proposals for dealing with those of Japanese origin in the U.S. was this one by Rep. Johnson, D, of Oklahoma. He wanted all the internees in the camps sterilized. From the Granada Pioneer article on Mary 7, 1945, comes his statement:
'I will say for the record...that we should make an appropriation to sterilize the whole outfit.'
In other words, let's eliminate all the persons of Japanese ancestry in the U.S. Now, Rep. Johnson, isn't that awfully similar to what Herr Hitler had been doing in Germany? Did we want that to happen in the U.S.?
This book won the best illustrated book for children from the Canadian Library Association. It's about a family of persons of Japanese ancestry in Canada that end up being interned during World War II.
Canada did the same type of thing that the US did, and that is move any persons of Japanese ancestry from their west coastal areas to internment camps, simply because they were persons of Japanese ancestry.
The story is based on the actual experiences of the author, and what happens is basically the same types of things that happened to US internees; being moved from their own homes and businesses; being housed in bad conditions; being hated by nearby towns-people, etc.
The book also has a number of pieces of artwork to illustrate it.
It's an extremely good book, very readable, and from a child's point-of-view. One of the few things I've found dealing with Canadian experiences of internment.
Sara is a teenager from England who is staying in Canada with relatives during the early part of World War II. She enjoys Canada and her relatives have a gardener named Mr. Ito who she becomes very good friends with. He introduces her to the art of bonsai, growing miniature trees.
Everything is fine until the bombing of Pearl Harbor then, as it happened in America, persons of Japanese ancestry become the target of police round-ups and forced evacuation. Her cousin, Mary, loses her fiancée in the Japanese attack on Hong Kong and the gardener becomes an instant target for hatred.
Although Sara does not feel that way about the gardener the rest of those around her do and eventually he disappears and his wife, other relatives and friends are shipped off to one of the Canadian places of internment.
Things get even more complex with Sara finds a dying Mr. Ito and has to deal with that as well as trying to keep two of the bonsai alive, the only two not destroyed by her Uncle.
The book is extremely well done and parallels in almost every detail what happened to the Japanese Americans after the outbreak of World War II. The story led me to do some research on how the people of Japanese ancestry were treated and the results of that are in my section on World War II, which is off my main Japanese fact page.
Basically, what happened in the US in relation to persons of Japanese ancestry happened in Canada with almost no major differences. There were similar racial and economic hatreds; similar fears, and a similar government reaction.
One of the actual differences simply lies in the number of camps. Whereas in the US there were around ten regular camps plus various FBI, Justice Department and military camps set up, in Canada there was Angler and various ghost towns. The evacuees were used to build roads, help the sugar beet crop and basically do the same kinds of things they did in the US. There was also the same effort on the part of the government to relocate the internees, spreading them throughout the country.
As in the US, most of the people evacuated and interned were citizens of the country.
The book points out a similar history of anti-Japanese feeling. In 1907 there were Oriental riots in Vancouver; somewhat of a misnomer since it was the whites who rioted, led on by a minister, and they sacked Chinatown. When they got to the Japanese portion of town, though, they met resistance and the riot broke up.
As in the US, there was the same type of discrimination in being served as blacks and Japanese Americans found in the US. One example given was when some Japanese Canadians tried to eat at a restaurant called The White Lunch and were met with the yell “Stay out of here, you Japs” from one of the cooks. In theaters there were sections (high up) for the Japanese Canadians to sit.
As in the US, persons of Japanese ancestry were forced to register and the community leadership (just as the JACL in the US) said to go ahead and do that, it will help prove how loyal they are. The still ended up being interned, though.
As in the US, Germans and Italians were not forced to register and were not interned in large numbers.
As in the US, without hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, persons of Japanese ancestry were being rounded up. Fishing boats were confiscated and livelihoods ended.
As in the US, evacuees were placed temporarily into horse stalls at Hastings Park, some 20,000 of them.
A lot of people were put onto road work, involuntarily, which helped to lead to a breakdown of the family structure. The roads were being built for military traffic.
A description of the Angler camp calls it a “prison camp” where there were guard with machine guns.
About 2,000 men were sent to the road-building camps; 3,400 were working in the fields of Alberta and Manitoba, and 1,000 were working elsewhere. 12,000 were sent to renovated ghost town at Sandon, Kaslo, Greenwood, Salmo and New Denver.
A parallel to the US plan to keep the Japanese Americans out of the west coast:
'It is vital to understand that the federal government had no intention of ever allowing the inhabitants of the ghost towns and camps to move back to the West Coast. On the contrary, th Japanese were to be scattered across Canada, each province taking its share-and thus would be eliminated the Japanese Problem in B.C. '
There was also a very similar military thing going on. In the U.S., the Nisei were not wanted as volunteers for the military at the start of the war; later, they were drafted into the military.
'Prior to Pearl Harbor no Japanese Canadians living in B.C. Were called up, and no volunteers were accepted. When Hastings Park began to fill up in early 1942 any number of young Japanese pleaded to join the army, even if they had to serve in a lowly labour battalion. They were refused. Instead, they were sent to road camps and ghost towns.
But in 1944 the tide of war was changing in the Pacific and the British desperately needed men who spoke Japanese to be translators, interrogators, broadcasters.
One problem, similar to that in the US, was that many of the Nisei did not speak Japanese and had to be given lessons. Unlike in the US, the fact that there were Nisei working in the Canadian military was not publicized until Sept. of 1945.
On August 4, 1944, the Prime Minister of Canada said that 'no act of subversion or sabotage had been found before or during the war by the Japanese [Canadians]'. Exactly the same thing that happened, or didn't happen, in the US. At least in Canada they didn't have any officials saying things like 'since there's been no sabotage then that's proof that there will be.
Around 3,700 Japanese nationals in Canada repatriated to Japan in a program that was poorly run and extremely confusing.
Before the war there were 22,000 Japanese Canadians living in British Columbia. Afterwards, there were only 7,000, the rest being dispersed throughout Canada or returned to Japan.
Ellen Levine, 1995
This book is written in a manner where the author interviewed numerous people who had been interned at the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming. She also states out front that the book is more a book of remembrance and not one that deals extensively with historical information and details.
Chapter 1 deals with the times before Pearl Harbor and the type of anti-Japanese hate that was present in California. The personal memories are important, especially in that they verify things written about in other books; how the Japanese-Americans were called Japs, made fun of, prohibited from going certain places, etc,, even before Pearl Harbor. The people were subjected to a lot of prejudice, very similar to that suffered by blacks at the time (and in places still today.)
Chapter 2 deals with the time centered around Pearl Harbor. She talks about the FBI raids and the Hearst press which carried on some of the most vicious anti-Japanese rhetoric of all. A lot of these memories center around how people who were students at the time were treated in school right after Pearl Harbor. Another story is about how one house was shot at.
She also writes about roundups on Hawaii, especially aimed at anyone who was a leader of any Japanese American organization.
Chapter 3 deals with preparations for evacuation. One of the main things is how people would offer extremely low amounts of money for the family furniture and possessions, acting like economic vultures.
Chapter 4 deals with life in the camps. The memories make even more real things from other, more 'academic' oriented books. One of the memories even revolves around the gradual breakdown of the families as kids ate with their friends rather than their parents. Basically, what this book is doing is putting a personal face on all the more cold facts and figures from other books.
The memories then deal with how people passed their time in the camps including the various arts and crafts and a sort of community pond-building project that happened.
A lot of the people say they had a lot fun, actually, in the camp when they were kids, but at the same time they felt sort of dirty being in the camp. The older kids and the parents had the hardest time adjusting, in general.
There's also personal accounts of various problems in the camp, including the Manzanar riot and the one old guy who was shot and killed while trying to catch his dog.
Chapter 5: The littlest enemies: homeless children. The author notes that anyone who was 1/8th Japanese blood or more was subject to evacuation and relocation. Orphanages had to close down since the orphanage staff were evacuated. There were three orphanages for Japanese children and the children from these three were taken out and shipped to Manzanar. It's also interesting to here what the government did with the orphans when the camps were closed.
Chapter 6: Japanese Peruvians in U.S. prison camps: They were imprisoned not in the internment camps but in camps run by the Justice Department such as at Crystal City, Texas. The Peruvian government made it clear that they didn't want them back, either. Many were deported to Japan; some moved to New Jersey rather than be deported to Japan.
Chapter 7: Nisei Soldiers and the Fight for Democracy Overseas: This discusses the 100th battalion and the 442nd. It also points out that the Nisei helped liberate Dachau, but the fact they did was kept secret by the government and the 522nd FAB (Field Artillery Battalion), which was part of the 442nd, were the ones who liberated the camp.
Chapter 8: Resisters, No-Nos, and Renunciants: A lot of this relates to the infamous loyalty questionnaire that ended up having people classified as 'no-no's' and send to Tule Lake Detention Center for what the government considered troublemakers. Over 300 men were tried as draft resisters from the camps for their refusal to report for duty when the government started drafting the people it had put behind barbed wire.
Chapter 9: Life Outside Camp: Most of this chapter deals with what people did after the camps were closed. It was not an easy time for them at all, and the racial hatred at not stopped with the defeat of Japan in the war.
Chapter 10: Setting Things to Rest: One incredibly interesting thing in this chapter is the information on the person called 'Tokyo Rose,' and that, actually, there was no such person. One woman was arrested, though, the authorities equating her with the "Tokyo Rose" person and she ended up serving prison time in the U.S. The woman who was accused, Iva Toguri, was a dj for a Tokyo radio station. She was an American citizen of Japanese descent who had been trapped in Japan when the war began and had to earn money to survive. The Japanese authorities wanted her to renounce her U.S. citizenship but she refused.
The program in question, Zero Hour, was a propaganda program with Western music added. English-speaking women read scripts written for them. It was directed by three POWs, an Australian male, an American captain, and a Filipino male. After the war reporters bribed witnesses to identify one woman as Tokyo Rose, and Toguri was the one they chose. In 1976 information came out that the two witnesses who testified her had been coached by the government on exactly what to say and threatened that, if they did not cooperate, they would be charged with treason themselves. Toguri eventually got her U.S. citizenship back.
The rest of the chapter talks about court cases and other activities in the redress movement.
The book also includes some more historical information in the ending part.
This is the type of book that can make you made reading it. Reading a straight 'just-the-facts-m'am' type of book is bad enough, but when you read the personal accounts of what these people went through it makes it all the more real and all the more upsetting. It was a total denial of Constitutional rights, a total denial of all civil rights, a totally illogical program (for example, the Japanese-Americans in Hawaii would have been closer to Japan physically and should have represented a greater threat, yet they weren't gathered up for economic reasons, and if the Japanese Americans were a threat on the West Coast then, logically, they were a threat anywhere in the U.S. so why didn't the government round up all the Japanese-Americans in the whole country if they were so dangerous?), and a totally unnecessary program. Supposedly some things have changed so such a program could never again be done in the U.S.
Supposedly.
This is a children's book about a young girl named Mari who, with her family, has been sent to the Topaz camp. The author's grandmother and mother had booth been at Topaz.
Each page has very nice drawings on it, and they show life as it was at the camp. The family was in a one-room apartment (using the term extremely loosely.) The toilets are shown as having no doors on them. There could be major dust-storms at any time. One of the guard towers is shown.
Also, the things that the author refers to are things that really happened. For example, during the stay at Tanforan Assembly Center, Her fictional character Mari and her parents stayed at a horse stall that still smelled of manure.
The book is the story of Mari coming to terms with what happened, trying to find out why she and the others were in the camp, and realizing that eventually it would be over and, for the time, she should make the best of a bad situation.
A very nice, yet at the same time very informative book for young readers.
This is a story about the Tule Lake internment camp after it became a segregation camp.
The story behind that is this: the persons of Japanese ancestry in the internment camps had to fill out a survey that had two very controversial questions. Number 27 asked if the person signing would be willing to serve in the US military, and number 28 asked if they were willing to give up any allegiance they had to the Emperor of Japan.
This was bad in a variety of ways. For one thing, the people answering the survey were all in the internment camps. They had been uprooted from their homes, had to sell most of their belongings (in most cases), lost their jobs, and were put into the camps, all of this being done without anyone being accused of anything, arrested, or convicted of anything. They were all just considered guilty of being persons of Japanese ancestry, and that is enough.
So question 27 was extremely bold, asking people who had been treated like dirt if they would be willing to fight, and perhaps die, for a country that treated them like unwanted baggage. In addition, the Issei, those who came to the US directly from Japan, were not even allowed to become US citizens.
Number 28 was a very bad question from the internees view. Since many of them (about a third) were not allowed to have US citizenship under any circumstances, then if they also gave up their loyalty to the Emperor they would be, basically, people without a country.
So, a number of people answered 'no' to both questions, and thus were branded 'no-no's', and were removed from the other camps and sent to Tule Lake, which was converted from a regular camp to a segregated camp for the 'troublemakers.'
That section also includes information on the unrest at the camp, which is the background for the events in this book.
The main characters are white people who are in the administration of the camp. Some of them are basically anthropologists studying the camp people and how they react to being in the camp.
There really was a riot and so the book starts off with the aftermath of the riot.
The early part of the story deals with the time just after the riot, and how some of the Japanese were divided among themselves into groups; those supporting the riot, and those who wanted nothing to do with it.
Denton is the main Caucasian character in the story. In a meeting he sees just how severely divided the Japanese are. References are made to beatings to force people to vote 'no-no', and attacks against Japanese who worked for the administration, being considered traitors to the Japanese.
Nebo is one of the Japanese characters. His mother is one of the ones who really believed in the Emperor. Although Denton and he were sort of friends early on, Nebo became more pro-Japanese and their friendship eroded. Background information is given concerning the cause of the riot and the reactions of the pro-Japanese group.
There is also a good description of the physical make-up of the buildings, how they were constructed, etc.
The book also is very good at making the characters real. Denton, for example, is a pacifist, and this is causing problems between he and his wife.
His wife, Esther, is not dealing with things well and she has a bad temper, taking it out on their three-year-old daughter, Parin. Although the main theme of the book deals with the internment camps, a sub-theme is about how problems people are going through can affect their marriage and how they act towards each other. Esther, in the area of chapters 9 to 11 or so, reminds me of Joy from Dead Like Me in how she acts.
The book has a number of themes:
1. The internment of persons of Japanese ancestry, including the sometimes terrible conditions they had to live under.
2. The loyalty questionnaire, and how this led to a Tule Lake that became a center for 'dissidents.'
3. The types of pressures that the Caucasian workers were under in the administration.
4. Just how split that camp was between pro-Japanese internees and pro-American internees, along with the violence that came with that split.
5. How a pacifist comes to terms with feelings of violence, and how his pacifism affects his marriage.
6. Denton's extra-marital affair.
The book overall is a good read, but I have some reservations. For one thing, you really have to have some knowledge about the internment of persons of Japanese ancestry in WWII in order to appreciate what is going on in the book. If you don't know anything about the history, the book won't make much sense to you.
Second, I think that the parts of the book that deal with Denton's physical lovemaking to the 'other woman' were not really necessary to the theme of the book. Normally, I have no problem with such scenes, but in the context of this book they appeared unnecessary.
Although Denton's personal story is sort of wrapped up, the problems at the camp aren't; it's basically an ending that's fairly depressing since the situation at the camp is left virtually hopeless.
Thus, the book overall is fairly good, but I think it could have been better with some of the material left out, and with some kind of resolution to the camp problem, even if it was bringing in someone else or changing the timing of events into the slight future, and having the camp close down as it really did.
There is one chapter in this book dealing specifically with the internment of persons of Japanese ancestry, and it centers on the events at Tule Lake and the issue of the segregation of the 'no-no's' and those who wanted to renounce their American citizenship and return to Japan.
Although most persons of Japanese ancestry went along fairly compliantly with the internment program, there was a group that was incredibly angry at what was being done. They were very pro-Japanese and became quite militant in following Japanese principles of culture.
Tule Lake was not the only camp with such people in it, though, as several hundred agitators had been sent to the INS camp at Santa Fe. (The WRA ran some camps, but the Justice Department and the INS ran other camps.)
Some of the Tule Lake people were due to be transferred to Ft. Lincoln.
For the people at Tule Lake who wanted to renounce their American citizenship, there were consequences. One that had been accomplished, some 650 of them were immediately classified as 'alien enemies' since they were no longer US citizens. They were scheduled to be transferred to Ft. Lincoln, which was a Justice Department camp.
What made the situation at Tule Lake worse was that, although there was a sizable group of the pro-Japanese, there were also some internees that were more pro-American in their approach, and this caused conflict between the two groups, with the pro-Japanese group sometimes using physical intimidation to try to get the rest of the internees to become as pro-Japanese as they are.
What complicated matters, though, was that even within a family group some would be pro-Japanese and some pro-American, yet the wives and children would end up accompanying the males to Tule Lake, even though they didn't think the same way.
The kibei are those persons of Japanese ancestry who were born in the US then went to Japan to get their education. This group was especially distrusted by the US military.
The book then goes into the main breakdown at Tule Lake when, on October 15, 1943, a truck carrying evacuees for crop harvesting overturned, with one worker being killed. Granted, this could happen at almost any camp and not have caused a major uprising, but the pro-Japanese agitators wanted to use the incident to push their anti-US and pro-Japanese stance.
The funeral was followed by a general strike by farm workers, and the camp administration brought in workers from other camps to harvest crops. WRA Director Dillon Myer ended up becoming personally involved (even though he might have actually planned to), but the people he met with were not really selected representatives of the camp; they were basically self-appointed representatives.
White camp workers were gathered up and put into the Administrative Building and told to remain inside.
Some of the protesters stormed the base hospital and beat up the chief medical officer. This was finally too much, and the camp administration made a call to the army and soon tanks were moved into position and MPs deployed.
The protesters kept up their demands, wanting Tule Lake to become a place strictly for their pro-Japanese group. The already anti-Japanese West Coast newspapers had a field day with the events, of course.
Holding a ceremony to commemorate the birthday of the Emperor was another sort of 'in-your-face' move by the protesters.
On November 4, some 150 men armed with clubs entered the administrative area to stop trucks taking food to the evacuees from other camps that were working the crops and they severely beat a security guard. The camp was then turned over directly to the control of the Army.
The Army wasn't into negotiating. The leaders of the riot were locked up in the stockade and kept there almost a year. This didn't stop the trouble, though. A petition was stated during the spring of 1944 asking that all pro-American individuals in Tule Lake be removed. The group doing this was the Resegregation group, and they even wrote to the Attorney General of the United States with a list of 6,500 internees who wanted to be returned to Japan A.S.A.P.
The militants became even more militant and militaristic in their actions. In a way all this helped, though, because it helped set up the program to make sure pro-American internees could be released from the camps.
On December 27, 1944, Border Patrol inspectors from the INS came into Tule Lake and arrested seventy men who were then taken to the Sante Fe camp as 'dangerous enemy aliens.'
All of this apparently just ended up getting even more people submitting their applications to renounce their American citizenship, until nearly 5000 had done so.
More men ended up being arrested, more sent to Santa Fe, and more sent to Fort Lincoln. At Ft. Lincoln Japanese textbooks were brought in and courses in Japanese language, culture and traditions were set up for the renunciates.
There were even some that held a memorial for the death of Hitler on May 8, 1945.
Gradually, though, some people began to realize that they had been carried away by the militant spirit and they wanted to withdraw their renunciation of their American citizenship. Gradually, more and more of the internees stopped practicing the more militaristic approach of the renunciates and started to put some distance between the two groups.
On Oct. 8, 1945, the Justice Department said that all persons who had given up their citizenship would be sent back to Japan as of mid November. This caused some people who did not really want to return to panic. The first group of Japanese included around 174, and no sooner had they gone then a second deportation was scheduled.
On Dec. 26, another 360 left Ft. Lincoln, headed eventually for Japan. They were joined by others from Tule Lake, making a group of 3,500 leaving American for Japan.
The militants in Ft. Lincoln still tried their pressure tactics to try and make sure no one backed down from leaving America. On Feb. 18, another 39 pro-Japanese left the camp, and on the 18th the last Germans held in the camp left.
On March 2 it was announced that, four days later, the last of the enemy aliens from Ft. Lincoln would be shipped out and the camp would be closed. The Santa Fe camp was closed at the end of March, 1946.
Richard S. Nishimoto, 1995
The editor of Nishimoto's book writes about him and about the terms used, including the term 'concentration camp.' The editor points out that one person (I'm assuming a sociologist or something like that from the text) divided the term 'concentration camp' into three levels, the third being the type run in Germany by the Nazis. The second level is slave labor camps and the first level is 'milder types' which the Native American reservations actually fall under. The editor then goes and does something original and extremely intelligent, in my opinion, and that is takes time to discuss why anyone should read Nishimoto's works in the first place.
He adds information on the evacuation/relocation program and on the assembly camps and internment/concentration camps, along with some information about the Poston camp itself. He then writes about the various roles Nishimoto played in the camp, including helping to clear the land for building ('firebreak gang'), manager of Block 45 and a block councilman for Block 45. He became the leader of the block managers of Unit I. He was also heavily involved in camp protests. He also worked as an assistant for the Bureau of Sociological Research. In addition, he worked for the Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study as a field research.
There are also extensive notes at the end of the opening portions of the book. After that, it gets into the actual autobiographical writings of Nishimoto.
The Bureau of Sociological Research was set up to work with the camp administration to monitor what was going on in the camp.
In the first part of his writings Nishimoto describes growing up and the types of problems he had in school. It's obvious that he was a brilliant man with a very extensive education in American colleges, in addition to which he has a very readable writing style. Each section of Nishimoto's writings, by the way, has a short introduction and explanation by the editor.
The next section talks about the 'firebreak gang' and the type of work that people at Poston did and various complaints about it, including very low wages (maximum was $19 per month), work that some people felt was simply "make work" type of stuff, corruption on the part of the camp staff and difficulties over who got what type of jobs.
Nichimoto then writes about the problems he had trying to run the firebreak gang and he had plenty of problems to write about. It would seem that this type of thing wouldn't make interesting reading but it actually does, especially as it gives a lot of insight into the attitudes of the people who were in the camp towards work and towards white supervisors.
The next chapter is about Leisure and gambling at the camp. Apparently gambling was a major problem in the Japanese community in general and definitely within the camp community. The chapter goes into the history of gambling among the Japanese in considerable detail.
Demands is the title of the next chapter and is one dealing with the closure of Poston. A number of things are discussed including the confusion about the camps closing (internees initially thought the camps would remain open for the duration of the war then all of a sudden the government decided to start closing the camps), and fears of the part of many that relocating would not be safe for them, especially as long as the war was still going on, due to the anti-Japanese feeling in general society.
The afterward goes into Nishimoto's life after leaving Poston, how he died alone, and the nature of his accomplishments.
This is an interesting book although it is very specialized in its focus and is really mainly for those who are interested in sort of advanced, detailed information on Poston in particular, and Japanese American culture in relation to work ethic and gambling.
Sandra C. Taylor, 1993
The introduction establishes the parameters of the book, stating what group of Japanese Americans it deals with , uses the term 'concentration camp' to describe Topaz and establishes the authors own feelings about the internment program.
The first chapter deals with the history of the Japanese settlement into the San Francisco area of California. It goes into the types of businesses that the Issei and Nisei established, educational problems their children ran into, and the overall structure of the Japanese American community in that area.
The chapter also covers the anti-immigration movement, the effect of the Great Depression on the community and how the community grew.
The next chapter goes into what happened after the attack on Pearl Harbor, including the arrests, Executive Order 9066, etc.
The next chapter starts with moving people to the Tanforan Assembly Center. The author points out that Tanforan was not ready at all to accept the internees as shown by the types of meals the people had to eat for the first ten days which were basically lima beans, cold tea, canned food, stale bread, boiled potatoes and canned Vienna sausage. The horse stalls without roofs are described and she also points out the strong desire on the part of the Nisei to prove themselves good citizens which, in itself, helped stop a lot of trouble along with the fact that the JACL was being 'accomodationist.'
Religious services were actually controlled as to the content. Various recreational activities got underway and the leadership changed from the Issei generation to the Nisei generation. Next to be gone into is the 'self-government' setup at the center. Then the residents are moved to the Topaz internment camp.
The next chapter starts off with how the Topaz camp was constructed. The nature of the camp administration is discussed, and then the movement of college students into other states to continue their education. The overall difficulties involved with resettlement are also discussed.
The next chapter starts off talking about the schools that were set up at Topaz. Discussed is the fact that the schools were not ready physically (they had to shut down for a month until the schools were winterized), and the uneven teacher quality. Also covered is the appearance of juvenile delinquency which had not previously been any sort of a problem for Japanese-American youths.
The book then goes into the killing of one of the inmates by a guard. The author discusses the event in detail and particularly what followed immediately afterwards, with, in effect, an attempt by the military to cover up what had happened and an almost complete disinterest on the part of non-camp newspapers. It was also apparently not the only time that sentries had fired at internees who were near the fence.
A lot of time is spent on the incident (a man was shot and killed when he was near the fence; he might have been trying to escape, he might have been playing with a dog, he might have been reaching for a flower, he might have been partially deaf and never heard any warnings, etc.). The exact circumstances of the shooting have never been definitively determined.
The loyalty questionnaire is discussed along with the arrangement of camp politics, and then the segregation of the 'no-no's' to Tule. Problems of Kibei violence in beating up "pro-administration" internees is then covered along with labor troubles at a strike at the camp.
The relationship of those in the camp with the nearby town of Delta are discussed, and it's pointed out that, basically, the relationship was a good one for both sides. The draft of the Nisei is then covered. The author discusses what happened as more and more people left the camp in the last year and a half of its existence, and how there were fewer people behind, their attitudes were not very positive and some people were actually fearful to leave the camp and relocate to some other area of the country.
There's a lot of detail on different aspects of the camp life and the problems each was having from the hospitals through the education program, which was essentially falling apart. The process of actually closing the camp and the kinds of problems that caused is next to be discussed.
The next chapter covers the effect of internment on the lives of the people in general and with many specific examples. The problems of moving back to the West Coast are covered, including the anti-Japanese feelings still prevalent there. An extensive notes section and bibliography follows.
This is a good book with specific examples of how the camp life influenced the lives of the people there and an in-depth examination of the shooting death of one internee, covered in more detail than I've seen elsewhere. A good and interesting book.
This is probably one of the best-known fiction books that deal with the internment of people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast at the start of World War II.
In the prologue, the author points out that the times were very different from what they are now. There was no civil rights movement, no marches, no group of people willing to help others who suffered discrimination.
Also, and I'm adding this, people of the time trusted their government much more than they do now. The fact that the government did what it did to the Japanese Americans in full violation of the Constitution and with no regard at all to established criminal procedures didn't seem to bother many people at the time. The Issei, first-generation, non-citizens (they couldn't become citizens because a law wouldn't allow them to) and the second-generation Nisei (who were American citizens) were gathered up without any due process being followed at all. They were not charged with anything; they were not given any trials, not allowed to defend themselves. They were just gathered up and shipped out like so much cattle to internment camps.
Yuki is eleven. She and her family live in Berkley. She has an older brother. The story opens on December 7th with them eating dinner and listening to the radio when the report of Pearl Harbor comes on. The rest of the story deals with her father being taken away by the F.B.I., she, her mother and brother having to store their items and be moved to Tanforan Assembly Center, and their life there. After that, they end up being moved to Topaz Internment Camp.
The fiction book is based upon reveal events, and the author does an excellent job describing the surroundings at the assembly center and at Topaz. She also brings into the story various factual happenings, including the shooting of an elderly man by a sentry.
For those who want to learn about the internment of the persons of Japanese ancestry, this book will serve as an excellent summary introduction.
Charles Kikuchi, edited by John Modell, 1993.
This is based on a diary kept by one of the Japanese Americans sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center. The editor starts off with a brief overview of the history of Asian immigration to the U.S. and the problems that resulted. He then goes into Charles Kikuchi's family life and upbringing. After that he talks about the pre-evacuation period and then the evacuation activity itself.
The editor also points out that Kikuchi kept writing in diaries up through 1945, but the particular book only deals with the diary he kept during his time at Tanforan.
Kikuchi starts his diary on Dec. 7, recording the events of that day. He writes about the violence against the Japanese American and how people were being moved to the Santa Anita Assembly Center. He had hoped to get his social work degree but was removed to Tanforan before he could do that.
Since this is a diary of daily events I'll only point out a few things that I think stand out.
Restrooms at the racetrack labeled "Gents" and a separate one labeled "Colored Gents".
There are numerous entries relating to Issei/Nisei differences.
There's an entry for May 23, 1942 about gunshots and three boys being shot while supposedly trying to escape.
His work on the local camp newspaper was subject to censorship.
He makes an interesting entry about how bad the camp high school is, how the students aren't paying attention and how the teachers aren't very good.
He writes about the Korematsu case and how he discussed it with Korematsu's brother.
Kikuchi is one of those who is ultra-American in his attitudes. This comes through quite plain in his writing, and he disparages a lot of things Japanese. There was a problem where some Issei believed there was a ghost or spirit in came. When it was shown to have a natural cause (moonlight), Kikuchi writes, in relation to the Issei, 'They must be extraordinarily limited in intelligence.'
The diary goes on to describe the excitement and concern about the upcoming closing of the assembly centers and the people being transferred to one of the ten internment camps.
This is a very interesting book in that it deals with a lot of the little things that make up anyone's daily life, much less life in an assembly center. It's got a lot of good insight on the Issei vs. Nisei cultural problems, and definitely shows that many Nisei were not anywhere near as oriented towards things Japanese as the people making the decisions for evacuation thought.
An interesting book in many ways.
John Armor, 1988.
With photos by Ansel Adams.
The book begins with an introduction to the purpose of Manzanar. Ansel Adams was asked to take photos of the camp in 1943 and it composed the only 'photo essay' that he ever did.
Interestingly enough, neither he nor any other photographers were allow to photograph the guard towers, the guards or the barbed wire. The book then goes into a brief history of the evacuation from the West Coast, the assembly centers, the attack on Pearl Harbor and its immediate aftermath.
The book has an interesting discussion about San Francisco on the night of Dec. 8. This is the night that there was a false alarm of an air-raid of the city. I read elsewhere that there was some firing that resulted in shells landing on cars and the like and damaging them. This books adds that planes searched for six hundred miles offshore and found no Japanese carrier and no Japanese planes. Although an air-raid was sounded, San Francisco made no effort as a city to achieve a blackout.
The next day DeWitt called a meeting at the City Hall where DeWitt laid into them, claiming there were enemy planes that were tracked out to sea and that it might have been good if a few bombs had been dropped so 'It might have awakened some of the fools in this community who refuse to realize that this is a war.'
In this case, the fool was DeWitt.
A couple of nights later DeWitt supposedly heard a rumor of a planned uprising of 20,000 Nisea in the San Francisco area. The information came from a person an FBI agent described as a flake. On the night of the 12th there was a rumor of an imminent enemy attack on Los Angeles and DeWitt almost advised all the people in the city to evacuate. That night a general described DeWitt as 'a jackass.'
A good judge of character.
The book goes on to describe more absurd rumors and allegations, and DeWitt's report that was ridiculed by J.Edgar Hoover. It then goes into the history of racism in California. Then it notes a bit later on how DeWitt complained when he asked for reinforcements for the Western Defense Command and he felt that too many of them were black. He said 'I'd rather have a white regiment.'
Equal-opportunity hater, that man.
More details about the history of the evacuation plans and implementation are then included. Then it covers the history all the way to the closing of the camps.
The next part of the book is 'A Portrait of Manzanar.' This section starts out going further into the history of the evacuation program, then finally ends up talking about Manzanar itself, although parts about the camp itself are mentioned intermixed into parts dealing with the camps in general.
An extremely interesting thing pointed out is that, during World War II, ten people were convicted of spying for Japan. Not a single one was Japanese or Japanese-American. They were all white.
The book describes more about Manzanar, including information about the camp newspaper, then talks about the Nisei who served in the U.S. military. Finally, the redress movement is discussed.
There is no doubt that the photographs are of very high quality. There is also some good information on Manzanar, but the book is slightly deceptive in a way since it is titled Manzanar but includes a good bit of non-Manzanar information.
The author was born in Hokkaido and lived in poverty. The book, being memoirs, goes into a lot of details of his early life in Japan. He decided to move to Peru when he grew up, largely because it had the second largest number of Japanese immigrants (second to the U.S.). Life in Peru didn't turn out to be quite as pleasant as he hoped, though, and the book goes on to describe his difficulties getting started in that foreign country.
He describes a revolution in Peru in 1919 and how Japanese shops ended up being looted by mobs. Seiichi, the author, almost got sent back to Japan by the Japanese consulate in Peru for evading the military draft, but the guy changed his mind and let Seiichi remain in Peru.
The book describes his life as he grew older and got better jobs and ended up getting married. He ended up the owner of shop and became president of the Ica Japanese Association, not a position he wanted or campaigned for. By 1939 there were rumors of a Japanese 'fifth column' in the country. Some of the rumors and anti-Japanese feeling were due to the U.S. situation with its Issei and Nisei citizens, and some was due to jealousy over the economic success of Japanese immigrants, exactly the same type of thing that was happening in the U.S. in California in relation to farmers.
A major situation erupted over, of all things, the number of barber shops in the area, leading to what was basically a feud. During this a raid on one person's house by the other faction resulted in the death of a Peruvian woman. She was related to the owner of a tabloid newspaper, and that was all it took to start anti-Japanese articles and eventually riots.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor anti-Japanese articles began to appear in newspapers containing lists of 'dangerous axis nationals', lists on which Seiichi's name was added. Further, the lists apparently were provided by a U.S. agency. On January 24, 1942, the Peruvian government broke relations with Japan and began to deport some of the Japanese in the country.
The Peruvian government cracked down on Japanese businesses and ordered them to close. The book continues to talk about oppression of the Japanese by the Peruvian government, how some of the Japanese were deported, etc. Once deportations to Japan stopped the people were deported to the U.S. internment camps. Seiichi does, eventually, get arrested and gets sent to a U.S. military camp in Panama.
Eventually he was sent to a small camp in Texas. He goes into how he was reunited with his wife, people who believed that Japan was actually winning the war, the end of the war and how most of his relatives returned to Japan but he chose to stay in the U.S.
He says 2,118 Japanese were deported to the U.S. from 12 countries in Central and South America. 1,024 were actually arrested, the others were family members who voluntarily joined them.
Seiichi and his wife moved to New Jersey where they found out that working for an American food processing company was not as pleasant as it might have seemed it would be, to put it mildly. There's also some interesting comments by the author on differences in American and Japanese cultures as far as how business is done.
Seiichi and his family later moved to Chicago where they had a rough time of things economically. He also talks about Issei and Nisei cultural> differences.
He and his wife eventually retired to Hawaii. Some of their children later moved there but had problems of their own relating to how Hawaiian-Japanese-Americans perceived mainland-Japanese-Americans. A 'kotonk' was a mainlander, and a 'Buddhahead' was a Hawaiian Japanese-American. He talks about how this was a problem even during the war for Japanese-American volunteers for the military (and something I saw discussed in a PBS movie about internment.)
The book is quite interesting in its autobiographical approach to being a Japanese immigrant into Peru, only to be forcibly relocated to the U.S. as part of the internment camp program. It's good that he talks about his life after the camps and various problems and successes that he and his wife had. His comments on the culture of U.S. business, the Hawaiian culture and the clash of cultures even within the Japanese-American community are also quite interesting.
Morton Grodzins, 1949
The author starts out stating why he wrote the book. He wanted to examine the effect of public opinion, the relationship between the states and the Federal government, policy-making roles of the government, civil and military agencies, the political status of minority groups and how all these was involved in the decision to intern the Japanese Americans.
The author notes: 'It was the first event in which danger to the nation's welfare was determined by group characteristics rather than by individual guilt. It was the first program in which race alone determined whither an American would remain free or become incarcerated.'
The author then goes into the history of how California regarded the Japanese living there, including the attitudes of the farmers, and how their attitude changed as the Japanese farmers became more and more successful. He then discusses specific groups (like various grower's associations) and how they felt about the Japanese in their midst. I've commented about this in other reviews; I'll just add here that the author goes into very considerable detail on these groups, more than in any other book I've seen so far.
Next the author discusses Pacific Coast Congressional Delegations examines specific congressmen and various congressional groups in their growing demands for the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Again, there is a great deal of detail in this chapter about this topic, more than in other books I have looked at.
Continuing the look at the politics of the situation, the author next examines state and local political leaders and their views on what to do about the Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. One of the first examined is Earl Warren and his virulently anti-Japanese statements. Again, as with the other chapters, this one is filled with in-depth information.
'Cogency of the Regional Demand' is the title of the next chapter. The author starts out showing that the various rumors of Japanese sabotage in Pearl Harbor were totally false. Apparently seven Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor on the West Coast, all killed without provocation. There was also a variety of assaults. However, the numbers were not that high that it, by itself, would have justified the evacuation program on the basis of possible threats to the Issei and Nisei.
The author also examines other arguments used in favor of the evacuation and shows how the evidence does not support the rumors and reasons used for the evacuation program.
He gives a lot of attention to the idea that had been presented that the Japanese owned lots of land near military facilities, and shows how this argument wasn't backed up by good evidence and even involved some stretching of the truth on the part of the government. This is a very important part of the book since it absolutely demolishes the 'Japs were near military areas' argument that appears in most books on the subject as a reason given for the evacuation program.
Next the author examines the racial arguments used against the Japanese Americans of the time. Of particular interest is the material dealing with the question of why the Japanese were evacuated but the Italians and Germans weren't.
The next chapter deals with opposition to the evacuation program. Again, there's a wealth of information in this book and I think it's another case where a book written right after the events will contain information that books written much later generally won't contain.
The next chapter deals with the extent of demand for evacuation and shows that public opinion in favor of the evacuation was not as strong as commonly believed, and that certain organizations were the ones responsible for the common belief that there was widespread desire to have the Japanese Americans moved elsewhere.
The book then moves on to the formation of national policy, starting with the administration, specifically the justice and war departments. The Justice Department had already done a lot of work on potential Japanese-American trouble-makers, for lack of a better term, and were prepared to deal with them on an individual basis. In other words, they already had a program ready which did not involve the necessity for relocating everyone; just arresting those specific persons who they were concerned about.
It was the Army that was pushing for much tighter controls on the Japanese-American population. Executive Order 9066 gave control of the situation to the military. One of the most bizarre arguments used against the Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor was that 'There has been no substantial evidence of manifestation of nationalistic fervor exhibited by any Japanese group in the United States since the outbreak of the war. Even on the Emperor's birthday there was no visible evidence that the day was remembered in evacuee center.' This was a statement by someone from the U.S. military and is interesting in its argument; since the Japanese-Americans were not showing any patriotic fervor for Japan, and since they weren't celebrating the Emperor's birthday, then were therefore dangerous people. Obviously a nonsensical conclusion.
The author points out that the various FBI raids on peoples homes, looking for contraband, resulted in no trials or convictions. There simply wasn't any contraband worth anything. J.Edgar Hoover denied that there was any evidence indicating any Japanese-Americans trying to communicate with Japanese ships. There was one incident of a submarine-carried Japanese plane bombing some forests trying to start forest fires; and a useless shelling by a submarine at Astoria, Oregon. The thing is both incidents occurred after the Japanese-Americans in the area had already been evacuated; thus, they could not have caused the incidents to happen.
The author then discusses why there was no mass evacuation in Hawaii but there was on the West Coast and this is another area of the book that contains quite fascinating information. Another point is the list of governors who opposed resettling Japanese Americans in their states unless they were confined to 'concentration camps under military guard.' The list included the governors of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and other states. This helped to contribute to the failure of voluntary evacuation.
What basically happened was that racial prejudice on the part of special interest groups (farmers, certain newspapers, etc), resulted in the false perception that there was a wide-spread desire for evacuation of all the Japanese-Americans which gave the military the room they needed to maneuver in and get their program for evacuation of everyone put into place rather than the Justice Departments original program of simply rounded up a particular group of individuals and keeping an eye on the rest.
The involvement of the U.S. Congress is the next subject to be covered in the book, and then the role of the Supreme Court is covered. An extensive Appendix section provides even more information.
This is one of the most detailed books that one can find on the subject of what led up to the evacuations, containing information not generally covered in other books, especially not to this length of detail.
Part of the subtitle reads 'Here is the complete, shocking true story.' That type of subtitle immediately causes me to be suspicious.
This is also one of the few books that uses the term 'concentration camps' in its title. There are various terms for the camps, such as 'relocation centers' and 'internment camps.' Concentration camps is not used often because of the baggage that comes with that term, the German massacre of Jews in the camps the Germans ran. Although persons of Japanese ancestry were forced to go to the American camps, and although the camps were surrounded by barbed wire and guards and a few people did end up getting killed, there was never any plan to actually kill the people in them.
Try to get them to move to other parts of the country, yes. Try to break up their internal power bases somewhat, yes. Kill them, no (although that could have changed if the Japanese had actually invaded the mainland U.S.)
The author points out that the persons of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii were not interned, even though Hawaii had been attacked and was closer to Japan than the U.S. West Coast. He talks about the 100th/442nd military Nisei units and the amazing battle record they had.
He talks about evacuation events, and talks about the Seminole Indians being moved out Florida.
He also talks about the history of Japanese immigration to the U.S. He also sites some of the groups that were anti-Japanese, including:
1. Oriental Exclusion League (Also known as the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League, and the Asiatic Exclusion League).
2. Joint Immigration Committee.
3. Many labor unions.
4. United Spanish War Veterans.
5. Disabled American Veterans.
6. Military Order of the Purple Heart.
7. Veterans of Foreign Wars.
8. The Associated Farmers.
9. California Farm Bureau Federation.
10. Western Growers' Protective Association.
11. Grower-Shipper Vegetable Association of Central California.
12. Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
13. Various Lions, Elks and Townsend Clubs.
He then goes into the history of the post-Pearl Harbor time and how there was almost no pressure to evacuate the Japanese until the Hearst papers started their attacks. He then talks about the assembly centers and the internment centers, and the things that went on there including the various problems and occasional scenes of protest and violence.
In essence, this is actually a very, very excellent reference source despite the sensationalistic wording of the subtitle. It would be a valuable addition to anyone's resource library on the subject.
This is a 1969 book, 'A novel about the detention of Japanese-Americans by the U.S. government during World War II.'
My view: this is a novel about the internment that is confusing and almost pornographic in its approach. To even begin to understand this book the reader would already have to know about the internment, about Tule Lake and Manzanar specifically, about the Kibei and why they were considered a problem, and especially about the loyalty questionnaire and the “no-no's” and the violence that caused.
The book often shifts viewpoints, adding to its level of confusion. It makes use of the word 'nigger' as well as derogatory names for women. It has a guy that rapes a woman and still thinks she will be willing to have regular sex with him later.
It's a book that could have made its point just as effectively without the racially charged words and sexual violence that it features. Of all the books I have read, fact and fiction, about the internment, this is the only one that I think the term 'disgusting' applies to.
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 afterward.
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 theirs 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.
The author opens the book with an explanation of what happened at the start of the internment process. She includes some good photos with this. After this section, she moves on to the main part of the book, showing the kinds of arts and crafts things that were made in the camps.
They are nothing less than absolutely amazing. Working without free access to the normal tools of artists, the artists in the camp made objects out of wood, stone, shells and thread. They also did a lot of really good drawings.
The book is very large, dimension-wise, and this helps to bring out the full beauty of these objects that were created. The colors are incredibly; the detail in the work is nothing less than amazing. Even in places as ugly and controlled as were the camps, great beauty could still arise and flourish.
This book is one of a series of books that examine both sides of an issue, presenting material from both views.
The book opens with basic information about the number of Japanese in the U.S. at the time and the reasons officially given for the internment and other possible reasons.
One statistic I didn't see anywhere else was that, in 1941, three-quarters of the Nisei (second generation in the U.S.) were under the age of 25.
The rest of the introduction is a recapping of the history of the internments from just prior to until after the war.
The first chapter contains Earl Warren's (later Supreme Court Justice Warren) views supporting internment as given in his testimony before the House Select Committee Investigating National Defense.
His reasoning is most interesting. He starts out saying the military should be the group to handle whatever is done and that another Pearl Harbor but on the west coast is possible. He says a 'wave of sabotage' could happen in California. He thinks that the 'fifth column' has already planned such activities for California.
He says that the fact that there has been no sabotage at all is an '...ominous sign...' (In other words, it hasn't happened yet so that proves it will happen.) He holds that the sabotage has obviously been planned for a later date. He also said there is more danger from the Nisei (Japanese-Americans born here), than from the Issei, the original Japanese inhabitants. (Which was proven totally wrong as the Nisei had been 'Americanized' so much that many of them no longer even spoke Japanese.)
He also testifies that the fact that the Japanese Americans own a lot of farms, and that those farms are often near aircraft factories shows a prior planning of sabotage on their part.
The next chapter is someone testifying that the evacuations are not needed. His view was that only a few hundred of the Japanese-Americans might not be loyal and they should be investigated on an individual basis.
The third chapter is testimony by DeWitt, the chief military person behind all the evacuations and an avowed hater of the Japanese. He sites almost every possible type of Japanese business as being near this or that potential target all the way up to Japanese business being near wooded areas. His testimony is absurd in its statements. This guy was not firing on all thrusters by any means.
The fourth chapter is an editorial from the San Francisco News asking all Japanese to cooperate with the evacuation plan. It has a really important argument in it: Real danger would exist for all Japanese if they remained in the combat area. The least act of sabotage might provoke angry reprisals that easily could balloon into bloody race riots.
The next chapter examines the role of racial prejudice in the relocation movement. It quotes a congressman from Mississippi as saying: 'once a Jap, always a Jap. You cannot change him. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. ...The white man's civilization has come into conflict with Japanese barbarism and one of them must be destroyed.'
Apparently FDR himself held some rather odd racist views, including the idea that if the Japanese could be driven back to their own islands their aggressive characteristics might be bred out of them. The rest of the chapter is filled with similar statements about him and from other congressmen.
The next chapter is one that was written by an attorney who says that the evacuation was not racist or shameful, either. He refers to the treatment of the Japanese-Americans as ...so tender-hearted that it actually endangered the security of the United States during a desperate war.
He further argues that the Japanese-Americans were not really interned' since some were allowed to leave for work in other places from time to time. He argues that the fences and guards were really to protect the Japanese-Americans from other Americans. He argues that the Japanese-Americans in Hawaii were not relocated since Hawaii was under martial law. Italians and Germans were not subject to relocation since those groups had already become assimilated, and the Japanese, due to their different culture, were not assimilated. (Note: I'm just noting his arguments; the entire chapter is filled with statements like that.)
The next section deals with Constitutional questions raised by the relocation program. The Korematsu decision presents material from judges who agreed and those who disagreed with the decision. The section goes on with more material on the legal aspects of relocation.
The third section of the book is entitled 'Legacies and Lingering Disputes Concerning the Internment of Japanese Americans.'
The first portion deals with whether or not the camps should be called concentration camps with the writer saying they should be called that. An opposing view follows by a different writer. The third article in the section is about attempts at redress over the relocation movement.
The fourth article is about divisions among the Japanese-Americans over the issue of being willing to serve in the American armed forces when they were drafted or refusing to serve. Resisters to the draft were arrested, tried and sent to prison. Those divisions continue even today in spite of the fact that most of the people involved are in their seventies or eighties.
The fifth section is about historical revisionists in the U.S. who are trying to say the camps weren't that bad after all, the whole process was okay, things like that. A couple of there more absurd arguments: the barbed wire around the camps was to keep out wandering cows and most Japanese Americans were not forced to go to the camps but went voluntarily.
Their actions are not limited to words, either. Vandalism at Manzanar and shooting at a state historical landmark have also been undertaken, along with the usual Nazi swastikas and racial slurs. The rest of the section goes into more specifics about what these revisionists are saying.
This is another of the books that is absolutely filled with interesting information and information covering both sides of the issue. Worth taking a look at.
Frank F. Chuman, 1976
The first 7 chapters of the book deal with the Japanese immigration into the U.S. and the various anti-Japanese actions taken in the form of immigration policies, etc. and various cases that occurred as a result of the anti-Japanese prejudice.
Chapter 8 talks about the time just before WWII and covers things not seen in other books, examining what was going on in Japan at the time and how it related to the U.S. Great Depression and legal actions being taken to stop Japanese immigration. It also discusses Japan's economy of the time and how it looked to China as a market for its goods. It also discusses a 1932 joint US-Japan military exercise that ended up demonstrating exactly how Pearl Harbor could be attacked and destroyed, something that was done 9 years later, allowing plenty of time for the military to have taken proper measures to stop such an attack from being successful.
Chapter 9 goes into the internment camp/evacuation process, while Chapter 10 talks about the JACL and the Nisei involvement with the U.S. military resulting in the 100th and 442nd fighting groups. Chapter 11 goes back to the legal areas and examines the cases that challenged the evacuation orders.
Chapter 12 continues the examination of legal issues and further attempts even after the war to ban Japanese-Americans from owning land. Then it discusses how these Alien Land Laws were finally challenged and overturned. Chapter 13 deals with the Issei/Nisei fishermen in particular and the things that were done to them and how the fishing restrictions were successfully challenged.
Chapter 14 deals with the Japanese Evacuation Claims Act which resulted in the Issei/Nisei receiving a very, very small monetary compensation for the losses of their jobs, homes and personal belongings caused by the evacuation.
Chapter 15 deals with the loyalty questionnaire and draft resisters, including the history of the questionnaire, the problems it caused in the camp, and the rise of the draft resistance movement in the camps. Chapter 16 deals with the history of those who ended up renouncing their citizenship and the efforts by some of them to get their citizenship restored.
Chapter 17 is about the 'strandees', those Japanese Americans who were in Japan when the war began and were thus unable to return to the U.S. Some of them were denied passports to the U.S. when the war was over because their U.S. citizenship had expired. The section also includes the story of Tokyo Rose.
The book then goes into the period after the war and how some G.I.s fell in love with Japanese women and wanted to marry them but couldn't bring them back to the U.S. due to the Japanese Exclusion Act of 1924. The rest of the book deals with other legal matters affecting the Japanese-Americans and other minorities after the end of WWII.
(Due to the age of the book, 1976, there is no information on the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which would have drawn a great deal of interest from the author, I am sure.)
A rather interesting albeit somewhat specialized-interest type of book.
A childrens' book with text and artwork. A young boy starts to be made fun of at school, then his family is shipped to an assembly center (living in former horse stall), then shipped out again to an internment camp.
Some of the young people there start being disrespectful to their parents, so the adults build a baseball field. The rest of the story is about the young boy playing baseball, his family leaving the camp, and his resuming playing baseball.
Sort of an interesting quick overview of the internment of persons of Japanese descent, seen through the eyes of a child.
1952
No matter how many books I examined on the subject of Japanese-American internment, each one offers something different and from time to time there will one that will be quite different from most of the others. Such is the case with this book which shows the arts and crafts done by the people in the internment camps, trying to produce beauty even in the midst of the ugly reality of their imprisonment.
The first thing that sets this book off as being different is that it has an foreword by Eleanor Roosevelt.
The author quotes a governor of one of the western states at the time as saying A good solution to the Jap problem...would be to send them all back to Japan, then sink the island. They live like rats, breed like rats and act like rats.
The author wanted to organize an exhibition of items made by the Japanese Americans while in the internment centers and also photograph the items. It took until 1945 before he could undertake the photographing portion, and by then one of the camps was already closed. Various arts exhibitions were held at the camps during their existence, though, in which the author was not necessarily involved.
Keep in mind that the items were made in what were essential prison camps under oftentimes bad weather conditions and with the objects at hand, stretching imagination and creativity to the limits. Still, the things that were made were oftentimes of incredible beauty.
It's also interesting to note that different camps were noted for different art products. The Poston camp was noted for bird carvings, although the Gila River camp also did some. The Tule Lake center was noted for its flowers that were actually made out of sea-shells found in the area. The Rohwer center was noted for its weaving.
One actual advantage for some of the women in the camps was that the amount of daily work they had to do actually went down since they no longer had their own homes and/or jobs, so there were many opportunities for them to develop artistic creativity that they otherwise would never have had time to work on, so even in the darkest of times it's possible for something good to arise.
Dramatic plays were performed and musical instruments made as other forms of artistic expression.
Another thing that the author notes is how in the various camps people skilled in various crafts would then teach others the craft, whether it be working with wood, embroidery or the Tea Ceremony itself.
(Time for odd thought here. One of the things about Star Trek that is problematic is how, in the future, the matter duplicators pretty much eliminated the need for most jobs since most foods and other materials could be duplicated. I wonder if a rebirth of the arts, like there was in the internment camps, would occur under such a situation where most people would no longer have to work for a living at a 'regular' job.)
Towards the end of the book the author goes into the history of the internment camps.
This is another very fascinating and different look at the internment camps and something positive that managed to come out of them.
Daniel C. Davis, 1967
The book starts out with a description of the attack on Pearl Harbor, then follows with a brief description of the FBI raids, the fear of attacks by neighbors, the JACL and follows that up in the next chapter with a description of the initial immigration in the U.S. by Japanese.
This goes into the history of the immigration, anti-Japanese prejudice and government efforts to control and then stop immigration.
One chapter goes into the origin of some of the hysterical rumors of imminent Japanese attack on the West Coast, tracing those to radio operators who were rather incompetent, where they were picking up broadcasts from Japan but thought they were coming from very near to the U.S.
DeWitt and his program are discussed next, followed by the arrest of all Japanese on Terminal Island, a fisherman's place. It then covers the assembly centers and the movement of the internees to those places. A description is given of the assembly centers and the lives of the people there. Next is similar information about the internment camps themselves. This includes some of the violence in the camps.
The next chapter goes into the loyalty questionnaire, the confusion and the results, and the establishment of Tule Lake as a segregation center for 'troublemakers.' Then it follows with a description of the troubles at Tule Lake.
Next comes a description of those Nisei who volunteered for the U.S. military, then the next chapter deals with the court trials over the internment issue. The book then goes into the closing of the camps and the troubles at Tule Lake and the move by some of the internees to renounce their U.S. citizenship and return to Japan.
This is a fairly nice book giving a broad general outline of what happened in relation to this issue. It also has a good variety of photographs.
Minoru Kiyota, 1997
A Kibei is a Japanese-American who was born in the U.S. then returned to Japan for his or her education, then returned to the U.S. The translator notes that Kiyota was a 'no-no' and renounced his American citizenship. He was released from Tule in March of 1946. He continued to study in the U.S., though, but later his passport was taken and he continued his studies at Tokyo University.
He was one of the Japanese Americans that took their treatment after Pearl Harbor strongly and personally.
Kiyota starts his story with Pearl Harbor, then takes a step back to go into his family's history. There's a lot of interesting stuff here but one point I found that stood out was when he someone he knew was called an eta (burakumin), which is a class of outcasts in Japanese society.
His parents separated and his mother and he returned to Japan, but shortly afterward his mother went back to the U.S. to earn more money than she could in Japan. His father showed up one day and tried to kidnap him, unsuccessfully. By the time his mother returned it as 1937 and Japan was on its aggressive march in China.
He also notes when the Rape of Nanking was being reported in foreign presses, but in Japan it was referred to as the 'fall' of Nanking and was celebrated 'with a magnificent lantern parade through Tokyo.'
In the spring of 1938 they both returned to the U.S.
An extremely important point he makes is that the Nisei (those born in the U.S.) were trying to become as American as possible, whereas the Kibei (educated in Japan) still had a spiritual foothold in their Japanese culture. A short time later he writes about the evacuation of Japanese from California.
He and his mother first went to the Tanforan Assembly Center. He notes the Heart newspapers were leading an unrelenting attack on Japanese-Americans. He talks about the history of racist suppression against the Japanese Americans. His anger grew and he was later shipped to the Tule Lake Segregation Center.
He writes a lot about what happened there and how terrible the conditions were, especially in relation to the ultra-nationalists pro-Japanese internees who basically tried to bully all the other internees. This was made even worse by a camp administration that was rapidly anti-Japanese. The author ended up renouncing his U.S. citizenship, found some Presbyterian people who befriended him and later wanted to undo his renunciation.
He was finally released from Tule Lake in March of 1946. He quickly ran into more anti-Japanese prejudice after his release and then, on a train, he was introduced to Southern style prejudice when he was asked to change to a different train-car since the one he was on was to be used for colored people.
He gets into college but gets into trouble when he suggests that blacks be allowed to attend church services with whites. He ended up having to go back to California to a different college.
He returns to Japan to continue his college studies and finds his grandparents, their home long destroyed. He ended up fighting for the U.S. military in the Korean War. He then goes on to further events in his life including getting his citizenship back and returning to the U.S.
It's not a happy book to read. It's the story of a very, very angry young man who was angry because of all the injustices done to him. He went through a great deal of hardship, and the personal memories he has of his life at the Tule Lake Segregation Camp are particularly important. Not a happy book, but a good one.
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.
This 1987 book is quite different from other works dealing with the internment of Japanese Americans. This book is a collection of paintings and sketches done by some of the internees along with short sections of personal recollections, making this a very intimate examination of life in the camps.
There is also historical material in the book to put the recollections in context. It's quite a different type of approach and the book is quite good, especially the personal recollections of the inmates.
This is a children's book about the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans during WWII. It consists of text and artwork.
It starts out with the main character being Emi. The story says that she and her family are being sent to a 'prison camp.' Her father, a Japanese businessman, was being sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.
Emi and the others are sent to the Tanforan racetrack assembly camp. At the camp they are housed in used horse stalls.
The story then tells a little about how they fixed up the stall so they could live there.
This is a rather short book for rather young readers.
The book starts out acknowledging that the internment of the Japanese Americans does not really compare to the Rape of Nanking or the deaths of Jews during the Holocaust, but it's a particular stain on American history since it was largely American citizens that were rounded up and interned, without any specific charges or trials and without any change to defend their own loyalty to the country.
As such, it was especially bad in that we were fighting the war to preserve democracy which supposedly guarantees the right of all its citizens to be treated equally under the law.
The book then goes into the history of the Roosevelt family itself and its ties to the Orient. This includes FDR's growing concern (as he himself grew up) with Japan's growing economic ability and military potential, especially after they defeated the Russians in their 1905 war.
The book also recounts the history of the anti-Japanese movement in California prior to the second world war. FDR as early as around 1913 considered that a U.S.-Japanese war was highly possible in the future.
More of the pre-WWII history of FDR is covered along with various books and people that influenced him in his view of Japan. There's a great deal of detail in this part of the book.
As the years went on Roosevelt became more and more worried about a possible war with Japan. As for what was happening in the U.S., he was hampered by the fact that there were no Japanese American or other Asian American people on the White House staff, nor were there even any links to the Asian communities in the U.S., meaning the White House was operating without knowing anything about what the Japanese-Americans were thinking or doing.
Roosevelt was quite concerned about the Japanese and Japanese-Americans in Hawaii and a study was done in 1933 by Army Intelligence. Displaying the usual lack of intelligence such a group generally has, the report noted Japanese 'racial traits' such as "moral inferiority to whites, fanaticism, duplicity and arrogance." The Japanese-Americans there, the report claimed, were fiercely loyal to Tokyo and the majority of them would prove disloyal to the U.S. if war ever came.
Japanese ships put in at Hawaii and some of the sailors from the ships had relatives among the local residents. Concerned about this, FDR actually wrote:
One obvious thought occurs to me-that every Japanese citizen or non-citizen on the Island of Oahu who meets these Japanese ships or has any connection with their officers or men should be secretly but definitely identified and his or her name placed on a special list of those who would be the first to be placed in a concentration camp in the event of trouble.
Thus. it was apparent that as of 1936 (the time FDR stated the above), he was already considering the use of what would later become the internment camps. The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 and especially the Rape of Nanking did not do anything to improve FDR's view of the Japanese.
A 1940 memo proposed various steps for dealing with preparations for war including 'Prepare plans for concentration camps.' A November report by the FBI in Hawaii, though, indicated that the earlier military report predicting disaster was wrong and that only a very small number of the Japanese and Japanese-Americans in Hawaii would pose any potential problem, and that, further, the group was not hard to identify at all, something which would prove useful in rounding up potential troublesome people.
FDR initiated a secret study in 1941 on Japanese Americans. A Midwestern Republican businessman named Curtis B. Munsen headed the study, using a number of special agents. The results of his study were very positive in relation to the Japanese Americans:
We do not want to throw a lot of American citizens into a concentration camp, of course, and especially as the almost unanimous verdict is that in case of war they will be quite, very quiet.
He added that, in case of war, there was a greater danger coming from violence against the Japanese Americans than from that group of people itself. As to those in Hawaii, he said that 98% of the Japanese and Japanese-Americans were loyal, and the other 2% was already being monitored by the Navy and F.B.I. Even as late as December 2 he told the President that the Japanese-Americans in both Hawaii and on the mainland would be loyal to the U.S. in event of war with Japan.
FDR was suspicious of all Japanese Americans, regarding them as potential enemies and servants of Japan. He ignored the fact that Japan itself regarded Japanese-Americans (first generation Issei, who could not have citizenship, and second generation Issei) as very suspicious a far as Japan was concerned. They were no longer really Japanese enough.
In other words, the President of the U.S. didn't trust them because he felt they would be loyal to Japan, and the country of their ancestry and/or birth, Japan, didn't trust them, feeling they would be loyal to the U.S.
The book then goes into the history of what happened right after the December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor, basically a day-by-day accounting of events. Reports supporting Japanese-American loyalty still came in to the President and there was still concern about anti-Japanese violence in the U.S. Then various groups began to cry for control of the Japanese-Americans, spearheaded by the West Coast Defense Command and DeWitt. Other groups had other reasons for hating the Japanese-Americans, and these included the Western Growers Protective Association and other farm-oriented groups, all envious of Japanese-American success on their own farms.
The main thing behind this was racial hatreds, although greed was also a major factor. This type of special interest group pressure spread through the United States and ended any chance of a more gentle type of solution to concerns over the Japanese-Americans.
FDR was also given a lot of misinformation, much as the U.S. government was given prior to the invasion of Iraq. Executive Order 9066 is the next thing discussed in the book. A major factor influencing FDR's decision to issue the order was Canada's program of internment that had already started. Bad counsel, political pressure, public outcry, misinformation and FDR's own views were other factors.
Apparently FDR considered the Japanese people to be 'inherently savage', that they were a 'treacherous people' and that aggression was 'in the blood' of Japanese leaders.
Further, FDR didn't actually seem to be concerned about the rights of the Japanese-Americans and he even failed to follow advice and appoint an authority that could arrange for protection of the property of anyone interned. An excellent overview of his approach follows:
...Roosevelt displayed a shocking unconcern for the negative effects and ramifications of the policy as it developed. He ignored the legal problems created by the institution of a policy of incarceration of citizens. Rather than declare martial law or endorse congressional efforts to legislate mass involuntary confinement of citizens without a charge-a power not granted by the Constitution nor contained in Executive Order 9066-he presided over a joint army-WRA police of denial and euphemism in which the indefinite incarceration of Japanese-American ‘evacuees' was termed ‘resettlement' and camps with armed guards and barbed wire were officially named ‘relocation centers.
FDR seemed to care nothing at all about the loss of personal property that the evacuees would suffer. It's also interesting that in other documents the term 'concentration camps' was being used, and not 'internment' or 'resettlement' camps, for those interested in the argument over whether or not the term "concentration camp" should be used today to describe the places the Japanese-Americans were sent to.
FDR also wanted the Japanese Americans on the island of Hawaii evacuated to a smaller and separate island. Other's in the government disagreed with him and basically by dragging their feet little was done. Some 1,037 voluntarily went to the mainland (and had been lied to, told they would be set free once they got there to be with relatives, 1,500 were interned in Hawaii for the length of the war (without trial, of course), and 675 Issei had been transported to the mainland after Pearl Harbor and held throughout the war (and again, of course, without trial).
The next major argument was over whether or not Nisei should be allowed to join the U.S. military. Already the Japanese-Americans in the military had been kicked out and none had been allowed to join. Some in the government wanted the Nisei to be allowed to join again, but be confined to labor battalions. Arguments also raged on what to do about when to release any of the interned individuals who had already lost their jobs and their property.
One of the people disagreeing with FDR's policies was his own wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, who was much more tolerant towards the Japanese Americans and even visited one of the camps and wrote about them in her daily newspaper column, whereas FDR put off for as long as possible giving any speech showing any concern at all for the internees.
Late in 1943 FDR's attitude started to change, possibly due to racial riots going on in the U.S. (white/black and white/Hispanic) and DeWitt's departure. Also, the West Coast had been removed from its designation as a military theater of operations, weakening the government's original reason for evacuation of the Japanese-Americans.
The West Coast newspapers, though, continued and even strengthened their anti-Japanese American position, especially after unrest at the Tule Lake camp. Those who hated the Japanese Americans used the incident to drum up support for the continuing anti-Japanese-American policies.
The book goes on to examine some lying and deception that the government participated in over the issue of resettlement and examines the approaches to the issue of resettlement and how release of the interned people was considered to be a political problem. Everything became even more complicated as FDR's health worsened and he took less and less of an active role in running the country.
In July of 1944 FDR made a trip to the west coast and delivered some speeches which only served to strength anti-Japanese feelings. The ending of internment would not be stopped, though, and January of 1945 saw the beginning of the end for the policy. Those returning to the west coast, though, were met by the same type of racial hatred and violence they had confronted before their evacuation.
The book continues, noting, in effect, that much of what FDR did in relation to the entire internment issue was reactive rather than proactive, ruled by politics rather than by concern for people who were, mostly, actual American citizens.
By December of 1945 the relocation centers were emptied, and the Tule Lake detention center was closed in March of 1946.
This book is absolutely filled with details of FDR and his administration's dealing with the Japanese-Americans and the internment issue and is worth reading for anyone interested in the politics behind what was done.
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 mosquitoes.
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.
Catherine A. Welch, 2000.
This is a book for young readers and emphasizes photographs, but the information it contains summarizes what happened quite well. It's a good introduction for a young reader to what was involved in the internment of the Japanese Americans, both before, during and after.
This book is written by one of the Japanese Americans who was interned and each page has some information and a drawing on it that the author did, making it pretty much physically unique among the books on the subject.
The author begins recounting information about the evacuation process, curfew, etc. He was scheduled to go to the Tanforan Assembly Center which was one of the assembly centers located at horse-racing tracks. He and his brother had all of three whole days to get everything done they needed to do before being shipped off to the center.
He and his brother were assigned to stall 50; an actual horse stall that had hurriedly been whitewashed. For mattresses they had to stuff straw into bags. He describes what life was like at the center, talking about the lack of privacy, the toilets, etc.
The author notes something I saw in another book, that family life was falling apart, for one reason since people no longer ate together, and the parents didn't really have control of their kids any more.
He was then moved to the Topaz internment camp in Utah. He notes that the camp was not actually totally constructed by the time he and others were interned there. He worked on a local newspaper and a literary magazine.
He notes that the food was rationed and meals 'consisted of rice, brea, and macaroni, or beans, bread and spaghetti.'
When the winter came they were given G.I. clothing - from World War 1. (Making the clothes at least thirty years old) They did get to order some clothes from the Sears catalog, though.
He writes about the loyalty questionnaire and pressure put on people by a pro-Japanese group at the camp. The camp received 230 evacuees from Hawaii (the first reference I've found to a specific number of Hawaiians going to a specific camp.) Then there was the Wakasa case where an internee was shot and killed by the guards.
In the fall of 1943 about 1400 were sent from the Topaz camp to the Tule Detention Center for being 'no-no's' and certain others.
In January of 1944 he was released from the camp to live somewhere else on his own.
The drawings are quite interesting, emphasizing very much the daily life of the people in the camp. Again, the book is strengthened by being a personal account of someone who was actually interned. Worth reading.
Western Archaeological and Conservation Center, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1999.
This is an extremely interesting book which is basically an archaeological examination of the various internment camps and other camps relating to the Japanese-Americans in World War II.
The book starts out with some of the history of what happened, and then discusses the types of work involved in the production of the book. The book has an incredible number of pictures of the remains that are still standing of the camps. It also shows the types of things that were made and/or used at the camps relating to the Japanese culture and even includes photographs of Japanese writing found in the remains of the camps.
The second chapter is a 'Contemporary report of one relocation center by an outside observer: Eleanor Roosevelt.' Chapter 3 is a summary of the relocation movement; chapters 4 through 13 look at the individual camps; chapter 14 discusses Moab and Leupp Isolation centers; chapter 15 covers other temporary facilities that were used; chapter 16 covers the assembly centers, chapter 17 the Dept. of Justice and Army Internment Camps, and chapter 18 covers three Federal prisons involved in the program.
Chapter 3 has a great deal of information in it, even covering the problems at Tule Lake and other internment camps. The chapters on the camps follow a pattern where the physical nature of the area is discussed, the construction and layout of the camp is covered, maps are included, and numerous photos from the time and from today fill out each chapter.
This is not the type of book you sit down and read cover to cover. Actually, for most people the book probably wouldn't be that interesting, but if you want to know about the physical structures of the camps and the areas they were in and see photos from that time and photos showing the remains of the camp then this is basically the book for you. The majority of the material in this book is not covered in any of the other books on the subject ( of course, that's because the exact nature of the information is not covered in other books, though.)
This is a somewhat older book (1976) on the subject and it's quite good. It goes into a lot of detail of just how the decision to relocate came about, including various proposals which covered the range of incarcerating only a few to putting every single person of Japanese ancestry into camps.
The most interesting part of the book is the latter part where lots of documents, phone conversations, etc, related to the topic are included. Some things I haven't seen in any of the other books I've examined are part of this section and that helps to make it quite complete and useful.
Although by all normal indices of social deviancy-crime, delinquency, broken homes, institutionalization, etc.-the Japanese Americans were model members of society, they were viewed with fear, suspicion, and loathing by most to most other Americans.
This is an interesting statement. The Japanese Americans were essentially model citizens. Yet they were still hated. What I have read in many places that the Japanese Americans went along with being put into internment camps and didn't fight it since they thought that was their way of proving their loyalty, yet virtually nothing they did would have worked since they were hated even though they were actually model citizens.
The book is another one to point out that, as far as sabotage goes, the Japanese Americans were not involved despite the fact that it was one of the major arguments used for interning them.
The book does a good job in pointing out how important the newspapers were in fanning the flames of anti-Japanese prejudice by running wild headlines and making totally unsubstantiated claims.
The book discusses the 'Battle of Los Angeles' where some 1400 three-inch antiaircraft shells were fired at what turned out to be nothing. Fragments of shells that dropped to the ground did, though, manage to damage numerous automobiles.
The writer also pays a lot of attention to the Japanese Americans in Hawaii, noting that there was no sabotage or involvement on their part in the attack on Pearl Harbor with the exception of one single incident where a Nisei helped a down pilot and then killed himself.
The author also goes into a discussion of various programs that were considered as alternatives to actual total evacuation, the plans, of course, all being rejected eventually.
The author asks the question of why were the Asian Americans considered outsiders. Factors that led to this, he says, related to their racial characteristics such as skin color and eye shape. The author seems to overlook that this same type of thing applied to blacks and Native Americans, both.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked, the war was no longer 'over there' but directly involved American soil. This caused a major change in American attitude, and it impacted negatively on those of Japanese descent who were here.
The author talks about how the Koreans taught Japanese to the U.S. military. Korea and Japan had a rather long and contentious history.
The author says 37% of the islands population were people of Japanese ancestry.
There was some pressure to ship the persons of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii on to a separate island, but the military governor nixed the idea. Martial law and other factors helped eliminate any perceived need for evacuation and internment.
The book examines the Munson report and how this and other things were ignored on the West Coast and those persons of Japanese ancestry ended up being evacuated and interned. The book discusses how the radio and newspapers turned against the Japanese living on the West Coast, another major factor in the decision to remove them from the area.
The loyalty questionnaire is discussed, along with the eventual decision to draft the Nisei, including the ones in the camps. The draft resisters are also discussed.
By Page Smith, 1995
The author starts by talking about World War II just before the U.S. entered it, along with how Japanese aggression alarmed the people on the West Coast and contributed to the anti-Japanese fervor, and then goes on to discuss Executive Order 9066.
The author then takes a step back in history and talks about the opening of Japan by Admiral Perry along with other things going on in Japan at the time. The next chapter talks about the growing imperial might of Japan and how that related to the building of the Panama Canal.
The author then talks about the Japanese Americans on the West Coast, what they did for a living, giving numerous specific examples of immigrants. He then talks about the Issei/Nisei differences and also talks about the Kibei, those who were born in the U.S., educated in Japan and returned to the U.S.
Also covered is the specific differences in how Japanese aggression was being viewed by the various generations of immigrants.
Next is how the Japanese Americans reacted to the bombing of Pearl Harbor with very specific examples. Included in this section is the beginning of the government program that eventually led to the internment of the Issei and Nisei, and the role of the JACL.
The author does a really good job of discussing the mood of the times, how people were reacting to the Japanese military successes, again with numerous specific examples. DeWitt's attitudes and plans are covered in the same chapter.
Terminal Island is discussed in the next chapter. This was an island of Japanese American fishermen who were immediate targets of the FBI and the military, who made the assumption that, since they were fishermen and had boats, they were using the boats to communicate with Japanese forces in the area. What happened to people being evacuated is covered along with its effects on the concept of voluntary evacuation.
The next chapters discuss the voluntary evacuation, the involuntary evacuation, and in particular the farms and other personal property that were lost to the Issei and Nisei in the process of internment. Material on the War Relocation Authority comes next in the book.
Then there's a long an excellent chapter on the assembly centers. Efforts to get students into other schools follows, and then the entire next section is on life in the internment camps. Again, a lot of details are included. Then the author turns his attention towards the troubles that did occur at the camps, especially the Manzanar riot where two evacuees were killed by the soldiers. Resettlement is the next to be discussed, and then the entire issue of the loyalty questionnaire and the military wanting Nisei soldiers.
After that is a chapter dealing with Tule Lake as the isolation/detainment center for the "no-no's" and certain others. The author also includes material on the social and cultural life of the centers, something that helped the internees manage to survive what they were going through. The closing of the centers and all that entailed is next to be covered in the book.
The final chapter is 'loose ends' and has some very interesting material, including how nine of their advanced submarines were cruising off the West Coast and had planned to bombard San Francisco on Christmas Eve, but the plan was called off because of potential harm to the Japanese Americans.
The author also states his position about the potential military threat of the Japanese Americans. Those who condemn the relocation as a ‘racist decision' have to climb over a mountain of evidence that many Japanese living in California were ardent Japanese nationalists. He adds that DeWitt realized he could not protect the Japanese Americans against the 'mounting public hostility against them.'
Included in this discussion is the matter of the Kibei and the parents who sent them to study in Japan. The author believes that if an invasion of the West Coast had taken place, many of the Issei and Nisei would have fought for the U.S., some would have taken neither side, and some would have actively added the invading Japanese forces. What I think we must admit is that responsible public officials, most of whom were publicly and privately extremely reluctant to take such a step, were persuaded by those ‘on the ground' and in command of the broadest range of evidence that the evacuation of the exclusionary zone was, if not essential, given the evidence, wise and prudent.
So the author does not make reference to the Majic documents, but does believe that there was a military necessity for the evacuation, if for nothing else than being on the safe side of things.
A very interesting book, indeed.
Yoshiko Uchida, 1982
The author originally grew up in Berkeley, California. She starts off writing about her life there and gives some of her family history. She also has her own share of tragedies; one cousin died in Japan during the war; one died at Heart Mountain due to a heart condition, and an uncle became blind due to inadequate care while he was at one of the interment camps.
She continues with personal memories of her education in the U.S. and how she, as a Nisei, felt she wasn't really fully Japanese and wasn't really fully American, either. The day Pearl Harbor was attacked her father was taken by the FBI. There's a lot of very personal details of what was happening, including the fact that the parents of a friend of hers were shot and killed by an anti-Japanese fanatic.
She and the rest of her family were subject to evacuation and she tells the story of how they had to get rid of things, including even giving their pet collie away. They were shipped to the Tanforan Assembly Center. She describes the living conditions there, including the horse stalls they lived in, latrines with no privacy, etc. She also described the type of life her father had where he was being held, and these details are something few if any other books have.
She describes more details about life at Tanforan, including the activities, classes, the setting up of the post office, etc. As with the other evacuees she and her family were moved to a relocation center, in their case Topaz. They even had a sheet of instructions to follow on what words to use in Topaz (reminding me of an episode of The Prisoner with similar sayings), including to use the word Safety Council, instead of Internal Police, and Residents instead of Evacuees.
It's also obvious from what she writes that Topaz was not at all ready for use when the evacuees got there. Many buildings were not even finished being built, the laundry lacked water and lights didn't work. She writes about how elementary schools were supposed to start but nothing was there except an empty building. She also visited a white teacher at her staff lodgings and found out that the staff were in much, much more comfortable buildings than the internees.
Although the schools finally did get started they had to close in November due to the fact that they weren't actually finished and so terrible cold kept getting in to the schoolrooms. She also writes about the increasing tensions and bitterness in the camp and how this affected the way people behaved.
She finally did get to leave the camp and continue her education outside.
This is a very personal book and extremely good, giving a lot of good in-depth insight into what was actually happening at the assembly centers and internment camps. Definitely worth reading.
March 31, 2005
(What I have done is to modify the original article slightly, and add comments in italics.)
During the Second World War, President Roosevelt made numerous proclamations under the Alien Enemy Act for the purpose of interning aliens deemed dangerous or likely to engage in espionage or sabotage. At the outset of the war, the internments were effected under civil authority of the Attorney General, who established 'prohibited areas' in which no aliens of Japanese, Italian, or German descent were permitted to enter or remain, as well as a host of other restraints on affected aliens. The President, acting under statutory authority, delegated to the Attorney General the authority to prescribe regulations for the execution of the program. Attorney General Francis Biddle created the Alien Enemy Control Unit to review the recommendations of hearing boards handling the cases of the more than 2,500 enemy aliens in the temporary custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
In February of 1942, the President extended the program to cover certain citizens as well as enemy aliens, and turned over the authority to prescribe 'military areas' to the Secretary of War, who further delegated the responsibilities under the order with respect to the west coast to the Commanding General of the Western Defense Command. The new order, Executive Order 9066, clearly amended the policy established under the earlier proclamations regarding aliens and restricted areas, but did not rely on the authority of Alien Enemy Act, as the previous proclamations had done. Although the Department of Justice denied that the transfer of authority to the Department of War was motivated by a desire to avoid constitutional issues with regard to the restriction or detention of citizens, the House Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration found the shift in authority significant, as it appeared to rely on the nation’s war powers directly, and could find no support in the Alien Enemy Act with respect to citizens. The summary exercise of authority under that act to restrain aliens was thought by the Committee to be untenable in the case of U.S. citizens, and the War Department felt congressional authorization was necessary to provide authority for its enforcement. Congress granted the War Department’s request, enacting with only minor changes the proposed legislation providing for punishment for the knowing violation of any exclusion order issued pursuant to Executive Order 9066 or similar executive order. A policy of mass evacuation from the West Coast of persons of Japanese descent — citizens as well as aliens — followed, which soon transformed into a system of compulsive internment at 'relocation centers.' Persons of German and Italian descent (and others) were treated more selectively, receiving prompt (though probably not full and fair) loyalty hearings118 to determine whether they should be interned, paroled, or released. The disparity of treatment was explained by the theory that it would be impossible or too time-consuming to attempt to distinguish the loyal from the disloyal among persons of Japanese descent.
These people were 'evacuated' from the West Coast without being given any more than a relatively brief notice, sometimes just a few days. They had no recourse to legal action at all, at least at first. Some people were taken by the F.B.I. and placed in separate camps, without formal charges, trial, or right to defend themselves. In other words, simply because the President issued an executive order, all the 'normal' rights of the Japanese-Americans, many of which were actually American citizens, were completely suspended.
In a series of cases, the Supreme Court limited but did not explicitly strike down the internment program. In the Hirabayashi case, the Supreme Court found the curfew imposed upon persons of Japanese ancestry to be constitutional as a valid war-time security measure, even as implemented against U.S. citizens, emphasizing the importance of congressional ratification of the Executive Order. Hirabayashi was also indicted for violating an order excluding him from virtually the entire west coast, but the Court did not review the constitutionality of the exclusion measure because the sentences for the two charges were to run concurrently. Because the restrictions affected citizens solely because of their Japanese descent, the Court framed the relevant inquiry as a question of equal protection, asking whether in the light of all the facts and circumstances there was any substantial basis for the conclusion, in which Congress and the military commander united, that the curfew as applied was a protective measure necessary to meet the threat of sabotage and espionage which would substantially affect the war effort and which might reasonably be expected to aid a threatened enemy invasion.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Douglas added that in effect, due process considerations did not apply to ensure that only individuals who were actually disloyal were affected by the restrictions, even if it were to turn out that only a small percentage of Japanese-Americans were actually disloyal.123 However, he noted that a more serious question would arise if a citizen did not have an opportunity at some point to demonstrate his loyalty in order to be reclassified and no longer subject to the restrictions.
In Korematsu, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of an American citizen for remaining in his home, despite the fact that it was located on a newly declared 'Military Area' and was thus off-limits to persons of Japanese descent. Fred Korematsu also challenged the detention of Japanese-Americans in internment camps, but the Court declined to consider the constitutionality of the detention itself, as Korematsu’s conviction was for violating the exclusion order only. The Court, in effect, validated the treatment of citizens in a manner similar to that of enemy aliens by reading Executive Order 9066 together with the act of Congress ratifying it as sufficient authority under the combined war powers of the President and Congress, thus avoiding having to address the statutory scope of the Alien Enemy Act. In Ex parte Endo, however, decided the same day as Korematsu, the Supreme Court did not find adequate statutory underpinnings to support the internment of loyal citizens. The Court ruled that the authority to exclude persons of Japanese ancestry from declared military areas did not encompass the authority to detain concertedly loyal Americans. Such authority, it found, could not be implied from the power to protect against espionage and sabotage during wartime. The Court declined to decide the constitutional issue presented by the evacuation and internment program, instead interpreting the executive order, along with the act of March 27, 1942 (congressional ratification of the order), narrowly to give it the greatest chance of surviving constitutional review. Accordingly, the Court noted that detention in Relocation Centers was not mentioned in the statute or executive order, but was developed during the implementation of the program. As such, the authority to detain citizens could only be found by implication in the act, and must therefore be found to serve the ends Congress and the President had intended to reach. Since the detention of a loyal citizen did not further the campaign against espionage and sabotage, it could not be authorized by implication.
The Court avoided the question of whether internment of citizens would be constitutionally permissible where loyalty were at issue or where Congress explicitly authorized it, but the Court’s use of the term 'concertedly loyal' to limit the scope of the finding may be read to suggest that there is a Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process applicable to a determination of loyalty or dangerousness. While the Fifth Amendment would not require the same process that is due in a criminal case, it would likely require at least reasonable notice of the allegations and an opportunity for the detainee to be heard.
At least one American with no ethnic ties to or association with an enemy country was subjected to an exclusion order issued pursuant to Executive Order 9066. Homer Wilcox, a native of Ohio, was excluded from his home in San Diego and removed by military force to Nevada, although the exclusion board had determined that he had no association with any enemy and was more aptly described as a 'harmless crackpot.' He was the manager of a religious publication that preached pacifism, and was indicted along with several others for fraud in connection with the publication. The district court awarded damages in favor of Wilcox, but the circuit court reversed, finding the exclusion within the authority of the military command under Executive Order 9066 and 18 U.S.C. § 1383, and holding that the evidence concerning plaintiff’s activities and associations provided a reasonable ground for the belief by defendant ... that plaintiff had committed acts of disloyalty and was engaged in a type of subversive activity and leadership which might instigate others to carry out activities which would facilitate the commission of espionage and sabotage and encourage them to oppose measures taken for the military security of Military Areas Nos. 1 and 2, and that plaintiff’s presence in the said areas from which he had been excluded would increase the likelihood of espionage and sabotage and would constitute a danger to military security of those areas.
The court also found that the act of Congress penalizing violations of military orders under Executive Order 9066 did not preclude General De Witt from using military personnel to forcibly eject Wilcox from his home.
In other words, Wilcox was disloyal because he was publishing pacifist materials. This is the same kind of thing that was being done in Japan, although sometimes with fatal consequences for the publisher.
The Japanese internment program has since been widely discredited, the convictions of some persons for violating the orders have been vacated, and the victims have received compensation, but the constitutionality of detention of citizens during war who are deemed dangerous has never expressly been ruled per se unconstitutional.
Note that. It's very important. Detention of citizens could, under this approach, still be carried out under 'war' conditions. The problem there is to define the word 'war.' World War II was, by anyone's definitions, a war. If the so-called 'war on terror' were to be considered an actual 'war,' then the government could end up interning people again.
In the cases of citizens of other ethnic backgrounds who were interned or otherwise subject to restrictions under Executive Order 9066, courts played a role in determining whether the restrictions were justified, sometimes resulting in the removal of restrictions. Because these persons were afforded a limited hearing to determine their dangerousness, a court later ruled that the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution did not require that they receive compensation equal to that which Congress granted in 1988 to Japanese-American internees. It may be argued that Hirabayashi and the other cases validating Executive Order 9066 (up to a point) support the constitutionality of preventive detention of citizens during war, at least insofar as the determination of dangerousness of the individual interned is supported by some evidence and some semblance of due process is accorded the internee. However, it was emphasized in these cases that Congress had specifically ratified Executive Order 9066 by enacting 18 U.S.C. § 1383, providing a penalty for violation of military orders issued under the Executive Order. Thus, even though the restrictions and internments occurred in the midst of a declared war, a presidential order coupled with specific legislation appear to have been required to validate the measures. The internment of Japanese-American citizens without individualized determination of dangerousness was found not to be authorized by the Executive Order and ratifying legislation (the Court thereby avoiding the constitutional issue), although the President had issued a separate Executive Order to set up the War Relocation Authority140 and Congress had given its tacit support for the internments by appropriating funds for the effort.
From the Footnotes
The footnotes have some interesting things. DeWitt set up five classes of civilians to be affected by the military areas. These included:
1. Class 1: all persons who are suspected of espionage, sabotage, fifth column, or other subversive activity.
2. Japanese aliens. (Issei)
3. American-born persons of Japanese lineage. (Nisei, etc. who were American citizens.)
4. German aliens.
5. Italian aliens.
Discrimination: Japanese Americans Struggle for Equality
The book first defines discrimination, then goes into the history of persons of Japanese ancestry in the US, starting from the earliest immigration on through the incarceration and then to the 1990's. (The book is from 1992).
The book notes that discrimination doesn't just come from “regular” people, but from people high up in the government.
The Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox made matters worse on the West Coast when he held a press conference in Los Angeles on December 15, 1941, after a brief inspection of Pearl Harbor. He spoke of the treachery that took place in Hawaii and stated that much of the damage had been caused by saboteurs. In fact, the level of damage at Pearl Harbor was the result of military incompetence and lack of readiness, and Knox knew that when he made his statement to the press.
This is one of the books that refers to the places where the Japanese Americans were held as 'concentration camps,' noting that President Roosevelt used that term himself.
The book also talks about the controversial questionnaire the Japanese Americans had to fill out, noting that 75,000 did so and of those 65,000 answered yes to both questions relating to if they were willing to serve in the US military and if they would give up any form of allegiance to the Emperor.
The book also notes that discrimination against Asian Americans is still going on in today's US.
This is a nicely done, easy-to-read book on the subject, covering the main points of Japanese immigration and incarceration quite well.
Catherine Embree Harris, 1999
The author is not a Japanese American. She did work at one of the internment camps as a staff member and thus this makes her book quite different from books written by the internees themselves, or by the people who were making the decisions (or about the people making the decisions) on what was done.
After working at a bookstore she applied at the Office of Indian Affairs for a job but ended up instead being asked if she would work at a relocation camp. She had many pleasant memories of Japanese from her when she was growing up in Hawaii and thought it would be something she looked forward to doing.
She then goes into the history of the rounding up and evacuation of the Issei and Nisei, including the assembly centers. The book has numerous photos not seen elsewhere, too.
She took a job as an assistant teacher at the Poston internment camp in Arizona. She describes her roommate at the camp and talks a little about the physical setup the staff had which was better than that for the internees, but not always a whole lot better.
She talks about how the camps were constructed and about the other teachers she would be working with. She then covers the differences between the Issei, the Nisei and the Kibei in particular.
There were 5,300 school children at Poston. There were never enough teachers, and turnover was rapid. Although she had signed up as an assistant teacher, she was put into a full teacher's position. They had no schoolbooks until three months after the schools started. Although there were science and cooking classrooms, and auto mechanics and woodworking shops, none of them were wired for electricity or even had running water.
The author was a 9th grade teacher. Various other teachers showed up, with the author going back to an assistant teacher status, but each teacher left relatively quickly until the fourth who turned out to be a Quaker woman who stayed till the camp closed in 1945.
She talks about the nearby town of Parker and how it was extremely anti-Japanese, especially when any of the students or other internees stopped in the town during one of the out-of-camp-work excursions. She then goes on to talk about various things the internees did involving the arts and crafts and churches.
She also talks about many of the problems that the camp had including food shortages, the cultural shock to Issei males who no longer were the actual working heads of their families, etc. She also notes that Poston had no guard towers nor barbed wire fencing, just regular fencing around it.
She writes about a beating that took place in the camp and how the FBI became involved. 50 men had been interviewed and the field was cut down to 2 suspects although no one knew why the two men in particular were picked and not the others. The people in the camp were worried that the men would be removed and tried somewhere else and they tried to testify to the good character of both suspects.
The camp kept referring all requests and petitions for release to the FBI who ignored them. Certain key people were not present in the camp and in their absence a general strike was called. It was also a power struggle between the Issei, the Nisei and the Kibei.
A rather polite strike was called since the strike would not cover food delivery, the hospital, schools, fire protection, internal security or garbage collection. In the end, after a lot of bad tempers and frayed nerves, some solid negotiations were held and things ended up working out fine.
She then discusses how some of the evacuees ended up in the U.S. military doing valuable work. Then came the loyalty questionnaire and the 'no-no's'. She notes that 4,724 evacuees eventually returned to Japan.
She writes about how many students were placed into colleges throughout the U.S., including Swarthmore and Berea. She also writes about how some of the evacuees were resettled in the East and how that affected the number of teachers and students left in the camp. She then covers the end of the war and the disbanding of the camp.
She talks about what some of the people she worked with did after the camp was closed and then about the redress efforts.
This is a very interesting book, especially since it's told first-hand by a person directly involved in what was going on. It maintains a person's interest throughout.
This book is mainly a photo book of the internment camps and the people involved with that, including photos showing the type of discrimination against Japanese-Americans at the time of World War II. There is some factual historical information given, but the main emphasis is on the photographs.
Thomas James, 1987
The book starts off talking about the young people who were uprooted from the schools they were attending and ended up attending schools in the internment camps. It then goes into the history of Japanese immigration in to the U.S. and the education of the children at that time. Also discussed is the anti-Japanese movement in California. Showing the importance of education schools were started as soon as possible in the assembly camps and later at the internment camps.
The book goes into a lot of details relating to the individuals centers and camps and their schooling programs. The involvement of the WRA is discussed along with the role of the military in the camps. The author also notes that there was a severe teacher shortage even before the war, and the war only made it worse. (Which means some of the criticism of the teaching in the camps could be explained by a lack of certified, experienced teachers for the camps and other schools, too.)
The teachers in the camps were also sometimes looked down on by teachers outside the camps, not counting the sometimes degrading conditions in the camps themselves which both helped to contribute to a high turnover rate which also, in general, ends to lower overall teacher quality.
Another point the book makes is that the teachers were basically cut off from the Japanese-American community and were also cut off from the administration of the camps since the administration made all the decisions; thus, the teachers had to operate sort of separately from everyone else.
There were also some arguments about the way things should be taught; in a traditional method or in a progressive method. The teachers tended to favor the traditional method of teaching. The administration, though, also wanted them to basically indoctrinate the students, serving as mouthpieces for the administration itself.
This was all made worse for the Japanese-American teachers, of course, since their status was below that of the white teachers.
The author notes that the elementary and junior high school groups had the least troubles and the fewest students by proportion; the high schools had proportionally the most students and the most problems. The author also points out that the students themselves had to deal with many, many problems that their internment caused, just one of those being having to adapt to frequently changing administration rules and edicts.
The overall result was that fewer of the students desired to go to college and their scholastic achievement of the students suffered.
The next chapter deals with the loyalty questionnaire. This was especially bad at Tule Lake and the teacher turnover rate skyrocketed. It got so bad that compulsory schooling was dropped entirely. The use of social scientists doing camp studies is also discussed, especially in that it seems that camps that had such studies had fewer problems than those that had no studies carried on.
Various problems with the resettlement program are discussed along with how the Nisei felt who went to colleges outside of the camps. It also deals with the racial prejudice that they encountered outside of the camps.
The book then goes again in to the various problems at Tule Luke, these including the existence of private schools, pressures to be loyal Japanese, reactions of students, etc.
This is a very specialized book in that it deals with one aspect of the entire internment issue, but it doing that it manages to go into some of the problems that were going on in relation to lack of cultural understanding on the part of the camp authorities, along with the affect of Japanese culture on the schooling of the children. An interesting book.
This is the story of a American of Japanese descent who was born in 1921. He grew up in the pre-war time of considerable anti-Japanese feelings, and ended up in one of the internment camps, then in the military as a person with multiple specialties. His return to the Hood River area after the war was over, though, was difficult, as this was one of the most virulently anti-Japanese areas in the country.
The strongest and most interesting part of the book, at least to me, was the type of discrimination that he faced even after the war was over.
It's a very interesting, very personal biography.
Audrie Girdner, Anne Loftis, 1969
This is one of the older books on the subject, most of the books being from the 90's. It's also one of the biggest at over 550 pages in length.
The book starts with the events of December 7, 1941, looked at from the viewpoint of some of those involved, and then talks about goes into the beginning of the arrests of people of Japanese ancestry. It also covers the negative reactions to the Japanese Americans by those in the general community and various acts of violence against some of them.
The approach of the Justice Department at the time was to go after individuals, not the entire community. When the handling of that "problem" was turned over to the War Department, everything changed with the War Department not being concerned about things like individual rights.
The book talks about a Japanese sub on Dec. 24 torpedoing a freighter near the California shore, and four days later a powerful Japanese radio in Manila overrode a San Francisco radio frequency and pretended there was a second attack on Pearl Harbor.
The book goes into extensive detail on what was going on in California in relation to the anti-Japanese feelings and keeping watch on Japanese Americans living in the area.
The second chapter takes a step back and looks at the history of Japanese immigration, various racist problems they ran into, and early movements to ban Japanese immigration to the U.S.
The third chapter deals with how the Issei and Nisei began to settle down in the U.S. and the types of problems that they ran into when they tried to do so.
The next chapters deal with the actual evacuation process and the Assembly Centers. This includes a lot of detail on the various problems faced by those who ended up working on the camouflage netting, and how some of the work wasn't as voluntarily as some books seem to indicate. Then it moves into information on the camps themselves and some of the very bad physical conditions at some of them. The book goes into considerable detail on the various problems that arose in the camps and even includes information on anti-Japanese movies being produced in the U.S. during that time.
The JACL is discussed and then the loyalty questionnaire is covered along with the desire of some Nisei to join the U.S. military and what happened. Various attacks on the WRA are noted, mainly by those who felt the Japanese American internees were being treated too well, at government expense, and more media meddling is noted.
The book describes how the situation at Tule Lake became different from the other camps when it was turned into a segregation center, holding the 'disloyals' from the other camps. The author also covers the Nisei soldiers in the Pacific theater as well as the 100th and 442nd. The relocation of the internees is discussed along with continuing anti-Japanese prejudice in various communities. One of the main strengths of the book is in the amount of detail it has on what the relocated evacuees ran into in the lines of prejudice and outright hatred when they tried to relocate.
Numerous specific examples of hatred and discrimination against the evacuees as they tried to resettle and get other jobs are given, painting a much darker picture than most other books on the subject, at least relating to this part of the history of relocation.
The occupation of Japan is covered, especially in relation to Nisei returning to Hiroshima to try to find relatives that had lived there. The beginnings of the redress movement are discussed, but since the book was written in 1969 it predated many of the most significant events as to redress.
For those interested in the Japanese-American Issei/Nisei history of immigration, evacuation and relocation, this is an excellent book filled with great details and personal stories.
This book examines Hawaii specifically in relating to WWII, and is one of not very many books that does that. It examines the worries about a 'fifth column' of Japanese, whether or not the island Japanese were friend or foe, problems both whites and Japanese faced, and even includes some information on the immediate post-war situation in Hawaii.
Keep in mind that the situation in Hawaii in relation to persons of Japanese ancestry was handled very, very differently from the situation on the West Coast of the U.S., and books like this help us to understand why.
The mainland big business interests that were largely responsible for Hawaii's legitimate government being overthrown were the main driving force that brought in the Japanese immigrants. Reception was nice at first but, as their numbers increased and they moved from plantation workers into other forms of independent work, some people began to oppose their presence.
When the U.S. took over Hawaii, it ended any chance of the area belonging to any other country. It also allowed Nisei to become American citizens.
The whites who owned the businesses liked the Japanese immigrants as long as they knew their place and kept to it.
Hawaii has developed a history of racial tolerance (generally). Such an approach helped to prevent the wild anti-Japanese movements found on the mainland.
The school system of Hawaii has played a major role in how things turned out, which is not at all surprising. This also fit very well into the Japanese appreciation for a good education.
It seems a lot of haters don't understand just how important a good education is, and what effects it will have. Some of the anti-Jewish arguments have been very similar to the anti-Japanese arguments. One reason for the success of both groups was their emphasis on education. If you get a good education, then you have a much, much better chance of getting a decent job and having a fairly good life. Those who have turned away from a good education, not willing to make the effort to get one, are often the ones who end up being the greatest haters of all.
The Nisei were also allowed to vote. Again, this is of critical importance, because if someone feels that they have no say at all over what happens, they will become bitter and more likely angry towards those in power. People who can have a direct say over who the politicians are will be much more likely to actually care about who is 'ruling' them and many will take a more active interest in what is actually going on in their area.
The author goes on to talk about the Japanese language schools, and the opposition that existed to them. He then talks about the various Japanese papers and other things that irritated the whites, but also points out that, as the Nisei generation grew, they became more 'Americanized,' and the importance of Japanese papers and radio broadcasts from Japan shrank. The Nisei were not totally turning their backs on their heritage, but Japanese culture was no longer as important to them as it was to their parents.
He also discusses some problems that arose because of a couple of criminal cases that involved Japanese persons.
If people come into contact with other races on a daily basis, this will, in all probability, help over time to lower racial prejudice. On the Pacific Coast at the time, whites generally did not have frequent contact with Japanese, so it was easier to hate what they had never seen.
The Nisei are divided into two groups, depending on whether they have stayed in Hawaii or in the U.S. all their lives, or whether they were born here, then returned at some point to Japan for schooling. The ones who stayed her the entire time seem to have adapted much better to the American culture.
The author then goes on to talk about the time just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He notes that the upper-class white homes were wondering which side the Japanese on the island was going to take. The military, who had less experience with the Japanese in Hawaii, assumed the worst. They were concerned about the access of Japanese to military bases and potentially sensitive areas.
After the attack, there were various rumors of Hawaiian Japanese treachery. Each rumor, though, was fairly quickly denied and denounced.
There is, however, a very interesting complexity to the rumors. The ones that were circulated in Hawaii were disproved quickly, and ended up with the general noting that people shouldn't believe that type of trash talk. Yet, rumor continued to pop up on the mainland about sabotage, and went beyond the rumors that had originated in Hawaii itself.
The author believes that these false rumors did have an effect on the pressure for evacuation of persons of Japanese ancestry on the Pacific Coast, though.
The attacks against the Japanese Americans continued to be quite vicious on the mainland throughout the war.
Attacks against the Japanese on Hawaii were the result of hysteria or mainland feelings. Drunkenness led to some attacks, but being drunk can lead to attacks on anyone. The Filipinos had a particular dislike for the Japanese after the Philippines were invaded and conquered by the Japanese military.
There had been rumors that the Japanese on the islands would be isolated on one island, somewhat like being in an internment camp. Some people thought this would have a negative effect on the general island spirit.
Another intelligent Army individual, saying that there haven't really been any problems with the Japanese, no one's planning to kick them out to internment camps, but, just the same, the Army is keeping its eye on them. It's a statement to mollify those made nervous by the presence of the Japanese on the islands, but also mollify the same Japanese somewhat. Everyone gets treated equally, and is innocent until proven guilty. On the mainland, of course, the persons of Japanese ancestry were considered guilty until proven innocent which, incidentally, they really weren't in a position to do until well into the internment period.
Another reason not to kick the Japanese out was their economic importance to the island. I'll repeat the numbers here, the job being first and second the percentage of workers in that job who were Japanese:
Sugar plantation workers: 30%
Clerical and sales: 39%
Craftsmen: 51%
Restaurants, bars: 53%
Food and dairy stories: 59%
Retail trade owners: 62%
Farmers, farm managers: 73%
Plus what seems to have been a large percentage of the domestic servants.
Losing the workers is only part of the problem, the other part being replacing the workers lost, and that would have been a really, really hard thing to do. It's quite obvious from the numbers that food production and sale would have taken a major hit if the Japanese had been kicked out.
The concept they were working with was basically that, if you treat everyone equally, everyone will probably be able to adapt (assimilate). Everyone will be having the same gripes, everyone will be having the same shortages and inconveniences, and, with everyone in the same boat, everyone will probably get along fairly well, and that is exactly what happened (with, of course, a few exceptions here and there.) People will often live up to (or down to) the expectations placed upon them.
There was a Public Morale Section, set up with a Haole, a Japanese, and a Chinese. Again, something that made sense.
The author then goes into the program for getting Nisei to join the American military. The non-Japanese could get behind this, also. For those who liked the Japanese, it showed them what they knew all along, that the Japanese on the islands were loyal Americans who would fight for their country. For those who didn't like the Japanese, it allowed them to say, basically, that if the Japanese are as good as they claim to be, and like America as much as they claim, then let them prove it. A win-win position.
There was a problem, though, in the serviceman from the mainland who came to Hawaii (to be shipped elsewhere, usually). They sometimes had the anti-Japanese prejudice from the West Coast and from the movies and other media, so they didn't care much for the Japanese they encountered on the islands.
As time went on, and as some of them spent more time with the island Japanese, their attitudes started to change. A good bit of this ended up revolving around male/female relationships.
The author also talks a little about how some of the Issei had difficulty accepting the fact that Japan had lost the war, a few of them making up all sorts of strange ideas to try and prove that Japan had really won the war.
This is basically an artistic-type book with a story of a man on a kayak exploring a river when he goes over a waterfall. Later he ends up in an abandoned internment camp and confronts children from the past. It's sort of like a Twilight Zone type of story, quite short but still conveying the hopelessness that many must have felt in the camps.
Book by Jerry Stanley, 1994
This book is centered around the story of one person, Shiro Nimura, a Nisei, a senior in high school, and a Japanese-American who was totally loyal to the U.S., didn't even speak Japanese, and preferred American culture to Japanese.
The book tells about Shiro's parents but weaves into their story the events going on at the time including the vicious prejudice against Japanese on the west coast, not only prior to WWII but decades before the war.
(Shiro himself was not very lucky. He was hit in the head by a shot put, paralyzing him for six months, and on the night of December 6 he was in a car accident.)
The book notes that the Japanese-Americans tried very hard to demonstrate their patriotism but it didn't stop them from being interned. (Racial prejudice and greed trump logic and intelligence almost every time.)
The book notes some of the more idiotic reports of Japanese "sabotage and spying" and how every one of those turned out to be totally false or common things mistaken for spying, such as a 'flaming arrow' supposedly pointing the way for Japanese bombers really being nothing but a natural wildfire.
In the two months after Pearl Harbor there were 37 cases of Japanese-American individuals being attacked by gangs on the west coast with a result of seven dead.
There were almost 52,000 Italian aliens and over 19,000 German aliens (people not born in the U.S.) in California and some 600,000 German citizens living in the U.S. overall but only a very small number of either of these were ever interned.
The book details some of the ways the Japanese-Americans were mistreated by greedy whites who bought their property at ridiculously low prices. Further, some whites even hated whites who happened to like the Japanese.
Shiro's family was sent to the Manzanar camp. One of the strongest points of this book is how it is so personal by dealing with the lives of a small number of people in some detail. It makes the book quite interesting.
The next part of the book deals with how the Japanese-Americans served in the military as interpreters in the Pacific theater and in combat groups in Europe.
When the camps were being closed Japanese-Americans returning to their former homes often found trouble. Various white organizations had arisen such as No Japs Incorporated in San Diego and the Home Front Commandos in San Francisco. On the other hand various movie stars and the American Legion wanted the Japanese-Americans to be treated fairly.
80% of the goods that the Japanese-Americans had stored before their evacuations turned out to have been rifled, stolen or sold. They lost over $400 million in property.
This is yet another good book and well worth reading.
The book is a series of photos by Dorothea Lange, photos that were held by the government for years and not published. A chapter goes over Lange's personal history and her involvement with the internment camps. She was personally strongly opposed to the camps.
Another chapter goes over the history of the interment. It's an extremely good chapter.
After those two written portions, then the pictures start. The first section is before the evacuation. It starts off with young elementary school Nisei children saying the Pledge of Allegiance, then goes on to show photos of farms and the evacuation notices.
Chapter 2 consists of photos of the roundup of the Japanese Americans. In these sections there is one photo per page, and an explanation dealing with what is going on in the photo.
Chapter 3 is photos of the evacuees at the assembly centers. Chapter 4 is photos from Manzanar.
It's an interesting series of very clear photos showing the conditions that the evacuees had to live in and some of their normal daily routines. An interesting book.
Louis Fiset, 1997
The book is about Iwao and Hanaye Matsushita Issei, meaning that, at the time, they were not allowed to become U.S. citizens. Iwao was interned in a INS camp as an 'enemy alien' at Fort Missoula. His wife was in Seattle, then was shipped to the Puyallup, Washington assembly center, then to the Minidoka, Idaho internment camp.
They had been married in 1919 and were never parted until the government interned them in two different camps 23 years into their marriage.
The author starts off recounting the younger lives of the two and their journey to the U.S. He also writes about the anti-Japanese hostility that was present even then in Seattle then goes on to cover the events immediately after Pearl Harbor and the arrests of Japanese Americans by the FBI.
Next is a discussion of the Fort Missoula center where Iwao ended up. The application of the Geneva Convention terms to the camps is discussed and problems and violations of that agreement that occurred at Fort Missoula. The author also goes into the kinds of activities the internees had, especially in relation to the crafts, and the population changes at the center as various prisoners were released into the community.
The book the moves into the evacuation of Japanese Americans from Seattle to Puylallup assembly center. Fortunately Iwao was finally able to join his wife at Minidoka. The book then goes into their lives after the end of the internment.
The next part of the book consists of their correspondence while they were separated. It gives the reader a good insight into exactly what was happening in their lives within the camps. Quite interesting, especially with the historical material added that puts everything into context.
book by Diane Yancey, 2001
(Note: as I have done with some other books I have only noted things in this book that are either not in other books or are presented in a particularly interesting manner. This book is, as are many others like it, very well done and absolutely filled with information.)
The book opens up with a nice statement about what happened: The internment of the Japanese stands as an example of what happens in a democracy when racism is unchecked and mass hysteria replaces calm and rational thinking.
The book examines the influx of Chinese into the U.S. to work in mines and on railroads and the type of prejudice this led to, then notes that Japanese who came to this country ended up facing exactly the same type of prejudice. As early as 1905 an Asiatic Exclusion League was formed in San Francisco by businessmen who wanted Japanese immigration ended.
The term 'yellow peril' was coined to describe the fear of the Japanese and of their settling in the U.S. From 1905 on at least one anti-Japanese bill a year was presented to the California government.
Right after Pearl Harbor some 3,000 people were arrested, half of them Japanese-Americans. What was their crime? They had money in Japanese banks, they were ministers, language teachers, fishermen, journalists. etc. Thus, by FBI thinking, they were potentially dangerous.
The book makes reference to the Japanese submarine attack near Santa Barbara at an oil refinery. The book notes that, even though 25 inch shells were fired, about all that was damaged was the end of one pier. It did set off a panic, though.
Things the government doesn't want to pay attention to it won't, including a study that showed that Tokyo distrusted the Japanese Americans, and that at least 90% of the first generation American born Japanese were without a doubt loyal, and at least 75% of the Japanese immigrants were loyal. The report also noted that the Japanese Americans did not work in 'sensitive' positions and, because of their distinctive appearance, would make poor choices for spies. The report was not made public, though.
The book talks about why Germans and Italians were not rounded up and notes that there were about 1 million of those citizens living in the U.S., that many with German and Italian ancestry were already mayors and other public figures, and that many Germans had already fled to the U.S. to escape German oppression. Thus, it was considered neither practical nor politically feasible to round up those two groups.
Some of the things the people endured in the assembly centers (the places where they were stationed before they were shipped out to relocation centers), were living in areas that had recently been horse stalls, food poisoning from improper food preparing standards (they ate in mess halls), plumbing that backed up (in the communal toilets; the living quarters did not have their own toilets, running water or showers.)
The book then talks about the people who went out of the camps to work on farms temporarily (and sometimes faced violent attack as a result), and students who were allowed to continue their education outside the camps (although this did not always go well as some student were met with hostility and sometimes even kicked out of the schools before they could enter them.)
Next discussed is the use of Japanese-Americans in World War II where they served with great honor.
The Tule Lake center, the place for the 'no-no's' on the loyalty questionnaire had its barbed wire doubled, the military guard was increased to battalion strength and tanks were brought in.
The next section of the book is about the legal movements to end the internment and the gradual slowing down of the program, along with FDR's refusal to speed things up since he was concerned about being re-elected.
Then there is a discussion about the problems the Japanese-Americans faced when some of them tried to return to the west coast areas where they once lived, problems often centered around businessmen and workers who did not want Japanese around worker for less than them and businessmen who did not want Japanese opening stores and competing with them (since the Japanese generally did well once they opened a store.)
Yoshi is a Japanese American young girl. She has an older sister, Keiko, a mother and a father. She grew up in Berkeley, California, her father working at an import-export firm.
At the age of 12 she visited Japan, but felt somewhat foreign in that country, just as she feels foreign in the U.S. She gets along well with the neighbor's children, and the neighbors and their parents get along fine.
She goes from junior to senior high, graduating from high school early and going on to the University of California.
The above part takes up a little less than half of the book. The rest deals with Pearl Harbor and afterwards. One day Yoshi goes to study at the library, comes home, and finds her father has been taken by the FBI, and there's an FBI agent in the home. Her father was taken since he was a businessmen.
(One thing to keep in mind; these people were not charged with any crime at all. There was no formal arrest, no trial, no due process, no nothing like that at all involved. The people were simply taken and put places.)
Yoshi goes into how the interment process affected her and her family. They were housed in a former horse stall at the assembly center, and then were shipped to Tanforan.
She then talks about the life in the camp, how schools were set up, etc. Then they are sent to Topaz.
(She uses the term 'concentration camps.')
She also talks about the shooting that killed an internee. She then talks about worsening conditions in the camp that led to internal violence at the camp, which became a hotbed of angry young men, basically.
Then she covers the issue of getting volunteers for the military.
She finally gets to leave the camp when she gets a job outside it.
It's a really good book. She's also done a number of other books on the internment and on being Japanese American.
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.
2002, Gail Sakurai.
(Note: My review is written as normal, but comments in [ ] are my own and are not taken from the book.)
The book points out that there were 160,000 Japanese Americans living in Hawaii and another 125,000 living in the U.S., mostly on the west coast. Two-thirds of those were actually American citizens. The book points out that hysteria caused many Americans to hate anything Japanese.
The book notes that, as to Hawaii, there was actually no long-standing prejudice towards the Japanese. On the mainland U.S., though, there had been such prejudice for decades. The same reasons given today for fearing immigrants coming into the U.S. were given then; that they would take jobs away from native-born Americans and that they looked different, their customs were different and their religion was different.
The Supreme Court rules in 1922 that Asian immigrants could not become U.S. citizens; a year later non-citizens were forbidden from owning land and one year after that Congress stopped all Japanese immigration.
The sign above is one telling Japanese men that they were to sign up for relocation. Relocation was voluntary at first, then mandatory.
Within the next few weeks thousands of Japanese, both on Hawaii and mainland U.S., were arrested and jailed but without charges or trials. They were men who were involved in business, journalists, teachers and fishermen. Many of them were held in prison camps until the war was actually over, totally denied their rights as U.S. citizens.
The book points out one incredibly pertinent fact; that Despite these suspicions and accusations, there was never a single confirmed case of spying or treason by a Japanese American during World War II.
Not one.
It wasn't until March of 1942 that the military created 'restricted military zones' in the U.S., including areas of California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona. [If the Japanese Americans were such a terrible threat, why did it take the military three months before they acted?]
Any Japanese Americans living in those areas were put under curfew, from 8 P.M. until 6 A.M. They had to turn over any weapons, cameras, radios and binoculars that they owned.
After the voluntary evacuations failed to remove all the Japanese Americans, mandatory evacuations were ordered. Each family was given a registration number which all the member had to wear. [Much like Jewish people in Nazi Germany had to wear yellow Star of David marks on their clothing]. The families were given a week to ten days to get all their affairs in order. This resulted in people selling their furniture and other goods, often at incredible losses. Things that were supposedly safely stored for them until their return were not safely stored at all; other people stole much of what the Japanese American families had owned.
There were 16 temporary assembly centers that they went to first since the "permanent" facilities were still being constructed. From those centers they were shipped to one of ten relocation centers. The book notes there were food shortages, and the camps were surrounded by barbed wire and had armed guards.
Conditions at the camps were not exactly great. Temperatures ranged from 125 degrees Fahrenheit at Gila River in Arizona to minus 30 degrees at Heart Mountain, Wyoming. The book also notes that George Takai, who became Mr. Sulu of Star Trek fame, was himself an internee when he was four years old, being interned at the Rohwer camp in Arkansas.
Not even the orphans were left out. In June of 1942, Japanese-American children from orphanages in Los Angeles and San Francisco were relocated to Manzanar in California. (109 children total.) [Exactly how much danger to the U.S. did these orphans pose? Relocating children with their family at least makes a little sense, but orphans? That's getting a little absurd.]
There is an excellent description in the book of the arrangement of the camps. There were structured in block arrangements. There were 14 military-style barracks in each section along with a mess hall, a laundry building and bathrooms. The barracks were 120 feet long, 20 feet wide and divided into six one-room apartments. They barracks were constructed of wooden boards covered with tarpaper. Each 'apartment' had a wood-burning stove, one light bulb and a metal army cot for each person. Toilets were in communal areas as were the showers.
No Japanese language was allowed in the camps. Verbal and written communication had to be in English.
Something I had not read previously. Right after Pearl Harbor, 5,000 Japanese Americans serving in the U.S. military were discharged or transferred to non-combat units. In June of 1942, though, as an experiment the Army formed the 100th Infantry Battalion, an all-Japanese-American group that did so well Japanese Americans were once again allowed into the U.S. military, although such groups fought in Europe.
The book then makes reference to the loyalty questionnaire that caused so many problems for the internees with questions 27 and 28 being the problems. 27 asked people if they would be willing to serve in the U.S. military; 28 asked them if they were willing to give up all allegiance to the Japanese Emperor. Some people thought these were trick questions. Others who did not really worship the Emperor at all wondered how they could give up allegiance that they didn't have. Anyone answering "no" to both questions was gathered up and shipped to Tule Lake Segregation Center, which was a maximum-security center for such "disloyal" people.
Although this is a 'young adult' type of book it's a book filled with very good, very concise information and a good introduction to the entire issue of Japanese-American Internment Camps.
Wendy Ng, 2002.
She starts off discussing terminology, favoring the term 'concentration camp' over "relocation centers." Next is a chronology of events in Japanese American history.
Chapter 1 is about Japanese immigration, the Issei, Nisei and Sansei, the anti-Japanese movement and Japanese in Hawaii. Chapter 2 covers the evacuation part of the history and has a good table showing how specific people were involved in the decision to relocate the Issei and Nisei.
Chapter 3 is entitled 'Life Within Barbed Wire' and is about life in the camps. There are a lot of good tables of information in this chapter. Information on the Justice Department centers and Army centers is also included as well as information on Japanese-Peruvians.
Chapter 4 is about the Japanese Americans who became involved in the U.S. military and those who were draft resisters. This includes the 100th and 442nd and what they did, the Tule Lake segregation center, and other forms of military service performed by the Nisei.
Chapter 5 is about the legal challenges to the evacuation and internment, and it covers the major cases. Resettlement and redress is covered in chapter 6 of the book. A photographic essay follows, and after that biographies about 'The personalities behind the Japanese American internment program'. Reproductions of some of the orders and the loyalty questionnaire are included.
This is sort of a 'Cliff Notes' type of book on the Japanese Americans. The information is very condensed and it's useful as an introduction, but I don't think it really lives up to its "reference guide" title. An good reference guide would be probably three to five times as thick. The bibliographies section is not really necessary nor is the photographic essay since it also is quite short. It's like those two parts were padding.
It's not a bad book, but it's not quite what it calls itself, either.
(Note: The book contains far more than I comment on here. I am just pointing out things I found in this particular book that I had not found in other books, or things that further emphasized what I found elsewhere. It's also one of the best books I have found on the subject; very readable.)
The book notes that Earl Warren, who was later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S., was the California attorney general and spearheaded the program to have the Japanese-Americans removed from California.
Chinese immigration was halted in 1882. California had a law that did not allow Chinese, African Americans or Native Americans to testify against whites in court. In 1906 San Francisco had all Japanese students removed from its public schools and put into schools in Chinatown.
The book goes on to note many forms of discrimination which Japanese immigrants faced, most of which were similar to those African Americans faced.
Some of the hatred was also eerily similar to that against Jews, who have been hated because of the economic successes their hard work has won some of them. In California, Japanese and Japanese-American farmers worked very hard and did well. The average value of their land in 1940 was $279.96, while the average value of white-owned farmland was only $37.94.
Another interesting law was the Cable Act of 1922. It stated that an Asian woman who married an American citizen was not eligible for citizenship. For a woman it was worse; if she married a person not eligible for U.S. citizenship, she could lose her own citizenship as punishment.
The FBI had already been keeping tabs on Japanese professionals, anyone who was Japanese or a Japanese-American and who was a leader of any sorts. This even extended to Buddhist priests. The FBI raided Japanese-American establishments in Los Angeles and took records and membership lists a full month before Pearl Harbor.
After Pearl Harbor people of Japanese ancestry living in California found their bank accounts frozen, their safe deposit boxes confiscated and there were put on an 8 P.M. curfew.
The Secretary of the Navy tried to claim that Japanese and Japanese-Americans living in Hawaii had aided the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, even though he had absolutely no evidence to indicate any such thing. The commander of Naval Intelligence hired a safe cracker to break into the headquarters of Japanese American groups and go through their papers; he admitted there was nothing suspicious at all. The Japanese-Americans were no more disloyal than anyone else.
A man named DeWitt was the head of the Western Defense Command. His statements about Japanese were nothing short of insane. He stated We must worry about the Japanese all the time until [they are] wiped off the map.
He also possessed a wonderful form of logic. He admitted that the Japanese Americans had not sabotaged anything. Therefore, he reasoned, that was absolute proof that they would. In other words, if your neighbor's dog has never bitten you, that is proof that it will.
The book also describes behind-the-scenes arguments between various governmental sections on whether or not there should be any evacuations.
Part of the reason that the evacuations worked against the Japanese but were not used against Americans of German or Italian ancestry was that those populations had strong organizations representing them and established leaders; the Japanese Americans had some organizations but nothing of comparable strength and no really major leaders. What leaders they had were quickly locked up, leaving them without the ability to legally or otherwise fight the effort to have them forced away from the West Coast.
Apparently a week after the evacuation order a Japanese sub fired at storage tanks off the Santa Barbara coast. The following night a weather balloon was mistaken for a Japanese plane and shells were fired, succeeding only in damaging cars when fragments fell from the sky.
Some of the things that state governors said were absolutely shocking. The governor of Wyoming said If you bring Japanese into my state, I promise you they will be hanging from every tree.
The Japanese Americans and their organizations such as the Japanese American Citizens League stressed that all Japanese Americans should comply with the government so that is why there were no riots or uprisings during the evacuation process.
On June 3, 1942, the Battle of Midway settled the fate of the Japanese Navy and U.S. Naval Intelligence said that the battle effectively ended any threat of the invasion of the U.S. by Japan. Thus, the single reason given for moving the Japanese Americans no longer existed, yet they were still kept in the internment camps.
The U.S. was not the only country that did this. Mexico, Canada and Peru had similar programs. although Peru shipped their people to the U.S..
The camps:
California: Manzanar and Tule Lake
Idaho: Minidoka
Wyoming: Heart Mountain
Colorado: Granada
Arizona: Poston and River
Arkansas: Rohwer, and Jerome
There were problems in the camps. Resentments against the government, the camp administration and even some fellow prisoners would flare up.
Poston: Suspected informer beaten; parents of suspected informer beaten, both cases the beatings being done by other Japanese-Americans.
Manzanar: White employees of the camp stole food meant for the evacuees and sold it on the black market, causing a lot of resentment. One evacuee kept track of the losses, reported them and was thrown in jail. The JACL, who stressed cooperation with the government, was disliked by another group of people who were born in America but educated in Japan.
Some people protested the arrest of Ueno, the person keeping track of the losses, and this led to a confrontation where troops fired teargas at the crowd after someone threw a light bulb at them. Then the guards opened fire, killing two and injuring ten. The government tired to cover the event up, firing the camp hospital's chief surgeon when he refused to alter records from the event.
Tule Lake: The infamous questionnaire with its two confusing questions became a major problem. Many people refused to fill out the form and the camp a number of the second-generation Japanese-Americans were trucked out to local jails. A strike was held of the firing of some workers, then the strike ended. A trunk had an accident, killing one and inuring five. Camp workers blamed the driver and staged a work stoppage.
Striking farmworkers were replaced by workers from other camps and were paid more than the Tule workers. Matters worsened quickly and martial law was declared in the camp. A vote to end the strike resulted in many favoring the strike being rounded up by soldiers and not allowed to vote. The strike ended and martial law was lifted.
The book also describes Japanese-Americans who fought for the U.S. and follows that with an examination of some legal battles over the issue of internment.
Some of the evacuees were able to get out of the camps because they were useful to the government. Interpreters were needed along with farmworkers and college students (if they could find a college that would take Japanese Americans). Others obtained jobs in various eastern and Midwestern states although this sometimes led to problems as in Chicago where Japanese Americans that died were not allowed burial in certain cemeteries, some hospitals refused them as patients and they were absolutely definitely not welcomed back to the west coast.
In 1944 the war situation was improving. The Nazis were being driven back towards Germany and the Japanese armed forces were being driven back towards Japan. The decision was made to end the internment camp program but not immediately. The last camp did not finally close until March 21, 1946, about six months after the end of the war.
Even after returning to the west coast, though, the former internees were still subjected to racial hatred and violence. Some state governments tried to pass anti-Japanese American laws but they either failed to pass or were nullified by the courts.
The book I have apparently was used in some school system and is part of the globe Mosaic of American History. It's almost like a Cliff Notes of things about Japanese Americans.
The book starts off with the history of Japanese Americans from 1968 until 1940. There is text and photos, and then a section of questions for the student. At the end of the chapter there are a couple pages of questions covering key ideas, who/what/where, understanding the chapter, making connections, and writing about history.
The second chapter deals from the Pearl Harbor attack to the decision to intern the persons of Japanese ancestry. One of the very good things it does is examine how the situation in Hawaii was different from that on the West Coast.
Chapter 3 deals with the actual internment process. Each chapter also includes a graphic timeline helping to place specific events in one's memory. The assembly camps are covered in chapter 3, and chapter 4 deals with the actual internment camps. The fourth chapter talks about life in the camps, and has a table with the name of the camps, when they were opened and closed, and their maximum population. This chapter also goes into a discussion of the prejudice against the persons of Japanese ancestry.
Chapter 5 deals with how some of the internees were able to leave the camps, some going to schools and some finding jobs in the Midwest or East. It also goes into a discussion of the Nisei who ended up in the U.S. military, fighting the enemy while some of the Nisei still had families behind barbed wire in the internment camps.
Chapter 6 goes into the legal issues raised, both of the internment and evacuation themselves, and of redress.
The book also includes a glossary. As I said, this is a Cliff Notes type of book condensing a whole lot of information and serving as an excellent brief overview of persons of Japanese ancestry in the U.S. and Hawaii.
1986, 1991
The book is centered on a International Conference on Relocation and Redress held in 1983 in Salt Lake City.
The book starts out with a chronology of Japanese American history along with the opening and closing dates and maximum population of the relocation camps. This part of the book puts a lot of the information together in a nicely concise fashion.
The Conference Keynote Address is next and is, by the time this book was published, outdated, since redress checks had been given out by the government.
Prewar Japanese America is the next topic to be covered. The first part is a personal story from one of the interned who was a student at Berkeley when everything started to go wrong. It's not a very pretty story, to say the least.
The second portion is from someone who lived in Seattle at the time and was interned at the Heart Mountain camp and how things changed after the internment was over.
Part 3 of the book is about life in the camps and consists of people recalling their personal experiences in the camps, along with professional people who were not of Japanese-American ancestry or relationship but who still worked in the camps.
The book sites a 1798 law, the Alien Enemies Act, which allows our government, in a declared war with another country, to apprehend anyone fourteen years old or older as an enemy alien. It also notes that three internees were shot to death. One incident, involving two deaths, is somewhat shrouded in controversy. This section of the book deals with mistreatment of the detainees.
Reactions to the evacuation compose the next section of the book with chapter titles such as Racial Nativism and Origins of Japanese American relocation ( an extremely powerful chapter, especially with it's examination of FDR's blatant racist views) and Utah's Ambiguous Reception: The Relocated Japanese Americans along with material on reactions of other cities, like Seattle, and groups, like the Mormons, to Japanese relocation.
This book, as others, notes that there was no acts of sabotage done by Japanese-Americans for the entire war time, either in Hawaii or the continental U.S., even though this was one of the main reasons they were relocated in the first place; fear that they had been doing sabotage and would do sabotage.
The next major section of the book deals with Japanese immigrants who had settled in other countries in the Western Hemisphere and how those countries handled their own "Japanese problem" during the war. Brazil didn't both rounding theirs up; Canada did what the U.S. did; Peru shipped theirs to the U.S.; Mexico had theirs move to two particular cities and Cuba had the males resettle in Havana.
Some statistics on Hawaii are given. there were 421,000 civilians in Hawaii. Of these, 157,000 were of Japanese ancestry. This means they formed about 37% of Hawaii's population in relation to the Japanese-Americans in California forming around 2% of the population.
10,000 of these 157,000 were investigated. This led to 1,250 Japanese ancestry people being interned during the war which was less than 1% of the people living in Hawaii who had Japanese ancestry. There were various prohibitions the Japanese Americans and aliens had to follow:
These included turning in weapons, ammunition and explosives; registering as aliens; expanded curfews; reporting foreign military service; restrictions of entry into certain security areas; tighter than normal travel restrictions; restricted access to communications equipment; and a prohibition about writing or printing attacks against the government. In addition, no alien could engage in fishing activities and the Japanese fishing fleet was impounded. ...the Japanese were not prohibited from attending gatherings or meetings...
A detention camp was set up, the Sand Island Detention Camp. The people who were considered most suspect were Shinto and Buddhist priests and people working at the Japanese consulate in Hawaii. People teaching Japanese language were also suspect and especially anyone who had actually been educated in Japan.
A small number of people were voluntarily sent to mainland U.S. camps, but they went primarily looking for relatives and to be with them.
The fourth part of the book deals with examining the effects of being in the internment camps. In examines the psychological effects of being detained and also the actual economic losses that the people who were detained suffered.
The last part of that section deals with some of the legal cases that arose from the relocation movement.
The fifth part of the book covers attempts at redress. The sixth part of the book covers negative reaction to the attempts at redress. The final part of the book deals with how redress was actually achieved.
This is a book which goes into details which many other books don't. At times it's a little overwhelming, at times a little boring, but still worth going through.
This book, copyright 2000, consists of a number of essays about the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II. A couple of the essays are written by people who were actually in the camps; the majority of the essays are written by their descendants.
Some of the most important points made in the book include the following:
Polls show 64% of Americans believe that, during wartime, the president 'should have the authority to change or abridge constitutional rights.'
Lawyers for the Bush administration said that critics of administration policies were ignoring 'Supreme Court precedents that approved such extreme wartime actions as the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II.'
Executive Order 9066 (the original Presidential order allowing for the internment of the Japanese Americans) was not rescinded until 1976.
Even those they were in internment camps, surrounded by barbed wire and guns, Japanese-American males were subject to being drafted to fight for the U.S. 63 were indicted for being draft resisters and sentenced to three years in prison.
On December 6, 1942, at the Manzanar camp, military police opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators, killing two and injuring ten others. The demonstrators were protesting the arrest of a cook who had tried to organize a kitchen-worker's union.
People forced to move were given less than a day to maybe several days to sell/store their possessions, sell their houses and businesses and pack up only as much as they were allowed to carry with them (2 suitcases per person.)
Schools in the internment camps were organized by the prisoners themselves, sometimes with help from the camp administration. Schools, though, tended to lack supplies, including books, and the room conditions were primitive at best.
The barracks had no running water. Latrines and baths were communal, with virtually no provision for privacy. Barrack construction was poor, and dust would come right in through the walls (the camps were placed in dusty, barren places.)
Most of the internment camp survivors speak little if at all of their experiences, many because feel somehow responsible for their being locked up.
In one case a deaf man tried to catch his dog and was gunned down when he got near the barbed wire.
Even though the Japanese Americans were placed into the internment camps since they were supposedly a danger to the U.S., some were still allowed to get furloughs to help the surrounding farms during their harvest time. (If they were such terribly dangerous people, then why were they allowed out at all?)
Belonging to certain groups was considered a sign of a person's being a 'subversive danger.' Such groups included Japanese language schools and Shinto and Buddhist groups.
Just because World War II ended and the internment camps were closed does not mean the danger of such an activity ended. The Internal Security Act of 1950 provided for "mandated detention of likely spies and saboteurs during an internal-security emergency declared by the President." in Title II of the act. Such persons would be given a right to defend themselves, but the attorney general had a right to withhold evidence 'deemed potentially dangerous to national security.' In other words, you could defend yourself, but the government can withhold the very information you need to have to defend yourself with.
Appropriations were made by Congress between 1952 and 1957 to build six detention sites, including one at Tule Lake, the site of one of the original internment camps.
Title II of the Internal Security Act was not repealed until 1971. However, the repeal allowed that an act of Congress could allow such imprisonments to take place.
The Supreme Court held that the internment of the Japanese was constitutional and it is still viewed as such.
Those are only a few of the many fascinating and at times frightening facts contained in this book.
The book starts out noting that there was already racial prejudice against Asians, particularly on the West Coast of the U.S. Part of this was based on the success Japanese laborers and farmers had, and the fear on the part of white businessmen and workers that the Japanese would take their jobs away, a rationale used to justify discrimination and similar to that used against Jews worldwide.
By law, even before World War II started, Japanese nationals (people born in Japan and living in the U.S.) could not vote, could not own land, and could not become U.S. citizens. This would be like saying today that Hispanics could not vote, own land or become U.S. citizens; basically nonsensical. In addition, laws existed banning Japanese living in America from working in manufacturing, construction and related jobs, so even the type of work they were allowed to do was controlled by the government.
As these Japanese Americans and their children worked harder they succeeded economically which just stirred even more bad feelings against them which led to some workers unions banning Japanese members, certain trades banning Japanese, and some schools segregating Japanese American children from other children. (Nisei is the term used to describe the first generation of Japanese American children born in America. Issei referred to the actual first generation of Japanese that settled in the U.S.)
Formal groups organized against the Japanese Americans including the Japanese Exclusion League.
Executive Order 9066 ordered these Japanese-Americans to be removed from their homes and placed into internment camps, some 110,000 people, 70% of which were already U.S. citizens, born in the U.S.
It is interesting to note that a government study by the State Department before all this happened had concluded that the vast majority of Japanese Americans were no danger at all, and that the fact that they were Asians and had a different physical appearance facially would actually serve to make it much harder for any of them to serve as spies (they would be easily recognized).
The book notes that several thousand people were rounded up by the FBI just hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and that half of those were people of German and Italian descent.
The book goes into just how that did not stop the wave of anti-Japanese sentiments, and how this feeling was supported by various government officials and by the mass media.
Although some citizens of Italian and German descent were incarcerated, they made up only a very small percentage of the total locked up. The reason: 'officials' had determined that it was easy to figure out of the Italian and German descent citizens were loyal, but it was much harder to determine if the Japanese descent citizens were loyal.
The areas for evacuation included Military Area 1 (western halves of Washington, Oregon and California and the southern half of Arizona), and Military Area 2 (the other parts of those states.) There was some voluntary relocation, but to the government and the people who were prejudiced it wasn't enough, and forced resettlement began. When people were resettled they often had to sell their possessions for small amounts of money. Those who tried to voluntary resettle further east ran into discrimination again and at times were even turned back at state borders by armed men.
At this time, of course, the United States consisted of only 48 states. Alaska and Hawaii were not states at the time. Alaska did it's own version of internment camps, and even Latin American countries gathered up their Japanese citizens and sent them to U.S. internment camps. Hawaii, interestingly enough, did not have any internment camps.
It was the people who were locked up in the camps that made the greatest effort at improving things, fixing up the gaps in walls of their living quarters, starting schools for their children and doing a variety of other tasks around the camp.
The book notes that the total number of attempted escapes from the camps was about 35. 32 of those were schoolchildren who went onto a restricted hill in order to go sledding. Of the remaining three escape attempts, two were by people who were mentally ill, and the third was by someone under suspicion of murder.
Internment of the Japanese Americans ended on December 18, 1944.
There is discussion of one camp, Tule, where many residents had renounced their American citizenship (it's a complex story) under pressure from militants in the camp. When the militants left, the people realized they had made a mistake, but it the issue wasn't settled until 1968, over twenty years after the war ended.
Later, in 1981, a government commission investigated the entire process of internment of the Japanese Americans and concluded that it was not militarily necessary to do that at all.
It was another nine years, in 1990, that President George Bush sent a letter to former internees apologizing for the injustices of the past. That month, checks for reparations were distributed, although they could not make up what the Japanese Americans lost economically since they generally got only about 10% of the worth of their furniture and other goods when they had to sell them in order to be relocated.
This is a thoroughly excellent book on the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. It's a first-person account of a girl who was 17 at the time. It covers her life and family before the internment, during and after the internment, and goes into a lot of very interesting detail about her life and the life of her family. They were at several camps and one assembly area during the time period.
One of the more moving parts is about what happened on December 7th, 1941, how the family found out about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and how they reacted to that attack. In their particular neighborhood, an island in Puget Sound, they were lucky in that they did not run into the immediate vicious anti-Japanese prejudice. Mary, the author, actually had a much better time at school then did many other Japanese-American children in other schools after the attack.
The neighborhood was fairly small, and the people rather close, so this probably accounts for the lessened hatred of persons of Japanese ancestry after the attack. These were people, PJAs and whites, who had known each other for years and had gotten along very well.
She writes about radio broadcasts that claimed Japanese sympathizers in Hawaii cut arrows into the cane fields, directing Japanese planes to Pearl Harbor. There were reports of Japanese-American sabotage on the West Coast and of an impending attack on our continent.
She then spends time talking about the Issei and Nisei culture, and its relation to American culture. She then goes into what her family did after Executive Order 9066 was announced, and how they, like many other families, destroyed mementos from Japan, destroying their own family's history in order to avoid possible trouble with American authorities.
The first place they went to was the Pinedale Assembly Area, and she describes the rather primitive living conditions they all had to adapt to, with only one light bulb in a 20'x 20' area, with no running water, no indoor plumbing, and no way to fix food.
Later, her family was moved to Tule Lake, and she again describes the conditions and the kinds of things that happened, especially in relation to the loyalty questionnaire and how there was some violence at that camp (and others) over questions 27 and 28. They were then relocated to the Heart Mountain camp, and her brother went into the Army and she went into nurse's training.
She even talks about her family's release from the camp after the war. They were very lucky in that they returned to their original home in Puget Sound and it was still there. They were able to re-start their lives and their farm, not encountering the considerable hatred that many others encountered when they tried to go back to their original homes.
This is a very good book about the camps, very personal and very comprehensive. One of the best ones I have read.
This is a young adult book that takes place in Oregon during World War II. Hazel, 11, is one of the main characters along with her older sister Estelle. The other major character, Sogoji, is an orphan Nisei, meaning he is an American citizen born of Japanese parents.
The problem is that this takes place after the Japanese Americans were sent to the internment camps. Sogoji remained behind, which was an illegal act. A white couple is taking care of him.
The book centers around Hazel's initial hatred of Japanese, and then her meeting with Sogoji. Throughout the rest of the book Hazel has to balance her own growing friendship with Sogoji against her anti-Japanese feelings that she has been taught to have by those around her.
There is also a sub-plot about a new schoolteacher who claims to be an American soldier who had been wounded in the war.
Also, the book deals with one of the lesser-known events of the war, and that is the use of the balloon bombs by the Japanese, which were balloons launched from Japan that made their way across the Pacific. The purpose was to act as a terror weapon, starting forest fires and perhaps destroying factories; there was no way of knowing since there was no way of actually controlling where the balloon went.
One of the strongest points of the book is the various references it makes to how people viewed the Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Some of the ways in which the characters in the book refer to them include:
'Sneaky devils.'
'Claude says Japs are sneakier than the Germans.'
'Japs acted tough but were cowards at heart-everybody knew that, not just from the comics but also from posters and movie cartoons. They were small, with buck-teeth and thick eyeglasses. You could tell them from other Orientals because of the space between their big toe and the other toes, caused by the sandals they wore.'
'In newspaper and movie cartoons, Japs had wide, evil grins.'
'Because of you, there's a lot fewer filthy Japs livin' and breathin' on God's green earth...'
'They smile and bow and act so polite, then they turn around and stab you in the back.'
The book also talks about how there was a lot of opposition on the West Coast to the ending of the internment of the Japanese Americans and their returning to their former homes.
Another thing it brings up is how many persons of Japanese ancestry had not learned to speak English (the Issei), and that they are dislike for that; in other words, they refused to fit in to our society, as they argument went.
On the positive side, one of the characters mentions the Japanese Americans who are fighting in Germany on the side of the US (the 442nd group).
The book is an excellent examination of how regular people viewed persons of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast, and just how much prejudice there was against them. The book also tells its story well, with interesting characters. One of the best I've seen on the subject.
This book is not so much an analysis of the internment of the Japanese-Americans as it is primarily the story of one girl who had to go through that experience, and how she dealt with it.
The book talks about how the Nisei were culturally more American than Japanese, maintaining some traditions from their Japanese heritage, but mainly adapting American cultural practices. Many of them did not even really speak much if any Japanese.
She writes about how she attended (before the internment) both American public school and the traditional Japanese language school. This was quite a burden for elementary-school students. She talks about how the Chinese in Chinatown looked down on the Japanese. She also talks about the stereotyped editorial cartoons in the papers, how people stared at them, how others refused to serve them, and how they still tried to say they were really Americans.
She writes about how, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, men from the FBI rounded up various persons of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast (she and her family were in Seattle). Eventually she ends up in the Puyallup assembly center (known as Camp Harmony). Early on, she notes, about half the camp suffered from food poisoning.
Like the other internees, they eventually got moved to a relocation center/internment camp, in their case Camp Minidoka. She writes about how one man died from exposure to the cold because he didn't have proper clothing (although the internees really didn't have time, or foreknowledge, to pack “proper” clothing.)
It's a very personal type of writing and very interesting. The majority of the book is devoted to her life before the assembly and internment camp, but the parts on the camps are still quite fascinating.
This is an unusual book on the internment process, as it consists of information, but also includes poetry, artwork, photographs, and personal remembrances, making it a very fascinating work.
The book starts right off noting that the U.S. suspended due process and put people of Japanese descent into what amounted to be prisons without any formal charges or trials, much less appeals. The book deals with the war years only.
One very interesting section is on editorials, which includes some from the Rafu Shimpo, a Japanese publication whose editors called on U.S. forces to crush the Japanese empire. One editorial from another newspaper said that Racial hatred belongs in the arsenal of Nazi weapons and is used to inflict deep and biter wounds in the nations which Hitler would conquer.
What is interesting is that these type of editorials happened in the time period after Pearl Harbor but, later, the Hearst papers stated their anti-Japanese campaign and the other papers changed their tune and went with the Hearst approach. One paper claimed that the moment Pearl Harbor was attacked Japanese worked quickly to block roads so the military people couldn't get to their stations. The paper even went so far as to claim that some ads had hidden codes the Japanese could decipher to help in their plot against the U.S.
Not a single one of the many, many rumors ever proved out to be true.
One thing that was true was that the Japanese could use the U.S. attitude towards blacks as a propaganda tool of their own, warning Asians they would be treated just as badly, that the war was a racial war against white oppressors.
There's an interesting breakdown of military exclusion zones, meaning all persons of Japanese descent had to move out of them. There was, of course, Military Area 1 and Military Area 2. There were also 84 other places in California, 7 in Washington, 24 in Oregon, and 18 in Arizona. This doesn't count 135 others around harbors, dams, power plants, etc.
There's a lot of interesting photographs of posters, magazine pieces, and even of the Tanforan racetrack assembly center which would pretty much disprove anyone who said that those in the assembly centers had pretty good living conditions.
There also happens to be an entry by George Takai, Mr. Sulu of Star Trek fame.
One very, very interesting thing. There was a newspaper comic strip of Superman, and part of that strip involved the visit of Clark Kent and Lois Lane to one of the internment camps. The military representative was trying to get them to believe how great the camp was, while Superman was able to detect trouble with his X-ray vision, a plot of some of the inmates to kidnap Clark Kent, Lois and the military rep.
The author of the book notes that he tried to get permission from DC comics to run a sample of the strip, and that they were the ONLY publisher they had contacted (and they must have contact a pretty large number, considering the variety of things in the book) that refused to give their permission to use any of their material.
Many of the governors of Western states did not want internees in their states, but the governor of Colorado was willing. He pointed out that there were 1,118,000 people in Colorado, and they could handle any number of internees that would be put there.
What most books don't do, but this one does, is talk about what happened to persons of Japanese ancestry in Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
The difference in Hawaii is noted, with only 59 families evacuated a year after Pearl Harbor.
There's a chapter on the draft resisters at the Heart Mountain camp, and discussion about the Nisei who did end up in the US military and what jobs they filled.
The book is over 400 pages long and is one of the most unique and most interesting books that deal with the internment.
Book by Susan Sinnott, 1995
An example of prejudice in Boston. This type of sign was one very familiar to blacks, especially in the south.
The book stresses the important of the California media in contributing to the hysteria and prejudice that helped lead to the evacuation of the Japanese-Americans.
The book then gives a brief history of the Japanese in general and of Japanese in America. It points out that Japan itself took an interest in its emigrants and helped them when it could which backfired in the U.S., with the media thinking that Japan was doing this for some dark purpose.
It then goes into the politics behind the decision to evacuation the Japanese-Americans and describes their lives at the assembly centers.
After that it talks about the move to the internment camps and the type of life the Japanese-Americans had there. After that it discusses the gradual closing of the camps and how many of the Japanese-Americans ended up living in the east or mid-western parts of the country where they didn't have huge difficulties (generally) in being accepted after the end of the war.
Finally the book briefly talks about President Reagan and the government's apology for what happened during the years of the internment camps.
The book is a little smaller than some others but still has a good bit of information in it, especially for the younger reader.
This is another book on the internment of the Japanese Americans during World War II. The book goes into the background leading up to the internment, the internment itself, and what happened afterward.
As with my other reviews, I'll concentrate on things this book presents that I other books tend to miss entirely or gloss over. I'll put my comments on things in ( ) to distinguish them from what the author actually said.
The history leading up to the internment is one basically of anti-Oriental prejudice, starting with the anti-Chinese prejudice in this country, particularly on the West Coast. This prejudice was basically transferred over to the Japanese after the Chinese were barred from immigrating, and it was a prejudice that was felt by many people. The author notes that, in California, the Republicans, the Democrats, and a third political party, the Populist, along with the American Federation of Labor were all against Japanese immigration in 1900. The San Francisco Chronicle paper began a series of virulent attacks on the Japanese in America in 1905, matching some of the worst tabloid trash-type journalism that anyone has ever seen.
The result was to further inflame public opinion which the politicians were then more than willing to use to further their own purposes. The author adds that Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, was elected President and was quite anti-Japanese.
A very interesting thing is a breakdown of the types of businesses persons of Japanese ancestry were involved in in the city of Seattle (which was probably fairly representative of the businesses they were involved in in other cities.)
They ran hotels, grocery stores, dry cleaners, market stands, produce houses, restaurants, barbershops, laundries or gardening services. A lot of them were also involved in farming in rural communities. (Note that none of these is in any way, shape or form involved with military things or would threaten the US in case of war.)
The author talks about the war in Europe and how fast Hitler's victories were. There was a belief in American government agencies that this happened because there was a vast “fifth column” of saboteurs and subversives that helped him, which was something that was totally untrue. (This same type of thinking, that the military of the 'good' countries could not have lost so easily unless they were betrayed, was carried over into the attack on Pearl Harbor where, for a long while, the belief was that it was not our military's fault at all for not being ready; it was all due to a massive number of persons of Japanese ancestry living in Hawaii that aided the attacking planes. That, also, was totally disproven later, but was useful to the politicians for inflaming public opinion against the Japanese Americans.)
There was a proposal to let the Japanese Americans stay on the West Coast and just keep them away from any 'sensitive' areas, but the politicians and hate-mongers were against such a limited program, wanting the 'Jap problem' to be dealt with once and for all.
Soon after Pearl Harbor the draft boards began classifying Japanese Americans as 4-C, which is a category reserved for enemy aliens.
The author also points out that, if it was so necessary for military reasons to remove Japanese Americans from the West Coast then that would have been even more true for the Japanese Americans in Hawaii where they formed almost a third of the population. The persons of Japanese Ancestry in California, though, only formed 2% of the population. (So it should have been around 16 times as necessary to “deal” with the Japanese Americans in Hawaii than those on the West Coast if it was so powerfully militarily necessary.)
The author goes into the internment camp descriptions and breaks everything down into four phases (which I haven't seen anyone else do.)
Phase 1: Settling in (spring 1942-February 1943.)
Phase 2: Registration/segregation crisis (Feb. 1943-Jan. 1944)
Phase 3: Draft crisis (Jan. 1944-Nov. 1945)
Phase 4: Leaving camp (summer 1942-March 1946).
As far as students leaving the camps and going to college, the author points out that Princeton and MIT refused to admit Japanese Americans in 1942. Eventually around 4,300 students did find their way into colleges.
Some 600 of the evacuees eventually settled in Cincinnati with no trouble.
There's a very good chapter on whether or not such a thing could happen again, and the author points out relatively recent events in which people of one nationality or another were interrogated by the FBI or some preliminary moves to setting some kind of program or other were made.
There's also a section of some photos.
This is an essay that was in a book entitled The Dispossession of the American Indian and Other Key Issues in American History. It shows an incredibly poor grasp of the history of what actually happened.
'Before the New Left, very little was heard about the World War II relocation of the Japanese-Americans.' This gives us an idea of where the person is coming from. The term 'New Left' is a code word for Liberals, so it's obviously someone writing from the position of a conservative.
The author admits that, when he started his study of the removal of the Japanese-Americans from the West Coast, he knew basically nothing about the subject.
An example of this is shown when he lists some terms to know, including Issei and Nisei. He then writes : 'I am uncertain about Sansei., which, of course, anyone who has studied the subject much at all will tell you stands for the third-generation of persons of Japanese ancestry'.
In relation to the assembly centers, the writer of the article says this:
'The assembly centers are criticized as having had barbed wire and searchlights, overcrowding, lack of privacy, and inadequate medical care. But Bendetsen disputes virtually all of this, as we will see in my later discussion of whether the evacuees can properly be said to have been interned.'
Again, for anyone who has studied this at all, there is no doubt whatsoever that the assembly centers were overcrowded and there was a lack of privacy, for example. In many cases, people were living in horse stalls or other one-room places. The walls were thing (and sometimes not even all the way up to the roof), and there was, indeed, a lack of privacy.
Later in the article, the writer basically says that the relocation centers were actually good places to be. If you liked the desert, maybe they were nice (or swamps and bugs, in a couple of cases.) If you liked living in tar-paper buildings with ultra-thin walls and one light bulb, then they were heavenly. If you wanted to live your life behind barbed wire and guard towers, then this was the place for you.
The author notes the places had schools. Indeed they did. Schools which, for a good while, had no books and almost no other supplies whatever. There were stores, athletic events and newspapers, indeed, and all of them were made up by the residents themselves. This also does not include the very basic fact that these people had been removed from their homes without any charges being put against them, and without any chance for defending themselves legally, and they were shipped first to the assembly centers and then to the camps all because they were Japanese in ancestry.
In another part of the article, the writer quotes his source Bendetsen as saying that there were no guards at the relocation centers at all. From the photographs I have seen, there were most definitely guards at the camps.
The author of the article has a section examining 'the nature of the military emergency.' In that section, he says:
'On February 23 a Japanese submarine shelled an oil field along the California coast. Two days later five unidentified planes were spotted and Los Angeles underwent a black-out.'
Again, if the writer would have studied the actual information on the events, he would have found out that there were no actual planes in the Battle of Los Angeles. Not one single enemy plane was involved.
The writer talks about the West Coast and how vulnerable it was to a Japanese attack, and that this was one of the reasons for the movement of persons of Japanese ancestry out of the area, yet ignores the fact that Hawaii had a much higher proportion of persons of Japanese ancestry than did California, and Hawaii was a lot closer to Japan than was California, and thus was under more direct possibility of invasion, yet the persons of Japanese ancestry there were never moved out in mass into internment camps. (It would have destroyed the Hawaiian economy, for one thing.)
The writer talks about how the Japanese community did not assimilate into American culture, and how 'it was virtually impenetrable to efforts of the American government to sort out those whose loyalties were with Japan.'
If this was true, then why were various persons of Japanese ancestry arrested on December 7th and 8th, and later? They had been identified as leaders of the community, etc, and were quickly picked up by the authorities. If it was so impossible to determine who was loyal and who wasn't, then why was the government able to virtually immediately pick up Japanese leaders and others?
The author of the article talks about the loyalty questionnaire, but doesn't examine at all the linguistic and cultural difficulties with two of the questions and why that resulted in various problems.
He talks about those Japanese who sought repatriation, yet doesn't mention that many of them did so because of pressure from other Japanese, and, once the war was over, sought to have their repatriations canceled.
The author also makes use of unsupported generalities: 'there were a sizeable number of Japanese-Americans who militantly supported Japan. If they had conducted even one massive act of sabotage, would the risk have been worth it? How many lives, say, was the risk worth? 100? 1,000? 10,000? Whose lives?.'
How many exactly? Also, the author doesn't point out the virtual total lack of actual sabotage by persons of Japanese ancestry during the war.
The writer then cites one of the most absurd pieces of reasoning ever:
After the war began, authorities anticipated acts of sabotage on the West Coast -- but none occurred. Why? The critics of the evacuation argue that this is evidence that there were no disloyal persons of Japanese ancestry. A number of American officials at the time, however, including Earl Warren, drew diametrically the opposite inference: that there must be some who were willing to commit sabotage, but that for some reason they were being held back rather than being exposed.73 Warren and the others, including the columnist Walter Lippmann, considered it an ominous sign.
In other words, the very fact that there had been no sabotage PROVED that there was GOING TO BE sabotage.
How strange can a person's reasoning become?
The writer then finally examines the Hawaii question, and says:
The point is sometimes made that the evacuation from the West Coast was inconsistent with having left the Japanese-American population on Hawaii. The answer is that with the declaration of martial law and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in December 1941, Hawaii was placed under direct military control. It is said to have been governed like a military camp for all its inhabitants. This was not done on the mainland.'
Just for arguments sake, let's assume this is really the reason why there was no internment, the use of a nice, strong, martial law movement. Then why wasn't the same thing done on the West Coast? If it was so tremendously successful in Hawaii, then it should have been successful on the West Coast (where the actual proportion of persons of Japanese ancestry was much smaller), and it would have done away with any “need” for internment at all.
Was racism involved in this? No, says the author:
Throughout the war, one of the motivating factors in the policy of evacuation and resettlement was to protect the Japanese-Americans from public anger. It is easy today to say that that anger was 'racist,' but we have reason to be suspicious of attitudes taken under much more comfortable circumstances forty and even fifty years after the fact. To argue that the anger was vicious has, itself, a certain vicious quality about it. There were ample reasons for the evacuation that had nothing to do with racism.
Obviously, the person writing the article had no knowledge of the literally decades-long struggle against persons of Japanese ancestry by persons who had strongly racist motives. (For proof of this, I suggest reading any of the multitude of anti-Japanese books published during the time, or reading some of the Proceedings of the Asiatic Exclusion League.
This is the kind of paper that results from a person who has simply not done their homework. The entire thing concerning the internment of persons of Japanese ancestry was something that was decades in the making, that had multiple causes (including racism and economic greed and jealousy), and that left behind solid data (as in photographs and film recordings that showed the nature of the camps and assembly centers.)
He has some 96 footnotes, but they are actually from only around a dozen sources, and at least one of those is from a virulently anti-Japanese writer. I have over a hundred book sources and I know I haven't come close to finishing my research.
Tana Reiff, 1993.
This is a very small book from a Supplementary Education Group in some kind of series called Hope and Dreams 2. It would be interesting to know the exact purpose of the book because it would serve as an incredibly excellent way of talking about the internment times with a group of children.
The book is written about one family, starting before Pearl Harbor and on through that, the evacuation, the relocation and the closing of the camps. It has a lot of information in it and each section of the book includes several questions that could be used as discussion points. I could see this easily being used for maybe a junior high or even slightly earlier group of children to explore what happened and discuss various quite excellent questions about the events.
This is an excellent book that succeeds on many levels. Rennie Stroud is a thirteen-year-old who lives with her family on a sugar beet farm. They are in Colorado, near the fictional town of Ellis. The government constructs one of the World War II internment camps for Japanese Americans next to their farm.
The story is multi-facted.
1. There is the story of the interment camp itself, which is done with considerable attention to detail of the real internment camps. The barracks, the dust, the mess halls, etc, are all described, as well as the barbed-wire surroundings and guard towers.
2. There is the story of how the townspeople react to the camp and then nearness of people of Japanese ancestry. Some of the townspeople hate the Japanese and even stop to violence; some of the people don't hate them, and have no problem with the internees coming to town to buy things.
3. There is the personal story of Rennie's family. Her brother goes off to war; a sister lives elsewhere. Her mother is ill.
4. The fact that many Japanese Americans were hired out from the camps to farms is covered, as well as reactions of the townspeople to that being done.
5. There's a murder mystery. A young girl is raped and murdered. Many of the townspeople automatically think one of the internees did it. The sheriff has an idea of who did, but needs proof.
6. Then there is also Rennie's own story of how she has to deal with everything that is going on.
Many authors would be unable to carry this many plotlines, but the author of Tallgrass does an excellent job with all of them. The story is very realistic, extremely well done, and is one of the few books that I read basically straight through. An absolute must if you are interested in that period of U.S. history.
Larry Dane Brimner, 1994, young adult.
First off, the book has a lot of really good pictures in it. It starts off with the Pearl Harbor attack and then moves on to the demand to remove all Nisei and Issei from the West Coast. Chapter 2 covers a short history of anti-Asian prejudice in the U.S. Chapter 3 deals with Executive Order 9066, the disagreement over whether or not evacuation was necessary, and has some interesting quotes from some of the people involved.
The exclusion orders and memories of people involved in the process of selling their property and preparing to be 'evacuated' are next. The author then writes about the various relocation camps they were sent to and the conditions at the camps. Nisei who served in the military and what they did is covered in Chapter 6. This includes the 100th battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
Chapter 7 deals with the loyalty questionnaire, plans for closing the camps, and opposition of some people to the Japanese Americans returning to their homes. Chapter 8 deals with how the internment experience affected the Issei and the Nisei and various redress attempts.
This is a very good, condensed book of information for young adults, covering most of the essential points of the entire internment process and using valuable quotes from individuals involved along with an excellent selection of photographs.
< a name=mean>This book is a collection of essays on the subject from a variety of authors. Some of the topics include why were Japanese Americans interned; What caused the Supreme Court to affirm the constitutionality of internment; why did the US intern people from Central and South America; how did some Japanese Americans resist internment, and what was the impact of internment on Japanese American families and communities?
Following are the things I consider most important that I found in each section.
The Introduction notes that many ships were sunk by German submarines off the East Coast, yet it wasn't until after the Japanese Americans started to be interned that there were any Japanese attacks on the West Coast. The differences in how the Japanese Americans in Hawaii were treated in comparison to mainland Japanese Americans is also discussed.
The author also talks about the types of things written about the internment process, especially just after the end of the war and how those differed from things written some decades later.
The federal Agricultural Dept. held a meeting on the Japanese American farmers and concluded that the anti-Japanese American propaganda that was going on in the papers was really an effort to displace the Japanese American farmers and put their farms into the hands of whites. The chapter continues in an almost day-by-day analysis of behind-the-scenes movements by various federal departments to “deal” with the issue of West Coast Japanese Americans.
The author of the essay notes that, on the day FDR signed Executive Order 9066, an Army intelligence reported noted that there was no military necessity at all for removing the Japanese Americans from the West Coast. He also writes about how FDR wanted the Japanese Americans in Hawaii all shipped out and interned in mainland camps.
The chapter on the Supreme Court notes that an official report from the Office of Naval Intelligence noted that less than 3% of persons of Japanese ancestry in the US were any potential threat at all, and that most of them had already been arrested.
The chapter on Central and South American persons of Japanese ancestry talks about the idea of some in the US that our country needed to have a group of potential hostages that they could use in prisoner exchanges or in reprisals for actions of Japanese military in other countries. The chapter also talks about persons of Japanese ancestry in Canada and what happened to them, something which most books ignore completely.
The chapter on resistance starts off with various things that happened at the Tule Lake camp. It has a more complete discussion of events at that camp than almost any other book.
The chapter on what impact the internment hand notes the loss of status suffered by Issei males; the growing independence of females, and the problems of behavior among the young children.
Gary Y. Okihiro, 1996.
The first section of the book consists of photographs of the various camps taken in the present day, showing bits and pieces of what is left as if being done in an archaeological study format. The pictures are black-and-white and quite interesting.
The next section of the book covers the history of Japanese immigration to the U.S. and Hawaii and is written with personal anecdotes along the way which makes it very interesting reading. It's also fascinating the way the author writes about how people's expectations of life in the U.S. didn't always match what actually happened (not counting the anti-Japanese prejudice.)
The next chapter has more information on how the Japanese gradually transferred from being Japanese to being Japanese-American, something which was obviously not easy. The chapter covers everything from changes in the foods used and how they were prepared on through the types of housing the people lived in. These two chapters deal with pre-WWII material.
The next chapter starts out with the attack on Pearl Harbor told by people who live near the base. Then it talks about how people were quickly gathered up and sent to various holding areas. It also describes the Hawaiian holding areas like Sand Island which is something which most books ignore.
The book goes into the internment process and lists the camps where Hawaiian Japanese-Americans ended up, and the assembly centers and camps are both discussed. What makes this all the more interesting are the personal anecdotes of people who had gone through all of that being mixed in with the basic historical information, making the entire process come more alive than in some other books.
The draft movement and draft resistance are also covered in detail. The medical facilities, or lack of them, are also talked about on a very personal level with an incredibly sad story about a mother and her two newly-born twins dying basically due to lack of proper medical facilities.
The next chapter starts off with personal memories from people who encountered violence upon their return to the West Coast once the camps were closed. Also covered is a law that had been passed allowing future internments to take place and the fight to get that law repealed. Redress and legal reconciliation from the courts is discussed next.
The book is extremely interesting, bringing the historical events of that time into considerable life with the use of the personal anecdotes of people who went through those times. It also has more on Hawaii than almost any other book and the photographs are also a nice touch. Definitely a book one should read and look at.
Michi Nishiura Weglyn, 1996
The book starts out with photos relating to the interment and reproductions of some newspaper articles relating to the Tule Lake riot. (Why books don't include more reproductions like this is a puzzlement to me.)
The introduction should definitely be read and is very hard-hitting. Chapter 1 deals with 'The Secret Munson Report.' This relates to the Munson report which was ordered by FDR prior to Pearl Harbor and concluded that there was no threat from the Japanese Americans living on the West Coast or in Hawaii that couldn't be handled by the FBI using normal measures. The report was kept secret until 1946, though.
The author points out that of those evacuated, many were infants, extremely young children or extremely old people, none of whom could possibly have posed any threat to the country. One of his interesting statements in relation to the Nisei is that they show a pathetic eagerness to be Americans. He later adds There is no Japanese ‘problem' on the Coast. There will be no armed uprising of Japanese. There will undoubtedly be some sabotage financed by Japan and executed largely by imported agents...In each Naval District there are about 250 to 300 suspects under surveillance. It is easy to get on the suspect list, merely a speech in favor of Japan at some banquet being sufficient to land one there. The Intelligence Services are generous with the title of suspect and are taking no chances. Privately, they believe that only 50 to 60 in each district can be classed as really dangerous. The Japanese are hampered as saboteurs because of their easily recognized physical appearances. ...There is far more danger from Communists and people of the Bridges type on the Coast than there is from Japanese. The Japanese here is almost exclusively a farmer, a fisherman or a small businessman. He has no entree to plants or intricate machinery.
Chapter 2 is entitled 'Hostages'. This chapter discusses the use of people as hostages to try to ensure Japan's good behavior, or as reprisals if Japan did something to its hostages that teed off the U.S. The chapter also discusses the Japanese-Peruvians that ended up in the U.S.
The events leading up to the decision to evacuate the Japanese-Americans is discussed along with FDR's anti-Japanese racism. Chapter 4 then deals with the actual evacuations. The life and problems at the assembly centers is discussed along with the construction of the internment camps. The author also discusses the use of guns and the behavior of the guards.
Next discussed are the work-release programs at the camps, people involved in making the evacuation decision who later regretted their decisions, and trouble in the camps. Also included is some discussion of the role of the JACL in relation to the camp problems.
The complex problem of the loyalty questionnaire is next to be covered, along with the role of Southern politicians in all this. Tule Lake is discussed in chapter 9, starting out with a quote showing just how bad the conditions were and how in some cases they were worse conditions than in federal prisons.
The conversion of Tule Lake into a segregation center is explained along with the international problem that happened when certain 'troublemakers' at Tule Lake were given extremely harsh punishment. The end result was the ending of prisoner-exchange negotiations between the two countries.
Then, in an act that utterly confuses me, the author next puts in a variety of appendices.
Except it's not the end of the book, which is where appendices normally go. It's the middle of the book. There are 12 appendices, and then the book moves on to chapter 10.
Whatever.
Chapter 10 starts by noting that the U.S. and Japan both initially agreed to abide by the Geneva Convention. This applied to POW-internees, and only those actually held at the Dept. of Justice camps were considered by the U.S. to fall under that category, so the people in the regular camps did not have to be treated according to the Geneva Conventions. The main argument still centered around the use of the stockade for 'troublemakers' at Tule, and Tokyo protested their treatment to the U.S. Family members were not allowed to visit people in the stockade (but in regular prisons they were allowed to) even though the ACLU protested. Discussions between the ACLU and some of those being held are presented. This amidst a rather questionable voting ploy by the camp administration to get those who against the protests into power in the camp.
Directly from the book: In the improvident mishandling of the Japanese American minority, a singularly powerful weapon had been handed copy writers of Radio Tokyo. The wholesale racial detention of a people based on the mere accident of ancestry substantiated, as nothing else could, japan's claim that the war in the Pacific was a crusade against the white man's arrogance and oppression...
The next chapter goes over the question of liberating or not liberating some or all of the internees. Discussed also was the movement to block internees from returning to the West Coast, a movement led by the Hearst newspapers.
The repatriation movement is covered next, especially at the Tule center. This is a very fascinating movement and one showing how much pressure one group can put on another to toe the line. It also doesn't make for happy reading of any sort. This is then followed by a discussion of how many of the people who initially renounced their citizenship wanted to change their minds, once the pressure of the more radical faction of the camp was eased.
The epilogue covers what has happened since the time of the closing of the camps.
This is a very, very good book (even if it does put the appendices in the middle) and contains a lot of detailed information on the problems at the Tule Lake Segregation Center, doing this in more detail than perhaps any other source I've yet consulted. Definitely a good book to get.
Basically, what happened in the US in relation to persons of Japanese ancestry happened in Canada with almost no major differences. There were similar racial and economic hatreds; similar fears, and a similar government reaction.
One of the actual differences simply lies in the number of camps. Whereas in the US there were around ten regular camps plus various FBI, Justice Department and military camps set up, in Canada there was Angler and various ghost towns. The evacuees were used to build roads, help the sugar beet crop and basically do the same kinds of things they did in the US. There was also the same effort on the part of the government to relocate the internees, spreading them throughout the country.
As in the US, most of the people evacuated and interned were citizens of the country.
The book points out a similar history of anti-Japanese feeling. In 1907 there were Oriental riots in Vancouver; somewhat of a misnomer since it was the whites who rioted, led on by a minister, and they sacked Chinatown. When they got to the Japanese portion of town, though, they met resistance and the riot broke up.
As in the US, there was the same type of discrimination in being served as blacks and Japanese Americans found in the US. One example given was when some Japanese Canadians tried to eat at a restaurant called The White Lunch and were met with the yell “Stay out of here, you Japs” from one of the cooks. In theaters there were sections (high up) for the Japanese Canadians to sit.
As in the US, persons of Japanese ancestry were forced to register and the community leadership (just as the JACL in the US) said to go ahead and do that, it will help prove how loyal they are. The still ended up being interned, though.
As in the US, Germans and Italians were not forced to register and were not interned in large numbers.
As in the US, without hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, persons of Japanese ancestry were being rounded up. Fishing boats were confiscated and livelihoods ended.
As in the US, evacuees were placed temporarily into horse stalls at Hastings Park, some 20,000 of them.
A lot of people were put onto road work, involuntarily, which helped to lead to a breakdown of the family structure. The roads were being built for military traffic.
A description of the Angler camp calls it a 'prison camp' where there were guard with machine guns.
About 2,000 men were sent to the road-building camps; 3,400 were working in the fields of Alberta and Manitoba, and 1,000 were working elsewhere. 12,000 were sent to renovated ghost town at Sandon, Kaslo, Greenwood, Salmo and New Denver.
A parallel to the US plan to keep the Japanese Americans out of the west coast:
It is vital to understand that the federal government had no intention of ever allowing the inhabitants of the ghost towns and camps to move back to the West Coast. On the contrary, th Japanese were to be scattered across Canada, each province taking its share-and thus would be eliminated the Japanese Problem in B.C.
There was also a very similar military thing going on. In the U.S., the Nisei were not wanted as volunteers for the military at the start of the war; later, they were drafted into the military.
”Prior to Pearl Harbor no Japanese Canadians living in B.C. Were called up, and no volunteers were accepted. When Hastings Park began to fill up in early 1942 any number of young Japanese pleaded to join the army, even if they had to serve in a lowly labour battalion. They were refused. Instead, they were sent to road camps and ghost towns.
'But in 1944 the tide of war was changing in the Pacific and the British desperately needed men who spoke Japanese to be translators, interrogators, broadcasters.'
One problem, similar to that in the US, was that many of the Nisei did not speak Japanese and had to be given lessons. Unlike in the US, the fact that there were Nisei working in the Canadian military was not publicized until Sept. of 1945.
On August 4, 1944, the Prime Minister of Canada said that no act of subversion or sabotage had been found before or during the war by the Japanese [Canadians]. Exactly the same thing that happened, or didn't happen, in the US. At least in Canada they didn't have any officials saying things like 'since there's been no sabotage then that's proof that there will be.'
Around 3,700 Japanese nationals in Canada repatriated to Japan in a program that was poorly run and extremely confusing.
Before the war there were 22,000 Japanese Canadians living in British Columbia. Afterwards, there were only 7,000, the rest being dispersed throughout Canada or returned to Japan.
Tetsuden Kashima, 2003
The book starts out with some basic definition of terms which is a good idea and something I haven't seen any other books do. It then goes into the pre-WWII history of German, Italian and Japanese espionage, the Justice Department, the War Department and the various classifications of Japanese American groups.
The book also deals with other levels of government and even talks about the Magic Cables and notes that none of then indicated any sabotage being carried out or planned by Nisei or Issei in the U.S.
In the next chapter the book uses a flowchart to show what happened to various aliens of German, Italian and Japanese ancestry in relation to the various forms of internment camps. Public fears, types of arrests, paroles and early releases are all covered in this chapter.
Chapter 4 deals with Hawaii. It starts off by going into the military and political background of the Hawaiian Islands. It discusses those who were held in Hawaii, the camps, a flowchart showing what happened to the individuals involved, and a lot of other information.
Chapter 5 deals with Alaska and Latin America. Chapter 6 deals with something not talked about much in other books and that's Department of Justice and Army camps that were used to house Issei and Nisei. The book goes into Executive Order 9066 and the WRA camps, the way that the German and Italian prisoners were treated, how the centers differed in nature, and trouble at the camps.
Inmate resistance and the various isolation camps are also discussed.
By this time we are to chapter 8 which starts right off with the loyalty questionnaire. Worsening conditions, renunciation of citizenship and draft resistance are all covered. Chapter 9 deals with abuses in the camps, protests and the Geneva Convention. Conflicts at the isolation centers and imprisonment are next to be discussed. The book also contains around 80 pages of notes and bibliographical information.
This is an extremely detailed book and spends a lot of time going into areas that most other books ignore or cover only briefly, and that relates to the isolation camps and the actual prisons used. A very interesting book.
Lillian Baker, 1996
This is one of the books that causes intense reactions on the part of people reviewing it on amazon. It's either love it or totally hate it; nothing in the middle. It's not the only book I've gone over that has drawn that type of review, either, although such books are rare.
She starts off by saying the purpose of the book is to be historically correct. One of the problems with history, and telling whether or not it's correct, is that it is history, not something happening right now that you personally can look into. So you have to study whatever you can; books, movies, pamphlets, etc, from whatever sources you can and hope you will come up with an accurate profile of what actually happened.
If 95% of the sources you consult say things happened a certain way and 5% says the exact opposite, it's not impossible that the 5% one is correct, but the odds are against it, especially if the 95% of materials were written by people who are qualified to write about a particular time.
This is obviously one of those 5% type of books.
What the book does is mix actual factual information with rumors and distortions of information. For example, she states that 'Families were kept together at great cost to American taxpayers.' Any even moderate research done shows that this statement is outright false. Many families were separated especially right after the start of the war when fathers were arrested and interned for the rest of the war for being priests, community and business leaders, etc. The 'great cost' to American taxpayers is offset by the fact that the camps were meant to be self-sustaining and many raised much of their own food, built their own furniture, etc.)
The book includes a reproduction of a yearbook from a Manzanar school. The author apparently doesn't understand that the purpose of any yearbook from any school is to present the best face on everything that happened at the school; in other words, they are propaganda agents for the school administration and nice mementos for the students. Do they prove that things were really great? Absolutely not, not at any school; the yearbooks gloss over the bad stuff except in the most extreme cases. So adding the entire yearbook as an Appendix and, I assume, using it to try and prove how good things were in the camps for the internees is pretty much a waste of space. This takes up almost 70 pages of a roughly 240 page book, or almost 30% of the book.
By the way, I've seen other authors address the issue of the yearbooks and newspapers produced at the centers and camps and they say the same thing I have; such items are "feel-good" purposes and don't necessarily reflect things the way they really were.
Ten more pages are spent reproducing two Congressional bills, one being the Civil Rights Act of 1988 and the other relating to redress issues.
Appendix D is about a letter to J.Edgar Hoover, citing some rather spectacular claims such as there were 100 Nisei who were 'human bombs' on Hawaii and prepared to spread "contagious disease germs" in Pearl Harbor. (She doesn't really state what the letter writers qualifications were; how did he know these things to be true?) Anyhow, in a letter from J.Edgar Hoover dated February 2, 1942, the following statement is made: 'The necessity for mass evacuation is based primarily upon public and political pressure rather than on factual data.' In other words, Hoover must not have thought much of the original letter's claims.
Appendix E starts out by saying 'Today's revisionist historians claim that ‘there was nothing done in Hawaii' where almost half the population consisted of first and second generation Japanese.' I don't know what author's she's talking about since virtually all the books I read that discussed Hawaii at all point out that there were some Issei and Nisei taken prisoner, and that the vast majority were not since they were made up a major portion of the work force and their work was necessary.
That's the nature of the book. Setting up straw men, including irrelevant information, or distorting information that is actually there. A complete refutation of the book is, at least in my opinion, not worth taking the time to do. They are far too many good, reliable sources of information to waste time pointing out all the problems with this book.
Skip it and go read better and more reliable works.
This is a book which is in favor of the internment of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II, and is written by Michelle Malkin, who is a strong conservative.
The book is subtitled The Case for 'Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror. 'The cover shows what type of book it is, since there is a picture of a modern-day terrorist linked to a picture of a person of Japanese ancestry for the time of WWII.
The book is not as badly written as other books on this same topic. She presents her arguments in a fairly straight forward, usually non-wild manner. Her problem is that she doesn't consider the culture of that time, and she has some logical errors big enough to fly a B-29 through.
First, one would get the impression that the book, from the cover, spends lot of time on the current War on Terror, and makes a strong effort to link that back to the internment process. Actually, that's not the case at all. The vast majority of the book is on the internment, and only a small bit is on the War on Terror, and links between the two are quite weak.
'Ethnic Japanese forced to leave the West Coast of the United States and relocate outside of prescribed military zones after the Pearl Harbor attack endured a heavy burden, but they were not the only ones who suffered and sacrificed.'
Quite true, but she overlooks a major point. Yes, almost everyone suffered and sacrificed in World War II, but that was done voluntarily (except for those who were drafted into the military). People lived with rationing, cut back on purchases, saved scrap metal and paper, etc, but all this was done with their compliance. The persons of Japanese ancestry, on the other hand, were forced to leave their homes and businesses without any concern for their civil rights. They were not charged with any crimes. They were not arrested and put on trial. They were rounded up based on their ethnicity, forced to leave their homes and businesses (often suffering financial ruin as a result), then shipped off to various camps, forced to remain there or, if allowed out, were allowed out only on certain conditions.
This was enforced suffering, not voluntary, and, as such, was much worse that that of other person in the war (with the exception of those who lost loved ones.)
Later, she says people don't remember or understand the conditions that existed at that time, and I fully agree with her. Japan had attacked the U.S. Their armies were marching through Southeast Asia. There were some sinkings of merchant ships by Japanese submarines, and there was even very limited shelling of the U.S. coast by Japanese subs, and a couple of incidents where a Japanese sub-carried plane tried to start forest fires (during the wet season.)
What she totally fails to go into is the pre-existing prejudice against Orientals on the West Coast of the U.S. (I have reviewed a number of books on this topic and there are in my reviews section, along with related samples in my newspapers section.) The movement of PJAs (Persons of Japanese Ancestry) out of the West Coast area was as much a matter of ethnic prejudice and economic jealousy as it was anything else, if not more so.
She spends a chapter on one incident where a Japanese flyer was aided by PJAs after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was eventually killed by someone on the island. There was also one instance (which she doesn't recount) of a couple of PJA women helping Germans who had escaped from a P.O.W. Camp. Outside of those two examples, that was pretty much the extent of regular PJAs betraying the U.S.
Now, there were PJAs working in Japanese consulates, and she spends a lot of time on that subject. Those people would be expected, naturally, to work for the Japanese government and not care about the U.S. They were not reflective of the 'average' PJA in the states at all.
'After December 7, 1941, it would have been unforgivably irresponsible of American officials to ignore the possibility of attacks on the mainland-.'
She is, of course, totally correct on this. What she doesn't really consider, and herein is her biggest error in logic, is that, if the U.S. West Coast was in danger from Japan, then Hawaii was REALLY in danger from Japan. It is a lot closer to Japan than is the U.S. mainland. It had already been attacked once (and was, in fact, bombed again, but on a much more minor scale.) If the Japanese were to attack, then Hawaii, not the West Coast, would have been the logical place for an invasion.
What one has to consider, again, is the difference in the times. In today's world, attacking the U.S. from Japan would be comparatively easy. ICBMs could reach the US. There are planes that can fly the distance without refueling, and ships that can go the distance without refueling.
Back then, there were no such missiles, and there were no such long-range planes or ships. Refueling and reprovisioning were major problems for both sides during the war. At attack on the U.S. West Coast would have stretched Japanese resources far beyond what they could actually manage. Remember, Japan was already in China. It was moving through Southeast Asia. It had attacked Hawaii and the Aleutian Islands (which she also doesn't remember to include.)
Their forces were stretched as is, and to attack Hawaii would have been very difficult, but not totally impossible, but attacking the U. S. West Coast in strength, rather than by a few very isolated submarine incidents, was pretty much out of the question.
Also, consider that about 1/3 of the people in Hawaii were PJAs. (A much larger percentage than PJAs on the West Coast). Since there were many more PJAs in Hawaii proportionally, and since Hawaii was within striking distance for a major invasion (albeit pretty much at the limits of their abilities), then why weren't Hawaiian PJAs gotten off the island and shipped to the mainland. Logically, if Malkin's suspicious about PJAs are accurate, then the PJAs on Hawaii posed a much more dire threat to U.S. security than did those on the West Coast.
Yet, there was no major movement of PJAs off Hawaii. Some were arrested and removed, true, but this was a very small percentage of the overall PJA population. Why weren't they moved? Because they were a major part of the work force, and removing them would have severely damaged the economic structure of Hawaii (not counting the fact that it would have tied up numerous boats that would have been used for shipping PJAs from Hawaii to the U.S., rather than using those boats directly for the war effort.) So, the PJAs stayed in Hawaii (under wartime conditions and controls, of course.)
So, if her fear of PJAs was actually justified, then the ones in Hawaii should have been moved first and foremost, and the ones on the mainland secondly, yet only the ones on the mainland suffered a major resettlement, and then only those PJAs on the West Coast.
Again, logic is a problem for her. If the PJAs were so dangerous, subversive and willing to cooperate with the Japanese military, then it would be logical to gather up ALL the PJAs in the entire country, not just in one part of it. What logic holds for some must hold true for all, or for none at all.
Also, a lot of her examples of subversion, etc, take place in other countries, primarily in Southeast Asia, and not in the U.S. These were countries being invaded actively by Japan and, as in any war, some people will try to curry favor with the enemy.
She spends a lot of time going into the various Japanese organizations in the U.S., including the Japanese language schools. There were, indeed, such organizations. What she doesn't adequately point out is that the organizations were already under scrutiny, and, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI picked up most of the leaders of these organizations within a day or two (whether or not they were engaged in anti-U.S Activities.)
She spends a lot of time on the MAGIC intercepts. She says, for example, '...a series of MAGIC messages revealed Japan's intent to establish an espionage network in the United States.' Well, duh. Of course they would. Again, what she doesn't point out is that these were run through the consulates, and the Japanese agents weren't really able to get many volunteers among the PJAs in the U.S.
She spends some time over the fear of radios in the hands of PJAs. Well, for one thing, many of the PJAs were fisherman, and having radios was not unusual. Actually, anyone having radios was not unusual, since this was before television, and radios, shortwave and otherwise, were about the only way to keep up on world events. Having a radio was not a sign of some evil, devious purpose at work; it was a sign of a regular person having a regular interest.
She talks about the lack of internment of Italians and Germans in the country, and says '...there was no evidence that Germany or Italy had organized a large-scale espionage network...' This sort of overlooks the BUND, which was a fairly major organization in the Eastern part of the U.S.
Like other books in the series, she tries to paint a fairly rosy picture of conditions in the internment camps, totally overlooking the fact that the people were forced to go there without any attention being paid to their legal rights. Anyone who goes over my reviews of books on the camps will see that conditions in those camps were anything but rosy.
She writes about violence at some of the centers, and that is correct. There was violence in some, and deaths in some. A good part of this was brought about by the loyalty test given to the PJAs, and the tremendous split in the PJA community over what questions 27 and 28 meant, and how they should react to them. Also, she doesn't factor in the fact that these people were put into the camps and kept there against their will (until programs were set up for allowing some to work outside of the camps.) It's perfectly natural that some violence would eventually erupt, given the conditions the people lived under.
It's also amazing how far some conservatives will go to justify their beliefs. She writes 'There is not one documented case of an ethnic Japanese espionage agent or saboteur-Issei or Nisei-turning himself in to U.S. authorities.' A shocking condemnation of PJAS?
No. Just a matter of logic. If you were a spy or a saboteur would you turn yourself in to the authorities? I don't think so.
The basic information part of the book is 165 pages long. Then, there are 144 more pages of documents and photos, allegedly to prove her points.
A lot of them are very standard things, things that one would expect be sent from a consulate to the home country. There are also some rather interesting things included.
In a paper from March 12, 1941, Hoover, head of the FBI, says that the Japanese espionage effort is going to be moved to Mexico. So, it if was going to Mexico, why ship out the U.S. PJAs to the camps? A paper from the Navy Department, dated December 4, 1941, talks about PJAs in Hawaii, and how almost all of them 'belongs to one or more purely Japanese organizations.' By Malkin's logic, then these people were very, very suspicious and should have been moved to the mainland camps, but they weren't.
A paper from January 26, 1962 notes that'“..the entire 'Japanese Problem' has been magnified out of its true proportion...and, finally, that it should be handled on the basis of the individual, regardless of citizenship, and not on a racial basis.'
In other words, no mass evacuation was called for.
A number of the papers she includes have nothing at all to do with PJAs in the U.S. or Hawaii of the time. They deal with Mexico, Latin America, and other areas of the world.
She has some photos, noting in one of them a PJA named Richard M. Kotoshirodo, and that he was involved in gathering intelligence. She doesn't point out that he was working for the Japanese consulate at the time.
Thus, what we have is a rather flawed book. It doesn't examine the history of the times very well at all. It includes material that is totally irrelevant to the book's major thesis about how untrustworthy PJAs on the mainland were. It has major logic flaws. It's a typical conservative argument based on half-truths, omissions, and diversions. It might seem sort of convincing to someone who had read only this book and nothing else on the internment process, but to any person aspiring to be a historian, the book shows its limitations all too easily.
When I looked at the back of the book and read the blurb there I became concerned. The premise of this book is that the U.S. government had intercepted messages from Japan which proved that there was an active espionage movement among Japanese-Americans on the West Coast, and that this is what led to the interment program.
What was bothersome about was that, by the time I got to this book, I'd been through maybe twenty others or so, plus various articles and every single one of those sources agreed that there was no active espionage program, that there was no sabotage, and that intercepted telegrams had nothing to do with the relocation; rather, it was a product of racial hatred and prejudice, fear, and military and political pressure.
I started checking on the net to find out about the book and the author and found various sources which said that this man's writings were not considered reliable, to put a nice tone on it, and that his statements had been refuted.
I am not an expert on the subject of the internment. All I have been doing is consulting a number of sources and reviewing/summarizing them. I will do the same with this book but with this warning: it is very possible that at least some of what is in this book is distorted/revisionist history and not reliable.
He starts right off saying :The cumulative total of this intelligence revealed to the President and his key advisers the specter of subversive nets up and down the West Coast, controlled by the Japanese government, utilizing large number of local Japanese residents, and designed to operate in a wartime environment."
This is what he says led to the internment camps. Again, I will point out that I have not read one other single source, from 1946 to 2005, which supports this allegation. I am not saying it is false; all I'm saying is that I have found no one else who agrees with it. The author of one of the books I have reviewed, 'By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans', writes on a web page analysis of a book by someone else, but concerning the same concept that Magic makes:
First, an examination of the MAGIC cables provided by the author does not provide any case for implicating the Japanese Americans in espionage activities. Most of the cables discussed (a tiny handful of the thousands of messages decrypted) come from Tokyo or Mexico City and refer to areas outside the United States. Those cables that do speak of the United States detail various efforts by Japan to build networks, and list hopes or intentions rather than actions or results. For example, the author quotes (p. 41) from a January 31, 1941 cable from Tokyo which orders agents to establish espionage and to recruit second generations. It does not say that such recruitment took place, and furthermore that recruitment was to take place even more among non-Japanese. Similarly, the author cites excerpts listing census data transmitted on the Japanese population of various cities--hardly secret information. The author relies most strongly on a memo from the Los Angeles consulate to Tokyo from May 1941. The author claims "the message stated that the network had Nisei spies in the U.S. Army" (p. 44). In fact, the message states "We shall maintain connection with our second generations who are at present in the U.S. Army." This speaks again of agents to be recruited. There is no evidence that any individuals had been recruited as agents, still less that they were actively giving information. Replies back from Los Angeles and Seattle state that they had established connections with Japanese and with "second generations." The rest of the cables she cites recount information given to Japan in fall 1941, long after any discussion of recruiting Japanese Americans had ceased, with no clue as to the source of the information given. The sum total of the information is that Japan unquestionably tried to build a spy network in the US during 1941. It is also clear that the Japanese wished to recruit Japanese Americans, as well as non-Japanese.
Even assuming for the sake of argument that the MAGIC excerpts did show some credible risk of disloyal activity by Nisei on the West Coast, those who made the case for internment did not rely on them. The author herself notes that access to the MAGIC encrypts was limited to a dozen people outside the decrypters, and notably says that President Roosevelt, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy had access to the MAGIC cables. This leaves her in the position of asserting that the essential reflection and decision was made by those three figures, and the reasons or motivations of all other actors were irrelevant. However, the record amply demonstrates that West Coast Defense Commander General John DeWitt (and his assistant Karl Bendetsen) were largely responsible for making the case for evacuation, and that their judgment of the situation and their recommendation for mass evacuation overcame the initial opposition of McCloy and Stimson. DeWitt's motivations for urging evacuation--notably his comment to McCloy that 'a Jap is a Jap,' and his reliance on arguments about the 'racial strains' of the Japanese in his Final Report--indicate that his conduct was informed by racism.
Finally, there is no direct evidence to support the contention that the MAGIC excerpts played a decisive role in the decision of the figures who did have access to them to authorize mass evacuation, and considerable evidence that leads to a contrary inference. Throughout all the confidential memoranda and conversations taking place within the War Department at the time of the decision on evacuation, transcripts which show people speaking extremely freely, the MAGIC excerpts are not mentioned a single time. In particular, there is no evidence that President Roosevelt ever saw or was briefed on the MAGIC excerpts the author mentions, let alone that he was decisively influenced by them. As I detail at great length in my book "By Order of the President," throughout the 1930s Roosevelt expressed suspicions of Japanese Americans, irrespective of citizenship, and sought to keep the community under surveillance. As early as 1936, he already approved plans to arrest suspicious Japanese Americans in Hawaii if war broke out. As of early 1941, before FDR could have received any MAGIC excerpts, the Justice Department and the military had already put together lists of aliens to be taken into custody (the so-called ABC lists). These were not based on suspicion of individual activities, but of the suspected individuals' position in Japanese communities. Roosevelt continued to believe in a threat despite receiving reports of overwhelming community loyalty from the FBI and his own agents, reports he called "nothing much new.
One interesting thing about the book is that it contains no bibliography, no reference to other published books on the subject.
One more thing. Before I started going over the book I thought the sheer number of messages presented would be hard to refute. It turns out that the majority of the messages, indeed the vast majority of the messages, either have absolutely nothing whatever to do with the author's main premise of West Coast sabotage/espionage, or they are simply messages containing information that could have been obtained by consulate workers without the use of spies. In other words, much of the book is actually totally irrelevant to the author's own arguments.
Ok. So much for warnings. Now on to the review/synopsis.
The author starts right off criticizing the payments made to those of Japanese ancestry who were involved in the internment camps, due to a bill signed by Ronald Reagan.
Chapter 1: The author recounts a little the history of Japanese immigration. He criticizes Japanese schools as indoctrinating Japanese students with strongly pro-Japan ideology (without citing any other sources); he notes they worked long hours for low pay (true); the tended to form communities of their own (true, just the same as all other immigrant groups did initially); the Japanese settled in areas near airfields, etc. (did they do that, or did they settle in areas and after they settled the airfields were built?); he sites Terminal Island (fishermen) as a hotbed of espionage as well as various Japanese local organizations, says 25% of all Japanese Americans were of doubtful loyalty (without saying how that 25% figure was arrived at); 3,500 could be expected to act as agents and saboteurs (again, how was that number arrived at?); the Kibei, Japanese Americans born here, sent to Japan for education and returned here, were considered especially problematic (that, at least, is true; they were considered problematic); Japanese Americans were watching ports, military bases, etc. (proof?) and Japanese Americans in the armed forces, at least some of them, were there for subversive purpose (proof?).
He states that, within a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, '...the U.S. had taken several thousand enemy aliens into custody about whom there was evidence of disloyalty...' . Not a single source I have read agrees with this; all other sources I have consulted says the people were arrested and held without charge or trial. If, as the author says, there was 'evidence of disloyalty,' then, surely, the people would have been at least charged if not actually tried and found guilty. He says such a thing wasn't possible because it was too monumental an effort to undertake and would have required revealing how the information against the people was found out.
He notes that the Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not shipped en masse back to the U.S. largely because of the need for workers and because martial law had been declared and the military was in command. (Yet the Japanese-Americans formed a very large portion of the population of Hawaii, about a third, if I remember correctly, and the Japanese-American population in the U.S. -Hawaii was not a state at the time- was less than 2%. Even if the military was in control in Hawaii, how could they guarantee controlling 1/3 of the population if the Japanese American population was so treacherous, full of sabotage and spying?)
Next in the book are some pictures of assembly centers (good pics); and relocation centers (good pics, but almost entirely tied in to arts/crafts and leisure activities, none showing the latrines, showers, barbed wire, guard towers or things like that, thus showing only the good things and none of the bad.)
Chapter 2: This chapter goes into the history of the decryption of the Japanese intelligence code. Other than a brief aside claiming the messages were showing major efforts on the part of the Japanese government to recruit spies the entire chapter is simply a recounting of historical events.
Chapter 3: More history of the decryption program.
Chapter 4: The author writes, relating to the post-war period, 'The unflattering wartime caricatures of the Japanese enemy, which had unfairly tainted the public perception of the Issei and Nisei, completely disappeared.' (This utterly ignores the considerable opposition to resettlement of Japanese-Americans in California and other areas. Various state governors had stated they didn't want any of the Issei or Nisei to be resettled in their states. The prejudice did not end automatically with the end of the war as the author tries to claim.)
The author notes two trials of Japanese Americans that did occur. The thing he doesn't point out is that neither of these two was in the U.S. during the war! Then he goes into the history of reparation efforts.
Chapter 5: The author uses the term '...the powerful Japanese-American juggernaut...' in relating to the efforts to review the original cases from the time (Hirabayashi, Komatsu, etc) and have the original convictions overturned or set aside. Further, he claims the government did not lie in the original trials, but that the lawyers for the accused were the ones who did the lying. That gives you an idea of what the chapter is like.
Chapter 6: Goes into the history of Congressional action in relation to reparations.
Part II: The Magic Messages
Chapter 7: Japan Organizes for Intelligence: He refers to the Japanese effort '...to activate fully the already-in-place Japanese military agents previously placed in the U.S. by the Third Bureau...' which were largely language school students. Japanese Consulates were also being used for spying, according to the author. That consulates might have been used for spying is reasonable; the part about the language students being spies again is not proven.
The author then summarizes messages. Message #44 is interesting in that it supposedly said 'In the event of U.S. participation in the war, our intelligence setup will be moved to Mexico.' (Why would you move your intelligence setup to Mexico if you were going to use the Japanese-Americans, who happened to be in America, as the main spying group? Further, the message was from January 30 of 1941, so it seems it would actually work against the author's claims of massive spying operations in the U.S.)
Message #239 from February 5 of 1941 is summarized as having plans for fallback spying setups in Central and South America and to organize Japanese residents in those areas for espionage. (Thus moving the intelligence setup even further from the U.S. and organization non-U.S. Japanese residents, thus again working against the author's premise of U.S. spy operations.)
Message #287, from June 11, 1941, is about investigating '...the possibilities of using Negroes for subversive purposes.' (Now, unless my knowledge of biology and history is utterly wrong there was not exactly a large number of black Japanese-Americans! Investigating the use of blacks for subversive purposes has nothing at all to do with Issei or Nissei, and further it says 'investigate' the 'possibilities' which is rather different from having had something settled upon and in place.)
Chapter 8: Japanese Intelligence Requirements: The author notes that Japan's efforts to use dissident groups in the U.S. for their purposes failed because they didn't understand the realm of diversity in the U.S. among its people and groups. All the messages cited refer to the type of information any government would want on a country it was considering going to war against, but there is absolutely no discussion whatever of where that information was actually supposed to come from. The author does not say it was going to come from spies or consulate workers or just plain information researches, so the entire chapter does absolutely nothing to forward the author's claims of massive Japanese spying and sabotage planning on the West Coast.
Chapter 9: Issei and Nisei: The author does not seem to consider the possibility that much of the content of the messages relating to efforts to do this or that and programs to do this or that might have just been empty words; to say that things were being done and to really have those things being done are two different things. People sending messages would be subject to various political and personal pressures and they would tend to make things sound better than they actually were, something which is obviously still done today as 'spin doctors' exemplify.
Again, some of the messages have nothing to do with the West Coast. Message #319 relates to the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C. Message #93 concerns Mexico again. Message #1265 again involved the use of blacks, not Issei or Nisei. (It seems to me that the author is using an approach that by using a large number of messages it would impress the reader, whether or not the messages had anything to do with his basic premise not being that important. There's an old saying about 'If you can't dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullshit.'
Chapter 10: Special Interest Message: Messages that don't neatly fall into other categories such as message #247 talking about trying to start a revolution in Guatemala. Message #278 relates to Japanese nationals living in Mexico. Message #500 has to do with Japanese residents in the Philippines. Those are just a few messages that have, again, nothing to do at all with the author's premise of U.S. espionage. Most of the other messages he cites are of the kind that would naturally be expected under the conditions at the time.
Chapter 11: West Coast: Instead of summaries the author just has the various messages. One thing from reading the messages came immediately to me; a lot of the information in the messages, which the author is basically using to claim there was a vast spy network, contain the type of information that one could pick up from local newspapers and radio reports. All of the messages in this chapter are before Pearl Harbor and hence before any major censorship on the part of the government to keep information away from the Japanese. In short, any consulate workers who had access to local newspapers could have found most if not all of this information on their own; a vast spy network was not necessary.
Chapter 12: Panama. First, all of the messages are prior to Pearl Harbor. Second, unless my knowledge of world geography is totally wonky, Panama is NOT a part of the continental U.S. much less than a part of the West Coast. Thus, there again is an entire chapter which has absolutely nothing at all to do with the author's premise about West Coast spy and sabotage networks.
Chapter 13: Manila. Same comments as for Chapter 12 exactly, except this time for Manila.
Chapter 14: Honolulu. The chapter deals with one single espionage agent in Hawaii. One.
Part III: The Intelligence Reports
Chapter 15: The F.B.I. Document summary 214 is about the Japanese planning to strengthen its intelligence network in the U.S. according to a 'highly confidential and reliable source' (and how many times have we heard that argument and seen it prove totally false). Now, if a nation is even considering a war with another nation, wouldn't it be reasonable for it to try to strengthen its spy network? This message is not surprising at all.
Then, what's worse, if you read the actual material rather than the author's summary of it you find the message refers to using 'citizens of foreign extraction, Communists, Negroes, labor union members, anti_Semitism and men having access to government departments...' etc. In other words, non-Japanese-Americans. A reference is made to using Japanese nationals, but warns that if they are caught they will be subject to "considerable persecution." So the plan is to use non-Issei and Nisei, mainly.
The next document the author sites, page 216, again notes a 'thoroughly reliable and highly confidential source', notes they will be using whites and blacks along with Japanese in their efforts, again showing emphasis on non-Japanese Americans being used.
I'm not going to go into every single page noted, but the pattern is obvious; the author's summary of the page makes it sound terribly significant and dangerous; the actual page usually contains information which relates to 'reliable sources' (which are never named), or has to do with people other than Issei and Nisei, deals with consular personnel and not average on-the-street Nisei and Issei, etc. One part originally had a list attached of specific names but the author has left it off; in addition, many of the names, by the author's own admission, were Caucasians and Blacks. Finally, all but three of the messages are pre-Pearl Harbor.
Chapter 16: The Army Military Intelligence Division. 7 document pages noted, three of which are prior to Pearl Harbor. One concerns efforts in Latin American and Peru in particular (which, again, has absolutely nothing to do with the U.S. West Coast); one message has to do with setting up restricted areas in California; one message deals with reports of Japanese submarines off Alaska and California, etc, not tying any of it in to actual persons from the Issei or Nisei on the West Coast.
Chapter 17: The Office of Naval Intelligence: 7 pages cited, 2 of which are prior to Pearl Harbor. (One note here about my attention to pre-Pearl Harbor messages. To me, pre-Pearl Harbor proves nothing in relation to actual West Coast spying and espionage. It concerns possibilities and plans. What is needed to support the author's premise of massive sabotage and espionage is proof provided that such things actually did exist, not that they were planned or being worked on.)
One of the messages again concerns Latin America and Mexico. One message concerns something called the Tokyo Club which was apparently a gangster-ish organization involved in gambling. There's a number of specific people mentioned and their relationship to the club or to someone in the club. (Now, if they had specific information on specific people (and remember, this is gambling organization) then why not just pick up those people and not be concerned with clearing out all Japanese-Americans?)
(Actually, I'd sum up this rather long passage in Shakespearean terms: "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.")
One message concerns an incident that happened on the Hawaiian islands with a downed Japanese pilot.
One very long reference is to a report that has such interesting things as: 'The alien menage is no loner paramount, and is becoming of less importance almost daily, as the original alien immigrants grow older and die...' It refers to the Nisei and says at ...least seventy five percent are loyal to the United States.' It adds that the total number who could act as saboteurs or agents was less than three percent of the total Issei and Nisei population, about 3,500 persons. It notes that the most dangerous of those are either already in custody or members of groups that are already being watched.
That ends the author's portion of the book. The publisher included some other documents. One is Executive Order 9066. The rest of the memos are pretty much again irrelevant to the author's main premise.
So, what we have is a book which purports to prove that the internment of Japanese Americans was due to translated Japanese coded documents showing the existence of a massive espionage and sabotage effort on the West Coast.
What we actually have is a book filled with documents that either directly contradict the author's main premise or are utterly irrelevant to that same premise (such as messages dealing with Japanese efforts in Latin America) or contain information from 'unnamed sources.' Many of the messages are even from the time period before Pearl Harbor and again not directly related to any espionage/sabotage organizations existing at the time of the war. The summaries of the documents try to make them look intimidating and ominous, but when one reads the documents one finds that most of them are not at all that way. It's a physically imposing book, it looks nice, it has some good photos in it, but as far as actually proving its premise it (in my opinion, of course) fails miserably.
This is a book about how some people worked very hard in order to get a form of redress to those of Japanese ancestry who had been interned during World War II in the various internment camps. The book is one dealing pretty much specifically with the stories of certain people involved and is really focused on just the redress movement, so there's very, very little about the actual internment process here.
The book notes that a Senator from California, S. I. Hayakawa, was opposed to the redress movement.
The author says that the redress movement was important in that it let a lot of people know about what had happened during the internment process, and it raised the level of respect for Japanese Americans.
Yasuko I.Takezawa, 1995
The book is about the Japanese-Americans from Seattle and what they went through in the internment process and their redress movement.
The author goes into the history of the Japanese in Seattle with various tables about Asian immigration trends and information on Japanese ethnicity. Then the author goes into the history of the redress movement, staring with the 1970's. The government ended up paying about $37 million out on 26,558 claims. Estimated losses in property and income ran a minimum of $119 million up to around $370 million, however.
The book also covers other related laws, however, including the Emergency Detention Act, part of the Internal Security Act of 1950, which set up six camps including Tule Lake for anyone taken due to insurrection within the country, sabotage or espionage. Through the efforts of the Japanese-American community and a somewhat reluctant JACL that measure was repealed in 1971.
There apparently was a lot of disagreement within the JACL over whether or not to sponsor the redress movement. A series of 'remembrance days' helped to get momentum going for the redress movement in the 80's. Even though successful legislation eventually was obtained, funding that was a difficult and time-consuming process, as the book points out in detail.
The third chapter is entitled 'Nisei Experience.' It goes into the history of the Japanese in Seattle and cultural differences between the Issei and the Nisei. This is a very detailed chapter.
The chapter also describes life in the camps, problems in the camps and problems that resulted after the camps were closed. This part of the book is the same type of information found in other books and the author does a good job of presenting it.
The fourth chapter is entitled 'Sansei Experience.' The first thing the author points up is that the Sansei generation has grown up in a more ethnically diverse environment than the Issei and Nisei who tended to live in conclaves consisting almost entirely of people of Japanese ancestry. The Sansei also did not automatically learn to speak Japanese nor did they grow up fully bathed in Japanese culture and customs. They were becoming more and more 'Americanized.'
The author talks with a number of people and gets their personal experiences in growing up.
The next chapter is about how the various generations have talked, or not talked, about the internment experience. The chapter is quite interesting in how it explores the attitudes of the various generations, especially with the Sansei seeing the interment camps more as a political injustice than their parents see it.
The last chapter is basically more information related to the previous chapter, again dealing with different outlooks on the part of the different generations of people of Japanese ancestry.
An interesting book with a lot of information in it that is similar to other books. The strength lies in the examination of cultural differences among the different generations of people of Japanese ancestry in the U.S.
This is a 1983 book on the legal aspects relating to the internment of the persons of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast during World War II. Since it's entire content deals with the legal aspects alone, then theirs room for the author to go into far greater detail than is present in other books that refer to only a few aspects of the legal issues.
A man named Edward Ennis has been instructed to work on 'planning facilities to house enemies of aliens nationality if we got into the war.' On December 7th, that event happened, and Ennis drafted a document relating to “summary apprehension” of any Japanese alien by the Justice Department. He passed it on to FDR, and FDR signed it.
For a while things were fairly calm on the West Coast, but then a massive movement against the Japanese who lived there began to develop. One of the first people writing about internment camps was Los Angeles Congressman Leland Ford, who sent letters to Hoover (F.B.I.) and Navy Secretary Frank Knox.
The author points out that the arguments used as reasons to intern the persons of Japanese ancestry dated back to the time of the efforts made on Chinese exclusion on the West Coast.
The intelligence community had been keeping track of who they termed 'suspicious aliens' for over a decade before the internment. This is why they were able to act so quickly in picking up leaders of various Japanese organizations, and other target individuals, within hours of the outbreak of the war.
An ABC list of dangerous aliens had been drawn up, divided into known dangerous aliens, potentially dangerous aliens, and one who worked with propaganda and/or had pro-Japanese views.
Then there's a section on DeWitt, along with various rumors of things that the Japanese had done. These included supposed Japanese planes over the West Coast (I think the author is referring to 'The Battle of Los Angeles'), Japanese submarines shelling areas of the West Coast (which really did happen), and the sinking of some freighters out at sea.
DeWitt at first wanted all the Japanese aliens fourteen years of age or up picked up, but it later evolved into picking up all of the persons of Japanese ancestry, alien or American citizen.
Things really started to get back in February of 1942 with a number of search-and-seize raids on the West Coast and the gathering up of Japanese fisherman on Terminal Island. None of the searches turned up anything relating to sabotage.
There was a meeting with the West Coast congressional delegation on January 30th, and at that point the fate of the Japanese Americans was sealed.
It is interesting that some of the Justice Department lawyers were not in favor of the evacuation and tried to block it, unsuccessfully, of course.
A voluntary exodus failed since there weren't enough places willing to accept the West Coast Japanese (and there wasn't enough time to make proper preparations), so the movement of the entire group was decided upon. The attorney general of Idaho, for example, wanted them all placed in concentration camps.
Out of around 120,000 who were moved off the West Coast, there were actually only around a dozen legal challenges to the action. One of the reasons was that the initial roundup of Japanese involved many of the leaders of various organizations. Without any leaders, it was very hard to develop the sentiment among the Japanese for resistance of any kind.
One if the cases involved a person named Minoru Yasui who walked into a police station and asked to be arrested for curfew violation in Oregon.
A second case, one of the most known ones, involved Gordon Hirabayashi. He failed to comply with the exclusion order and was jailed.
The third case involved Fred Korematsu who tried to stay in the evacuated area. He carried a fake draft card, and had had some plastic surgery to try and conceal his racial identity.
A fourth case involved Mitsuye Endo. She went to the Tanforan Assembly Center as required, but filed a habeas corpus petition.
The book then goes into extensive detail about the forty lawyers involved in the four cases, and how there was a lot of disagreement between them. There was also some questionable stuff done on the part of at least one of the judges. Details of the hearings and trials are numerous.
One very interesting thing that is noted was that there are no transcripts of the Supreme Court hearings on the cases because, until 1955, stenographers were not regularly used.
The author discusses the initial hearings, trials, appeals, and ultimate Supreme Court hearings on the cases, noting that a later study basically concluded that the legal system had failed the people that had been charged.
Peter Irons, editor, 1989
This is an incredibly detailed book that covers various cases relating to Japanese American internment during WWII. An introduction covers the cases in general and the effort to overthrow the convictions later. The rest of the book consists of the rulings of the various judges involved in the cases, including the Supreme Court justices.
It's incredibly detailed and, for anyone with an interest in the law, would be quite edifying. It's not, however, for the average reader or for anyone not having a considerable interest in the law.
The story of Fred Korematsu. 22 years old, born in the United States of Japanese parents. After the start of WWII he was thrown out of his union because of his ancestry. Result; he lost his job as a shipyard welder. Speaks almost no Japanese.
He was ordered to leave California by the Army and he refused. The people were being relocated (and not charged with any crime). He changed the name on his identification card and had plastic surgery on his face. He was arrested on a street corner in his hometown.
California, Oregon and Washington laws: Japanese could not marry white citizens. They could not use public swimming pools. They could not live in certain neighborhoods. They could not own land. They could not rent a piece of land for more than 3 years.
Congressman John Rankin: Once a Jap, always a Jap...You cannot...make him the same as a white man any more than you can reverse the laws of nature.
Executive Order 9066, signed on February 19, 1942, 'gave the military commander the power to select certain parts of the West Coast and call them military areas.' All people who were deemed a threat to national security were to be kept out of those areas.
March 2, 1942: Proclamation 1. California, Washington, Oregon and Arizona were declared military areas.
March 21, 1942: Public Law 503. It was a federal crime to disobey any orders of General DeWitt, in charge of protecting the west coast against attack by Japan.
Three days later: 8 P.M. to 6 A.M. curfew declared for Americans of German, Italian and Japanese ancestry in the military areas. Curfew violation meant being charged with a felony crime.
March 27, 1942: People of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast were not allowed to leave the military area without permission.
Evacuees in Korematsu's area were told to move on May 3, 1942, and were given only until May 8, 1942, to have everything done, including closing up and selling businesses, homes, property, store things, pack things for moving, etc.
To add insult to injury, the Japanese Americans were later given a survey to fill out. One question was whether or not they would be willing to serve in the American military, and the other question was if they were willing to give up their Japanese citizenship and loyalty to the Emperor.
Those who answered 'no' to both questions were deemed 'disloyal' and were sent to a separate internment center at Tule Lake.
Korematsu was tried for breaking Public Law 503 and was found guilty, but the judge sentenced him to five years probation. This wasn't good enough for the government, though, and the Army took him into custody at the court house.
On Sept. 11, 1942, his lawyers appealed his suspended sentence to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth District. He lost, then appealed to the Supreme Court of the U.S.
The governments argument was based on various things.
1. Korematsu was not allowed to challenge internment since the subject was not brought up at the original trial on breaking Public Law 503.
2. Internment was a way of keeping safety on the West Coast.
3. The War Power Clause of the U.S. Constitution allowed special measures to be taken in event of a war. (This allows Congress the right to create any laws necessary in order to win a war.)
4. The internment was good for the Japanese Americans since they had suffered discrimination and prejudice already, and needed to be protected from possible violence against them.
Korematsu's case was based on the following:
1. He should not have been treated differently from other people due to his race, a violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
2. He should have had a trial to determine his loyalty, the lack of which was a violation of the 5th Amendment to the Constitution..
3. Public Law 503 is unconstitutional.
4. There was no real military necessity for evacuation and detention of Japanese Americans.
The Supreme Court heard arguments from both sides on October 11 and 12, 1944, and gave its ruling on December 18, 1944.
The ruling was that Korematsu's appeal was rejected 6-3. They went with the argument that it was necessary to protect the West Coast from any disloyal actions by the Japanese Americans. In effect, during wartime extraordinary measures may need to be taken, even if those measures seem to violate protections of individual liberties.
The case was reopened on January 19,1983 when it was found that Korematsu's lawyers did not have all the facts they needed because several government agencies had withheld information and changed information. This even included outright lying by the War Department to the Justice Department. The argument went that, since the Supreme Court had been given inadequate and incorrect information, their decision would have been based on faulty premises and thus should be reexamined. The end result was that the judge who heard the case found in favor of Korematsu, and his conviction was to be erased from the records.
The exclusion order ended on January 2, 1945.
In 1971, Nixon signed a law that said that Congress would have to approve anything like Executive Order 9066 being used again. President Ford signed a law that ended all power given by Executive order 9066.
August 10, 1988 saw a bill pass Congress that granted $20,000 reparations payment to each person who had been at an internment camp (many had died of old age and other causes by then, of course).
This is a very detailed book on the topic of how the US and Japan exchanged prisoners during the war and, as usual, I will point out a few highlights.
The group in charge of all the problems related to this is called the Special Division. It's task was to try to get Americans repatriated from the war zones. In 1941 one of the representatives of the department was given the task of researching the person of Japanese ancestry in the US to determine if they were a threat to the country. His report concluded that 'there is no Japanese problem.' The report said that the vast majority of Issei would be neutral in any Japanese-American conflict, and the Nisei would be loyal to the US. Since this wasn't what some people wanted to hear, the report was discounted, which helped lead to the internment of the Japanese Americans.
In October of 1941 the decision was made that the Justice department would be responsible for any interned aliens for the short term, but the Army would take over if internment was for the duration of the war.
Right after the attack on Pearl Harbor those termed 'dangerous individuals' were rounded up, along with Japanese diplomats. As early as Dec. 10, 1941, the Treasury Department recommended the relocation of persons of Japanese ancestry living on the US West Coast.
On Dec. 15th, the Secretary of the Navy said that, in his opinion, the Hawaiian Japanese had helped in preparing the attack on Pearl Harbor, even though there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever that this was true.
The Attorney General of California, Earl Warren (who later headed the Supreme Court of the United States), said that all Japanese were potential threats to America, even if they were citizens of the US. This view was backed by the American Legion and other groups.
While all this was going on the governments of Canada and Mexico had begun to take their own actions against persons of Japanese ancestry living in their countries. It is possible that reports from what those two countries did helped influence the later US decision to intern the Japanese-Americans in camps.
In February of 1941 there was yet another call for all Japanese in Hawaii to be removed to the mainland. In early 1942 the political pressure built enough to cause the issuance of Executive Order 9066, calling for West Coast to be declared a military zone and removing persons of Japanese ancestry from the area.
The book notes that at least five different agencies were involved in detaining PJA (persons of Japanese ancestry). Some of the PJA had been labeled by the FBI as being potentially dangerous. They were taken and held until a hearing could determine their status. Some were put into internment camps, others were put into jails and local prisons. Doing this ran counter to the 1907 Hague Convention and the 1929 Geneva accords.
In January of 1944, the Japanese protested when their hospital ship, the Buenos Aires Maru, was sunk by an American submarine. In May, 1945, another American submarine sunk another hospital ship, the Awa Maru. That ship had been carrying Red Cross relief supplies to Japanese POWs in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. The US government refused to apologize of that incident.
The Spanish embassy was the go-between for the US and Japan, and it investigated claims about problems with the American internment camps. At Ft. Missoula, Montana, they determined that there was not enough meat and vegetables in the daily diet, and that there was not an adequate supply of medicines.
The Spanish would report problems to the US first, to give them time to fix the problems, before reporting them to Japan, to help decrease any anger the Japanese might have.
In November of 1943, the Spanish warned the State Department that internees at Santa Fe internees were upset over a reunification of families, and that a general strike was possible.
The Japanese government protested the internment camps on August 3, 1942, for the first time. They said that the US was eradicating 'all Japanese communities' and were denying Japanese nationals their 'very basis of living'. They wanted any living quarters provided to be decent and ones that could allow the people to engage in their normal occupations, be protected from violence, and providing assistance to families with women and children.
The US view was that the centers 'had to be located on lands available to the federal government which could e taken over or converted as relocation projects with a minimum of friction with the white population of the Western states,' meaning that the camps got built in very bad places.
Around 2800 of the internees wanted to be sent back to Japan. The book explains that this consisted of three subgroups. One was very old people who wanted to die in Japan. Another group was the kibei, those born in the US but educated in Japan. The last group was younger boys and girls who were pro-American, did not want to go back to Japan, but had to because their parents wanted to.
The book then describes some of the troubles at the Tule Lake camp.
Leslie T. Hatamiya, 1993
The book starts out with a timeline of events and an explanation of what the book is about, then goes into the actual wartime experience of the Japanese Americans. including the anti-Japanese prejudice, the outbreak of war, the evacuations and internments, the JACL, etc.
Chapter 2 deals with how Congress works. Chapter 3 is entitled Chances for Success. This goes into the politics of the Japanese-American community and the redress movement along with opposition to redress. Chapter 4 is a detailed analysis of a Conference Report on redress (in considerable detail).
Chapter 5 is about the Commission on Wartime Relocation and their report Personal Justice denied. Chapter 6 deals with the Democrats recapturing the Senate in an election and what this had to do with the redress movement. Chapter 7 is about how four Japanese-American Congressman were involved in the redress movement. The next chapter concerns the Aleutian Islanders and how they were part of the redress movement.
Chapter 8 goes into the Japanese-American community after the release from the camps and onward and how they gradually became involved in the redress movement. The rest of the book deals with yet more details about what happened in relation to the bill, an appendices, and a section of notes.
For those who are interested in the legal and Congressional details of the redress movement than this is a valuable book; for others, you'd probably want to skip it.
This shameful episode in American history sheds light on the depth and persistence of anti-Asian racism, the capitulation of military officials and political leaders to such bigotry, and the Court's reliance on racial stereotypes to justify the suspension of constitutional protections.
The book notes that initially some newspapers called for tolerance for the Japanese-Americans, but that changed rather soon to articles against them. The author notes that a report called the "Final Recommendation" urged the mass relocation of the Japanese Americans due to fear of sabotage and espionage on their part, but presented no evidence whatever than any such thing had taken place. The report was by DeWitt who used the argument that, since nothing had happened, that proved that it was going to, and that the military should get the Issei and the Nisei out of California and other West Coast areas.
The book also examines a good reason why so few fought the attempt to be sent to internment camps. If you didn't go to the camps, you went to prison. Not much of an alternative. The book examines how three men challenged the internment in courts.
Gordon Hirabayashi. Born 1918. Conscientious objector to the exclusion orders. Arrested for curfew violation. Federal district court Judge Lloyd Black was anti-Japanese (the book has some fascinating quotes from him) and found Hirabayashi guilty. Sentenced to two concurrent ninety-day terms.
Minoru Yasui: Born 1916. Was ordered to report for duty at Fort Vancouver in Washington State. When he showed up in uniform, he was told to get off the base. Arrested for curfew violation. The judge's written opinion included such wonderful things as linking her to the attack on Pearl Harbor and saying she was subject to the Emperor of Japan even though she was an American citizen (she was born in the U.S.) Found guilty, given a year in prison and a fine.
Fred Korematsu. Born 1919. Tried to escape the internment, going so far as to have plastic surgery on his eyelids, all in order to remain with his Caucasian girlfriend. Was arrested while on a street corner. At the trial he said he was willing to serve in the military, but had been rejected on medical grounds. Found guilty, sentenced to five-years probation.
All three appealed to the Supreme Court. Hirabayashi's conviction was upheld. Korematsu's conviction was upheld. In 1983 the three filed petitions arguing that they should not have been convicted since some of the government testimony was based on untruths. The convictions of all three were overturned based on government misconduct during the earlier trials.
This is all in chapter 8 of the book, with the rest of the book being basically an historical examination of the misuse of Presidential powers from the very beginning of the country right up to the present.
Eric L. Muller, 2001
It starts off quite interesting since the author is Jewish and the son of German immigrants who had to flee Nazi Germany. After they settled here and the war started, though, they were relisted as 'enemy aliens,' their farm searched and they were prohibited from traveling more than five miles from their farm.
The author talks about the drafting of the Nisei and how they faced a terrible choice; either they fight against the country of their ancestry or they refused and became subject to prosecution. They were behind barbed wire, held prisoners by the U.S. because of their ancestry and yet, at the same time, they were expected to be willing to join the U.S. military and fight against Japan. How many people would be expected to agree to fight for a country that had you and your family locked up in a prison camp simply because you had relatives that were born in a country the U.S. was at war with, even though you, yourself, were a full-blown U.S. citizen?
It's fairly easy to see why some refused to be drafted.
More than 300 Japanese from the ten camps became draft resisters. They were arrested and tried in 1944 and almost without exception were found guilty and sentenced to prison terms of two to five years. The author goes into the history of the JACL also. Then he talks about individual reactions to Pearl Harbor and the FBI crackdown on the Nisei and Issei.
Next the author discusses the curfew, the assembly centers and then the relocation centers. On Feb. 1, 1943, FDR announced that a segregated combat unit would be formed for the Nisei. What is significant is that the government wanted the Nisei to start volunteering while they had basically just a short time before had removed the Nisei from the military or put them into dead-end type jobs. So not only did the Nisei have to consider that they were behind barbed wire but the government that originally didn't even want them in the military suddenly expected them to be gung-ho for getting into the military.
The military actually expected that about one of every three male Nisei (of proper age) in the camps would be willing to volunteer. This is, of course, when they decide to come up with the infamous loyalty questionnaire that just caused even more trouble about the Nisei.
The situations at the different camps is talked about including some trouble at the Tule Lake center. Then matters worsened when the volunteer movement didn't get as many volunteers as the military wanted so they said they would start drafting the Nisei.
Again, the author examines what happened at some of the camps, especially in relation to those who refused to report for duty. The government was also threatening those who defied the military with imprisonment. The author also deals with specific people rather than just general numbers.
The types of tactics that the government used to try to silence and control the resisters are, in general, quite disgusting and do not make for pleasant reading.
The trial of 63 resisters from Heart Mountain is talked about, especially the part where the judge referred to the defendants as 'you Jap boys.' Not saying much for fairness or impartiality. (Apparently the judge didn't care much for blacks or Jews, either.)
The various trials the resisters from various camps underwent is discussed in considerable detail. It follows this with a discussion of the prisons the men were sent to when they were found guilty.
For anyone interested in the legal aspects of the draft resistance movement, what led up to it and its aftermath, this is an excellent book to read.
The book notes that even many of the lawyers hired to defend the young men did not like persons of Japanese ancestry and would take little if any part at all in their actual defense.
This book for young adults starts out by talking about the racial prejudice against Japanese Americans on the west coast before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and how this changed to hatred afterward. It also points out that the teenage Nisei (those born in the U.S. of Japanese parents) were no different from other teenagers except for their race, but that was all that was needed for people to hate them.
The book notes how the Japanese Americans that were in the military were thrown out of it and how no others were accepted at the time. Then it discusses the assembly centers and the relocation centers.
The book points out that Japanese propaganda given to other Asian countries was along the lines of 'we're all Asians and the U.S. is carrying on a racist war against us.' Thus, allowing Nisei to join the U.S. military was being realized as a good idea for counter-propaganda. The Nisei of the 100th battalion chose the motto 'Remember Pearl Harbor' as their own. Other Nisei were recruited and formed the 442nd combat team and their motto was 'Go for broke'.
Wanting to prove themselves the Nisei worked harder than almost any other soldiers. The 100th battalion was shipped to North Africa. They were then shipped to Italy where they were held as a reserve unit (and part of another unit), but then were called into active fighting. Shigeo Takata was the first of the men killed in battle. They were so impressive that one of the Generals asked for more men like them.
The book then goes on to describe some of the battles that the group was in. Starting with 1400 men, the unit ended up losing 900 killed or wounded so the 442nd regiment merged with them to keep it an all Nisei unit, although it was officially called the 442nd regiment and not the 100th battalion. Some of the German prisoners ended up getting confused, wondering if Japan had switched sides and was now fighting with the U.S. instead of against it.
The 442nd was then transferred to France. They were the ones who rescued the 'trapped battalion', the 1st battalion of the 36th Division's 141st infantry which were surrounded by Germans. They not only got to the trapped men but kept going forward, capturing a slope the 141st had been unable to take, kept moving and split the German forces apart so the rest of the 36th Division could move in right behind them, sending the German army into retreat.
On December 18, 1944 the Supreme Court ruled all Japanese-Americans had to be freed from the internment camps. The 442nd had suffered so many casualties that replacement Nisei had to be sent, then the unit was moved back to Italy. They formed part of a group which consisted of the all-Japanese-American group, an all-black group, and an all-white group. ( Such discrimination was still going on in WW II against the blacks). The attack was supposed to be a diversion for a bigger attack elsewhere but the 442nd fought their usual way, overran the German positions, taking a major road in the process. Once the main attack got under way the German army was finished in Italy.
The book then talks about the Nisei who helped in the Pacific Theater by translating Japanese into English. They would question captives, translate any documents that were found, etc. Nisei in other positions are also discussed.
The book is very good, has a lot of extremely good photographs and is written in a style that is very readable and enjoyable.
Thelma Chang, 1991
This is one of the books about the Japanese-Americans who fought for the US in World War II, despite the fact that their parents and other loved ones were in internment camps in the US.
Like the other books on the topic, this is a very good book, very interesting. I will only point out some highlights from the book.
The groups the men served in were the US Army's 100th Infantry Battalion, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the Military Intelligence Service, and the 1399th Engineer Construction battalion (the 370th Engineer Battalion formed the nucleus of this group).
The first two groups ended up fighting in Europe, and were the most decorated units of their size in US Army history.
The 1399th was in Hawaii, building roads, bridges, airfields, barracks, etc. During the early part of the war, while the men worked, they were kept under armed guard. In other words, soldiers in the US military were being guarded by soldiers in the US military. How would it make you feel if you were trying to do something for your country, and you had to do it while you were being guarded by armed men, simply because your parents were Japanese?
The 100th and the 442nd became one unified group in June, 1944. The 100th became the first battalion of the 442nd, but they were still allowed to keep their own designation. The groups served in Italy and France, and acquired over 18.000 individual decorations for bravery, a Congressional Medal of Honor, and 52 Distinguished Service Crosses.
This was not done with their paying a very heavy price, however. The 100th/442nd lost about two-thirds of their men in the fighting. In one review, the division commander wondered why there were so few men assembled, and he was told that the men there were all that were left of the units.
They were the objects of hatred and discrimination while in the US, training, though. Some white businessmen wanted all the Japanese in Hawaii removed to the mainland internment camps, which was really something that was not feasible and would have dealt a major economic blow to Hawaii if it would have been done.
The book talks about Hawaii just after the attack on Pearl Harbor. On the 7th, the Governor of Hawaii placed the area under martial law (Hawaii was a territory and not a state at the time). He also suspended the right of habeas corpus, which was a person's right under the law to protection from illegal imprisonment. Lieutenant General Walter Short proclaimed himself 'military governor' at the same time. He suppressed civil courts and put things under military rule, which mean that even misdemeanors would be tried in provost courts, presided over by Army officers, who decided punishment without reference to federal or local statues. That lasted for three years.
Japanese fishing fleets were impounded. Hawaiians were urged to report any meetings of Japanese. The persons of Japanese ancestry were prohibited from travel or changing residences. They could not enter certain security areas, and all this even included Japanese-Americans working for the Military Intelligence Service.
How about the fear of persons of Japanese ancestry spying for Japan? From 1942 through 1944, 18 were charged with spying for Japan. All 18 were white.
In early 1942, the War Department pushed for the removal of all soldiers of Japanese ancestry from active service. By spring of 1942, a General Emmons wanted all Japanese-American officers and men in the 298th and 299th Regiments put into a Hawaiian Provisional battalion and then sent to the mainland.
No Japanese-American officer was allowed to head a rifle company.
When the nisei were moved to the mainland, there were problems with nisei that were from the mainland. Those from Hawaii and those from the mainland didn't get along at first, the Hawaiians being sort of a rowdy, but close-knit group, the mainlanders being more reserved and more individualistic. If someone needed some money for something, he would just ask and someone else would give him the money, but mainlanders didn't do that type of thing. There were even fights between the two groups from time to time.
The nisei soldiers also had some difficulty when they were sent to the South for training, as they were not ready for the intense black/white segregation of the south. At first, they didn't even know what water fountains to drink from; those marked White, or those marked Colored (although they were later told to use the White fountains.)
It is interesting that the book uses the term 'concentration camp' for the internment camp at Jerome, Arkansas.
This is another book on the Nisei who served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II, many doing so even while their families were held behind barbed wire in various internment camps in the U.S.
The book provides some general information on the men, and goes into great detail about the battles that they fought in Europe.
There is a monument in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles that lists the names of 16,126 Nisei men and 37 Nisei women who served with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The 442nd and its elements ended with with almost 5000 Bronze and Silver Stars, Distinguished service Crosses, and Medals of Honor.
An early part of the book deals with the interment of persons of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast. It mentions Munson's report to FDR, in which it was concluded that there was no Japanese “problem” on the coast at all. Munson even noted that the Nisei were 'eager to show their loyalty.'
Unfortunately, none of that stopped FDR from issuing Executive Order 9066, and the government from rounding up over 110,000 persons of Japanese Ancestry from the West Coast and shipping them to internment camps, generally in the middle of the country. The author points out that the order did not apply to any of those persons of Japanese ancestry who lived in the Eastern or the Central part of the country. Logically, if some group is dangerous at Point A, then they should also be dangerous in Point B, especially if you are talking about sabotage.
One thing I had not noted elsewhere was that a deep undercover Lieutenant counterintelligence officer was assigned to go undercover and study the Japanese Americans in Hawaii, to determine if they were any threat. His report was that 'no American citizens or alien Japanese residents of Hawaii was involved in any acts of hostility against the U.S. Forces.'
The book notes there was one Japanese spy in Hawaii, but after the war he noted that he couldn't get anywhere with the Issei or Nisei in Hawaii, that they were all too loyal to the U.S.
The rest of the book is spent on the details of the 442nd's fighting in Europe, and didn't really offer anything especially new that I hadn't read elsewhere.
Overall a good book, although not significantly different or better than other books on the same subject.
Joseph D. Harrington, 1979
The author talks about the 100th and 442nd and notes that the story of the Nisei in the Pacific is sometimes overlooked. It concerned about 5000 Nisei who served as translators, interpreters, interrogators and combat infantry. The author starts by relating the story of two Nisei who served as spies for the U.S. shortly before the war began, and relates one of them to the rumor of a Japanese pilot during Pearl Harbor being shot down and wearing a high school ring from a U.S. high school.
At the start of the war apparently only about 100 people in the U.S. (other than the Issei and Nisei) spoke Japanese The Japanese military thus continued to mark their maps, etc, in regular Japanese and didn't bother to put everything into code, thinking no U.S. soldiers could translate what they had written.
Convincing the military to use Nisei was not an easy task, but eventually the decision was made and it proved to be one of the best ones made during the entire war. It's also pointed out that many Nisei had little if any knowledge of Japanese, they had become so 'Americanized.'
A lot of the book deals with personal experiences of individual people, which is one of the books main strengths.
The author talks about Pearl Harbor and the differences in the reaction to West Coast Nisei and Hawaiian Nisei. Not everything went well for the Nisei, though, as almost all the Nisei GI's on Hawaii were pulled from their regular outfits during the time of the Battle of Midway and their guns were taken away from them. They were then shipped away from Oahu and were told they were going to be in a 'special battalion' which was an obvious lie to all of them. The military just didn't want 'armed Japanese' on the island of Oahu if the battle of Midway was lost and Yamamoto decided to attack Pearl Harbor again.
The third chapter takes a step back and goes into the opening of Japan by Admiral Perry and Japanese immigration to Hawaii and the U.S. mainland.
A unit under MacArthur was the Allied Translator and Interpreter Service which was made use of the Nisei to translate captured documents. The book goes on to tell about how this or that group of linguists was shipped to this or that place and what they started doing once they got there. All of this is quite fascinating and interesting.
The author points out that it was common in the Japanese army for men to keep diaries, but that was restricted in the American army. The diaries provided quite a bit of useful information (once translated). The author also describes the type of behavior expected of the Nisei in Hawaii by their parents.
One of the most important documents they translated was seized on Goodenough Island, north of New Guinea, after a battle in which the Japanese forces were decimated. The book listed every Japanese army officer, his rank, the unit he was serving with and his job, all of which were of major help to the U.S. military.
The differences between the Hawaiian soldiers and the mainlander Nisei soldiers is gone into with a very fascinating account of the origin of the terms Buddahead and kotonk.
As the war went on and it became apparent the U.S. would win (which they knew as of Spring, 1943, according to the author) the demand for Nisei translators increased and they became highly sought-after.
Another good thing the author does is insert here and there bits of what was going on elsewhere such as Mussolini dying, the 100th going off to fight, etc, so the reader can put what was going on in the Pacific into historical perspective.
The rest of the book deals with still more details about the rest of the Pacific war, individual battles, Japanese kamikaze boats and planes, and the end of the war. Then it also covers what happened after the war and how the Nisei helped during the occupation of Japan and how this led to Japan's being close to the U.S. as time war on.
This is a particularly fascinating and excellent book covering aspects of the use of the Nisei that few other books go into. Definitely worth reading.
Gary Y. Okihiro, 1991
The book consists of three parts, the first covering the years 1865 to 1909 and the second 1910 to 1940. The third covers the WWII years and is the section I'll deal with mainly.
The first section goes into a discussion of the early Japanese immigration as workers into Hawaii and covers the employee problems that happened and concern by the U.S. military over the Japanese workers long before World War II.
The third section of the book starts by noting that the government was considering how to establish martial law in Hawaii in the fall of 1941, even before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Various attempts by the Nisei in Hawaii to show their patriotism are discussed. The military was also realizing that placing all the Hawaiian Japanese-Americans in internment camps would not be practical, and they would all have to be replaced by white workers which was also not practical.
There were three plans drawn up, depending on whether or not Hawaii itself was in danger of invasion. If there was no danger to Hawaii, fewer than 250 people would be rounded up, 217 of them Japanese consular workers, and held. The second scenario was if surprise raids against the island were possible, and under that scenario an additional 54 would be picked up and held and the rest of the Issei and Nisei population would be put under surveillance and 'be subject to state propaganda to ensure loyalty.'
The third strategy was based on a threat of invasion of the islands, in which case martial law would be declared and all suspected Japanese would be interned. The author then talks about the Sand Island camp which almost no other book even mentions much less has a good amount of material in it on the camp as does this book.
They used the same system there as elsewhere; 'enemy aliens' were Issei; Nisei were not considered enemy aliens since they were U.S. citizens; kibei, the ones who were born in the U.S. and went to Japan to be educated and then returned, were considered with perhaps the greatest suspicion of all three groups.
There were quite a few restrictions on the Issei. Certain areas were off-limits to them; they couldn't leave their home island without permission and they couldn't write or publish anything critical of the government.
There was even a 'Speak American Campaign' urging all the Japanese Americans to stop speaking Japanese and speak only English. In 1942 the Honolulu Police Department got a 'vagrancy detail' program going where it rounded up unemployed adults who were called 'deserters' by the military. They were sentenced to imprisonment and hard labor. For example, a woman who no longer wanted to work at a laundry refused to report; she was arrested and sentenced to thirty days.
This was complicated by the fact that the Issei and some Nisei were prohibited from doing certain jobs; war project and dock work, fishing, transportation, photography and teaching. There was also strict supervision and attempted control of any unions in which Japanese members were a majority, especially if they threatened to or did strike. Plantation owners could get lists of unemployed workers (remember the law above?) In effect the military forced the Japanese Americans into a controlled labor program.
The book goes on to cover what things happened towards the end of the war and thereafter. The subject of Hawaiian Issei and Nisei is one that is usually either not covered at all or given very little coverage, usually along the lines of 'they weren't interned in large numbers.' This book shows what really happened and how the treatment of some of those arrested matched in cruelty and humiliation the worst things done in the Iraq prisons by U.S. soldiers.
Definitely not a happy-reading type book, but one that is very good and very important nevertheless.
Michael L. Cooper, 2000
The author starts by discussing the reaction to Pearl Harbor and the hysteria that resulted when a Japanese submarine shelled an oil refinery (with almost no success, however). Then he goes into a short history of the internment program.
The next chapter starts out discussing the Chinese immigration to the U.S. and then moves into a discussion of the Japanese immigration. The third chapter discusses the internment camps. It goes into what they did in the camps, the loyalty questionnaire and Army recruitment efforts in the camps. Some of the men who did volunteer ran into considerable harassment from others who did not support the idea of volunteering for a nation that had put them behind barbed wire.
Training Camp is the title of the next chapter and the author goes right into how the Hawaiian Nisei and the mainlanders did not get along at all well. The chapter has a good bit of information in it and an excellent selection of photographs.
The next chapter discusses the fighting in Italy and is extremely graphic in its description of the horrors of the war. This is not a pretty chapter but it's a very good examination of the kinds of things that really happen during a war.
Chapter 6 deals with the resettlement of the Japanese Americans in the camps. The author points out the hatred for the Japanese that still existed on the West Coast and some of the reasons.
Chapter 7 returns to the military Nisei units. The rescue of the 'Lost Battalion' is covered in the chapter. The next chapter goes back to the fighting in Italy and tells how an American commander gave a Nisei unit a week to capture a particular mountain target and they did it within two days, then moved on to capture other targets and cut supply lines.
Again, some of the discussion in the chapter is extremely gruesome. The end of the war in the Pacific is covered rather quickly.
Chapter 9 covers the evacuees as they returned to their homes, finding that many if not all of the possessions they thought had been safely stored were now gone. The chapter goes into some of the hatred that they found but also covers some of the help they got from the white community.
Positive points of the book: A lot of excellent photographs and some good information.
Negative points: This is absolutely not a book for everyone, especially for younger readers, as the discussion of some of the fighting in the war and the types of wounds the men received are extremely graphic and could easily be upsetting to some. This is important in that this library book was classified as a Young Adult book. Also, the organization of the book is a little odd in that it sort of seems to bounce around a bit in what it's discussing.
David J. O'Brien, 1991
The author starts by noting the difference in attitude towards Japanese-Americans fifty years ago and now, and how now they have become firmly established in the middle class society. Their average income is higher than that of whites; they live in Caucasian neighborhoods, primarily, and they marry out of their race about half the time.
The author then notes 'structural constraints' on the Japanese-Americans which set limits on what they were able to do when they were first coming into this country. One thing he points out is the homogeneous nature of the Japanese people, especially at that time and this helped their communities to stay together, whereas the white immigrants were fractured into numerous nationalistic groups that didn't always get along with each other.
He then discusses their experience in organization and setting up formal organizations which helped them a lot in the development of their economy. He discusses 'cultural relativism,' in which the Japanese are open to new experiences in clothes, food, religion, etc, as long as it doesn't interfere with the group survival. Changes in personal behavior patterns, the elimination of politeness, for example, would be unacceptable, whereas eating hamburgers and other Western food would be ok.
In 1873 the method of taxation changed and this resulted in many farmers losing their farms; hence, this established a pressure for emigration. Another thing was an odd draft law. National conscription also started in 1873. If a young man went abroad and stayed out of the country until he was 32, then he would no longer be eligible for the draft. If there was a younger son then he would be declared head of family and also be ineligible for the draft. Yet another reason was the opening of Japan to foreign trade which ended up showing there was a need for workers in other countries.
He next talks about the actual emigration and points out that most of the immigrants came from four prefectures; Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Fukuoka and Kumamoto. These immigrants ended up going to Hawaii and were primarily farmers. Immigrants to the West Coast ended up being mainly students and merchants. He then discusses Japanese farmers in the U.S. and their effect on labor organizations relating to farming. Their successes in that and farming caused problems with white farmers, and this led to the growing anti-Japanese movement in the U.S., which is detailed in the book.
More differences between the Hawaiian immigrants and U.S. ones are discussed, especially in relation to the 'Buddhaheads' vs. the 'Kotonks.' (Which eventually led to some trouble when the two groups entered the military and were trained together and did not get along at all well, at least at first.)
Problems in finding jobs are also discussed. For example, even high achieving students of the Japanese-American community were prevented from become teachers in the very public schools they did so well at as students.
The attack on Pearl Harbor is the next thing covered in the book. The book points out that experienced officers didn't really worry about the U.S. being invaded by Japan since its major forces were 5000 miles away and further. The German air force was actually closer to the U.S. than the Japanese military. ( I remember watching one program on T.V. that noted an experimental German long-range bomber actually came within 12 miles of Manhattan before turning back. The Germans were also working on rockets which, if they would have had time, would have had the range to hit the U.S. Japan had nothing of the sort nor was really planning anything like that. In addition, Germany was working on the atomic bomb and Japan wasn't.)
However racism won and the Japanese-Americans, Issei and Nisei, were relocated from the West Coast. The book goes into the assembly centers and then the internment camps (using the term 'concentration camps') It then moves on to the loyalty questionnaire and the use of the Nisei in the military. He then goes into the psychological effects of the incarceration in the camps.
Then he goes into the redress movement. After that he discusses the postwar experiences of the Nisei, especially in relation to their acculturation into society. The amount of involvement in the ethnic community is the next topic to be discussed; sort of how much 'Japaness' do the Japanese-Americans retain as their adapt more and more to the American culture.
The rest of the book is a sociological examination of Japanese culture, how it fits into American cultures, the problems it has doing so, what effects this attempt to fit in has on its own ethnic culture. etc.
This is a very well done and very interesting book, taking a more sociological approach and analysis of Japanese-American culture, including the period of evacuation, internment and immediately thereafter. Quite a good book.
The book starts out with an introduction by George Takai (Sulu from Star Trek). Then it goes into the history of Japan around the time of Admiral Perry's 'visit,' using narratives from people who were alive at that time. These accounts are fascinating, as are the photos with them.
The book covers right up to the present. The strength of the book is in the personal accounts, making the history the book is discussing much more real. the book has a good section on the interment of the persons of Japanese ancestry during WWII. It uses both terms; 'internment camp' and concentration camp.' That's a sticking point for some people who study the history of what happened.
A thoroughly excellent book.
by Jennifer M. Contino, 2003
The book starts with an introduction explaining immigration and assimilation and the “hyphenated American” that is now so prevalent.
Then it starts to talk about Japanese history. I had to stop just a few pages in because of a reference to “Emperor Edo” at the time of Admiral Perry. The person's name was Emperor Komei. Edo is the old name for Tokyo, not the name of the Emperor of the time.
The book also says the Emperor was assassinated. Emperor Komei is said to have died of smallpox, although there is a possibility that he was poisoned, but the smallpox explanation seems to be the more common one. I can't recall seeing a book like this that has two factual errors on the same page.
The book then talks about Japanese immigration to the U.S. The book does do something good which most others have not, and that is talk about how the Japanese plantation workers were abused by their bosses.
The book then goes on to talk about the various anti-Japanese legal measures that were taken to slow and then stop immigration; it also discusses the prejudice against them shown by whites.
After that it discusses the evacuation and internment camp process.
The book has a glossary and further references.
by Harry Kitano, 1996
This is not a book specifically about the internment camps, although it does have that part of history included. It starts out talking about Japanese immigration to the U.S. and talks about the racism they faced but it also talks about problems with cultural misunderstandings.
The book then goes on to example the influences of Shinto, Buddhism and Christianity on the Japanese. It also discusses the early history of the shogunate and the Tokugawa response to Christianity.
The first immigrants from Japan went to Hawaii in 1868. By 1899 there were more than 65,000 Japanese workers in Hawaii. The book then goes on to talk about how the Japanese then emigrated to California and some of the problems they faced. It then discusses the "yellow peril" problem and its origins in Japanese expansionism into China and other areas.
Next to be discussed as the various generations of Japanese Americans and how each generation was related to the way they were brought up.
The fourth chapter specifically deals with the evacuations, including the evacuations themselves and the time right after the internment was ended.
The book then goes into Japanese-American society after the war and includes information on typical Japanese foods and festivals. After that it talks about various Japanese-Americans that have made important contributions to our society.
A small, concise but good book on Japanese Americans. The chapter on Japanese-Americans who have made important contributions to our society is particularly interesting.
This is a somewhat older book on the subject, being put out in 1971. Sections include those relating to the immigration of Japanese into the US, what happened to them after that, the internment camps, what happened after those, and sections on Japan including it's history, religions, etc. It's more along the lines of a sociological analysis than a purely historical recitation of events.
As such it's quite an interesting book with a significant section on the camps and the events that led up to the internment of the people of Japanese ancestry in the US.
In relation to early anti-Japanese feelings in California the author cites various specific incidents of violence being committed by whites against the Japanese immigrants.
Something which I hadn't seen elsewhere; the Kingdom of Hawaii had passed a constitution in 1887 which prohibited persons from the orient from voting. The Kingdom was later basically overthrown by US businesses and the once independent country became an official US territory and eventually a state.
The first anti-Japanese land law was enacted in California in 1913, showing that there was a long history of anti-Japanese sentiment in the state, well before the events at Pearl Harbor.
Another thing I hadn't seen elsewhere was the position of the Communist party in the US in relation to the internment of the Japanese Americans. They were in favor of the internment, and they even helped to spread rumors about 'fifth column' activities by Japanese Americans in the attack on Pearl Harbor. There's actually quite a bit in the book about various liberal/leftist groups and how they reacted, or didn't react, to the anti-Japanese prejudice, evacuation and internment.
There's also quite a bit on Earl Warren's anti-Japanese statements in California. (He was later the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, by the way.)
A very interesting quote from the book:In their function and mode of operation, these were essentially prison camps but overlaid with a thick patina of official euphemism. Some called the camps internment camps, some concentration camps, and this author prison camps.
He goes into the gradual dissolution of the camps and talks about the process being one that was quite difficult and not as easy as some other books would lead one to believe, noting that the process was fought each step of the way on various legal issues.
Another quote: The Japanese Americans were the victims of a pointless, cruel injustice. Aided in their rehabilitations by only a few individuals and impecunious organizations, they had in fact to depend essentially on themselves to survive through the camp period, to establish a record of unmistakable loyalty to the United States, and to find their way back to normal life.
There's also a section on how the people of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii managed after the end of the war.
Definitely a very interesting book.
This is another of the somewhat older books on the subject, dating from 1969. It's more sociological than historical in nature although it does have a good bit of material on the internment camps.
It covers the history before, during and after the internment camps, and also goes into various aspects of Japanese American/Japanese culture.
The author has a section on the Santa Anita riot and he refers to the camps as being concentration camps, that 'in most senses' that's what they actually were. The author explores both negative and positive results of the internment, noting that:
But the most relevant point for our purpose is that the wartime evacuation aided the acculturation of the Japanese, especially the Nisei. New exposure, new opportunities, the dissolution of old institutions and structures, and life away from the ghettos hastened change.
At the same time the author notes that most families were ruined economically and that the family structure itself was damaged by life in the camps, even having an effect on the husband/wife relationships.
The author raises two questions; why did the internment occur, and why did the Japanese Americans cooperate? To the first, he notes racism, pressure from special-interest groups, the background of anti-Oriental prejudice, wartime conditions and the basic fact that few organizations spoke up in defense of the Japanese Americans.
As far as why did they cooperate include political powerlessness, the lack of any major leaders in the Japanese American community, economics and psychological conditions.
The author discusses the JACL somewhat and why there are still somewhat negative feelings towards it.
This is a book for young people covering a brief history of Japan, Japanese immigration to the U.S., the internment camps and after, and Japanese in America today. It has some very interesting tidbits, including one example of an immigration that tried to get a haircut and was denied, the barber driving him out of the barber shop.
They get into the definition battle, saying that relocation camps and internment camps were different, and that the Japanese that were a threat to national security were put into camps in North dakota, Nebraska and Texas.
One of the things they have that most similar books don't is a page on Japanese movies as seen in the U.S., including The Seven Samurai (which was the model for The Magnificent Seven), the horror movies The Ring and The Grudge (watch the Japanese versions of both movies; they are much better than the American remakes), and Hayao Miyazaki's films such as Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle (both of which are really good. )They also mention Princess Mononoke. (Another one is probably the most upsetting and saddest Japanese animated movie I have ever seen, which is Grave of the Fireflies.)
Bill Hosokawa, 1982.
This book examines the history of the JACL, an organization that has had its share of controversy. The first seven chapters deal with pre-WWII times. This goes into great details on the founding of the organization and the people involved. There's a substantial section of photos after the end of the eighth chapter and it includes the history of the internment process.
The book then moves onto the Pearl Harbor attack and the JACL's immediate letter to FDR assuring him of their 'fullest cooperation', and that 'we are ready and prepared to expend every effort to repel this invasion together with our fellow Americans.' This was a major move in the attempt by the JACL to establish the Japanese-Americans as being totally patriotic, almost super-patriotic in their beliefs.
Chapter 10 moves on to Executive Order 9066 and the JACL's efforts to try and keep people's reactions calm, then talks about the Hearst newspapers efforts to get the anti-Japanese hatreds stirred up again. The mass media won.
The government movement to intern the Issei and Nisei is discussed is followed by an examination of the JACL decision to cooperate with the government. This is followed by a discussion of the evacuation of those of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast area and how numerous local chapters of the JACL ended up closing down 'for the duration.'
The loyalty questionnaire that caused so many problems and the drafting of the Nisei is then discussed. The resettlement of the internees is discussed along with one major problem the government faced. It had said that the people of Japanese ancestry had to be removed from the West Coast since they were potentially unsafe as far as the country was concerned, yet it was trying to get the Eastern and Midwestern parts of the country to accept them as part of a resettlement program. If they couldn't be trusted on the West Coast, then why should they be trusted anywhere else?
The next thing the book covers are the cases that ended up before the Supreme Court. Next is some material on how the JACL became involved in the draft resistance movement, but the issue was already so polarized that there wasn't much they could do but talk to the resisters and others. They were also involved after the war in trying to clear the way for the Nisei trapped in Japan during the war to return to the U.S.
The rest of the book deals with the post-war years and JACL, ending up going into the redress movement (which was not yet completed since this book is copyright 1982 and it was 1988 before the former internees were granted $20,000 each in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.)
Considering how much appears in other books about the internment issue and JACL, it's good to have an entire book about the organization that is pretty objective in its presentation. Worth examining.
1932. The book starts off examining Japanese emigration in general. Then it goes into a chapter on Japanese immigration to Hawaii in particular. He notes that '...the practice of employing Japanese labor in Hawaii was put an end to by the Japanese government' and that lasted until 1884. It was pressure from Hawaii that finally reversed that decision.
Then follows more tables of information and statistics about the actual numbers in Hawaii, etc. This is followed by a statement about the low criminal rate among the Japanese, and then is followed by still more tables of statistical information. The next chapter deals with Japanese immigration into the United States (remember: Hawaii was not a state of the U.S. at the time.) Again, there are more tables of statistical data.
The next chapter goes into characteristics of Japanese immigrants and surprise, surprise, there's still more tables of information. A chapter on the causes of Japanese immigration is followed by one on geographical distribution. This has one interesting table in it, comparing the Japanese population by area in the U.S. from 1880 through 1930. As of 1930, there were less than 400 persons of Japanese ancestry in the New England area. Adding to this the Middle and South Atlantic areas, and you came up with a total of 4407. The central part of the country totaled 2758. The Mountain area was 11,418, and the Pacific area was 120,251. The Japanese were thus concentrated primarily on the West Coast, although there was still a moderate number on the Est Coast, but a smaller number in the center of the country.
More tables of information follow, including one showing Japanese residents by county and city for 1930. Los Angeles had the largest number, with San Francisco having a little over half that many, followed by Oakland.
Japanese in domestic service is the subject of the next chapter. The average monthly wage for a Japanese cook, for example, was $95. Japanese city trades is the next chapter (more tables of information). Their jobs were things like running hotels, restaurants, barber shops, laundries, etc.
Three kinds of shops declined in number, those being restaurants, laundries and shoe shops and cobblers, this due to 'organized hostility from their American competitors in the city.'
The next chapter covers miscellaneous occupations, and this is followed by chapters on Japanese in agriculture.
There is then a chapter on 'the cultural background of Japanese immigrants.' The writer notes that, as far as intermarriage between whites and Japanese goes, it is basically just a matter of time, pointing out that intermarriage had already occurred between whites and blacks.
This is followed by a chapter on anti-Japanese agitation. Part of it deals with the aftermath of the earthquake, and attacks on Japanese and boycotts of their stores. The school board problem is discussed, and this is followed by a chapter on The Gentlemen's Agreement, and then one on the alien land laws.
Several chapters are then devoted to the second-generation Japanese in American, including their schooling and assorted problems.
Sheila Hamanaka, 1990
This is a book geared for children, consisting of drawings with some text explaining about the internment process. The information included is condensed and quite good. A rather scary painting of the Manzanar riot shooting is included in the book.
The book covers the events before, during and after the internment program right on through the program of redress. The pictures are interesting, allowing an emotional content to be added to the images that can't really be added in regular photographs.
A good book that parents could use to discuss with younger children what happened during the internment camp program.
In October, 1944, there were four companies of a Texas Division of soldiers who were stranded in eastern France behind enemy lines. They were without reinforcements or supplies, but they ended up being rescued by the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was composed of Nisei, men of Japanese ancestry.
The 442nd 'had participated in seven major campaigns in Italy and France, received seven Presidential Distinguished Unit citations, and suffered 9,486 casualties and was awarded 18,143 individual decorations, ' all within a period of less than two years.
Their motto was 'Go For Broke.'
More than 22,500 Japanese Americans served in the Army in WWII, 18,000 of them in segregated units, most of the rest used in the Pacific theater as translators.
Keep in mind, though, that this was at a time when many of their families were being kept behind barbed wire in internment camps on the US mainland. The people had not been charged with any crime, yet their rights were taken away from them and they were basically treated like criminals.
Once Pearl Harbor was attacked, things changed radically for the persons of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii, but not as radically as those who lived on the West Coast. Lt. Gen. Delos Emmons, the military commander of the islands, considered evacuation and relocation of the persons of Japanese ancestry living in Hawaii, but instead of making a quick decision he talked to others and realized that evacuation and relocation wasn't necessary or practical.
The main thing was that the persons of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii were more integrated into the American culture than were those living on the West Coast. The reason for that deals mainly with prejudice; the AJA (Americans of Japanese Ancestry) who lived in Hawaii did not have to deal with anywhere near the level of prejudice those on the West Coast did. The AJAs in Hawaii formed about a third of the population, and they were major factors in the economics of Hawaii. The AJAs on the West Coast, though, had been disliked and hated for years; they white farmers were jealous of how successful the AJA farmers were, and the so-called community leaders often took strong anti-AJA stands along with the newspapers.
So the AJAs on the West Coast were never really given a chance to fully integrate into the larger 'American' society, while those in Hawaii were able to.
On May 28, 1942, Emmons was ordered to reorganize Japanese American soldiers into the 298th and 299th provisional battalions. The groups a week later had sailed to San Francisco, where they were then called the 100th battalion, and then shipped to Wisconsin for training.The book also describes the differences between the AJAs from Hawaii (the 'Buddhaheads' and the AJAs from the mainland (the 'kotonks.') The two groups did not get along at all well at first. They had rather different cultures that tended to clash.
The book also talks about the 'no-no's' caused by the controversial questions 27 and 28 on a questionnaire, and how they ended up at the Tule Lake internment camp. There is also a discussion of the call for volunteers, and how more AJAs from Hawaii volunteered than did AJAs from the US, which is not surprising considering they and their families were in internment camps.
May, 1943. Assistant Secretary of War McCloy says 'there [is] no longer any military necessity for the continued exclusion of all Japanese from the evacuated zone.' Still, the internees were not free to return and were not wanted.
The book points out that in the six months after Pearl Harbor, Nazi subs sunk 185 ships off the East and Gulf Coasts of the US, yet there was no cry to intern persons of German ancestry in the Eastern US.
FDRs plan was basically to disperse the persons of Japanese ancestry throughout the United States and not allow them to remain concentrated on the West Coast. Thus, the internment program was actually partially a social program to force the relocation of an entire race of people. This could have been planned to help them assimilate, or it could have been planned as a means of destroying the unity of the Japanese American community with the eventual goal of phasing out that community.
One reason for not allowing the internees to return earlier to the West Coast was that there was an election year and FDR didn't want to stir up any political on the West Coast by releasing the internees and allowing them to return to their former homes.
Problems arose when there was an effort to draft some of the internees. This caused a lot of personal difficulties. Here they were, locked up behind barbed wire, their homes gone, their jobs gone, and they were expected to respond positively to an order to fight, and maybe die, for the country that was denying them their rights as American citizens. The men would have to decide whether to go along with the draft or refuse to and take the consequences.
The book then goes into a lot of detail about the 100th Battalion and their fighting in Europe. The book is worth buying just for this section alone.
In November of 1944 ...the American Lesion post in Hood River, Oregon, erased the names of sixteen Japanese American soldiers from a memorial honoring servicemen from the area.
The move was denounced by the Secretary of War, Stimson, who called it 'wholly inconsistent with American ideals of democracy.'
The commander of the Salinas Valley American Legion said 'We don't want Japanese here and we said so bluntly in a recent resolution. There appears nothing we can do about it however.'
Within the first five months after the announcement that the 'relocation centers' would be closed, incidents of violence against returning Japanese Americans had reached such proportions that Secretary Ickes issued a public statement denouncing the perpetrators and demanding more effective protection for the returning evacuees.
The East Coast, on the other hand, was much more open to the returning of the evacuees, and the 442nd got a hero's welcome in New York City.
This book was written by students 8 to 14 years-old, under the direction of adults, and is a very good examination of Japanese-American culture. It covers the history of Japan and does talk about the internment camps. It covers a wide variety of topics related to Japanese culture, then talks about specific Japanese-Americans.
It also covers Japanese stories and language, and includes hands-on activities related to crafts, games and recipes. This is a very well-done book.
Dennis M. Ogawa, 1978
The first six chapters of the book deal with Japanese immigration to Hawaii and the various problems they faced and things they accomplished. Each chapter consists of numerous smaller sections written by various people.
Chapter 7 is the first chapter to deal with the WWII part of Japanese-American history and it has the report of Curtis Munson. Munson was one of the people who studied the Japanese American population and came to the conclusion that they were not a threat to the U.S. and there was no need to gather them all up and ship them to internment camps. Other sections, both pro- and anti-Japanese/Hawaiian/American are in the chapter. Chapter 8 covers the issue of volunteering for the U.S. military, including information on the 442nd.
The rest of the book deals with Hawaiian Japanese Americans after WWII.
The book is written in an interesting manner, having various articles from various authors on each side of an issue, but it's section on the WWII situation with the Japanese-Americans is relatively small in size although it does contain Munson's report on Hawaii, something which few if any other books quote in any length.
This is a very cute book for young kids. It has some very pretty pictures in it, and describes the life of a young Japanese-American girl. At the same time, it covers a lot of the Japanese traditions and cultural activities, so it's also a good introduction to Japanese culture for young people.
Donna K. Nagata, 1993
The author discusses what terms to use and prefers the use of the word "concentration camp" and explains why she feels that term is appropriate.
The first chapter of the book is a condensed history of the internment process. The second chapter deals with the 'consequences of injustice,' starting with economic losses. Then the book goes into the legal maneuvers that happened, then examines the social and psychological effects of all of this on the Issei and the Nisei.
The next chapter is about the details of doing a cross-generational study with such sections as 'Methodological Issues in evaluating the Cross-Generational Effects of Trauma.
The fourth chapter deals with a survey taken of the third generation (Sansei) with emphasis on the details of how it was done.
The next chapter deals with details of how the Sansei talked with their parents about the camp experience, comparing numerous factors relating to when the Sansei found out from their parents they had been interned and differences between one-parent and two-parent families and others.
The next chapter continues with the survey studies, dealing with people's attitudes about a possible future internment and notes that the Sansei say, in general, that they would actively resist any such move.
The next three chapters cover other details of various surveys and studies. Chapter 11 goes into the redress movement, again tying that in with more studies of attitudes and behaviors among the Sansei.
A couple more chapters follow and then the survey itself is reproduced, to be followed by an appendix and references.
First, this is a book that will probably interest no one other than someone who is involved in sociological/psychological research studies. I know it's important that science find out as much as it can about how things affect people, but I also feel that it, at times, can take a very important, emotionally-challenging event and reduce it to a nice series of numbers and equations, and I think that is what this book does. It's definitely not for a person with a general interest in the internment itself.
This is a 1969 book on the subject, and it is also one of the absolute best and most complete of all the books on the subject despite its age.
'No immigrant group encountered higher walls of prejudice and discrimination than did the Japanese-the denial on racist grounds of the right to naturalization, the denial in the areas where they largely lived of the right to own land or enter certain professions, and eventually complete exclusion.'
(Note that this excludes blacks because they did not immigrant voluntarily.)
The book starts out with the ancient history of Japan, including the mythological origins and the factual origins. It also discusses the the earliest people of Japan, the Ainu. Although the Japanese mythos tries to make Japan look like it's been there almost forever, the earliest reliable records date only back to about the third century C.E., whereas Egyptian and Chinese records go back for thousands of years.
St. Francis Xavier arrived in Japan in 1549 and noted that 'The Japanese have a high opinion of themselves because they think that no other nation can compare with them as regards weapons and valor, and so they look down on all foreigners.'
This is the type of think that, over 400 years later, helped lead to Japan's loss in the second world war.
The first formal relationship between the U.S. and Japan dates back to March 31, 1854 with the Treaty of Kanagawa. Although historically Dewey's ships get the most attention, there were actually other American ships that arrived there before him.
The first Japanese to America were not the immigrants themselves, but those who accidentally arrived either via shipwreck or very early exploring vessels. Japanese ships voaged to Mexico in 1610 and 1613.
The book then goes into the history of the first regular immigrants from Japan that came to Hawaii and the United States. The main idea that most of them had was to remain here long enough to make a good bit of money, and then to return to Japan. The book goes into how many Japanese came here, what type of work they did, and where they did it.
The book then goes into the story of California and its 'problems' with the Chinese, and how those ended up morphing into the 'problems' with the Japanese. Pressure began at least as far back as 1887 when there was a grand sum total of around 400 Japanese in the entire state.
A few years later members of a shoemaker's union forced a white man to dismiss the Japanese who were working for him. Things just got worse from there on. The book says that the basis of all of this was both racial and economic, racial since the Japanese were not white, and economic since they proved that they could be successful farmers even on land that no white farmers wanted.
One thing I did not know was that 'As late as 1950 there were more than 500 federal, state and local laws and ordinances aimed directly or indirectly against resident Japanese.'
The later immigrants became the focus of two political powers; Roosevelt, who needed the support of the Western (anti-Japanese) states, and Japan itself, who would use the anti-Japanese laws as part of their own propaganda.
The book then discusses the anti-alien land laws that were passed, going back to 1913. Interestingly enough, the Japanese never controlled more than 1.6 percent of the available land in California.
The first Heart attack on the Japanese dates back to 1905 with a cartoon showing a Japanese soldier casting a long shadow over the Pacific Ocean and California. The book also describes early anti-Japanese literature and movies. The book then moves on to talk about the Nisei, and how they differed from the Issei.
There's a section on labor unions and their disagreements with Issei and Nisei. The next thing the book goes into is the founding of the JACL. From that it moves on to the attack on Pearl Harbor and what happened shortly thereafter to many Japanese business, religious and cultural leaders. The book says there were three reasons for how fast the Justice Department moved in arresting Japanese and Japanese Americans. First was the concern for national safety. Second was that they were afraid of how the American public would react to the persons of Japanese ancestry, and third was basically to distract Americans from considering how badly the U.S. was surprised at Pearl Harbor to thinking how wonderfully organized they were in picking up so many Japanese so quickly.
There was a plan for removing Japanese in California even before the one that eventually led to the interment camps. It was an Army plan, geared for use in San Francisco, in which entire blocks of Japanese would be cleared at bayonet point by troops, rousting people in the middle of the night and taking them to concentration camps.
One difference in hate targets was due to the leaders of the countries being familiar. Hitler and Mussolini were both very familiar to the American public and so they were easy to target as objects of hatred. Tojo and Hirohito were not familiar, though, and it was easier to target Japanese in general for hatred.
The Japanese were also physically different from whites, so it was easy to separate them mentally and segregate them physically (just as blacks had been segregated for hundreds of years.)
Another factor was a problem of age. The Issei were old, not assimilated, usually unable to speak English, and thus had no political leverage. The Nisei were still too young and inexperienced to be a political force, so the Japanese were a relatively easy target for politicians that wanted to push their own agendas. The attack on Pearl Harbor played right into the 'sneaky Jap' mentality that was already in place, and just helped those who had been pushing anti-Japanese propaganda for decades.
The book then talks about the fears on the West Coast that Japan might actually attack them, and the U.S. did not have a very strong military presence on the West Coast at that time. The argument is that people wondered which side the Japanese living there would take; Americans, or a Japanese invading force? No one, though, seemed to question the people of German and Italian origin, and which side they would take if Germany someone invaded the U.S. from the east.
Various people involved in the evacuation of the Japanese Americans are discussed, and the point raised that, even before the mass exodus was forced, the Army had realized that there wasn't really much danger at all of an actual Japanese invasion of the West Coast. (The Japanese were busy elsewhere; the great distance would have stretched any Japanese supply lines to the breaking point; and, if they had wanted to invade, why hadn't they actually invaded Hawaii which was a lot closer?)
The book says that the demands for the removal of the Japanese fell into four categories:
1. The danger of sabotage, espionage, and fifth-column activities.
2. Loyal Japanese could not be distinguished from disloyal ones.
3. It would not hurt the economy of the area.
4. It was a 'humanitarian' measure to keep families together and protect then from vigilante action.
Refutations to those points are given in the book. Then it goes into the evacuation process (the book has a number of good and not often seen photos).
The book then lists the requirements for the sites for internment camps.
1. It had to be on government-owned land.
2. It had to be large enough to accommodate 5,000 or more people.
3. It had to be located at a 'safe' enough distance from strategic installations.
4. It had to provide work opportunities.
The communities had to be able to be built quickly, cheaply, and with a minimum use of critical materials. The typical center had 36 or more 'blocks.' Each block had 2 sections, with each section made up of 12 barracks served by one mess hall and a central H-shaped sanitation building with men's and women's latrines, shower and laundry facilities, and a recreation hall.
Each barrack was 20 feet wide and 120 feet long, divided into six rooms. The exterior walls were wood sheathing with black tarpaper. Each room had a stove, one light bulb, cots and mattresses. The book then discusses the roles and powers of the project directors, the men who ran each camp. The administration area (white) was kept separate from the evacuee area (Japanese.)
The book then goes into the major problem of the questionnaire with its two questions, numbers 27 and 28, that caused massive confusion, bad feelings, and defiance. This all eventually led to classifying the evacuees as loyal or non-loyal based on their answers to those two questions, and the segregation of the two groups, with the non-loyal being moved to Tule Lake, and the loyal ones in Tule Lake being moved into other camps.
The focus of the evacuation became relocation, trying to get the Japanese Americans in the camps to move to other parts of the United States than the West Coast. (This is basically opposite of what was done with Native Americans. They were gathered up and put into specific areas; the Japanese Americans were gathered up with the idea of scattering them all over and not having them in big groups in specific areas any more.)
While all of this was going on the evacuees were still under verbal and written attacks from a variety of sources.
1. Politicians. Senator Chandler of Kentucky, Representative Powell of New Jersey, and Senator Robertson of Wyoming were three of the main ones, but the really big one was Earl Warren who later went on to be on the Supreme Court.
2. Pressure groups like the American Legion and the Native Songs of the Golden West.
3. The Press, particularly the Heart chain of newspapers.
Change came about from a couple of sources. For one thing, the Nisei that relocated from the camps became parts of other communities and, with some exceptions, of course, they got on quite well. Many students had gone from the camps to various colleges and did well there.
The second major factor was, of course, the Nisei that ended up becoming the 442nd/100th fighting unit, and the noble and very heroic record they ran up in Europe. Although they got less attention, the Nisei who served in the military as translators and interrogators also made a very valuable contribution to the war effort.
Eventually the camps were shut down, and the book covers the time after that and the movement for redress, which the book also covers.
One of the most interesting things about WWII in the U.S. was the way persons of Japanese ancestry were treated almost totally differently in Hawaii and on the West Coast of the mainland. They formed over a third of Hawaii's population, yet they were not subjected to the widespread anti-Japanese propaganda and hatred that the same group suffered on the mainland. They were not moved out in mass to internment camps like those on the West Coast were, yet they were closer to Japan, more subject to attack by Japan, and formed a larger part of the population than those on the West Coast.
Japanese Americans in Hawaii played a major role in the war, and their enthusiasm was, it seems to me, largely due to the way they were generally treated with respect and as a part of the entire community (with exceptions, like there always are.)
The book starts out by talking about conditions in Hawaii before the attack on Pearl Harbor. There were Japanese Americans in the ROTC and the HTG (Hawaiian Territorial Guard). The author points out that one of the reasons for not evacuating the Hawaiian persons of Japanese ancestry was that it would have tied up far too many resources needed for the prosecution of the war.
The author points out that Japanese Americans on the West Coast formed only about one percent of the population, while in Hawaii they formed about a third. The ones in Hawaii played major roles in the war effort, while the numbers involved on the continental U.S. were smaller, probably because they actually weren't given any opportunities to do much of anything from the internment camps until later in the war.
Also, the Japanese American community was older than the one the mainland, and more integrated into the society as a whole. A lot of this was due to the economic control five major companies had over Hawaii at the time and in it's history.
There's a chapter on the history of Japanese immigration. It also goes into the cultural situation at that time.
The second chapter goes into the time of the 1920s. This was a rough time for the Japanese immigrants.
1. 1922 Supreme Court decision in the case of Takao Ozawa. Prevented Japanese immigrants from becoming U.S. citizens.
2. 1922: Cable Act, which revoked U.S. citizenship for any U.S. woman marrying aliens ineligible for naturalization.
3. 454 Hawaiian Issei served in WWI and were naturalized as a reward. Their citizenship was revoked in 1927.
One thing that Hawaiian Japanese did not confront, though, was the alien land laws. Most of the land in Hawaii was already under the control of the five major companies, the territorial government, the federal government, or other corporations. Thus, the immigrants in Hawaii did not have to face all the viciousness behind the anti-alien land laws that the immigrants on the mainland had to deal with.
The public school system in Hawaii had been working to help the Nisei assimilate to both the U.S. and the status quo in Hawaii.
Chapter 3 deals with the 1930s. Another difference in Hawaii seemed to be that a good umber of well-placed non-Japanese people were working to present the best face of the U.S. and its ideals. On the mainland, most of the high-profile people on the West Coast were actively working to drive out the Japanese.
Chapter 4 deals with Pearl Harbor and its aftermath. In Hawaii, the military declared martial law and had a very strict control of much of what went on in Hawaii. There was also a major push to include the Japanese Americans in efforts to help out with the war effort. This helped to make them feel part of a team (sort of), whereas the persons of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast knew that they were not wanted as part of any team. They were just wanted gone.
Chapter 5 deals with the Hawaii Territorial Guard. The issue of Japanese Americans in the military effort was sort of complex and not entirely positive. There was concern, of course, about how the non-Japanese would react to the Japanese. There was a Morale Division established to target the persons of Japanese ancestry.
Chapter 6 is about the Varsity Victory Volunteers, a group of Japanese American men that were attached to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They ended up doing a rather wide variety of jobs, from painting to building field iceboxes to quarrying rocks, and even serving as cooks. One group made intricate models of planes to help plane spotters.
The group was also seen by others in relation to post-war Hawaii. If the group did good and brought honor to the Japanese Americans on the island, then the post-war integration of the society could continue pretty smoothly.
It's interesting to know that the U.S. effort to get Nisei to volunteer for the military (when that was finally allowed) had great success in Hawaii. The goal was 1,500 volunteers from Hawaii, and 3,000 from the mainland internment camps. Some 10,000 volunteered from Hawaii, and only 1,000 from the camps.
It goes to show you that how you treat people can make a major difference
.Chapter 8 deals with the Nisei in the military, and chapter 9 covers the time after the war was over.
The book spends a lot of time talking about various specific individuals.
This is a book written for elementary-school level children. As with most books I've seen written for young people, it does a good job condensing information into a format that is easily read and interesting. There are also good photos.
The first chapter deals with Japanese history and immigration. The author says that many young Japanese who did not want to fight in the Sino-Soviet war decided to immigrate to Hawaii and the U.S. to avoid fighting in the war.
The second chapter is about the difficult reception the immigrations ran into when they go to the U.S. She writes that the 'Little Tokyos' were established largely because the immigrants were rejected by American society and had to turn to their own kind for business and a social life.
The same chapter discusses (very briefly) the internment of the Japanese Americans.
Chapter Three is entitled 'Starting Over' and is about their life after internment. The issue of redress is also dealt with in the chapter.
The fourth chapter is about famous persons of Japanese ancestry in the U.S., like Kristi Yamaguchi, gold medal skater and (not in the book since it happened after the book was written) winner of Dancing with the Stars. (She had some incredible performances during that season; absolutely fantastic dancing and very, very cute.)
The book also includes a time line, a glossary, and a listing of other resources.
As I said, books like these done for young people are almost always done very well.
Tomi Kaizawa Knaefier, 1991
The author starts off comparing the Japanese on Hawaii and the advent of WWII to the battle of Gettysburg, both of which pitted people of the same nationality against each other in deadly battle.
The author was barely 12 years old when Pearl Harbor happened. The event is told by her in a very personal manner since she was actually there when it happened and is of Japanese ancestry. What she writes about how the GI's came to the town she lived in and how the town ended up reacting to that is really good (things go well), and her personal account is absolutely fascinating of everything that was going on at the time, from the martial law right on to dances (which she wasn't allowed to go to-too young.)
She also had relatives living in Hiroshima, but they were on the outskirts of the city and thus were not killed by the effects of the atomic bomb. She notes that some of the Issei (first generation Japanese immigrants) did not believe the war had been lost; if fact, they thought that Japan had won the war. The author concentrates on how families were split apart by their feelings relating to the entire war experience.
She writes a lot about what happened in Hawaii after the war and how the Nisei rose economically and politically.
The first family interview starts right off revealing that Japanese propaganda during the war claimed that the G.I.s would rape all the women, and that women should look as dirty as possible. Fumiye Miho had seen the racial prejudice in Hawaii so she moved to Japan in 1939 to teach English. Three of her brothers, however, chose to volunteer for the U.S. military during the war. One was rejected but worked for the community in other ways. Two were accepted, but one was killed in a training accident. Their father, meanwhile, was detailed on the mainland for the duration of the war.
More information on the family is given, and more fascinating information on Fumiye's life in Tokyo where she was even called a fool for wearing an American hat in the time leading up to the war. She lost her teaching job since teaching English was now forbidden and later ended up living at her sister's house on the outskirts of Hiroshima.
She talks about how in Japan, even when it was losing the war, all the propaganda said it was winning the war. She talks about what happened right after the atomic bomb was dropped. She worked as an interpreter for the Japanese military officials during the occupation and writes about how astounded they were that the Americans behaved so decently towards them. She eventually returned to Hawaii to regain her U.S. citizenship and became a Quaker.
The next chapter concerns the Asami family and how the husband was arrested at midnight on Dec. 7. He was the managing editor of a bilingual newspaper that was pro-Japan. The family ended up heading back towards Japan although they ended up getting off the boat in Singapore and working there for a newspaper.
As the fortunes of war changed the family was told they would need to leave Singapore. The father and his youngest son boarded a ship traveling under a U.S. safe-conduct pass. but it was sunk by an American submarine and both died.
The rest of the family moved to Hikari in Honshu. One of them ended up having a lot of hatred towards her since she was not regarded as being properly Japanese. She worked in different jobs right after the war although she had to quit one since her boss, an American, wanted her to become his mistress.
The third chapter is the Tanaka story. One woman was taken by the FBI on Hawaii since she was the principal of the Showa Japanese Language School. She ended up at the Crystal City, Texas camp. One son ended up working as an interpreter and translator for the U.S. military. His sister was in Japan, working for Japanese intelligence by monitoring communications. As with the other chapters, information is included about what happened to the various family members after the end of the war.
The fourth chapter is the Yempuku story. One son fought in the U.S. military and others fought for the Japanese (the one was in Hawaii, the others lived in Japan.) Chapter 5 is the Miyasato story. One son was in Japan and in school and was subject to the military indoctrination that occurred during that time. He lived with about thirty Nisei in Tokyo. That was where the one brother's feelings about Japan changed as he was subjected to prejudice and discrimination for being a Nisei and not a 'true' Japanese.
Chapter 6 is the Fujiwara story. Teruto Fujiwara grew up in Hawaii, but when he was 14 his family moved to Japan. He was in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped and was injured. He describes what happened to him (and it's not pretty).
Chapter 7 is the Yamamoto story. Kazuyuki Yamamoto recounts how he was born in Hiroshima, moved to Hawaii and taught at a language school while his wife and three daughters, who were born in Hawaii, had returned to Japan to care for his sick mother. When he returned to Japan he was one of those who was convinced that Japan had really won the war and realized when he got there just how wrong he was.
His wife and one daughter were killed in the bombing of Hiroshima.
This is a very interesting book in that it is very personal and does exactly what it set out to do - show how some families were split by the war and the consequences of what happened to them.
This book is by a Japanese American journalist and includes material about the internment camps plus other parts of his life.
Even when he was in elementary school there was anti-Japanese prejudice. He was due to play the part of George Washington in a school play, but some parents objected to a 'Jap boy' playing the father of our country. The principal overrode their objections, apparently.
As he was developing his career as a journalist he was stationed in China for a while, traveled to Japan and back to the US. He seems to believe that war between the US and Japan was inevitable since the US wanted Japan out of China and there was absolutely no way they were going to voluntarily leave.
He writes about his area of Seattle where, before the internment, parents demanded that 27 Japanese American women secretaries be fired. They all voluntarily resigned. He also writes about how the early evacuations started, beginning with Terminal Island and moving on from there.
He notes that another name for the Puyallup Assembly Center was Camp Harmony. This was where he was sent. On June 12, 1942, he writes, soldiers with machine guns were staring down at them from guard towers whereas before the guard weren't very noticeable. Apparently it was a reaction to the Japanese bombing Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands.
He has an interesting section on the US Constitution.
The Fifth Amendment: 'no persons shall be held in answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.' The evacuees were not granted any form of due process of law. They were told to evacuate their homes and report to the assembly centers (and later internment camps). They were not charged with any crime nor given any trial and there was no Grand Jury involvement anywhere, all being a direct violation of the Fifth Amendment.
The Sixth Amendment: 'in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial..and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him.' None of the people were even given a trial. They were not informed of “the nature and cause” of any accusation, and no witnesses were presented in their favor.
The Fourteenth Amendment: no state 'shall 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.' There is no doubt at all that what was done was in total violation of this Amendment. (Although a strong case could be made in today's world for violation since 'equal protection of the laws' is often not granted to gays, lesbians or transgendered people.)
He also talks about the few trials that were held and how the government suppressed evidence that would have helped the defendants.
The book covers the time period up to and including the 1920's.The book starts out examining the origins of Japanese immigration into Hawaii as contract laborers and the into California as farm workers. The goal of many of the workers was to try to save enough money to buy their own farms.
One of the things that made an anti-Japanese movement easy to get underway was the anti-Chinese movement that had been under way for years. The first large-scale protest of the Japanese in California was in May of 1900 in San Francisco. This was largely a result of activity by labor unions and the major of the city. The national political parties were more concerned at the time with maintaining the anti-Chinese policies of the government.
The next major period of anti-Japanese undertakings was in 1905 and was started by one of the San Francisco newspapers. They carried on a series of attacking articles which even influenced the California legislature to come up with a resolution asking Congress to limit Japanese immigration. The Asiatic Exclusion League was formed in May of that year in San Francisco. Such movements in one form or another existed without break until the end of the second world war, some 40 years later.
A detailed explanation of what happened before and after the San Francisco school board forced the Japanese to be educated with the Chinese follows. This was the year of the great earthquake and, interestingly enough, the largest single source of monetary aid given to the city was from Japan.
By June physical attacks against Japanese were taking place. This included Japanese scientists studying the effects of the earthquake. The Asiatic Exclusion League than complained about laborers eating at Japanese-run restaurants and called for a boycott of them. Such wonderful placards as 'White men and women, patronize your own race' began to be used.
The book describes how the segregation of the students was picked up by Tokyo newspapers then became widely known in the U.S. because of that. it also discusses Theodore Roosevelt's views.
The situation worsened. Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913 and the Japanese ambassador talked to him about what was going on in California, so concerned was the Japanese government. On April 17th a crowd of 20,000 in Tokyo protested the way the Japanese were being treated in California and called on the Japanese government to send warships to California to protect the Japanese there which would, very likely, have led to war with the U.S.
A very interesting thing the book points out is that Lenin, in some writings of his in 1920, predicted a Japanese-American war was inevitable.
The 'Yellow Peril' fear gained impetus with the defeat of Russia by the Japanese, the first ever defeat of a white nation by a colored nation in modern times (that's the way people looked at it then, anyhow.) Once again California newspapers helped push the fear of the Japanese ever higher with headlines such as 'Japan May Seize the Pacific Slope.'
Even anti-Japanese films began to appear, starting in 1916 with a film called Patria. There were some groups that opposed the California views about the Japanese, though, so the anti-Japanese legislation and activities calmed down a little for a short time.
The peace didn't last long, and the Alien Exclusion Law was passed in California in 1920. In 1922-23 groups in Los Angeles started a 'Swat the Jap' movement to try to make life miserable for any Japanese living there.
The book then talks about the work of the 'exclusionists' and about a fourth of the book consists of appendices.
1944
This 1944 book on the subject of what led up to the internment of persons of Japanese ancestry is probably the best single book I have read the subject from the time.
It starts off talking about the California-Japanese War, referring to the troublesome relations between the two areas from 1900 through 1941. It goes on to being the most in-depth, most sensible examination of the problem I have yet seen.
Introduction
This section talks about the persons of Japanese ancestry being put into “protective custody.” This is one of the arguments used for why the interment was done - to protest the PJAs from attacks by Americans angry about the war.
Theoretically, with the PJAs gone from the West Coast, anger against the Japanese should have gone down, but the exact opposite happened.
..after evacuation had been affected, the nation noted, rather to its amazement, that agitation against persons of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast noticeably increased.
What had been a small flame of race prejudice became a raging fire. Agitation on the West Coast for the removal of the Japanese was as nothing compared to the agitation that developed, after their removal, to prevent their return! "As the danger of an invasion of the West Coast receded, measures were taken against this minority which no one had advocated prior to their removal.
Citizens of Japanese ancestry have been subjected to measures which were deemed unnecessary even in the case of German and Italian nationals; and these measures have been imposed without charges, hearings, or due process of law.
The argument that has been given against putting Germans and Italians into internment camps was that they had already been assimilated into American culture. The PJAs not only had not been assimilated, but they looked different than whites.
The argument, though, has a couple of problems. First, many Americans belonged to a group called the Bund, which was a pro-Nazi group. German spies actually landed on the East Coast. So there was just as much danger from whites as from Asians.
Secondly, having the PJAs all looked alike (to some degree, anyhow), actually would make it harder for them to be spies or saboteurs since they would stand out in a crowd. It'd be like having a person seven tall in a group of people of normal height. Makes it easy to identify the person and to follow him.
“The charge was frequently raised in California, for example, that Japan was attempting a 'bloodless conquest' of the West Coast and the absorption of Hawaii by 'seepage.' The evidence indicates, however, that the initial immigration of Japanese to Hawaii and the West Coast was not planned or instigated by Japan./p>
Basically, some people though the Japanese had immigrated to the U.S. and planned to have so many children they would out-reproduce the whites and thus take over the West Coast. Sounds stupid, but that's what I've seen in some sources from the time.
The reason the Japanese came to Hawaii and the West Coast was that jobs were available and were advertised by persons in Hawaii and on the West Coast.
It was after this immigration had reached sizable proportions that Japan discovered that anti-Oriental agitation on the West Coast could be used for a variety of purposes: as a smoke screen for Japanese aggression in Asia; as a means of inflaming Japanese public opinion against America; as the excuse for ever-increasing military and naval appropriations; as an excellent issue to exploit for domestic political purposes inside Japan; as a quid pro quo in dealings with the United States; and as a means of diverting widespread social discontent in Japan into chauvinistic channels.
It is part of my purpose, in this volume, to show that military cliques in Japan began, nearly fifty years ago, to lay the foundation for the acceptance, by the Japanese people, of the idea of an eventual war against the United States...
What the author is saying is that certain elements in Japan had been considering the possibility of war with the U.S. for a long time, and that they took advantage on the problems on the West Coast for their own purposes.
It will be noted that the moment we admitted a large number of Japanese immigrants as permanent residents, while refusing to make it possible for them to become citizens, we had in effect created a situation which Japan could exploit to great effect for the purposes indicated.
By refusing to allow the Issei, the first generation, to become American citizens, we gave the militaristic element in Japan a means for their own propaganda.
These same cliques in Japan were not interested in racial equality: they were at all times interested in imperialistic aggrandizement. They used the issue on the West Coast to make us appear, in the eyes of all Orientals, as race bigots and hypocrites.
OF course, there were many people on the West Coast who were exactly that; racial bigots and hypocrites.
A comparison of the racial creed of the West Coast on the Japanese with the racial orthodoxy of the Deep South will reveal the existence of the same fallacies, stereotypes, and myths.
This is the only book of all the ones I've looked at from the times that draws a direct comparison between the racial prejudice against blacks and the racial prejudice against the PJAs.
I also propose to show that the main reason the federal government permitted the West Coast to dictate important aspects of our Far Eastern policy was that, as a nation, we had not yet concluded the unfinished business of the Civil War.
This is a perfect example of the fact that those who do not learn from history and doomed to repeat it.
The author goes on to show how politicians from the South basically helped those from the West Coast.
Whenever the West Coast racial creed was seriously challenged in Congress, or when the spokesmen for this creed were proposing new aggressions, representatives from the Deep South quickly rallied to their defense.
The California-Japanese War (1900-1941)
For nearly fifty years prior to December 7, 1941, a state of undeclared war existed between California and Japan.
'Every man, woman and child in Japan,' wrote Louis Seibold, 'knows a great deal more about California than he does about the United States. . . . California is anathema to the average Japanese, and when he talks of war against the United States, he really means California." On at least one occasion, Japan even threatened to take action against California "as an independent nation.
This is very serious stuff. Now, I'm not saying that if this hadn't happened then Japan wouldn't have been involved in WWII. I think that was almost inevitable, but some fifty years of bad feeling probably did have some effect overall.
The first overt act, so to speak, in the California-Japanese War occurred in March, 1900, when Mayor James D. Phelan of San Francisco, using some idle gossip about an alleged bubonic plague as an excuse, quarantined both the Chinese and the Japanese sections of the city. The local Japanese immediately protested, claiming that the order was motivated by political considerations and that its effect was to put them out of business.
This is not something I have read about elsewhere (as I said, this book is VERY in-depth.) What better way to shut down the businesses of people you don't like than to quarantine the entire section of the city that they are located in?
This action, of course, had consequences.
'To protect their interests, they proceeded to form the "Japanese Association of America.'
This, of course, is a very reasonable and understandable action.
For, but every action, there can be an opposite, and sometimes unequal, reaction:
As a result of this flurry of excitement, the first anti-Japanese mass meeting was called in San Francisco on May 7, 1900. The meeting was sponsored by the San Francisco Labor Council; the chief speaker was Dr. Edward Alsworth Ross, professor of sociology at Stanford University. Repeating the stock arguments that had been developed against the Chinese, Dr. Ross found the Japanese objectionable on four counts:
1. They were unassimilable.
2. They worked for low wages and thereby undermined the existing labor standards of American workmen.
3. Their standards of living were much lower than those of American workmen.
4. They lacked a proper political feeling for American democratic institutions.
In the San Francisco Call of May 8, 1900, Dr. Ross was quoted as having said that should the worst come to the worst it would be better for us to turn our guns on every vessel bringing Japanese to our shores rather than to permit them to land.
The meeting proposed an extension to the Chinese Exclusion Act, to also ban Japanese. Japan, trying to defuse the situation, announced that 'no further passports would be issued to contract laborers seeking to enter the United States.' This led to a 50% decrease in immigration.
The problem is that there are some types of people that are determined to have their own way, no matter what, and nothing that is done is enough to satisfy them.
'This conciliatory action, however, failed to abate popular feeling in California. At the 1901 convention of the Chinese Exclusion League and at the 1904 convention of the American Federation of Labor, resolutions were passed asking Congress to exclude further Japanese immigration.'
The next step of this undeclared war was when the San Francisco Chronicle decided to run anti-Japanese articles with lurid headlines like:
1. Crime and Poverty Go Hand in Hand with Asiatic Labor
2. Brown Men are an Evil in the Public Schools
3. Japanese: A Menace to American Women.
And then, there's my favorite weird-out headline of all time:
Brown Asiatics Steal Brains of Whites.
The series of articles ran through February and March of 1905. Media headlines like this can exert pressure on the 'low information' voters, and have results.
Asiatic Exclusion League
'Following the appearance of the Chronicle articles, the California legislature, on March 1, 1905, by a vote of twenty-eight to nothing in the Senate and seventy to nothing in the Assembly, passed a resolution urging Congress to exclude the Japanese. Two months later, the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League was formed in San Francisco. Within a year, this organization had a membership of 78,500 (three fourths of its membership being located in the San Francisco Bay area). By 1905 the fight had been narrowed down to the Japanese. The Chinese, the Chronicle observed, are faithful laborers and do not buy land. The Japanese are unfaithful laborers and do buy land.'
The Japanese and Korean Exclusion League shortly thereafter became the Asiatic Exclusion League.
According to the author, a powerful trade-union movement was a major force behind the anti-Oriental agitation. The author points out that most of the leaders of that movement were Irish.
Another organization that was anti-Oriental was the Songs of the Golden West, which was created in 1875. It got involved in the anti-Oriental movement after 1907. The organization also believed that a 'grave mistake' had been made in granting citizenship to blacks after the Civil War.
Equal-opportunity haters.
It also caused them to take some unusual stands.
It opposed the Child Labor Amendment upon the extraordinary ground that the white American farmer must be free to work his children in the field in order to meet the competition of Japanese labor. It opposed our entrance into the League of Nations out of a deep-seated fear that Japan would bring the issue of racial equality before the League. It has consistently opposed the admission of Hawaii as a state, because of its large population of Oriental ancestry.
The author also points out that, until Pearl Harbor, Southern California was not really as involved in the race hatred as the other parts of the state.
Then came the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. The Japanese government sent $250,000 to help the relief effort.
Normally, of someone helps you, you thank them. In this case, though, since the Japanese community took part in the rebuilding and opened new stores, the Asiatic Exclusion League called for a boycott of all Japanese establishments. Two 'distinguished' visitors from Japan were assaulted.
The author also talks about the school board incident, where the San Francisco school board tried to make all the Japanese students in the city attend a special Oriental-only school. The author points out that much of this was done to distract public attention from some very bad corruption that was going on in the government of the time.
President Teddy Roosevelt condemned the action of the school board. A hearing that resulted in the Metcalf Report (Dec. 18, 1906) found that there was 'no factual justification for the action of the school board.' One result of the board's action was 19 cases of serious assaults against Japanese residents of the city.
The author again refers to the way the South supported this racism.
Because of their Negro problem, southerners were in sympathy with San Francisco's views; southern congressmen as a whole were decidedly with California in her race struggle." Congressman Burnett of Alabama stated that "we have suffered enough already from one race question" and similar views were echoed by Senator Bacon of Georgia, Senator Tillman of South Carolina, Senator Underwood of Alabama, Senator Burgess of Texas, and Senator Williams of Mississippi. One Congressman from Mississippi stated: "I stand with the State of California in opposition to mixed schools. [Applause] I stand with Californians in favor of the proposition that we want a homogeneous and assimilable population of white people in the Republic.
None of this was helped along by public speakers.
Throughout this period, Captain Richmond P. Hobson was conducting an inflammatory anti-Japanese campaign, on the lecture platform, in Congress (1907-1915), and in the press. 'We know,' he wrote, 'that the Japanese in California are soldiers organized into companies, regiments, and brigades.'
He was telling blatant lies, and people were falling for them.
In 1907, the President stopped immigration by way of Hawaii, Canada or Mexico. The response? Mobs began to assault the Japanese in the city, and Japan had a harsh reaction, putting it close to declaring war against the U.S. France offered to act as a mediator.
Things got even worse:
Attention was momentarily diverted from the situation in California when, on September 7, 1907, serious anti-Japanese riots broke out in Vancouver; but on October 14 another riot took place in San Francisco. The New York Times of September 29, 1907, carried a story about Japanese designs on the Philippines; the New York Tribune published a serial story depicting war between the United States and Japan, and the New York Sun announced that war was 'inevitable.' The campaign reached such proportions that President Roosevelt publicly denounced 'the wanton levity, brutality and jingoism of certain California mob leaders and certain yellow journals.'
One way to do things is to try and determine the facts of a situation. How to do that? Appoint a special commission.
...the California legislature in 1909 appropriated funds for a general investigation of the Japanese in agriculture. When the report, prepared by the State Labor Commissioner, was submitted in May, 1910, the legislature was horrified to discover that it was quite favorable to the Japanese. The Japanese land owners, read a portion of the report, are of the best class. They are steady and industrious, and from their earnings purchase land of low value and poor quality. The care lavished upon this land is remarkable, and frequently its acreage value has increased several hundred per cent in a year's time. Most of the proprietors indicate an intention to make the section in which they have located a permanent home, and adopt American customs and manners.
So, there you have it, politicians. The facts. So, how do politicians react to facts?
'Senator Caminetti (Commissioner General of Immigration in the Wilson administration) immediately proposed the following resolution which was quickly adopted: Whereas, the State Labor Commissioner has in his report concerning Japanese laborers, expressed his opinion of the necessity of such laborers in this state, and thus without authority misrepresented the wishes of the people of this commonwealth, therefore, be it Resolved, that the opinion of such Labor Commissioner is hereby disapproved by this Senate.'
So, if you don't like the report, say that the special commission just didn't reflect how people really felt. Facts, who needs them?
And the rumors just kept on coming:
In 1911 it was widely reported in this country with thrilling details, that Japan was taking steps to secure from Mexico a naval base at Magdalena Bay, in Lower California. This had followed a report in 1910 that the Japanese had sunk our drydock Dewey in Manila Bay, after planting mines which imperiled our navy at the station. They had also secretly charted our California harbors. Then there were numerous plottings with Mexico for a position from which this country could be attacked. A combination with Germany to destroy the Monroe Doctrine was the pabulum served up to the American public in 1912. In the same year Japan was forming an alliance with the West Coast Indians to gain a military foothold in this country. In 1915 Japanese spies were seen in the Panama fortifications and in the next year Japan was found conspiring to get a foothold in Panama by getting control of tie San Bias Indian lands. Japan's diplomats penned Carranza's protests against our invasion of Mexico, after there had been landed in that country two hundred thousand Japanese troops, who had already fired on American troops at Mazadan.
The Magdalena Bay one I've seen in other places. The wildest one is the one where the Japanese were supposedly conspiring with Native Americans.
One would think a President of the United States would try to speak reasonably, but Woodrow Wilson thought differently.
The whole question is one of assimilation of diverse races. We cannot make a homogeneous population of a people who do not blend with the Caucasian race.
The Yellow Peril
The term 'Yellow Peril' has been used a lot, but its origin involved European politics.
The first formulation of the doctrine itself was made in 1893 by C. H. Pearson in a book entitled National Life and Character. After conjuring up the horrible spectre of the yellow races sweeping over Europe...
Stereotypes
Another thing people have been familiar with is the stereotype of the bucktoothed, bespectacled, odd-speaking Japanese. Interesting enough, the origin of these things goes back to a magazine series.
Not only had a firm ideological basis been laid for anti-Japanese feeling by 1909, but malicious stereotypes were being created which tended to solidify anti-Japanese sentiment. From the schoo lboard incident in San Francisco, Wallace Irwin received the inspiration for his popular fiction about the Japanese schoolboy, Hashimura Togo.First published in Collier's in 1907, these letters long enjoyed considerable popularity on the West Coast. In them the 'Jap' stereotype was clearly outlined: the bucktoothed, bespectacled, tricky, wordy, arrogant, dishonest figure of the comic strips and pulp magazines. It was Mr. Irwin who invented the stereotyped speech of the Japanese-American or 'Jap.' It was Mr. Irwin who coined all the funny parodies on the use of Japanese honorifics, such as 'Honorable Sir,' and the 'so sorry, please.'
Discrimination is made Legal
One of the first measures proposed in the January, 1913, session of the California legislature was the so-called Webb-Heney Bill or Alien Land Act. Previously all such proposals had been aimed at aliens in general; but these earlier proposals had encountered the strong opposition of important landowning corporations controlled by British capital. This particular measure, however, was ingeniously drafted: it was aimed not at aliens generally, but at "aliens ineligible to citizenship.
The bill passed 35-2 in the California Senate, and 72-3 in the Assembly. This caused a very harsh reaction in Japan.
Members of Parliament invoked the old jio (anti-foreign spirit), advocated a policy of yakiuchi (incendiarism), and invited the people to burn the American embassy.
The Japanese Try to Make Nice
Later in 1913 the Japanese government sent a mission to this country to "allay the bitter feelings of the Japanese in California." 42 Mr. J. Soyeda, a member of this commission, subsequently published a report entitled Survey of the Japanese Question in California, In this report he took occasion to urge the Japanese in California to assimilate. He urged them to abandon those customs and habits which set them apart from other residents and to act the part of good citizens, even though they were ineligible to citizenship.
The San Francisco Examiner published a rather nasty reply.
Land Owners
The author also goes into the subject of land ownership and land speculation, and how monopolies had been developed that didn't like the Japanese horning in on their territory.
The Hearst Papers Stike Again
The attack was launched by an elaborate piece which appeared in the New York American, and other Hearst newspapers, on September 28, 1915, entitled: 'Japan Plans to Invade and Conquer the United States Revealed by Its Own Bernhardi.' The article purported to be a translation of a book published in Japan by 'the Japanese Military Association.' It was illustrated by pictures purporting to show Japanese troops practicing landing operations preparatory to an assault on the California coast. Investigation revealed that: (a) the purported translators could not be located or identified; (b) the pictures were retouched illustrations used during the Sino-Japanese War of 1895; (c) the original story published in Japan had been a 'dream story' of the pulp magazine variety which had sold about 3000 copies instead of the 500,000 copies represented; and (d) that the text had been distorted in translation.
Again, truthfulness in reporting was not exactly a top priority of the Hearst papers (nor, actually, of many papers and TV and internet organizations in today's world.)
A song called a 'Hymn of Hate' was written, one stanza going this way:
They've battleships, they say,
On Magdalena Bay!
Uncle Sam, won't you listen when we warn you?
They meet us with a smile
But they're working all the while,
And they're waiting just to steal our California!
So just keep your eyes on Togo,
With his pockets full of maps,
For we've found out we can't trust the Japs!
Another Paper
A guy named V.S. McClatchy was editor and publisher of the Sacramento Bee newspaper, and he became deeply involved in the anti-Japanese movement, starting up the California Joint Immigration Committee in September of 1919.
After WWI
After WWI ended, 'a wave of anti-Japanese agitation swept California.' This was due, the author says, to Japanese actions in Korea, Siberia, China and Shantung.
Labor became involved.
'The Federated Trades Council of Sacramento, on September 10, 1920, passed a resolution condemning anti-Japanese "propaganda now being spread by designing parties to the detriment of labor." In 1916 the American Federation of Labor failed, for the first time in years, to pass an anti-Oriental resolution.'
Part of the reaction slightly later involved the Presidential election campaign for 1919/1920.
In point of virulence, the 1920 agitation far exceeded any similar demonstration in California. In support of the initiative measures, the American Legion exhibited a motion picture throughout the state entitled "Shadows of the West." All the charges ever made against the Japanese were enacted in this film. The film showed a mysterious room fitted with wireless apparatus by which 'a head Japanese ticked out prices which controlled a state-wide vegetable market'; spies darted in and out of the scenes; Japanese were shown dumping vegetables into the harbor to maintain high prices; two white girls were abducted by a group of Japanese men only to be rescued, at the last moment, by a squad of American Legionnaires. When meetings were called to protest the exhibition of this scurrilous film, the meetings were broken up.
'Two influential novels appeared which were planned as part of the campaign: Seed of the Sun (1921) by Wallace Irwin and The Pride of Palomar (1921) by Peter B. Kyne.'
In relation to Kyne's novel:
Here are some of the charges made against the Japanese in Mr. Kyne's novel: their manners are abominable; they are greedy, selfish, calculating, quarrelsome, suspicious, crafty, irritable, and unreliable; they have no sense of sportsmanship, no affection for their wives, and they have never shown the slightest nobility or generosity of spirit.
One side-effect of all of this was growing hatred against other grups, including Armenians, Turks, Greeks and Hindus.
Alien Land Laws
'The Alien Land Act, passed as an initiative measure in 1920, was represented as the "final solution" to the Japanese problem; as designed to eliminate every loophole in the 1913 statute. Following its adoption in California, much the same statute was adopted in Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Nebraska, Texas, Idaho, and New Mexico.'
What is really interesting about this list is that it's not just West Coast states. Delaware on the East Coast is represented, and some states slightly east of the West Coast states are included.
The author then examines who might have profited from all of this.
1. Landowners did not profit: they had to accept lower rentals.
2. Agricultural workers did not profit: their wages declined and kept declining.
3. Non-Japanese produce growers did not profit, since produce growing got more organized and other areas of the country began to compete with products grown in California.
4. The general public did not benefit since prices went up. The Japanese had grown crops and sold them cheaper than the white growers.
Legal Measures
1. Takao Ozawa case, involving the Supreme Court. The ruling was that the student was not a “free white person” and therefore was not eligible to become a citizen.
2. The Quota Immigration Act of 1924.
In 1935, 1937, and 1939, various anti-Japanese measures were introduced in the California legislature; in 1934 mobs assaulted the Japanese in Arizona; and in the spring of 1935 the Hearst press began to inveigh against 'inequitable Oriental competition sapping the economic life of America and retarding recovery.' At the same time, a mysterious Committee of One Thousand was formed in Southern California. It began to repeat in its publication, the American Defender, the familiar calumnies: Japanese truck-gardeners were spraying their vegetables with arsenic; using human excrement as fertilizer, thereby creating epidemics of bacillary dysentery; they were training an army in Peru, and so forth. Typical of its utterances was this passage from the issue of April 27, 1935: Wherever the Japanese have settled, their nests pollute the communities like the running sores of leprosy. They exist like the yellowed, smoldering discarded butts in an over-full ashtray, vilifying the air with their loathsome smells, filling all who have misfortune to look upon them with a wholesome disgust and a desire to wash.
The West Coast Japanese
The author notes that the people in California did not take into consideration that the first-generation of Japanese were immigrants, without a command of the language or culture. Their sons and daughters, though, were becoming assimilated. If WWII had not started for another ten years, the author says, then the internment might not have happened at all since, by that time, the second generation would have been fairly well assimilated on well on their way to a third generation.
Most of the original immigrants, the author says, were Japanese farmers and farm laborers. Some of them were from the eta (burakumin) group of outcasts.
In 1909, they made up 41.9% of the agricultural labor supply in California.
The author than examines Japanese culture, noting the importance of family to them, the lack of intermarriage, and a willingness to put in the long hours needed to grow crops successfully.
'Their most important contribution to the economy of the West, however, was the manner in which they organized produce production on a year-round basis so as to provide a steady flow of produce to the markets.'
Why was this important? This was a time before homes had refrigerators like they do today. You couldn't buy produce and then freeze it for later. Everything needed to be as fresh as you could get it, unless you were into canning things yourself. So having crops available year round, rather than in just certain seasons, was good for the consumer and good for the farmer.
The author then examines the state of California and its population, noting that the state itself had not achieved full immigration, that it was still sort of on the wild side, and they were using similar 'stay-out' methods on farmers from Oklahoma and other places.
Another thing the author talks about that no one else does is Japanese grocery stores. They catered to the Japanese tastes, particularly those of the Issei, or first-generation, for a long time. This kept them totally apart from white-owned groceries. Once the Nisei began to grow up, though, and start buying things themselves, then the stores began to modify to reflect more American-type things since the Nisei were become more 'Americanized.' This then put these Japanese-owned stores in direct competition with white-owned stores, and that itself caused trouble.
The Issei
No immigrant group ever made a more determined effort to succeed in America than did the Japanese;The reports of the Immigration Commission consistently paid tribute to their eagerness to adjust themselves to their new environment. The progress of the Japanese, reads one report, "is due to their greater eagerness to learn, which has overcome more obstacles than have been encountered by most other races, obstacles of prejudice, of segregation, and wide differences in language." At the outset, they showed a remarkable willingness to adopt American folk- ways; to adopt American clothes, habits, furnishings, and even religious practices. They conducted themselves with admirable fortitude in the face of a bigoted opposition. There was no crime problem among them (a remarkable fact for an immigrant group); they paid their debts; they supported their own indigents. They conducted good-citizenship campaigns; they organized special campaigns against prostitution and gambling. When objections were made to the type of homes in which they lived, they organized Better Homes and Gardens campaigns. When objections were raised to the language schools, they took the initiative in suggesting that these schools be regulated or that the Japanese language be taught in the public schools. When objection was raised on the issue of dual citizenship, they asked the Japanese government to liberalize its expatriation laws.
In other words, they did about everything they could to try and get along.
The Supreme Court decision of 1923 (Japanese were ineligible for citizenship) caused the Issei to lose faith that they would ever truly fit in. What was worse for them was the way their children gradually adopted American ways and didn't follow the traditional ways any more.
One of the problems for the Nisei, though, was after they got out of college. They were effectively blocked from many occupations due to discrimination.
Exodus from the West Coast
The American military had no plans at all for anything like the forced internment of PJAs. The author tends to forget, though, that there was a roughly similar thing done to Native Americans, where they were forced from many different areas of the country on to reservations. Like the Japanese later, they were not charged with any crimes, nor were they given trials; they were just gathered up and moved. Unlike the later PJAs, though, the Native Americans were never fully released from their reservations.
Crazy stories began to appear again:
In March of 1935 a California Congressman had told his colleagues that there were 25,000 armed Japanese on the West Coast ready to take to the field in case of war. The San Francisco Chronicle, at the same time, quoted a state official to the effect that the 'Japanese in California are training for war.' In May, 1936, Bernarr Macfadden published an open letter in Liberty addressed to the President in which he increased the number of Japanese 'soldiers' in California to 250,000.
Isn't it reasonable to assume that if there were 25,000 or more Japanese soldiers in California that little fact would have become known to virtually everyone, and that PROOF of their presence would have been obtained?
The author does a little jump in time, and points out that the fact that the PJAs were evacuated from the West Coast PROVES that they were untrustworthy, at least according to the same people that originally said that the Japanese were untrustworthy, and therefore needed to be evacuated.
Evacuation History
On December 11, 1941, the Western Defense Command was established, the West Coast was declared a theater of war, and General J. L. De Witt was designated as commander of the area. On December 7 and 8, the Department of Justice arrested, on Presidential warrants, all known 'dangerous enemy aliens.' Subsequently, by a series of orders the first of which was issued on January 29, 1941, the Department ordered the removal of all 'enemy aliens' from certain designated zones or so-called 'spot' strategic installations, such as harbors, airports, and power lines.
Following the appearance of the Roberts Report on Pearl Harbor, January 25, 'the public temper on the west coast changed noticeably' and 'by the end of January, a considerable press demand appeared for the evacuation of all aliens, and especially of the Japanese from the west coast.' The moment this press campaign was launched, a highly significant meeting of the entire West Coast Congressional delegation took place in Washington under the chairmanship of Senator Hiram Johnson (a leader of the old anti-Oriental forces in California). On February 13, 1942, this delegation submitted a letter to the President recommending 'the lineage' and suggesting that this might be accomplished without a declaration of martial law (martial law had been proclaimed in Hawaii on December 7). On February 14, 1942, General De Witt submitted a memorandum to the War Department, in which he recommended mass evacuation of the Japanese. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066, authorizing the War Department to prescribe military areas and to exclude any or all persons from these areas. The next day Mr. Stimson delegated this responsibility to General De Witt, who, on March 2, 1942, issued Proclamation No. 1, setting up certain military areas.
Subsequently the General on March 27 prohibited all persons of Japanese ancestry from leaving these military areas, and by 1 08 separate orders, the first of which was issued on March 24, ordered all such persons to move from Military Areas No. 1 and 2 (embracing the states of Washington, Oregon, California, and a portion of Arizona). Congress, in effect, ratified this action on March 21, 1942, by the passage of Public Law No. 503, making it a criminal offense for a person or persons excluded from military areas to refuse to move. By June 5, 1942, all persons of Japanese ancestry had been removed from Military Area No. 1; by August 7, Military Area No. 2 had been cleared. This is a brief log of events in the evacuation procedure the how of evacuation.
The author points out that the 'risk of imminent invasion was obvious and real, but it was as grave in Hawaii as on the mainland.'
More grave, actually, since Hawaii had been attacked already, and since it was a lot nearer to Japan than was the West Coast.
In his report, two considerations, not strictly military in character perhaps, but certainly related to military security, are stressed: the danger of sabotage and the risk of espionage. The General knew, however, by February 14, that no acts of sabotage had occurred in Hawaii. If the Japanese population contained actual saboteurs, it is inconceivable that they would not have made their appearance during the attack on Pearl Harbor, which the Japanese government obviously intended to be a smashing, crippling blow. What is more disconcerting, however, is the fact that General De Witt cites the absence of sabotage as "a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken." 5 In other words, the absence of proof (and no Japanese on the West Coast or in Hawaii have been convicted of sabotage) is taken as evidence of a fact. It is also disturbing to note that the General's suspicions were riveted on one minority and that he minimized the likelihood of sabotage on the part of German and Italian nationals who were possibly in a better position to commit such acts by reason of the fact that their race did not identify them as enemy nationals.
This is the concept that, since someone has not done anything wrong, it's PROOF that they are planning to do something wrong. Sort of a “guilt by existence” type of mentality. We also were, indeed, fighting Italy and Germany, yet I don't know of any arguments made that, since the Italians and the Germans had been in the U.S. a long time, it was proof that they were plotting against the U.S. and should, therefore, all be rounded up.
The media played a major role in the reaction to Pearl Harbor:
Despite the nature of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor," wrote Dr, Eric Bellquist of the University of California, 'there was no immediate widespread reaction of suspicion of aliens and second-generation Japanese.' Dr. Bellquist notes that it was not until after the 'commentators, and columnists, 'professional patriots/ witchhunters, alien-baiters, and varied groups and persons with aims of their own' began inflaming public opinion in January, 1942, that hysteria began to develop.
The PJAs tried to show their loyalty to the country:
In the files of the Congressional Record, throughout 1940 and 1941, may be found numerous memorials and petitions from the West Coast Japanese attesting their undivided allegiance to the United States. On October 21, 1940, the entire Japanese population of Imperial Valley, Nisei and Issei alike, assembled on the courthouse steps in El Centro and reaffirmed their loyalty to this country. On March 9, 1941, the Japanese-American Citizens League met with the Los Angeles City Council, pledged their fullest support, and asked to be given a chance to demonstrate, in any manner suggested, their loyalty.
Still, hatred has a way of disregarding facts.
All this is not to say that none of the PJAs supported Japan. There was a way to deal with them, though:
Undeniably there were dangerous individuals among the West Coast Japanese; undeniably there was a strong current of nationalistic feeling among certain Issei leaders. But the point is that these elements were well known to the authorities. They were promptly arrested on December 7 and 8, both on the mainland and in Hawaii. Writing in Collier's, in October, 1941, Jim Marshall observed that "for five years or more there has been a constant check on both Issei and Nisei the consensus among intelligent people is that an overwhelming majority is loyal. The few who are suspect are carefully watched. In event of war, they would be behind bars at once. In case of war, there would be some demand in California for concentration camps into which Japanese and Japanese-Americans would be herded for the duration. Army, Navy or FBI never have suggested officially that such a step would be necessary.
The author then examines the sociology and psychology of General De Witt's decision:
It also develops that 'military necessity' involved a judgment, by an army official, on purely sociological problems. 'The continued presence of a large, unassimilated, tightly knit racial group, bound to an enemy nation by strong ties of race, culture, custom, and religion,' states General De Witt, 'constituted a menace which had to be dealt with.' Obviously there was a problem involved on this score; but it is interesting to note that West Coast sociologists who had studied the problem for years did not draw the same conclusion as the General and, needless to say, they were not consulted by him. No consideration whatever was given to the possibility of launching a special morale program or a campaign of so-called 'preventive politics' in order to cope with the problem.
So a military general concludes there is a sociological problem with the PJAs, but sociologists said there wasn't.
De Witt's personal feelings about PJAs was evident when he testified on April 13, 1943, before the House Naval Affairs Subcommittee:
A Jap's a Jap. They are a dangerous element, whether loyal or not. There is no way to determine their loyalty. . . . It makes no difference whether he is an American; theoretically he is still a Japanese and you can't change him. . . . You can't change him by giving him a piece of paper.
One of the things before was Hawaii, and how they did not intern their PJAs but just declared martial law.
'Unlike their confreres in Hawaii, the dominant business interests on the West Coast did not want to see martial law proclaimed. 24 These interests felt that, if some means could be devised to get the Japanese excluded from the West Coast without a declaration of martial law, then such a declaration might be altogether avoided.'
The pressure for mass evacuation came, the author says, from a number of sources:
1. Groups that had an economic interest in evacuation
2. Traditional anti-Oriental organizations like the Asiatic Exclusion League and the American Legion.
3. Mayors of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.
4. Grand juries and city councils.
5. The mass media.
6. California Attorney General Earl Warren.
7. General De Witt.
Terminal Island
Terminal Island was a Japanese-American fishing colony. The Japanese-Americans living there were attacked on the basis of being spies for the Japanese, and that they lived there to help their spying activities.
First, the fishing colony was established by the American cannery business, not the Japanese. Second, that cannery required its workers to live close by. In addition:
'All of the Japanese fishermen were members of the Seine and Line Fisherman's Union and, long prior to December 7, they had repeatedly made declarations of their loyalty and support in case of war.'
Japanese truck gardens near sensitive areas
One of the things that De Witt and some others tried to do was to claim that the PJAs had settled where they did and grew crops where they did to set themselves up to sabotage things once a war started. Their gardens were near factories, power lines, and refineries.
'Mr. Warren, ruler in hand, also pointed to small Japanese truck gardens shown, by the map, to be located near factories, power lines, and refineries. The Japanese, as previously shown, specialized in the production of fresh vegetables for the urban West Coast markets. By reason of freight and transportation costs, these gardening units had to be placed near the markets themselves. Located around the periphery of the city, they were naturally intermeshed with sites used for industrial purposes. Only the Japanese could farm these small plots successfully since they alone, by their intensive cultivation methods, could pay the high rental demanded for land which was essentially industrial, and not agricultural, in character.'
So, in effect, they really need to grow things in the areas where they did, and a lot of the land they used was land passed over by whites as being too hard to turn productive.
Japanese Language Schools
These were frowned upon by the white leaders. The Issei wanted them so their children would not forget to speak Japanese. The author notes that '...the Japanese themselves sponsored legislation to bring the vernacular schools under state regulation.' Later, the Japanese Association of America suggested that California enact similar legislation.
That isn't what deep-rooted anti-American spies and saboteurs would do, of course.
The author also points out that the language schools were not very successful.
The author points out something interesting about Italian language schools in California:
Prior to December 7, 1941, the Italian consulates had distributed fascist-inspired textbooks and other materials to Italian language schools in California. But, at the Tolan Committee hearings, only the Japanese language schools were deemed subversive or otherwise suspect.
Economic Pressures
There were people on the West Coast who were jealous of the Japanese success in growing crops. They figured that, if they could get them out of the way, then the profits would be theres. It didn't dawn on them that the Japanese were using farming techniques they weren't familiar with, and there was not going to be any automatic transfer of profits from the PJAs to the whites.
But the California shipper-grower interests were definitely in favor of mass evacuation and for admittedly selfish reasons. Shortly after December 7, the Shipper-Grower Association of Salinas sent Mr. Austin E. Anson to Washington to lobby for mass evacuation. 'We're charged with wanting to get rid -of the Japs for selfish reasons,' said Mr. Anson. 'We might as well be honest. We do. It's a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown men. They came into this valley to work, and they stayed to take over.' Similarly, so called 'white interests' in the nursery and florist businesses were actively seeking mass evacuation as a means of elimination unwanted competition.
These groups also figured that, with the Japanese out of the way, prices would rise, and they would make a very tidy profit.
It can be definitely stated, however, that the removal of the Japanese has had a most unfortunate effect on production insofar as consumers are concerned. In its annual report for 1942, the Federal-State Market News service stated that Southern California consumers alone paid $10,000,000 more for 10,000 truckloads less of perishable vegetables in 1942, by comparison with 1941: Removal of the Japanese has created a chaotic situation in the wholesale produce markets in Los Angeles. Buyers complain that it is currently either 'a feast or a famine'; tomatoes flood the market for a week and the next week cannot be obtained. The deterioration of quality is a self-evident fact to any Southern California consumer. In a report released on January 3, 1944, the State Director of Agriculture accused retailers of fresh fruits and vegetables in the state of charging prices ranging from 'higher than necessary' to 'wholly unwarranted and exorbitant.' In some cases retailers, according to this report, have realized margins of from 50 to 450 per cent above wholesale costs. Independent buyers of produce throughout the state complain that the removal of the Japanese has increased prices unnecessarily and has resulted in a definite consolidation of economic controls and a further extension in the direction of monopolistic price structures.
The Hammer Comes Down
When matters went south, they did so quickly.
'On July 26, 1941, the assets of Japanese nationals had been frozen. The restrictions imposed on enemy aliens on December 7 and 8 had begun to hamper the Issei in their business activities and a serious economic crisis had developed.'
'Landlords had begun to evict Japanese tenants; insurance policies were being canceled; social-security payments could not be released to Japanese nationals. Japanese firms were slowly losing patronage.'
'Nisei were being discharged from their positions (they were summarily ousted from city, county, and state civil-service positions without hearings and with no charges being preferred against them).'
So, the PJAs had access to their own money blocked, the landlords began to kick them out, and they were losing their jobs in numerous areas without any just cause.
On February 15, 1942, the PJAs on Terminal Island were told to get ready. They were being moved out. No charges, no hearings, no trials. Just get out.
By this time two military areas were set up, Military Zones 1 and 2. The PJAs were given a chance to voluntarily move out of Military Zone 1, but that was not very successful. Most of the PJAs living on the West Coast did not have relatives in other parts of the country they could live with, and they did not have the time to try to find a job in another state, go there, find a place to live, and move there.
They also often did not have the funds necessary for such an undertaking, and they weren't sure of what kind of reception they would receive.
Some state governors and various organizations openly opposed any PJAs moving into their state.
Arkansas:
Typical of the replies received was the comment of Governor Homer M. Adkins of Arkansas: 'Our people are not familiar with the customs or peculiarities of the Japanese. We are always anxious to co-operate in any way we can, but our people, being more than 95 per cent native born, are in no manner familiar with their customs and ways and have never had any of them within our borders, and I doubt the wisdom of placing any in Arkansas.'
Kansas:
Governor Payne Ratner of Kansas stated that 'Japs are not wanted and not welcome in Kansas' and directed the state highway patrol to turn back any Japanese trying to enter the state.
Nevada:
Typical of the general reaction was the statement of the Nevada Bar Association: 'We feel that if Japs are dangerous in Berkeley, California, they are likewise dangerous to the State of Nevada.'<
Idaho:
Speaking on May 22, 1942, Governor, Chase Clark of Idaho, for example, had said: 'The Japs live like rats, breed like rats, and act like rats. I don't want them coming into Idaho, and I don't want them taking seats in our university.'
The signs of the times were also evident, as PJAs saw signs like these:
'This restaurant poisons both rats and Japs.' From a barbershop: 'Japs Shaved: Not Responsible for Accidents.' 'Open season for Japs.'
Internment Camps Not Originally Planned
'It is important to remember, as Mr. Dillon Myer has pointed out, that internment camps were never intended in relation to this program. All that was originally contemplated was an order excluding persons of Japanese descent from the area. When it became apparent that these persons were slow to move, that they needed assistance; and when it gradually dawned on the authorities that they did not even know where to move, then and only then were plans prepared which contemplated assistance, supervision, and control of the movement. Voluntary evacuation was then "frozen" and the Wartime Civil Control Administration was created as a branch of the Western Defense Command to supervise the removal of the evacuees.'
Signs began to appear on telephone poles, telling the PJAs they were being moved out:
'For those long proclamations ordering removal which appeared in the newspapers, were announced over the radio, and were tacked to telegraph poles and posted on bulletin boards, referred to "all persons of Japanese ancestry.' No exceptions were specified; no provision was made for cases involving mixed marriages; and one drop of Japanese blood brought a person within the category defined. Here a group was being singled out for discriminatory treatment solely upon the basis of race or ancestry. In Germany, as Dr. Morris Opler has pointed out, the Nazis merely pretended to discriminate against persons on the score of race or ancestry.
The Assembly Centers
The first thing that was done to the PJAs was to get them from their homes and businesses and to assembly centers, which were often constructed on horse racing tracks and other areas.
'In a period of 28 days, army engineers had constructed shelters in assembly centers for 100,000 people, and in a period of 137 days the same number of people had been moved into these centers. By June 8, 1942, the entire movement from points of residence in Military Area No. 1 to assembly centers had been effected; and shortly afterwards those remaining in Military Area No. 2 had likewise been removed. By that date, virtually every Japanese, citizen and alien alike, in the three West Coast states and portions of Arizona was in an assembly center. The only exceptions were Japanese confined to institutions, such as hospitals, prisons, insane asylums, and orphanages.'
'Many of these centers were not completed when the evacuees began to arrive. The evacuees helped to build them; assisted in making them livable; and quickly assumed major responsibilities in their administration.'
The author points out that the evacuees, almost to a person, cooperated with the government.
'Negroes'
Remember that his book was written at a time when discrimination against blacks was still ultra-strong, so statements like the following were considered normal:
'The removal of the Japanese has had other 2nd, in some respects, rather amusing aspects. While the race purists of the state have been gloating over the removal of an "unassimilable" minority of around 90,000, the vacuum in the labor market occasioned by the removal of the Japanese is in part responsible for the current influx of Negroes from the Deep South. Approximately 90,000 Japanese have been removed from the state and approximately 150,000 Negroes have been attracted into it. By and large, the Negroes have flooded into the Little Tokyo areas which were left vacant when the Japanese were removed. Little Tokyo in Los Angeles has recently been rechristened as Bronzeville. The influx of Negroes has created special problems of housing, education, and recreation and, at the same time, has contributed to the steadily mounting racial tensions.'
Hawaii
In Hawaii, PJAs formed some 34.2% of the total population.
'But the agitation never reached serious proportions primarily because the economic oligarchy that rules Hawaii did not look with favor upon such a movement (although the same interests actually subsidized anti-Japanese agitation on the Pacific Coast).'
Marital law was declared on the islands. There were some arrests of PJAs, generally from this grouping: Shinto and Buddhists priests; language school teachers; consular agents; Kibei (Nisei who had gone to Japan to get their schooling and then returned), and 'organizational leaders having close ties with Japan.'
That was it. No mass evacuations, and no uprisings, riots, mobs, sabotage or other anti-American actions from the PJAs still living on the islands.
Another reason why the PJAs were not evacuated off of the islands:
There are, of course, certain obvious differences between the situation in Hawaii and that which prevailed on the West Coast. In the first place, it would have been practically impossible to have found shipping space to move 160,000 people across 2000 miles of ocean to the mainland. To have done so, if the shipping had been available, would have caused immeasurable damage to the internal economy of the islands. The manpower problem was acute and the Japanese could not be spared. Furthermore, in the islands they have had the powerful and determined support of the highly centralized business interests of Hawaii. In Hawaii they were supported by the dominant economic interests; on the mainland these interests wanted them evacuated. But a more powerful reason why evacuation was not ordered consists in the fact, pointed out by Dr. Romanzo Adams, that the race mores of Hawaii are or tend to be the mores of race equality. Effective interracial solidarity had been established in Hawaii before the war; it had not been established on the mainland.
The anti-Japanese people on the West Coast actually were against evacuating the PJAs from Hawaii. They didn't want them moved to the West Coast or anywhere else on the mainland.
Another reason they were not moved was that the person on the islands responsible for dealing with everything was, in fact, quite responsible and level-headed.
It should be pointed out, however, that Hawaii had a very sensible and levelheaded commander in the person of General Delos Emmons. After he had succeeded General Short, General Emmons acted decisively and firmly to prevent the rise of hysteria. He publicly warned that there must not be indiscriminate displacement of labor; and stressed that we must not knowingly and deliberately deny any loyal citizen the opportunity to exercise or demonstrate his loyalty in a concrete way. Hawaii, of course, seethed with rumors of Japanese sabotage after the attack on Pearl Harbor. These rumors were systematically investigated and publicly exposed as unfounded. For the uncontradicted facts are that no sabotage occurred in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. This statement can be made today in reliance upon emphatic assurances to this effect issued by the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, the Honolulu Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the various intelligence services involved.
There were some things done in Hawaii in addition to martial law. The Japanese language schools were closed. All but two of the various Japanese publications were shut down.
Another difference was that the Nisei had assumed a more important role on the islands in the leadership of their people.
So, basically, a lot of the difference centered on the leader of the military group overseeing the PJA situation, and the way that the Nisei had already fit into Hawaiian society which was, itself, a rather polyglot mixture of peoples and cultures.
Alaska
Something I haven't seen addressed elsewhere was what happened to any PJAs in Alaska. There were 134 of them removed to the Minidoka internment camp.
'In Alaska they lived in native Indian villages, hunted whale and seal. Speaking a jargon of English, Eskimo, Indian, and Japanese, most of these evacuees had never associated with Japanese people in their lives.'
Canada
The Canadian policy was strongly influenced by the U.S. mainland policy.
Immediately subsequent to Pearl Harbor, the Royal Mounted Police arrested about 178 'dangerous aliens' and interned them for the duration. Special regulations were invoked; fishing licenses were canceled; curfews were imposed. Following the pattern established on the West Coast, the Japanese-language schools were closed by voluntary agreement with the Japanese; and the press was suspended.
Protected areas were set up, like the military zones in the U.S., and on March 4, 1942, a commission was established to supervise the evacuation of PJAs from these areas.
Executive Order 9102
This created the War Relocation Authority.
'On April 7, 1942, the first director of WRA, Mr. Milton Eisenhower, met with a group of Western governors in a conference in Salt Lake City. At the meeting, WRA presented a relocation plan which consisted of three basic points: (a) establishment of Government-operated centers where some of the evacuees could be quartered and could contribute through work on government projects, to their own support; (b) re-employment of evacuees in private industry or in agriculture outside the evacuated areas; (c) governmental assistance for small groups of evacuees desiring to establish self-supporting colonies of an agricultural character.'
'The reaction of the assembled governors was unmistakable. They expressed strong opposition to any type of unsupervised relocation. Following this meeting, WRA was compelled to abandon, momentarily at least, alternatives (b) and (tf), and to concentrate all its efforts upon alternative (a). To accomplish this end, WRA worked out a co-operative or joint agreement with the War Department whereby, in effect, the War Department agreed to construct the necessary facilities in the centers and WRA assumed full administrative responsibility. The selection of sites was not an easy problem. All centers had to be located on public land; at a safe distance from strategic areas; capable of providing adequate work opportunities throughout the year; and of such size that a minimum of 5000 evacuees could be assembled in the particular project. Over 300 possible sites were examined and surveyed.'The end result was the establishment of ten relocation centers. People were moved from the assembly centers, or from their homes, to these relocation centers (also called internment camps).
The centers and their population as of July 10, 1943, were as follows:
Topaz, Utah 7,287
Poston, Arizona 15153
Rivers, Arizona 12,355
Amache, Colorado 6170
Heart Mountain, Wyoming 91292
Denson, Arkansas 7,767
Manzanar, California 8,716
Hunt, Idaho 7,548
Relocation, Arkansas 7,616
Newell, California (Tule Lake) 13,422
Total 95703
'Into these centers were also moved a small group of Japanese from Alaska; approximately 1073 Japanese from Hawaii; 1300 Japanese paroled from the internment camps; and a small number of Japanese who, although living outside the Western Defense Command, voluntarily moved into the centers for protection.'
The author then talks about the physical makeup of the camps. He also takes issue with those who have referred to them as 'concentration camps,' since those horrors were of another nature entirely.
The evacuees were under various sets of rules:
1. The general law of the United States.
2. The laws of the state the camp was in.
3. The regulations of the WRA.
4. The regulations made by the community council of the particular camp.
Really troublesome persons were sent to a camp in Leupp, Arizona.
The writer then talks about the schools that were set up in the camps. There were efforts made to get some students into non-camp schools, but these were sometimes met with strong opposition. Oregon, for example, refused to allow some Japanese children who were deaf to enter their school for the deaf. The University of Arizona opposed helping at all, the President of the school saying 'We are at war and these people are our enemies.'
Voting Rights
Remember that around two-thirds of the PJAs were actually citizens of the U.S. As citizens, they had the right to vote, even if they were in internment camps. The Native Sons of the Golden West tried to have them removed from voting rolls in California, but they failed.
Hirabayashi vs. the United States
'On June 21, 1943, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case of Gordon Hirabayashi vs. United States. Hirabayashi had been convicted of violating both the curfew and the evacuation orders. While the court held that the curfew regulation was a valid exercise of the war power, it pointedly refused to pass on the question of the constitutionality of the evacuation order. From language contained in the various opinions filed in the matter, it is quite apparent that the Supreme Court entertains the gravest doubts as to the constitutionality of evacuation insofar as the Nisei are concerned.'
Korematsu vs. the United States
'In a later case, Korematsu vs. United States^ decided by the Ninth Circuit Court on December 2, 1943, the evacuation order was upheld as constitutional.'
Seasonal Leave
One of the problems growers faced was that much of the labor used to harvest the crops had already been drafted. The need for food was critical, but there weren't enough people to pick it. Thus, some PJAs were allowed to leave the camps for short times to help in this.
'At first WRA proceeded with great caution in releasing evacuees for seasonal work: special safeguards and restrictions were imposed, special regulations invoked. But as the pressures increased, the regulations were gradually relaxed and, on September 29, 1942, WRA announced a liberalized release program.'
'By the end of 1942, some 9000 evacuees were working in agricultural areas throughout the West and were being enthusiastically praised as model workmen. There is no doubt that they saved the sugar-beet crop in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana.'
What did California do for their farming needs? They brought in Mexicans.
The leave program was thus quite successful.
'So successful was the seasonal leave program that, in October, 1942, Mr. Myer announced that henceforth relocation outside the centers would be the major goal of WRA policy. As a consequence, agricultural and industrial projects within the centers were sharply curtailed and the entire program was geared toward rapid individual relocation in private employment. Thus, within the space of six months, the emphasis shifted from resettlement in centers to relocation outside the centers; from planned colonization to individual dispersal over a wide area. Early in 1943 employment offices were opened throughout the Middle West and East; the clearance of leave applications was expedited; and every inducement was offered evacuees to leave the centers and to relocate before the war was over.'
This also led to one conclusion: the camps couldn't be made too attractive, since people would not be inclined to leave them. So some improvement simply weren't made.
The people who left the centers to find permanent jobs elsewhere generally were treated well, but there were some incidents in New Mexico, Indiana, New York and Illinois, but nothing terribly serious.
The author also goes into some of the psychological fears that people had living in the center, relating to life there and outside.
The Manzanar and Poston Incidents
The physical conditions during summer at the two camps were similar, daytime temperatures getting up to about 120 degrees.
Once the people were in the camps, the author says, there was competition for power. The groups included:
1. Militant anti-facists.
2. Pro-American middle-class elements, anti-Communist conservatives.
3. Japanese loyalists.
4. Plain hoodlums (Poston, Manzanar, Tule Lake)
These groups composed about 5% of the population of the camps, the other 95% being people just doing the best they could to get along.
There were beatings:
'Karl Yoneda, a former longshoreman, a man who has fought fascism in Japan and on the San Francisco waterfront for years, was severely beaten at Manzanar and his life was threatened. He circulated a petition in the center calling for the opening of a second front in Europe and promptly volunteered for service when enlistment was made possible.'
And strikes:
From November 14 to November 25, the center residents at Poston were on strike, protesting the arrest of two persons charged with having beaten an alleged informer. The protest was orderly enough (there was no rioting); but the incident which precipitated the protest was not its real cause. The causes were to be found in all of the tensions, resentments, and frictions that I have mentioned.
And riots:
Similarly, on the eve of the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, December 6, 1942, a riot occurred at Manzanar. Here, too, the ostensible cause of the incident was the arrest of a center resident; but the incident was merely the result of antecedent tensions.
This led to an effort by the WRA to separate the loyal from the disloyal/troublemaking elements.
Registration and Questionnaire
The WRA did a registration, and a questionnaire which caused problems, due to two questions, 27 and 28. People 17 and up were required to fill out the materials. This is one of the very few sources I have seen, if not the only one, that lists question 27 as given to women:
'Question 27: If the opportunity presents itself and you are found qualified, would you be willing to volunteer for the Army Nurse Corps or the WAAC?'
Question 28, the more controversial of the two, originally was worded this way:
'Question 28: Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and foreswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign government, power or organization?'
One thing to keep in mind was that the Issei were not allowed, by law, to become U.S. citizens. If they answered this question yes, there was a possibility it could be interpreted as giving up their Japanese citizenship, thus leaving them as people with a country.
The question was later changed for the Issei to:
'Will you swear to abide by the laws of the United States and to take no action which would in any way interfere with the war effort of the United States?'
The wording here is much better.
Anyhow, people were torn about how to answer the questions, and ended up generally falling in two groups, the yes-yes and the no-no groups. The latter ended up in Tule Lake.
There was a lot of controversy in the camps over the questions, and families were unable to agree on how to answer them. Pressure was put on people to answer a certain way. At the Gila center, 27 were arrested for intimidation and coercion. At Tule Lake, that number was 60. The president of the JACL was attacked at Poston, and a professor and a reverend were beaten at Topaz.
How You Treat People Makes A Difference
Remember the differences between Hawaii and the mainland, and how Issei and Nisei were treated? How you treat people does make a difference. When the government decided to allow Nisei to join the American military, they first asked for volunteers. They got around 10,000 volunteers from Hawaii, but from the internment camps they got about a tenth that number.
The proposal was met with dislike by certain in various areas:
'It is interesting to note that the proposal to form a combat team of volunteers met with instant opposition in California from the American Legion, the Native Sons of the Golden West, and the California Grange. Representative Rankin of Mississippi took the floor in Congress to denounce the proposal. All persons of Japanese descent, he said, should be put in labor battalions. He was particularly upset by the response shown by the Nisei in Hawaii, who, he charged, had aided in fifth-column activity, despite conclusive evidence that no acts of sabotage were reported. At the same time, he recommended that the United States deport all persons of Japanese descent at the end of the war and that the government buy their property holdings, valued at $200,000,000. Interestingly enough, he suggested that the South would be happy to co-operate with the West in its efforts to wipe out the Japanese menace. Senator Chandler, of Kentucky, has also spoken out in favor of a racial alliance between the South and the West.'
Tule Lake
Tule Lake was set aside as sort of the place for troublemakers and other problem people. Various elements were sent there:
1. Anyone who had requested repatriation to Japan.
2. Anyone answer no to both questions 27 and 28.
3. Anyone who had been denied a leave clearance.
4. Relatives of the above groups who requested to be sent there.
As can be expected, when you people who have caused problems together in one place, more problems will arise, and they did:
'On October 15, 1943, an accident occurred at the center in which some 29 evacuees were injured and one was killed. On the day following, no evacuees reported for work. The strike or protest lasted for about two weeks. During this time, the real trouble-makers raised a very serious legal issue. Prior to segregation, it could be argued that the evacuees were not prisoners of war and that they were, therefore, not protected by the provisions of the Geneva Convention. But the moment segregation was effected, a different situation arose. WRA had been careful to call those sent to Tule Lake segregants and not prisoners. But Tule Lake is not a relocation center: it is a concentration camp. There is a much larger detachment of troops on hand; the camp is carefully guarded; a double barbed-wire fence encloses the camp; and a military censorship prevails. Residents of Tule Lake are not, of course, eligible for either seasonal or permanent leaves.'
Also:
'Demonstrations occurred at the Tule Lake center on November i, and on November 4 the Army assumed full control. During these demonstrations a doctor was beaten, some property was damaged, and some of the resident personnel were moved outside the center for a few days. The evidence indicates, however, that the demonstrations, with the exception of the acts noted, were conducted in an orderly fashion and that their subsequent characterization as "riots" was wholly unjustified.'
Tule Lake was not the only place that had problems, though:
One old Issei bachelor, James Hatsuaki Wakasa, on April 1 1, 1943, left his barrack at the Topaz center, and started walking toward the barbed-wire fence which surrounds the area. The soldier in the watchtower ordered him to stop; but he kept right on walking toward the fence. He was unarmed, alone; he seemed in a daze. Again he was ordered to halt; but he seemed not to hear or to understand. He was shot and killed by the sentry.
It is possible that the man was actually almost deaf and never heard the guard.
The author then has a chapter on how the PJAs felt about things, and what kind of experiences they had.
One of the interesting bits:
'With scarcely a single exception, the Nisei believe that evacuation was brought about by race bigots in California and that they were singled out for removal by reason of the color of their skins and the slant of their eyes.'
An interesting statistic I had not seen elsewhere; there were about 10,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who lived outside the Western Defense Command and who were not involved in the relocation program.
We Don't Want Them Back!
One the anti-Japanese forces in California had succeeded in driving out the Japanese, then they set out on a plan to make sure that the Issei and Nisei could never return.
'Once evacuation had been achieved, the next logical step was taken: the launching of a large-scale campaign to prevent the return of the evacuees. But the eventual goal that these forces have in mind, and toward which they are now bending every effort, is the deportation of every man, woman, and child in the United States of Japanese ancestry old and young,citizen and alien, first, second, third and fourth generations.'
Another reason they got so upset was that it was Presidential election, and the issue of PJAs '..could be used to 'smear' the liberal and progressive movement in California.'
Other Anti-Japanese groups
1.The Americanism Educational League, under the direction of a former clergyman, Dr. John R. Lechner.
2. The Home Front Commandos, Inc.
'Come and hear the facts. Lend your help to Deport the Japs If you can't trust a Jap, you won't want him as a neighbor Any good man can become an American citizen, but a Jap is and always will be a Stabber-in-the-Back gangster; rebel. After the war, ship them back to their Rising Sun Empire.'
3. Pacific Coast Japanese Problem League, headed by a minister, Dr. John Carruthers. He says It is our Christian duty to keep the Japanese out of this western world of Christian civilization.
4.California Citizens Association of Santa Barbara.
5. The California Citizens Council.
6. The American Foundation for the Exclusion of the Japanese.
7. No Japs, Incorporated.
These are in addition to The California Joint Immigration Committee, the Native Sons of the Golden West, the State Grange, and the Associated Farmers.
The Campaign Begins
1. December, 1942: The Executive Committee of the American Legion, California Dept., wants a committee to conduct an 'impartial investigation of all Japanese Relocation Areas in the State of California.' The charters of the Townsend Harris and Commodore Perry American Legion posts are suspended, since they were formed of Japanese WWI veterans.
2. January, 1943. Local pasts pass resolutions urging the deportation of all Japanese, period.
3. Jan-March, 1943. The Supervisors Association of the State of California wants the Japanese language banned forever from the state. The Native Sons of the Golden West and the California Grange oppose the formation of an all-Japanese combat team by the U.S. military.
4. California legislature reconvenes, is presented with numerous anti-evacuee bills and resolutions.
5. The movement spreads.
'Wyoming passed a bill making it impossible for the evacuees at the Heart Mountain center to qualify as voters in the state; Arkansas sought to close the doors of its public schools to members of the Mongolian race; communities in Michigan and Indiana protested against the employment of evacuees in their localities; the Deriver Post, on February 14, 1943, launched a vicious series of articles aimed at making the position of the evacuees in Colorado untenable; the movement for deportation gained definite momentum in California; petitions and resolutions from various state legislatures and California citizen groups against the student relocation program and the induction of Japanese-Americans into die services were presented to Congress; Arkansas passed a bill making it illegal for a person of Japanese ancestry to own land in the state; Arizona passed a statute making it virtually impossible for anyone to conduct business transactions with a person whose liberties had been restricted; mass meetings were held in Wisconsin protesting the employment of evacuees...'
6.On April 19, 1943, General J. L. De Witt issued Public Proclamation No. 17 which, by its terms, authorized Japanese-American soldiers, serving with our forces, to return to the West Coast while on furlough or on leave. There is every reason to believe that General De Witt signed this proclamation not on his own initiative, but pursuant to instructions from the War Department. For on April 13, testifying in San Francisco before the House Naval Affairs Subcommittee, he had volunteered this information: 'There is developing a sentiment on the part of certain individuals to get the Japanese back to the Coast. I am opposing it with every means at my disposal. ... A Jap's a Jap. They are a dangerous element, whether loyal or not. There is no way to determine their loyalty. ... It makes no difference whether he is an American; theoretically he is still a Japanese and you can't change him.'
7. The Dies committee, hearings held June 8 to July 7, 1943.
'The Dies Committee never intended to make an investigation of the evacuation program. It was summoned to California to make newspaper headlines and to keep the Japanese issue alive, for political and other purposes.'
8. The media:
'Individuals who, in testifying before California legislative committees, had urged fair play were denounced over the radio as Jap-Lovers and the Kiss-a-Jap-a- Day boys. Typical headlines from the Los Angeles Times were: District Attorney Sees Bloodshed if Japs Return Servicemen Vow to Kill Nips (October 19, 1943) and Rioting Predicted in Event Japs Return to California (December 10, 1943).'
Japanese Distribution at the end of 1943
1. 8,000 to 10,000 in the U.S. military.
2. 87,000 in relocation centers.
3. 8,000 who had voluntarily moved from the West Coast.
4. 10,000 who were not near the West Coast and were not involved at all in the internment process.
4. 19,000 who had been released from the centers during the year and who had relocated mainly in the Middle West.
The rest of the book deals with the current (1944) situation, and the author's epilogue.
This is a book which examines the legal aspects of race in relation to Asian Americans. At times it's a little complex, but it's still an interesting book. Among the most interesting notes are:
For most of the nation's history, Asian Americans have been treated primarily as constructive blacks. Asian Americans for decades endured many of the same disabilities of racial subordination as African Americans- racial violence, segregation, unequal access to public institutions and discrimination in housing, employment, and education.
This is not just a WWII reference book, either, for the book sites examples of anti-Asian American violence up to the 1990's.
The legal subordination of Asian Americans on the West Coast paralleled the treatment of African Americans in the South following Reconstruction: segregation was sanctioned and discriminatory laws abounded at all levels of government. Anti-Asian laws cane in three forms: (1) federal naturalization laws that imposed a racial barrier on Asian immigrants seeking United States citizenship; (2) federal immigration laws limiting migration from Asian and Pacific Island countries, and (3) state and local laws discrimination against Asians, often based on their ineligibility for citizenship. One variation of this discrimination was the wartime treatment of Japanese Americans, who were relocated and interned in concentration camps during World War II.
The discrimination goes back a long ways in history, too, as the book notes that in 1860 California banned Asians, blacks, and Native Americans from attending the public schools.
Twenty years later, California enacted an 'anti-miscegenation law' that prohibited marriages between whites and 'Negroes, mulattoes or Mongolians.' People from the Philippines were included in the law fifty years later since they were members of the 'Malay race.'
It is interesting to see how the law, which is supposed to be fair and just for all, can be used to justify and even enforce discrimination against any particular group of people. Remember that the founding of the nation was based on equal rights for white males; blacks were slaves and white women, although free, were officially second-class citizens and not allowed to vote. In fact, women didn't get the right to vote in this country until the 1920's, and that only after demonstrations, political actions, violence and imprisonment.
Blacks are those who have faced the greatest legal discrimination, of course, but notice that even Native Americans were included in the non-white legal control movement (and, indeed, they are still on 'reservations' which are really modern-day forms of the internment camps.) The fight for the legal rights of any non-white group is a process that has to keep being fought over and over. The fight has become more complicated in present times, of course, with the anti-gay, anti-lesbian movement. This targets people of any race, including white, who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. Thus, legal protection, at least according to some people, should only be given to only a portion of the whites and virtually no one else.
Although the country has made some advances it still has a great deal of distance to go before the terms “fair and equal treatment under the law” become an actual reality rather than a nice catch-phrase.
Gary Y. Okihiro, 1999
The author starts out by talking about racism and anti-racism, how some whites helped the Japanese Americans.
It starts off with some general statements, an explanation that much of the book comes from personal memories of various people, and then goes into the history of Japanese immigration into the U.S.
The political difficulties of the time in placing Nisei students is discussed along with the programs set up to try and find places for the students in the camps. Personal letters from students to prospective colleges, and from colleges back to the students are included. Not all schools were willing to accept the Nisei students, of course, but many were.
It's a very specialized book in its nature but does cover a subject not often dealt with in other books and thus is a good addition to the body of knowledge about Japanese-American internment.
John A. Rademaker, 1951.
This is a over-sized book with lots of photos of Americans of Japanese Ancestry in Japan, and a lot of good information, though, due to its age, it might be hard to find except in a library.
The book talks about the problem with the draft in relation to AJAs on the Pacific Coast of the US. They were detained in internment camps (with no charges against any of them), yet they were being asked to fight for the very government that was denying them their basic rights as Americans. (2/3rds were American citizens.)
'When the right and duty to serve in the armed forces was restored, but the right to freedom of person and property from illegal restraint and detention, the right to freedom of speech and movement, the right to economic activity unhampered by discriminatory separation from their property and unprotected pilferage of their property in their absence, and illegal confiscation of their goods, businesses, and lands by covetous neighbors, was not restored at the same time, they protested, as any democratically trained person would, against the injustice of being asked to bear the burdens of our defense, while being denied the benefits of the citizenship which was theirs, which no other citizens were asked to forgo.'
As of December 7, 1941, about one-third of the people living in Hawaii were of Japanese ancestry. 'Yet not one case of fifth-column activity was attempted by anyone of Japanese ancestry except the specially imported agents of the Japanese consulate. ...The fact that none of the 150,000 attempted to help the enemies of our democracy, and that practically all of the able members of the 150,000 took active steps to help defend our 'rampart of the Pacific' shows clearly that whenever fascism or militarism meet the sincere convictions of a people who enjoy a democratic way of life, they will meet determined opposition and a spirited, united defense.'
The book describes the Nisei as 'well-saturated with American customs, ideas, and attitudes.'
'The older generation, or immigrants, are not and never were permitted to become citizens of the United States. ... That fact has made it difficult for many older generation Japanese Americans to become really Americanized.'
'Although the Japanese Americans were confident of their loyalty to America, the American military and naval authorities were in no position to take for granted their loyalty in a period of crisis, in view of their responsibility for the safety of America's chief defense outpost on the West.'
A series of surveys were taken to attempt to determine the loyalty of AJAs (Americans of Japanese Ancestry) in Hawaii. '...it became increasingly apparent that there was no reason to question the loyalty of the citizens of Japanese ancestry, except for a small number of Kibeis who constituted one-third of one percent of the citizen population.'
Kibei were AJA who had spent at least some time in Japan, usually in schools, and then returned to the US or Hawaii. Their views on Japan were considered more suspicious than those of Nisei, who had never been in Japan longer than for a brief visit, if even that much.
From December 7, 1941 till the end of the war, some 1,440 AJAs were picked up by the authorities. This constituted nine-tenths of one percent of the AJAs in Hawaii. 879 of those were Japanese Issei, first-generation immigrants. 534 were Nisei.
Of the Issei, 301 were released after a hearing before an internee hearing board. Of the Nisei, 160 were released after their hearing.
This does not mean that the ones who were not released for guilty of anything, though. They were still held since they were leaders of the community, language school teachers, priests, etc.
...no sabotage or fifth-column activities were committed or even attempted by persons of Japanese ancestry at the time of the attack on pearl Harbor, or at any other time. ... The Army authorities, the FBI, and the Naval Intelligence Office all agreed that the Japanese Americans would be dependable and would give no trouble, and events proved that they were right.
The book provides some statistics on people drafted in Hawaii. 701 were inducted for the first draft call, and 419 of those were AJAs. They made up 59% of those inducted, even though they constituted only 34% of the overall population of Hawaii.
There was no need for the wholesale evacuation of the Japanese American population. The arrest of the few who were suspected of being pro-Japan was ample safeguard for the safety of the Islands, as events proved conclusively.
From April, 1942 to April, 1944, registrants of Japanese ancestry were not accepted in the armed forces by being drafted, but only by volunteering.
Over 13,000 AJAs from Hawaii served in the armed forces by the end of the war, 4000 of those being volunteers. Many others actually volunteered (over 6000) but were not accepted for physical or other reasons.
'...the Japanese Americans...are determined to make their homes here, to live under the United States government, and to bring up their children, and themselves to be, in every sense of the word, loyal Americans all.'
There's a very interesting section talking about how the attitude towards AJAs changed in Hawaii somewhat. Apparently as more people in influential positions and military men unfamiliar with the nature of the AJAs in Hawaii entered Hawaii, they brought with them their anti-Japanese biases. This led to the decision '...in spite of their loyalty and their hard, conscientious work during the days in which the danger was real and when people were dying rather than retreating to positions of safety' to remove AJAs from active participation in combatant military duties. In other words, guns were taken away from them, for example. A construction group did major work, but under the guns of US soldiers. Things like that.
One example were the men in the Hawaiian Territorial Guard that were of Japanese descent. (The group was somewhat like the National Guard in nature and purpose.) On January 19, 1942, all the AJAs in the group were told that they could no longer be used and were given honorable discharges.
Although there were spies, etc, in the Consular Office, '...there is no evidence that any of the local residents of Japanese ancestry...ever lifted a finger against the government of the United States.'
Apparently, most of the civilians killed or injured in the bombing of Pearl Harbor and adjacent areas were people of Japanese ancestry.
The book cites some of the rumors going around just after Pearl Harbor.
1. Two regiments of Japanese troops had been dropped by air near the University of Hawaii. The university's ROTC was sent to intercept them, and most of the members of that group were Japanese Americans.
2. Arrows had been cut in cane feeds by the Japanese population to direct the planes towards Pearl Harbor.
3. A transmitter had been found for sending messages to the attackers.
4. The sides of a milk truck in Schofield Barracks collapsed and Japanese with machine guns hidden in the truck opened fire on the soldiers.
All the rumors, of course, were totally untrue. The problem was that the people in Hawaii realized the rumors were not true, but the people on the mainland believed in the rumors since they were already quite anti-Japanese in their attitudes.
Apparently a movie was made about the attack. The movie was called Air Force and contained lots of the rumor-type things which helped even more convince the people on the mainland that AJAs were not to be trusted. When the film was scheduled to be shown in Hawaii, though, local authorities demanded that the “scenes drawn wholly from disordered imaginations and excited but unfulfilled expectations” be removed from the movie before it could be shown.
Another difference between Hawaii and the mainland was that authorities on the mainland did not try to deny or disprove the rumors such as in the film and the newspapers, while those in Hawaii actively worked to debunk them.
On the mainland '...it became highly fashionable politically to criticize them [AJAs] and to say they could not possibly be trusted with freedom to come and go on their regular business. In Hawaii, the rumors were taken care of promptly so that such hysteria could not arise or be fanned into an attitude so strong as to force mass evacuation of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the Islands.'
...loyalty, and devotion to one's country are not based upon one's race, parentage, or ancestry, but upon education and the ideals one learns in the school, in the neighborhood, in the church, and in the community, from personal contacts, from books and newspapers, from the radio, and from the movies.
On June 5, 1942, the Hawaii Provisional Battalion was organized and a week later was renamed the 100th Infantry Battalion, Separate.
There was a question as to whether to keep the AJAs together in the military, or to just place them at random in other groups. '...the War Department felt that by keeping them together, where the spotlight could be kept upon them, the Americans of Japanese ancestry could demonstrate to all Americans, at home as well in the services, just what stuff they were made of, and where their loyalties lay.'
'How do we know that Japanese Americans love the United States and the American way of life? We know because so many of them volunteered for combat service, when they might far more safely have shrugged their shoulders and accepted the opportunity to stay far away from the battle zone.'
Major General C.A. Willoughby: 'In spite of the 2,000 to 3,000 Nisei used-40 percent of who were Hawaii-born-there has not been a single case of disloyalty or ill fielding. They did their job quietly and with great efficiency.' This referred to the Nisei used in the Pacific theater as translators.
The Nisei also worked on the translation of the documents of surrender of the Japanese government, and documents for commanders of various Japanese garrisons for their surrender.
The book also talks about the 1399th Engineer Construction battalion which was composed of AJAs.
A breakdown of what happened to the 100th Battalion and 442nd Combat team:
Killed in action – 569.
Died of wounds – 81.
Missing in action – 67.
Wounded in action – 3,506.
Injured in action – 177.
Total casualties – 4,120.
The 100th Battalion and the 442nd Combat Team won the following decorations:
1 Medal of Honor.
1 Medal of Honor
47 Distinguished Service Cross
1 Distinguished Service Medal
12 Oak Leaf Cluster to Silver Star
350 Silver Star
18 Legion of Merit
16 Soldier's Medal
41 Oak Leaf Cluster-to Bronze Star Medal
823 Bronze Star Medal
1 Air Medal
500 Oak Leaf Cluster to Purple Heart Medal
3600 Purple Heart Medal
2 Army Commendation Ribbon
40 Army Commendation
87 Division Commendation
1 brigade Commendation
12 Croix De Guerre (French)
2 Palm to Croix De Guerre (French)
2 Croce Al Merito Di Guerra (Italilan>
2 Medaglia De Bronzo Al Valor Militare (Italian)
There was also a women's group called the Women's War Service Association that was involved in helping wounded soldiers in hospital and writing letters to families which had lost a member killed in action.
The book has two main strengths. First is the amazing assortment of photographs, very few of which I have ever seen anywhere else. Second, the information content is very detailed and interesting and again generally does not cover what is found in other materials. Although a very interesting and useful book.
Roger W. Axford, 1986
The book opens with a statement of the author's feelings about the internment and an explanation about the nature of Japanese-American culture, that it's not all 'Yellow Peril' or all 'the perfect minority' forms, that it's a much more complex culture than that.
The book starts with a brief interview with Dr. Gordon Hirabayashi, one of the people who challenged the legality of what was being done to the Japanese-Americans during World War II. One of the things he does is challenge the use of the word 'evacuation,' saying that it's too humanitarian a word for what was actually done, evacuation implying getting away from some natural or man-made disaster.
He also favors the use of the word 'concentration camps' rather than 'relocation centers' for what the Japanese-Americans were placed into. He also goes into the history of exactly what happened to him as far as his arrest and what follows goes.
This type of in-person interview is quite rare in the various books on the internment. Normally a person's story is told, but in this case the person involved tells it which makes the story even more real and impressive.
The next person interviewed is William Hohri, 'redress fighter and author.' Among other things he writes about his internment at Manzanar.
The third person is Hannah Takagi Holmes. She is deaf and was deaf when, as a child, she and her parents were sent to Manzanar. To help her, her parents managed to get sent to the Tule Lake camp which had a Helen Keller School for the deaf that was there. The school closed two months later, though, due to the controversy in the camp over the loyalty questionnaire. She ended up in Illinois at a school for the deaf that was there. She talks about discrimination she encountered, not just against her but against a black friend of hers.
The fourth person is Charles Kishiyama, with the police department in Tempe, Arizona. He was ten when he was put into one of the camps. The next is Nelson Kituse, a pharmacist, who was in the Poston camp when he was younger. He was involved in the redress movement. Kenneth Matsushige is next, writing about Heart Mountain.
Minoru Mochizuki is the next person in the book. This is another of the interned people, this one being interned at Tule Lake. He also writes about the loyalty questionnaire. An interview with the Rev. Perry Saito is next. This is another person that was interned at Tule Lake. H. G. Sameshima is the next person in the book. He ended up in the Gila River internment camp.
Amy Okagaki & Esther Stone are next in the book. Esther Stone is a friend of Amy Okagaki who ended up at the Heart Mountain camp. Kaoru Sugiyama is next and is another person who ended up at the Gila River camp. Aiko Nakane is next
It's sort of an interesting book but none of the interviews are in-depth and they don't generally deal with people who would be recognizable to people reading the history of the camps, so it's a book that's interesting to read but not essential.
Greg Nickles, 2001
This book for younger readers starts off with a brief recap of Japanese immigration and the internment camps. It next goes into a history of Japan itself, how the immigrants settled in, picture brides and the kinds of jobs the immigrants worked.
There are also occasional first-person accounts which are a plus.
The book then goes into the anti-Japanese feeling prior to WWII, the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Nisei who served in the U.S. military. After that it talks more about the internment camps and what came after, then concludes with information on Japanese culture and festivals and some of the present-day Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians.
This is a thin but still extremely good book for younger readers and will serve as an excellent introduction to the history of Japanese-Americans.
Richard Drinnon, 1987
The book begins by comparing, in a way, the way the Native Americans were gathered up and put into reservations and the way the Japanese-Americans were gathered up and put into internment camps. The book itself is about Dillon s. Myer who was the head of the WRA from 1942 to 1946, and actually also headed the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1950 through 1953.
Myer was not the first head of the WRA, though, and the book talks about Milton Eisenhower and how he was the first head of the organization and eventually quit.
The book proceeds to provide some information on Myer as a director, and then as a person backing the idea of scattering the Japanese Americans through the eastern and mid-western part of the country (but keeping them under surveillance at the same time). The author also does not speak well of the JACL during that time.
To put it mildly.
The next chapter starts out talking about the draft resisters using specific individuals and what happened to them. Some of the individuals were forced to perform slave labor. In addition, Myer was not even aware of when selective service registration was being required and when it wasn't. Specific groups of individuals from different camps that were imprisoned are also examined and the whole thing is almost enough to make one ill the way the government officials twisted things and lied.
More of the trouble at Tule Lake (after it became a segregation center) is covered. When an ACLU lawyer came to the camp to try and find out what was going on he received less than friendly welcome and was thrown out of the camp after only two days, but it was long enough to begin to clue him in to just how badly the locked-up internees were being treated.
There's a lot of very upsetting information in this portion of the book, some of the greatest violations of rights of individuals that have ever occurred in the U.S. (outside of the institution of slavery itself.)
The rest of the book deals with Myer's time with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and he did no better there than he did in the WRA.
This is a very hard-hitting, upsetting book but one that is important in any study of the Japanese-American internment program.
This is an incredible book about the life story of Kiyo Sato. It starts out with looking at what brought her parents to the U.S., and then examines her life growing up, her life at the Poston internment camp, and her life afterward.
The book succeeds on a variety of levels. For one thing, the reader can see just how hard it was to make a living farming at the time. Her parents, her, and her brothers and sisters all had to help in order to plant, care for, and harvest the crops. They never had a lot of money, but they did have wonderful family life.
Her description of the anti-Japanese prejudice after Pearl Harbor, the way the FBI arrested people without charge, her transportation to Poston and her life, and the life of her family, there, all make for some fascinating reading. Kiyo herself had a very hard life, having to work a variety of jobs, to help out her family and to help her get a college education.
One of the most interesting parts, and a part not covered in very many books, is the numerous problems she and her family had after their release from Poston and their attempts to move back to their former home. There was still a great deal of prejudice against Japanese Americans.
There were also problems with greedy councilmen and even more greedy developers that threatened to destroy their farm, and she had to fight against them. Then there's a section dealing with her mother's cancer and how her mother faced death.
There's also a great deal of anger in the book, anger against FDR and those who treated the Japanese Americans, 2/3rd of whom were actually American citizens, so shabbily, arresting some without any charges or trial or legal representation, taking the homes and property of many, and putting them away in the internment camps, surrounded by barbed wire and guns pointing inward.
This is without doubt one of the best books I have read on the subject.
This is a long work, but I'm only going to comment on the section that dealt with his role in the internment of persons of Japanese ancestry during WWII.
1. He was not in sympathy with the idea of the evacuation, but he was requested to do it and it was a Presidential request.
2. At first, he didn't know much about the Japanese Americans, nor the reasons why there was so much pressure for their removal. He later determined that most of the given reasons were “phony.”
3. Voluntary evacuation didn't work for various reasons.
4. Earl Warren, who played a major role in all of this, was Attorney General of California, and was planning to run for Governor.
5. A radio commentator named John B . Hughes and a man named Walter Lippmann were also involved in the anti-Japanese movement.
6. Agricultural labor was needed, so the decision was made to allow some from the camps to have temporary leaves.
7. One of the reason that some universities and colleges would not accept PJAs as students was that they were afraid they would get would get in trouble with the Defense Department, since they had Defense Department contracts.
8. He uses the term 'relocation centers' rather than internment camps.'
9. The policy to allow evacuees to find jobs outside the camps started on July 20, 1942.
10. In describing the assembly centers, he says they used bars and put in partitions. 'The Nisei still talk about the smell of horse manure that they lived with during those months.'
11. The first relocation center was Manzanar. He points out that even though some relocation centers were not ready, they still had to ship the evacuees in due to very strict train and bus transport availability and schedules.
12. He believes that the good health facilities in the camps helped some of the evacuees to extend their life span.
13. He notes that anti-Japanese groups on the West Coast were very quick to be '...out sniping at everything that was going on in the centers. They were claiming that the evacuees were getting better meats than the men in the Army were getting and all kinds of crazy stories were being put out in the Hearst press and in other ways to harass the evacuees and WRA.'
14. Trouble at Poston and Manzanar:
Our first real trouble spot developed in Camp I of the Poston Relocation Center on November 14, 1942 when we had a community-wide strike and demonstration, which was called by the Hearst press and others a riot which it wasn't. This came about because the F.B.I, had come into the center and had arrested two or three people and they were put into jail and the community got up in arms and demanded that they be released and when they weren't released immediately they went on strike and consequently nothing was done for about a week or ten days except to provide the basic food and essential services required by the evacuees.
This had hardly settled down when we had a incident at Manzanar on December 6, 1942 and this was known pretty much as the Kibei rebellion. A group of Kibei and a group of people who were running the kitchens were involved. The chefs who had organized themselves into a kitchen workers union began to demand things. Here again this incident came about because there some arrests were made in the center and these people who were arrested were taken out to Independence or one of the nearby towns.
This group demanded that they be brought back to the center and that they be released to the people in the center. As a result of discussions that Ralph Merritt, the director of the project, had met with the leaders of the group and he thought they had arrived at a meeting of the minds and a compromise but he found out an hour or two later that the leader had simply announced another meeting later in the day. When he found that they had broken their word and were meeting again he called in the Army which he had authority to do. Unfortunately, after the Army came in some youngster climbed into a car and released the brakes and ran it right down toward the soldiers and some trigger-happy boy started shooting. Some people were wounded and three people ultimately died as a result of the shooting.
15. Relocation Field Offices Established:
'About the same time we decided to go all out on a relocation program outside of the relocation centers. On January 4, 1943 the first two relocation field offices, called area field offices, were established to assist in helping people to relocate outside of the centers through finding jobs, housing and assuring them the opportunity to live peaceably and to carry on as other civilians would carry on.'
16. The registration program for the Army started on February 8, 1943. He talks about the questionnaire and some 'poorly worded' questions.
17. The people from the camps did not participate in sabotage.
'HP: Getting back to the allegation by the American Legion that some of the people released from the centers to take jobs elsewhere were guilty of sabotage. Was there ever an established case that a person from a relocation center had become a saboteur?'
'DSM: No, there never was an established case of sabotage. Not only as regards the people who had been in relocation centers who had lived on the West Coast but it also included Hawaii, which had more people of Japanese ancestry then we had in the United States mainland. There were lots of rumors about sabotage but none of them proved to be true. It took a long time to eliminate those rumors. Many people were still quoting them weeks and weeks after they had been knocked down by J. Edgar Hoover and others who had made the investigation.'
18. On March 11, 1943, he sent a letter to Secretary Stimson of the War Department suggestion a relaxation of the exclusion orders. It was two months before he got a reply, and the answer was no. Not only was the answer no, but the guy wanted a program established to separate pro-Japanese evacuees from all the others.
19. In May of 1943 the decision was made to make Tule Lake a place for pro-Japanese evacuees and any others they felt were necessary to isolate from the other evacuees.
20. Eleanor Roosevelt visited the Gila River camp on May 6, 1943. Myer asked her to tell FDR about the problems they were having in the camps, and the replies they were getting when they asked for help. She did, and FDR intervened.
21. The Dies Committee:
'The Costello sub-committee of the Dies Committee was appointed on June 3, 19^3 and they became a real harassing element over the period from May until July 6th. They held so-called hearings in Los Angeles, to which we were not invited. One or two of the people from Poston were invited but the people who were testifying out there were mostly people whom we had fired because of the fact that they had either not been loyal to the service or who had left the center during the Poston incident.
'In one case a chap by the name of Townsend who testified had left the center in a government car because he was scared, to death, and was gone for a week. When he came back fortunately the director of the center had had enough experience that he sat him down and interviewed him with a stenographic transcript of the interview and of course fired him.
'This ex-employee told all kinds of wild stories at the time of the Los Angeles hearings which were fed out to the newspapers...'
22. There was trouble at the Tule Lake center when there was a truck accident that resulted in one of the workers being killed. A farm strike by the evacuees followed. He went to the camp to speak to the internees, but while he was doing that a non-Nisei doctor was assaulted at the base hospital.
He never felt in danger, and he explains some of the lies that appeared in the Hearst papers about what actually didn't happen.
On November 4th there was actually an outbreak of violence, and the military was called in. They remained in control of the camp until January of 1944.
23. In November he met with the California American Legion group and tried to clear up some of their many misunderstandings. He says they were very 'snide.'
24. On January 20, 1944, the draft was reinstituted for the Nisei.
25. On June 30, 1944, Congress passed legislation allowing the Nisei to renounce their American citizenship. Around 5400 did, but many of those had done so under pressure from various elements at the camps, and later asked to have their decision undone.
26. The Jerome camp was closed on June 30, 1944.
On December 17, 1944, the War Department canceled the West Coast exclusion order, to be effective on January 2, 1945.
27. Finding housing for the evacuees when they were resettling back out of the camps was not an easy thing to do. There was a housing shortage, and some people did not have much money. Some of the older Issei were afraid to leave the camps.
28. On January 2, 1945, the Supreme Court ruled that he evacuation order had been constitutional in the Koromatsu vs. United States ruling.
29. Oddly enough, there was another case, the Endo case.
'In the Endo case, which was a case of a young Nisei girl who had asked that she go freely from the centers without signing up of forms or any thing of the sort, which we wanted heard long before it was heard, much to our pleasure they, the Supreme Court, held, that a loyal American citizen should not be held under any circumstances.'
30. Some of the evacuees encountered trouble when trying to return to their homes or find new places.
'DSM: 1 have mentioned the fact that there were some dastardly things perpetrated to keep people from coming back. On January 8 an attempt was made to dynamite and burn a fruit packing shed owned by a returning evacuee in Placer County, California. This was the first of about thirty incidents involving violence. Most of these consisted of shooting into the homes of returned evacuees between January 8 and about mid-June. They weren't shooting at people. They were using long range rifles, shooting into corners of houses hoping to scare people out and to discourage their return.'
'HP: Who do you suppose was doing this?'
'DSM: The people who were doing it were for the most part young farmer lads and others up and down the Central Valley who had either taken over some of the rented land that they didn't want to give up or who didn't want the competition. We pretty well knew who was doing it in some cases.'
30. On September 4, 1945, after the war was over, the Western Defense Command finally revoked all individual exclusion orders. On February 23, 1946, the last group of people who wanted to return to Japan left for there. Tule Lake was closed on March 20, 1946.
U.S. Dept. of Interior, War Relocation Authority, Jan. 1, 1946
This is another of the government publications relating to the internment of the Japanese Americans during World War II. As I usually do, I will only comment on what I feel are significant portions of the document.
The Japanese live near airfields, etc.
One of the arguments used by DeWitt and others in calling for evacuating the Japanese was that they owned land surrounding various important military plants and airfields, making the assumption that they had developed some kind of very long-term program to buy land in those spots on purpose so they could eventually, decades later, go to war with the U.S. and use those spots for spying.
Although it was a ridiculous argument it was believed by many to be true. This report tears that argument apart by saying:
'In the light of cold fact, the charges made in wartime mood by certain West Coast militarists, politicians and professional racists, impugning the motives of the Japanese immigrants in settling where they did, lost substance and credibility. The most intent and extensive examination of historic fact reveals that nothing more sinister than economic necessity determined the pattern of geographic distribution of the Japanese immigrants upon the West Coast of the United States, and that that pattern had been set in such commonplace fashion for more than 30 years when the country of their ancestry and the country of their adoption went to war.'
In other words, the Japanese had bought land where they could economically afford it and where it would be useful, usually for farms. There was no long-term or even short-term plan to spy on the U.S.
Attacks on American shipping
There had been some Japanese attacks on American shipping which I didn't find covered in other books, except for one case. In late December of 1941 an American tanker was fired on off Cypress Point but got away on its own power. A second tanker was sunk. On the 22nd a freighter was fired on but was missed. On the 23rd, a tanker was shelled by escaped. After Christmas day an Army bomber sank one single sub off the California coast and suddenly all the attacks on shipping ended. In other words, all of those attacks were done by one submarine, even though rumors were that there was a whole line of subs off the California coast.
Attacks on Japanese in America
According to the report, on Dec. 23,1941, a Nisei who 'had been honorably discharged form the United States Army Medical Corp' earlier in the year was stabbed to death on a Los Angeles street. On Christmas day a Japanese was killed in Stockton, and in the next ten days there were attacks on Japanese in San Jose, Gilroy and Sacramento.
This was also related to one of the arguments used to justify evacuation, and that it was to 'protect' the Japanese Issei and Nisei from racial attacks.
Terminal Island
Other sources I've consulted have talked about how all the fishermen from Terminal Island were evacuated since they were of Japanese ancestry, but the report goes into some information on just how chaotic and disorganized this process was.
'On Tuesday, February 10, 1942, posers were put up on Terminal Island by Department of Justice order, warning all Japanese aliens that the deadline for their departure was the following Monday,February 16. However, on February 11, without warning, a Presidential order transferred Terminal Island to the jurisdiction of the Navy, and Secretary Knox instructed Rear Admiral R.S. Holmes, Commandant of the 11th Naval District in San Diego to notify all residents of Terminal Island that their dwellings would be condemned and that they would be evicted within 30 days. This arrangement automatically canceled the orders of the Department of Justice...Before a week had passed, the residents of Terminal Island were ordered to be out within 48 hours of notification.'
The report goes on to tell how the residents were lead to believe they would get certain aid from the government, then they weren't able to since they didn't get any notices about where they could get any aid before they had to be out of their homes.
Official Prejudice
The Mayor of Los Angeles was not exactly friendly to the Japanese Americans. In a radio address he said the following, according to the report:
'If Lincoln were alive today, what would he do to defend the nation against the Japanese horde, the people born on American soil who have secret loyalty to the Japanese Emperor? ... The removal of all those of Japanese parentage must be effected before it is too late. Those little men who prate of civil liberties against the interest of the nation and the safety of the people will be forgotten in the pages of history, while an executive in Washington who will save the nation against invasion and destruction will be entitled to a secure place beside Lincoln.'
The Power of the Press
Walter Lippmann was a nationally known columnist who ended up writing about the Japanese American situation, and in relation to the fact that there had been no sabotage on the Pacific Coast since the start of the war, he said 'It is a sign that the blow is well organized and that it is held back until it can be struck with maximum effect.' In other words, since there had been no sabotage it was proof that there would be sabotage. This is exactly the same argument that DeWitt noted when he was pushing for the removal of the Japanese Americans from the West Coast.
This is shown in a February 14, 1942 memo that DeWitt wrote to the Secretary of War about the 'Evacuation of Japanese and other Subversive Persons from the Pacific Coast.' He said 'The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken.'
In other words, Lippman's argument, almost word-for word. In addition, the report noted things like 'The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become ‘Americanized', the racial strains are undiluted. ...It therefore follows that along the vital Pacific Coast over 112,000 potential enemies, of Japanese extraction, are at large today. There are indications that these are organized and ready for concerted action at a favorable opportunity.'
The JACL
The report had the following comment on the JACL:
'The Japanese American Citizens League provided about the only leadership that emerged from the minority at this time.... The league was not actually representative of the Japanese minority, but its officials at this time appeared as the only spokesmen.'
The Santa Barbara submarine attack
Directly from the report:
'At approximately 7:10 p.m. on February 23, 1942, an attack was made on the Santa Barbara area by an unidentified vessel off the coast of California. Included in the area shelled was an oil refinery. The blackout in this area went into effect about one hour after the shelling had occurred and although there were reports of lights and flares in the vicinity, investigations were made with negative results. ...There was no evidence of shore-to-ship signaling and no evidence of a landing in the area.'
The effect of this incident was immediate and pronounced. Representative Alfred Elliott, of Tulare, California, shouted next day from the floor of the House: ‘We've got to move all the Japs in California into concentration camps, somewhere, some place, and do it damn quick.'
The Battle of Los Angeles
Some books have made reference to the rumors of a plane attack on Los Angeles which turned out to be a wayward weather balloon, although damage was done to some cars by falling spent shells.
The report goes into the attack, and Tokyo's response, in considerable detail and it's really quite interesting.
'In the small hours of February 25, Los Angeles had a blackout with antiaircraft guns brought into use. Five deaths resulted from traffic accidents or heart attack and were laid to what the newspapers called the ‘raid.' The War Department stated officially that the alarm as real; the Navy Department stated officially that it was a case of ‘jittery nerves.' Whether the ‘Battle of Los Angeles' was or was not a genuine raid, was still unsettled in the fall of 1945. An Associated Press Story reported from San Francisco under dateline of October 28, 1945:
'As many as five unidentified airplanes, either Japanese, , civilian or commercial, were over southern California the night of February 24-25, 1942, during the ‘Battle of Los Angeles,' Fourth AAF headquarters disclosed today.
'The blackout and antiaircraft firing in the Los Angeles area on the morning of February 25, 1942, were caused by the presence of one to five unidentified airplanes' reported Lieut. Gen. John L. DeWitt, then commanding general of the Fourth Army and the Western Defense Command. He added it was his belief that three planes appeared over Beverly Hills. ...the officer said ‘My belief is that those three planes could have been launched from submarines somewhere close into shore under our detectors.
'On November 1, 1945, comment on that statement came from Tokyo in the form of an Associated Press story, which appeared in the Washington Evening Star under the caption: ‘Jap ‘Air Raid' of Los Angeles in ‘42 was Myth' and continued:
'The battle of Los Angeles was a myth. The Japanese did not send planes over that city the night of February 24-25, 1942, a Japanese Navy spokesmen told the Associated Press today. ... Captain Omae of the Japanese navy said, however, that a plane was launched from a submarine and sent over the Southern Oregon Coast on February 9, 1942, ‘ to attack military installations, but the lone plane was unable to discover any.'
The explanations were fairly simple. It was a weather balloon, or it was actually nothing but nervous gunners firing at shadows.
Red Cross limits involvement of evacuees
Some of the evacuees were put to work making camouflage nets with some degree of difficulty and some degree of success. The Red Cross allowed the evacuees to donate money, but 'steadfastly refused to allow the center residents to roll bandages or knit for the armed forces, even going so far as to deny members of the Junior Red Cross units at centers their right to fill game kits for the soldiers, and not allowing center Red Cross organizations to be called ‘chapters'–they were called ‘units' to differentiate between Japanese American branches of the organization and others.'
Well, I've pretty much had my say on this subject, I think. The first book in the series covered the topic of maps, illustrations and photos from the newsletters. The second one covered the topic of violence as reported in the camp newsletters, and this one dealt with prejudice both from articles in the internment camp newsletters and from other sources.
The topic of the internment camps is still an emotional one for many people. It set a dangerous precedent for something that hopefully will never happen again, but still could if the bigoted fringe get their way.
I hope you've enjoyed this series. I owe a great deal of gratitude to Densho and their archive.