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TREATMENT OF JAPANESE-AMERICAN INTERNMENT DURING WORLD WAR II IN U.S. HISTORY TEXTBOOKS

MASATO OGAWA

My comments will be in [ ].

The purpose of this study is to analyze the treatment of Japanese-American internment during World War II in high school United States history textbooks. Four reasons highlight the selection of this topic for study. First, this historical event was selected because a little over a year ago was the 60th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order No. 9066, setting in motion an unprecedented internment of Japanese Americans and those of Japanese descent. Even more than fifty-six years after the last center was closed, the Japanese-American interment experience continues to deeply affect the Japanese-American community. Second, the event has enormous relevance to contemporary issues of interest to high school students including equity and social justice. Discriminatory policies, programs, and practices are still present today. Disparities and inequities manifest at local, state, and federal levels, and in both public and private domains. Since the September 11th attack on the United States, which is often compared to the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the need for understanding of the democratic ideals of social justice and equity and the issues of national security has never been greater. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the Arab-American and Muslim communities have been subjected to many of the same experiences that were once visited on Japanese Americans. Third, the event was selected because of my experience teaching the topic at a high school located in a large Japanese-American community, in which approximately 1,000 Japanese Americans currently reside. Finally, I selected the event because of my interest in and concern about teaching this topic in Japan, my home country. In a previous study, I found that Japanese textbooks pay little attention to the event and present only scant officially sanctioned information about the Japanese-American internment during World War II.

[ I doubt that many texts would give much of any coverage in length to anything other than the 'big' topics like the revolution, slavery and so forth. ]

Review of Related Literature

Present social studies standards and current emphases on multicultural education support a curriculum that promotes multiple perspectives and use of myriad of materials, multimedia, and electronic resources. However, many teachers persist in using history textbooks as their primary instructional tool in their classrooms. In the United States, people place great faith in United States history textbooks to supply their children with an understanding of American history. Thus, teachers and textbook authors have struggled with the fundamental questions about what content should be included in textbooks because the United States houses the most diverse ethnic, cultural, and linguistic school population in the world. One of the fundamental questions concerns the presentation by textbooks of issues that are important to understanding the experiences of various ethnic groups in the United States.

[From my experience in urban schools, there are not over supplied with a good selection of media materials. The budget is limited and schools have a hard time coming up with the money for really advanced teaching materials.]

A more recent investigation by Harada concentrated on the treatment of Asian Americans in high school United States history textbooks published between 1994 and 1996. Harada discovered that Asian Americans were depicted as passive rather than active agents in texts. She also found that textbooks cited how industrious Asian Americans had successfully assimilated into the mainstream culture, emerging as the “model minority culture.” However, none singled out their recent efforts to organize for greater visibility and voice through such groups as the Asian American Political Alliance and the Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans.

[One of the things that Asian Americans having going in their favor is their emphasis on learning in their schools. This becomes of major importance when one relates the success one has with their education and the type of job and income they will have later. The Japanese drop-out rate from high school is about 2%. The American high school dropout rate is four times that number. ]

Researchers have also analyzed the treatment of historical events or historical eras in textbooks. Of particular interest to these previous studies was Romanowski’s examination of the treatment of the Japanese-American internment during World War II in five secondary school United States history textbooks published between 1988 and 1992. He found that most of the textbooks examined failed to: (1) provide students with a complete description of the internment camps; (2) develop an adequate discussion concerning the loss of personal property suffered by the victims for the internment; (3) discuss other possible motives for the internment; (4) question American government action; (5) mention restitution made to Japanese Americans; and (6) raise issues centering on democratic ideals and related issues. He concluded that most textbooks presented knowledge in a technical manner, excluding important information and divorcing significant moral issues.

Research Methods and Data Sources

References to Japanese-American internment were found in chapters titled “America and the World, 1921-1945,” “The United States in World War II,” “World War II, 1941-1945,” ”World War II: Americans at War,” “The World War II Era,” and “A World Conflict.”

Six categories, modified from previous studies about the Japanese-American internment, emerged from the textbook data about the Japanese-American internment. Analysis of the textbooks’ content, developed from the general research questions below:

1. Japanese Arrive: How do textbooks mention the Japanese immigration experience in the early twentieth century?

2. Motives for Internment: How do textbooks portray people’s reactions to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor? How do textbooks discuss the motives for internment?

3. Expulsion and Detention: How do textbooks discuss Executive Order No. 9066? How do textbooks explain why Germans and Italians were not interned? How do textbooks present the conditions of internment?

4. The Question of Loyalty: How do textbooks discuss Japanese-American loyalty? How do textbooks include information about Japanese-American soldiers?

5. Returning Home: How do textbooks describe Japanese Americans after they returned from the internment?

6. Seeking Justice: How do textbooks discuss several Japanese Americans who challenged the internment policy? How do textbooks mention the redress and reparations?

Discussion of Findings

Photographs of Japanese Americans are rare in United States history textbooks. Two textbooks contain photographs of the early Japanese immigrants. A photograph in Prentice Hall’s America: Pathways to the Present illustrates “picture brides” wearing kimonos with the following caption: “These immigrants from Japan, shown in traditional dress, were known as “picture brides.” Their parents arranged their marriages to Japanese men in America by exchanging photos across the Pacific.”

Motives for Internment

Four of the six textbooks studied limit the discussion of possible reasons for internment to the issues of fear and the need for national security. These textbooks state that many Americans were genuinely fearful of a Japanese attack on the United States after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Most of the textbooks fail to raise other possible motives for internment camps. Certainly, the related issues of racism, discrimination, civil rights, and ethnocentrism are raised. In most cases, however, they are mentioned only in passing and are marginalized as primary motivations for internment. These textbooks seem to justify internment based solely upon fear and military necessity.

Prentice Hall’s Out of Many: A History of the American People raises the issue of institutional racism by mentioning the titles of popular songs and a racist comment credited to General John L. Dewitt. The text indicates that the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast and their incarceration couldn’t have occurred without the prior history of prejudice and legal discrimination:

Charges of sedition masked long-standing racial prejudice. The press began to use the word “Jap” in headlines, while political cartoonists employed blatant racial stereotypes. Popular songs appeared with titles like “You’re a Sap, Mister Jap, to make a Yankee Cranky.” The head of the Western Defense Command, General John L. Dewitt, called Japanese “an enemy race,” bounded by “racial affinities“ to their homeland no matter how many generations removed. “The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date,” an army report suggested, with twisted logic, “is a disturbing and confirming indication that action will be taken….”

Only one textbook, McDougal Littel’s The Americans: Reconstruction to the 21st Century, notes that Japanese Americans who lived in Hawaii experienced vastly different treatment during the war than Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast.

Expulsion and Detention

All textbooks for this study discuss the topic of President Roosevelt’s order requiring the removal of the people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. Two textbooks use the term “Executive Order 9066.” Although most of the textbooks don’t develop any clear reasons why President Roosevelt signed the order, two textbooks discuss the fact that he signed the order for the national security.

Of the six textbooks analyzed, only one text includes information on American citizens of German and Italian ancestry when President Roosevelt signed the order. However, this description is very brief. “Officials told foreign-born Italians and Germans to move away from the coast, but within a few months they canceled those orders.”

All other texts exclude the information that nationals of Germany and Italy were interned for a short period of time but not en masse. Additionally, no textbook explains why American citizens of German and Italian ancestry weren’t interned, while American citizens of Japanese ancestry were interned. No textbook discusses the racial prejudice including rampant anti-Japanese sentiment.

A rich textual and visual treatment in textbooks of the conditions of internment is vital in order for students to gain a complex understanding of the event. All textbooks discuss the conditions of the internment camps, however the textbooks tend to differ in discussion of the living conditions experienced by Japanese-American citizens subjected to life in the internment camps. The coverage ranges from a brief description that is rather incomplete to a complex portrayal that encourages students to look at issues of justice, equality, discrimination, and prejudice. Two of the six textbooks exclude particular information pertaining to the conditions of the camps, while the other four textbooks provide details about internment such as the personal property losses suffered, and personal accounts of victims of internment.

Four textbooks contain photographs regarding Japanese-American internment. All of these photographs illustrate Japanese Americans during some phase of being forcibly relocated to one of ten internment camps in the United States. None shows photographs of the internment buildings, dining halls, schools, or the interior of the internment camp barracks.

Only two textbooks contain maps in reference to the Japanese-American internment camps. The maps show the locations of the ten World War II-era internment camps located in the United States. The map in Longman’s America: Past and Present also shows a military area or an exclusion zone on the West Coast.

The Question of Loyalty

All texts concede that internment was harsh and unfair treatment for Japanese-American citizens. Three of the six textbooks indicate that there was never any proof of disloyalty by Japanese Americans. Only one textbook includes textual information about the 1941 confidential report to the President and the Secretary of State that certified the Japanese Americans possessed an extraordinary degree of loyalty to the United States: “Although a State Department intelligence report certified their loyalty, Japanese Americans—two-thirds of whom were American-born citizens—became the only ethnic group singled out for legal sanctions.”

All six textbooks address Japanese-Americans service in the military. All of these textbooks include information on the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, comprised of volunteers and draftees from the ten mainland internment camps. All textbooks praise the 442nd Regimental Combat Team as the most decorated American unit in United States military history, for its size and length of service. Two textbooks mention the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), made up of Japanese Americans who were sent to the Pacific Theater. Only one textbook illustrates the process by which some Japanese Americans were allowed to leave the camps and join the armed forces:.

Information about the loyalty review program administrated by the United States government isn’t found in any of the textbooks.

Returning Home

Four textbooks mention the unfair losses of individual property suffered by Japanese Americans during and through the war years. Two textbooks discuss Japanese Americans who renounced their American citizenship at the end of the war. Over five thousand chose to live in Japan at war’s end, a substantial portion of the population. In addition, details about the majority of Japanese Americans who returned to their homes in California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona from the internment camps were excluded from the textbooks. No discussion was found related to the violence and discrimination experienced by Japanese Americans at the end of World War II. According to the Japanese-American Citizen League, more acts of violence and terrorism were committed against Japanese Americans at the end of war than at the beginning. Many restaurants, hotels, barbershops, grocery stores, and other public accommodations refused to serve Japanese Americans upon return to home communities. This lack of information in the textbooks seems to imply that “everything returned to normal” at the end of the war. Despite the well-publicized accomplishments of the 442nd Army Regimental Combat Team, the names of Japanese-American soldiers were removed from community honor rolls, and the remains of Japanese-American soldiers killed in action overseas were refused burial in some hometown cemeteries.

Seeking Justice

Although all but one textbook discusses the redress and reparations for the Japanese-American internees, the depth of coverage about Japanese Americans’ seeking justice varies among texts. Three of the six textbooks discuss the 1944 Supreme Court case, Korematsu v. United States. McDougal Littell’s The Americans is the only text with a two-page section about the case, while two other texts provide only a short paragraph. The Americans contains a photograph in which President Bill Clinton is presenting Fred Korematsu with a Presidential Medal of Freedom during a ceremony at the White House on January 15, 1998. Five of the six textbooks discuss the court cases and government actions that formalized apologies and compensated the ancestors of internment camp victims after World War II. These textbooks discuss Public Law 100-383, signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, in which formal apologies were made to Japanese Americans who were interned during the war. In addition, President George Bush issued redress payments of $20,000 along with letters of apology to approximately 60,000 survivors of the Japanese-American internment in 1990. However, only two textbooks mention the important role of the Japanese American Citizen League. Additionally, there is scant reference to the role played by third generation Japanese Americans, the Sansei, in bringing about the redress legislation forty years after internment.

Conclusion

...two more recently published textbooks have improved. referred to the topic. Additionally, recently published textbooks attend to the important Supreme Court case, Korematsu v. United States.

[Again, there is the issue of space allotted to any topic in a high school yearbook. I did manage to find one textbook which dealt only with the issues around the interment. This is : A Historical Reader: Japanese-American Internment by Nextext. It is dated 2000 and contains essays about virtually all the topics the author of the paper wanted dealt with. The book is 240 pages long and is an easy read. There's even a sticker inside identifying it as a textbook and the inside cover has the usual 'This book is the property of...' writing. I read it and it's an excellent book and could be used as a supplementary book to the regular assigned textbook.

Note: I've edited the article somewhat and have presented most of the article but not all of it.



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