Incarceration, Japanese American

Incarceration, Japanese American

ARREST OF COMMUNITY LEADERS

MASS REMOVAL OF U.S. CITIZENS

DISPERSAL TO DETENTION SITES THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES

SOME LEAVE CAMPS: “DISLOYALS” TRANSFERRED TO TULE LAKE

GOVERNMENT ENDS WEST COAST EXCLUSION

ADMISSION OF WRONGDOING: APOLOGY FROM THE GOVERNMENT

BIBLIOGRAPHY

From 1885 to 1924 approximately 200,000 Japanese immigrated to Hawaii, and 180,000 Japanese immigrated to the mainland United States. This first generation of immigrants (Issei) built a vibrant community, raising families, starting churches, and forming social and business organizations. Their success met with prejudice and an anti-Japanese movement. Discriminatory laws prevented Issei from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. They were barred from owning land, marrying whites, and sending their children to schools attended by whites. In 1924 Congress passed the Immigration Act, which barred any further immigration from Japan. The second generation (Nisei) also faced discrimination. Even though they were born in the United States, spoke English like other Americans, and often did well in school, these U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry faced discrimination in employment, housing, public settings (restaurants, stores, hotels, swimming pools, etc.), and social and civic activities.

ARREST OF COMMUNITY LEADERS

On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked U.S. military bases in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. More than 3,500 American servicemen and civilians were killed or wounded. In the hours following the attack, the FBI arrested over 1,200 Japanese immigrant men: businessmen, Buddhist priests, Japanese language teachers, and other community leaders.

More than 5,500 Issei men were eventually picked up and held as potential threats to national security. Most of these men were taken first to Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) detention stations and then to Department of Justice (DOJ) internment camps to undergo hearings. Officially, these internment cases were given individual legal review, but in practice the majority of Issei were imprisoned without evidence that they posed any threat to national security. Internees were not allowed legal representation. Approximately 1,700 were “released” to War Relocation Authority (WRA) concentration camps after these hearings, but most were transferred to U.S. Army internment camps.

MASS REMOVAL OF U.S. CITIZENS

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized military commanders to designate military areas from which any person could be excluded. Congress supported the executive order by authorizing a prison term and fine for a civilian convicted of violating the military order. General John L. DeWitt (1880–1962), Western Defense Command, then issued over one hundred military orders that only applied to civilians of Japanese ancestry living in the West Coast states. Thus the president and Congress authorized the removal and incarceration of over 110,000 people based solely on race without charges, hearings, or evidence of wrongdoing. More than two-thirds of those incarcerated were U.S. citizens—over half were children.

Ironically, over 150,000 people of Japanese ancestry in Hawaii were not removed or incarcerated. General Delos Emmons (1888–1965), who became commanding general in Hawaii shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, treated the Issei and Nisei as loyal to the United States. Although there were many false stories of Japanese American spies, General Emmons repeatedly rejected anti-Japanese pleas for mass removal of Japanese ancestry from Hawaii. He knew there was no evidence of Japanese American espionage or sabotage. In fact during World War II (1939–1945) no Japanese American in the United States, Hawaii, or Alaska—citizen or immigrant—was ever convicted of espionage or sabotage.

DISPERSAL TO DETENTION SITES THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES

The general public, through books, movies, and school lessons, is most familiar with the ten WRA concentration camps, such as the Manzanar “relocation center” near Independence, California. The full extent of the imprisonment, however, included approximately sixty other government facilities: temporary “assembly centers,” immigration detention stations, federal prisons, and internment camps. Italian and German immigrants, Alaskan natives, Japanese Latin Americans, and Japanese Hawaiians were also sent to live at these sites.

Which detention facility a person entered depended on several factors, including citizenship status, perceived level of threat, geography, degree of cooperation or protest, and sheer chance. For the most part the DOJ and U.S. Army camps interned first-generation men who were arrested by the FBI, while the WRA concentration camps incarcerated both U.S. citizens and immigrants affected by the exclusion order.

SOME LEAVE CAMPS: “DISLOYALS” TRANSFERRED TO TULE LAKE

As early as April 1942, even before inmates were transferred from the temporary “assembly centers” to concentration camps, the WRA recognized that Japanese Americans eventually would have to reenter society. Thus the WRA enacted a policy of granting short-term or indefinite leave for college or work to Japanese Americans who were U.S. citizens and who could find sponsors. Additionally, thousands of Nisei men enlisted in the military and served in combat.

To help administer the military draft and work-release program, the U.S. Army and the WRA produced “loyalty questionnaires” for all WRA inmates seventeen years of age and older. Two questions caused confusion and controversy for inmates. They were asked if they were willing to serve in the armed forces and to forswear loyalty to Japan. Answering “yes” left the Issei stateless, as they could not be U.S. citizens and the wording falsely assumed the American-born Nisei were loyal to Japan. Despite serious problems with the meaning and purpose of the questions, government officials and others considered those who answered “no” to these two questions to be “disloyal” to the United States, and they were transferred to the Tule Lake concentration camp in northern California, which was designated a segregation camp. “Yes” answers to these questions qualified inmates for service in the U.S. Army, and some became eligible for release and resettlement in areas outside of the West Coast exclusion zones.

GOVERNMENT ENDS WEST COAST EXCLUSION

In December 1944 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case brought by Mitsuye Endo, a Nisei contesting her incarceration, that a loyal U.S. citizen could not be held in a WRA concentration camp against his or her will. While the case was being heard, federal officials recognized that the continuing incarceration was not legally defensible and began preparations to close the concentration camps. In addition the exclusion orders were rescinded, and persons of Japanese ancestry were allowed to return to the West Coast. On March 20, 1945, the last WRA concentration camp, Tule Lake, was closed. The DOJ internment camps remained open longer. The last internment camp to close was the DOJ camp in Crystal City, Texas, in January 1948.

Upon release the majority of those who had been incarcerated were given $25 and one-way transportation. Many of the freed Japanese Americans returned to discover that their homes and farms had been vandalized and their belongings stolen. Even Nisei military veterans returning home in their uniforms from combat duty endured racist insults. Starting over was especially hard for the Issei, who were entering their senior years with little to show for a lifetime of work.

ADMISSION OF WRONGDOING: APOLOGY FROM THE GOVERNMENT

In the late 1960s community activists started a movement to petition the government to look into potential wrong-doings. Classified information was uncovered that showed that the exclusion order and incarceration were based on racism and falsehoods. In February 1980 Congress passed an act forming the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC). This commission conducted hearings in 9 cities, heard testimonies from over 750 witnesses, and examined over 10,000 documents. In 1983 the CWRIC issued its report, which concluded that military necessity was not the cause of the mass imprisonment. Rather, “the broad historical causes which shaped these decisions were race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership” (Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians 1983, p. 18).

Acting upon the recommendations of the commission, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, and President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) signed it into law. This law required payment and apology to survivors of the incarceration caused by Executive Order 9066. Two years later President George H. W. Bush presented the first apologies along with payments of $20,000 to each of the oldest survivors.

SEE ALSO Civil Liberties; Civil Rights; Discrimination, Racial; Japanese Americans; Reparations; Roosevelt, Franklin D.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Burton, Jeffery F., Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W. Lord. 2002. Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. 1983. Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Repr. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.

Kashima, Tetsuden. 2003. Judgment without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Niiya, Brian, ed. 2001. Japanese American History: An A-to-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present. Updated ed. New York: Facts on File.

Tom Ikeda