Japanese-Americans

Japanese-Americans. The war led to profound changes in the status of Japanese-Americans in the USA. For members of the American-born Nisei (second) generation, it brought about a major test of the assimilationist aspirations that led Japanese-Americans to believe that they could gain acceptance as US citizens. Despite the Japanese Exclusion Act of 1924, the passage of laws restricting land ownership by aliens, and the hostility of groups such as the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, by the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese residents had become well established in the economies of Hawaii and California. As the USA mobilized for war, the Japanese-American Citizen's League reflected a widely-shared desire among Nisei to affirm their loyalty to the country. Nevertheless, during the war they would be singled out for unprecedented forms of discrimination. Military exigencies became a justification for forced relocation of Japanese-Americans, citizens as well as resident aliens, living on the West Coast, a policy which was also adopted by Canada (see Japanese-Canadians). Before the end of the war, the relocation programme had been suspended. Nisei soldiers, including some former internees, distinguished themselves while serving with US forces in the European and Pacific theatres.

At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, the territory of Hawaii contained the nation's largest concentration of Japanese-Americans. More than 150,000 Hawaiians, 37% of the total population, were of Japanese descent. Initially attracted during the late 19th century by employment opportunities in Hawaii's sugar plantations, ethnic Japanese remained an essential part of the islands' workforce as the USA began wartime mobilization. Because of their importance in the territory's economy and their long-established presence in a cosmopolitan society with a large non-white population, Japanese-Americans in Hawaii had not endured the kind of intense racism that was directed against Asian immigrants on the US West Coast.

Hawaiian civilian and military authorities, as well as the islands' newspapers, were generally more willing than their mainland counterparts to play down rumours of sabotage by disloyal Japanese. Recognizing that federal investigation had not confirmed these rumours and that martial law controls made subversive activity less threatening, authorities were concerned about the potential economic impact of anti-subversive programmes that were targeted at all residents of Japanese descent. General Delos Emmons, Hawaii's military governor, resisted Navy Secretary Frank Knox's effort to evacuate Japanese residents of Oahu, and the reluctance of Emmons and other Hawaiian leaders to fan wartime fears of fifth column activity led to a policy of limited relocation which involved the internment of only about 1% of the Japanese resident in Hawaii.

Japanese-Americans on the mainland were treated far worse than those in Hawaii. At the outbreak of war, about 120,000 Japanese lived on the West Coast, most of them in California. Unlike the Japanese in Hawaii, they had endured intense discrimination that included restrictions on land ownership. Moreover, California had been a centre of anti-Asian activism that culminated in exclusion legislation preventing further immigration from Asia. Although Roosevelt received no reliable reports that Japanese-American citizens represented a subversive threat, he and other national political leaders agreed to the demands of western whites that they be removed from the West Coast.

Viewed differently from German-Americans (see German-American Bund) and Italian-Americans, Japanese residents were singled out for special treatment. On 19 February 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 empowering military authorities to relocate residents of ‘military areas’. On 2 March 1942, Lt-General John L. DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command, declared California, Oregon, and Washington strategic areas from which all residents of Japanese descent should be excluded. Forced to settle their personal affairs immediately, more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans on the West Coast (64% of whom were American citizens) were forced to abandon homes and businesses and live in one of ten relocation centres.

The well-publicized involvement of Japanese-American troops in the war effort (including about one thousand volunteers from the internment camps) was an important step towards overcoming exclusionist sentiments. The isolated cases of anti-military agitation (there were no proven cases of Japanese involvement in sabotage or espionage) among Japanese-Americans received far less publicity than the valour demonstrated by Japanese soldiers. The 100th Battalion composed of Hawaiian Nisei fought in the Italian campaign of 1944 and suffered such a high rate of casualties that they were called the ‘Purple Heart Battalion’. The survivors were later integrated into the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which continued to sustain heavy casualties during 1944 and 1945. The unit won many commendations for valour, including a Congressional Medal of Honor (see decorations).

The Supreme Court initially upheld the relocation policy, but found in the 1944 case of Endo v. United States that the detention of persons whose loyalty had not been questioned was unconstitutional. Even after the evacuation order was rescinded and the internment camps closed during 1944 Japanese residents continued to encounter discrimination, but the distinguished record of Japanese soldiers and the wartime disruption of traditional Japanese social life encouraged the eventual integration of Nisei and Sansei (third generation) Japanese into the American mainstream. See also internment and Latin America at war.

Clayborne Carson

Bibliography

Daniels, R. , Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 (Seattle, Wash., 1988).
—— Concentration Camps USA (New York, 1971).
Takaki, R. , Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston, 1989).