Japanese-Americans Fight to Preserve Wartime Internment Camps
As survivors of the camps age, their cause becomes more pressing
MANZANAR, CALIF—Ernie Takahashi knows his past is around here somewhere. "I think this is it," says Takahashi, 63, as he stumbles through the eastern California sagebrush, his shirt flapping in the high desert wind. He walks up to a small wooden post, pounded into the sun-blasted landscape on the edge of Death Valley. Stenciled into it are the words "Block 27." Takahashi, a Sacramento optometrist, smiles beneath his sunglasses. Until now, he has never seen his first home. He searches for some evidence of his existence on the dusty ground. Above him, the snowcapped peaks of the Sierra Nevadas soar over 14,000 feet. At his feet, there is nothing but sagebrush. "Well, I guess this is it," he smiles, looking back at his wife. "I can't believe it."
The wind was blowing, too, on March 27, 1945, when Takahashi's pregnant mother was taken from this same spot at the Manzanar internment camp to the camp's maternity ward. She and her husband, both Japanese-Americans who had been living in a farming community in California's Central Valley, were among the nearly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry—most of them American citizens—who were forcibly removed to the camps after Pearl Harbor. Ordered to leave their homes with only what they could carry, they were sent by train and bus to 10 internment camps scattered across remote areas of the country, small cities enclosed by barbed wire.
For years, the internees struggled to survive in these desolate places, not knowing when they would be released. The Takahashis were married in Manzanar in 1944, but when their son, Ernie, was born the next spring, his father wasn't there to meet him. Responding to the wartime manpower shortage, he had been released from camp to take a job at an ammunition depot in Utah. Meanwhile, two of Takahashi's uncles were serving with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, an all-Japanese-American unit fighting its way through Europe. Takahashi's mother must have appreciated the terrible irony, knowing she would spend the next few months the same way she'd spent the past three years: scraping out a living in Block 27, Building 5, Apartment 4.
Takahashi's experience, lost in the glow of a just war of liberation, is one of the darkest chapters in American history. Eugene Rostow, a prominent legal scholar during World War II, called the internment "our worst wartime mistake." Twenty years ago, the U.S. government officially apologized to Japanese-Americans for the way they had been treated, authorizing payments of $20,000 to each living survivor. But that wasn't the end of the camps' story. During the fight for redress, the Japanese-American community, long known for its stoic silence about its wartime experience, found its voice, pouring its stories into books, plays, and documentaries. Last month, Takahashi traveled to his birthplace on one of several organized pilgrimages to internment sites taking place this year.
As the last of those who remember camp life reach their 70s and 80s, their efforts to commemorate their experience have expanded: Former internees are determined not just to preserve the stories of internment; they also are trying to save the camps themselves. In 2006, President Bush signed a bill authorizing up to $38 million for a grant program to preserve the camps. But nearly two years later, swamped in election year politics, the funds have yet to be appropriated. The delay worries internees and historians alike. Soon, says Lane Hirabayashi, a professor of Asian-American studies at ucla, "these physical sites are all we'll have left to remind us."
"Military necessity." Decades later, the story of internment stands as the unrivaled cautionary tale of the flimsiness of the Constitution during wartime. On Feb. 19, 1942, two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forcible removal of all ethnic Japanese living on the Pacific Coast. Worried about invasion and convinced that Japanese immigrants might be loyal to Japan, Roosevelt insisted the decision was a matter of "military necessity." Anyone with any Japanese ancestry had to register for relocation. The white population stood by unmoved. "If making 1,000,000 innocent Japanese uncomfortable would prevent one scheming Japanese from costing the life of an American boy, then let 1,000,000 innocents suffer," wrote Henry McLemore, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
Historians are still awed by the magnitude of the decision. "It was a horrendous, draconian measure," says Tetsuden Kashima, a professor of American ethnic studies at the University of Washington. "There was no basis for true suspicion; there's not a single proven case of espionage. And yet they scapegoated an entire people based on their ethnicity in a way that violates the Constitution." In The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom, published this month, constitutional scholars Robert Levy and William Mello rank the Supreme Court's decision upholding the evacuation order as one of the most egregious in its history.
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Reader Comments
TGhree points:
(1) The japanese resettled were only from the Pacific Coast. There were substantial populations throughout the US in other areas, particularly Colorado. The Colorado population even published a newspaper :The Prarie Shimbun". It was anti American and supportive of Japan.
(2) Yes, there were some spies and sabotuers among those relocated.
(3) While we should support all of the remedies, one cannot understand the fear and terror that a Japanese invasion of Hawaii and the Pacific Coast was imment.
Yes, the Pacific Coast was attacked by Japanese submarines. Twice...once in Oregon and once in Southern California. There was also a baloon bomb that killed six people near Bly, Oregon. While one might argue that the internees had nothing to do with this, there was scant information available that they were not somehow abetting Japan's efforts against us.
Let's memorialize the event, but we cannot, ever, judge 60 year old history by contemporary standards.
Just a thought....just a thought...
Internment Camps and TGhree points
I was a child living in Southern California before and during WWII.
[1] I remember my family driving by Santa Ana Race Track (when it was a temporary internment camp before the Japanese-Americans were relocated to Permanent Camps).
[2] I remember looking out the car window at children standing at the fence looking out.
[3] I remember my father saying that the internment was one of the worst mistakes American had ever made.
[4] Neither German American or Italian Americans on the East Cost were interned.
[5] There are numerous documented records of spying and sabotage on the east coast as well as some off shore attacks.
[5] Japanese-Americans in Hawaii were not interned although there were more of them there ( as a % of the population ).
[6] Please provide Documented Proof of spying and sabotage by West Coast Japanese-Americans interned in the camps.
Yes we can and should judge mistakes our government has made, both now and in the past. We've had the SAME constitution for over 200 years. It either means what it says and we believe in it and live by it, or it is not relevant and we have an imperial government.
your historical revision, not mine pal
My folks were there at Manzanar. An uncle died heroically in France, fighting for the country that imprisoned him. When the family received the War Department telegram they received it behind barbed wire.
Yes, we can, in your words, "...judge 60 year old history by contemporary standards...".
It was wrong. Hugely wrong, unjust, unconstitutional -- and unAmerican.
Period.
Un-American Activities
In the history of America in the past and present and future there is and will be many examples of wrongs. Our America is not perfect as we all know. Also, many of us are part of problems. But, let us all keeping trying to make it a better land to live in.
This article is historically flawed and one sided, as usual...
It is well-documented that the evacuation was motivated, not by racism, but by information obtained by the U.S. from pre-war decoded Japanese diplomatic messages "MAGIC" and other intelligence revealed the existence of espionage and the potential for sabotage involving then-unidentified resident Japanese aliens and Japanese-Americans living within the West Coast Japanese community.
The U.S. Congress immediately passed legislation providing enforcement provisions for FDR's Executive Order, unanimously in both the House and Senate, provided under Article 1, Section 9 of the United States Constitution.
Only persons of Japanese ancestry (alien and citizen) residing in the West Coast military zones were affected by the evacuation order. Those living elsewhere were not affected at all.
It is not true that Japanese-Americans were "interned. Only Japanese nationals (enemy aliens) arrested and given individual hearings were interned. Such persons were held for deportation in Department of Justice camps. Those evacuated were not interned. They were first given an opportunity to voluntarily move to areas outside the military zones. Those unable or unwilling to do so were sent to Relocation Centers operated by the War Relocation Authority.
At the time, the JACL (Japanese American Citizens League) officially supported the government's evacuation order and urged all enemy alien Japanese and Japanese Americans to cooperate and assist the government in their own self interest.
It is misleading and in error to state that those affected by the evacuation orders were all "Japanese-Americans." Approximately two-thirds of the ADULTS among those evacuated were Japanese nationals--enemy aliens. The vast majority of evacuated Japanese-Americans (U.S. citizens) were children at the time. Their average age was only 15 years. In addition, over 90% of Japanese-Americans over age 17 were also citizens of Japan (dual citizens)under Japanese law. Thousands had been educated in Japan. Some having returned to the U.S. holding reserve rank in the Japanese armed forces.
During the war, more than 33,000 evacuees voluntarily left the relocation centers to accept outside employment. An additional 4300 left to attend colleges.
In a questionaire, over 26% of Japanese-Americans of military age at the time said they would refuse to swear an unqualified oath of allegiance to the United States.
According to War Relocation Authority records, 13,000 applications renouncing their U.S. citizenship and requesting expatriation to Japan were filed by or on behalf of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Over 5,000 had been processed by the end of the war.
After loyalty screening, eighteen thousand Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans were segregated at a special center for disloyals at Tule Lake California where regular military "Banzai" drills in support of Emperor Hirohito were held.
The Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Consitutionality of the evacuation/relocation in Korematsu v. U.S., 1944 term. In summing up for the 6-3 majority, Justice Black wrote:
"There was evidence of disloyalty on the part of some, the military authorities considered that the need for action was great, and time was short. We cannot --by availing ourselves of the calm perspective of hindsight -- now say that at the time these actions were unjustified."
That decision has never been reversed and stands to this day.
It should be noted that the relocation centers had many amenities. Accredited schools, their own newspapers, stores, churches, hospitals, all sorts of sports and recreational facilities. They also had the highest percapita wartime birth rates for any U.S.community.
More history for you to consider regarding the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians:
Consider that of the nine commission members, six were biased in favor of reparations. Ishmail Gromoff and William Marutani, relocatees themselves, sat in judgment of their own cases. Arthur Goldberg and Joan Bernstein made sympathetic, pro-reparation statements publicly before hearings even began. Arthur Fleming had worked closely with the JACL (he was a keynote speaker at its Portland convention in the '70s). Robert Drinan was a co-sponsor of the bill establishing the commission.
Consider that notices of when and where hearings were to be held were not made known to the general, non-Japanese public.
Consider that witnesses who gave testimony were not sworn to tell the truth.
Consider that witnesses who were pro-reparation were carefully coached in their testimony in "mock hearings" beforehand.
Consider that witnesses against reparation were harassed and drowned out by foot-stomping Japanese claques, that the commission members themselves ridiculed and badgered these same witnesses.
Consider that not one historian was asked to testify before the commission, that intelligence reports and position papers contrary to reparations were deliberately ignored.
Consider that as a result of the above, the United States Department of Justice objected strongly to the findings of the commission.
Lastly while we've all been educated on the doctrines associated with the rise of Nazism, I would be curious to know if courses are provided teaching the history of the doctrines of Japanese militarism, a belief system similar and equally as insidious as Nazism?
Any clasess on the kokutai? Hakko Ichiu? Any reading of Kokutai no Hongi? Shimin to Michi? The role of Nichiren Buddhism and Japanese "Language Schools" in teaching these doctines of Japanese racial superiorty to ethnic Japanese colonies throughout the word prior to Pearl Harbor?
Those of you learning this history at your public schools and universities should understand you are being taught an extemely biased and partial version of what really happened and why. I would urge you to go beyond the politically correct version of this history as propagated by the Japanese-American reparations movement.
[i]6] Please provide Documented Proof of spying and sabotage by West Coast Japanese-Americans interned in the camps.[i/]
1.Office of Naval Intelligence memorandum for the Chief of Naval Operations, Feb 12, 1941,"Japanese Espionage Organization in the United States," which suggests that the information therein be brought to the attention of the President and stating that the Japanese government had decided to strengthen its intelligence network by, among other moves to employ "Nisei Japanese and Japanese resident nationals" using extreme caution in doing so.
2. The Tachibana case (March 1941) about which Peter Irons' wrote in his "Justice at War":
"...There was no question that Tachibana headed an espionage ring on the West Coast that enlisted a number of Japanese Americans, both aliens and citizens (sic), nor that the government knew the identities of its members..."
3. Military Intelligence Div. 336.8, Honolulu, 14 October 1941. "Japanese Ex-Service Men's Organization" which reports on two Japanese ex-military member groups active in the U.S. with 7200 members, stating in part: "...these two organizations have pledged to do sabotage (railroads and harbors)in the states mentioned (California, Washington, Oregon, and Utah) in time of emergency. Similar organizations are in Hawaii. Sixty-nine local units of these two organizations are said to be carrying on activities."
4. U.S.Army MID Information Bulletin No.6 of Jan.21, 1942,titled "Japanese Espionage," forwarded to Ass't SecWar John J. McCloy by Brig. General Mark J. Clark,then Deputy Chief of Staff, U.S.Army, which, among its conclusions states: "Their espionage net containing Japanese aliens, first and second generation Japanese and other nationals is now thoroughly organized and working underground."
"4] Neither German American or Italian Americans on the East Cost were interned."
German Americans on the east coast and throughout the country were arrested, interned, and in some cases deported. Almost 11,000 German Americans were interned in the U.S. during World War II. Many German Americans sat, worked, played and went to school in the same camps as their Japanese American counterparts.
Furthermore even before the first person was interned, 600,000 Italian Americans and 300,000 German Americans were deprived of their civil liberties when they (all persons, male and female, age 14 and older) were required to register as "Alien Enemies." This registration entailed photographing, fingerprinting and the issuance of identification cards which the Alien Enemies had to have on their possession at all times. In addition they were forbidden to fly; to leave their neighborhoods; to possess cameras, short-wave radio receivers, and firearms. Finally, these persons were required to report any change of employment or address to the Department of Justice.
"[5] Japanese-Americans in Hawaii were not interned although there were more of them there ( as a % of the population )."
According to the 1940 census, ethnic Japanese made up 40% of the population of Hawaii. In California, the population was 1.6%. Military authorities had considered moving all ethnic Japanese to Molokai or the West Coast but moving 40% of the population was logistically and indeed financially impossible. That said, there was an internment camp in Hawaii at Sand Harbor. More importantly, Hawaii was under military martial law at the time.
If the the authorities could have evacuated all ethnic Japanese from Hawaii they would have. They could not so they did not.
As an aside, Japan had a battle plan in place for the invasion of Hawaii that intended to utilize ethnic Japanese during the occupation. The plan was scrapped after Japan's defeat at Midway.
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interment camps
I support the Japanese-Americans that want to save the sites. If the constant -endless -drumbeat for forever remembering the plight of jews in WW2 is ok---then other minorities deserve as much.
May 11, 2008 17:04:15 PM [permalink] [report comment]