CRE 151 Japanese Internment Camps: America’s Great Mistake

 Japanese Internment Camps: America’s Great Mistake

1.      President D. Roosevelt declared Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harber a Date that will live in infamy -dec. 7, 1941.

2.      Feb. 19, 1942, Roosevelt ordered the mass removal from the West Coast of all persons deemed a threat to national security

a.      Order 9066 applied exclusively to American Japanese =120,000

b.      Ordered from their homes -70% were American citizens

c.      Took months

d.      FBI detained 1,000 German and Italian Immigrants and 1,200 prominent Japanese Americans = suspected enemy aliens

e.      Most lived on the West Coast or in U.S. territory of Hawaii.

f.        Nisei second-generation Japanese Americans

g.       Some were in serving in the Military -peremptorily discharged

h.      Selective Service stopped accepting Japanese Americans trying to enlist

i. But after the Military realized the need for Japanese speakers in the ranks and the need for trained combat personnel..they shipped most Nisei servicemen inland to Minnesota and Wisconsin for intelligence training and readiness drills

j.        Japanese

3. The Japanese American Citizens League pushed back—its president, Saburo Kido, telegraphed FDR that we are ready and prepared to extend every effort to repel this invasion together with our fellow Americans.

4.      Rufo Shimpo, the largest statewide Japanese-language newspaper, editorialized in English that Japan had started the war and America must end it: “Fellow Americans, give us a chance to do our share.

5.      White American animus toward Japanese immigrants started as early as the Naturalization laws enacted in 1790 and 1894, which denied Japanese U.S. citizenship

6.      Increasing numbers of Japanese immigrant farmers motivated a 1913 California ballot measure proscribing Japanese ownershi8p of land

7. Even though Japan was an Alli during World War I, -1924, the Johnson-Reed Act cut off all immigration from Japan.

8.      Depression and Japan’s 1936 alliance with Germany and Italy intensified suspicions in America of Japanese aliens as well as non-citizens of German and Italian ancestry

9.      J.Edgar Hoover had presidential approval for secret domestic intelligence-gathering

10.  After Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939- Hoover directed every FBI field office to document individuals who during wartime, “would constitute a menace to public peace and safety of the U.S. Gov. especially those warranting detention

a.      The ABC list rated leaders of ethnic organizations as A’s, C’s simply supported cultural societies

11.  The Alien Enemies Act of 1918 allowed detention of non-citizens deemed dangerous

a.      A step explicitly reserved for wartime

12.  Americans watched the war between Asia and Europe develop -Congress buttressed Hoover’s secret wortk by enacting the Alien Registration Act of June 1940

a.      ordered all non-citizens photographed and fingerprinted

b. By January 1941-five million individuals registered nationwide

                                                              i.      including 90,000 Japanese

c.      Hoover also vilified communists and the espouser of alien philosophies =fifth-column intrigues.

d.      between December 7, 1941, and mid-march 1942, fbi agents arrested 6,700 alien enemies

e.      detainees included several hundred operatives implicated in a Japanese spy ring run out of the nation’s consulate in Los Angeles

f.        those arrested were deported

g., a dozen members of the German American Bund chapter were exonerated of charges that they provided privileged defense information to the axis.

h.      most of those  charged in weeks after Pearl Harber were guilty of only being of a particular ethnic/national ancestry

i.        soon only american japanese were being rounded up

j.        Germans and Italians, besides being Caucasian and their descendants, were too familiar, too numerous, and too strongly supported by fellow citizens.

K. No one wanted to arrest European ancestry, but the distrust of the Japanese was deep-seated.

13.  by early 1942 -California politicians, along with elks, Townsend Clubs, and other grassroots groups, demanded quick action against Japanese living on the west coast

a.      California Attorney General Earl Warren at first counseling moderation -saying they did not want a repetition of Pear Harber..but later the Governor told Congress that the wole scale evacuation of japanese people was needed

b. later, Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron fired all city workers of Japanese descent.

14. Newspapers such as the San Francisco Chronicle accused the Japanese of aiding in the attack on Pearl Harbor, while Sacramento Bee insisted that the possibility of a Japanese attack on the coast was high.

15.  in dc people like eleanor Roosevelt argued that it was just foolish prejudices about other races

16.  privately she urged her husband and others to push back against the racist tendencies

17.  even hoover agreed that the mass evacuation was based primarily on public and political pressure

18. Lt. Commander Kenneth Ringle, a naval intelligence officer who had served in the American embassy in Tokyo, said the entire Japanese problem had been magnified…largely because of the people's physical characteristics.

19.  but others like Amy’s head of western command lt. General John Dewitt argued for removal, stating, “Racial affinities are not severed by migration.  The Japanese race is an enemy race.

20.  ultimately fdr signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942

a.      a national pool found that 90 percent of respondents endorsed evacuation of issei (Japanese-born immigrants), and 75% also favored removal of nisei (children of Issei -American citizens by birthright)

b.      exclusion zone quickly defined and a War Relocation Authority organized to coordinate mass removal to relocation centers

c.      any person 1/16^th or more Japanese had to register for evacuation

d.      Exclusion zone encompassed Western Washington and Oregon, California and Southern Arizona

                                                              i.      The region where most Japanese in America lived.

e.      The other large concentration of Japanese was in Hawaii, where a blanket expulsion of Japanese residents would devastate the economy

f.        Only Hawaiian residents of Japanese descent on one of the FBI’s list were detained.

21. The Army issued evacuation orders beginning March 24 -300 Issei and Nisei, who lived in Bainbridge island off Seatle, got 6 days' notice

a.      They could take only what they could carry

b.      Farmers abandoned crops, college students walked away from campuses

c.      Owners frantically negotiated sales of business and residences

d.      Some were able to store cherished possessions with friends who might also adopt their small businesses

22. The federal government not prepared to house more than 100k people

23.  Thousands on abc list wer already jailed at military bases or other facilities

24.  17 temporary assembly centers designated -in California this included racetracks, fairgrounds, and camps

25. The best-known camps were in Manzanar and Tule Lake in Eastern California, but there were also camps in Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado and two each in Arizona and Arkansas.

26.  From May through November 1942, thousands of Japanese families were transported mostly on trains with window shades drawn to these camps

27.  With time, relocation centers became organized -block councils provided effective self-governing apparatus, but this varied by camp

28.  Council for each 250-300 resident group of barracks included block manager, elected representatives, and head chef for the block

29.  Male nisei and bilinguals typically became block managers and tried to meet the needs of block residents

30.  Block managers and councils took direction from and negotiated with Caucasian camp staff

a.      Helped establish schools, worship spaces, and playing fields

b. They helped develop health clinics, barber shops, community newspapers, and gardens.

c. Mostly they had little o rno vices -simply a flunky of camp administrators.

31.  Living conditions reshaped lives and relationships

a.      Undercut family structure

b. But some young people saw this as ad granting more independence, and with peer groups able to secure jobs or college admission away from camp.

32.  Tensions were ever-present -each camp with about 10,000 people forced to live together, issei and nisei, country folk and city dwellers, Buddhists and Christians, bilingual and those who knew limited English -internal squabbling spread like disease

33.  Shoody healthcare meant sickness ran rampant

34.  Jobs paid little and were erratic

35.  In the fall of 1942 -WRA director Dillon Myer toured the barely settled relocation centers

a.      He quickly realized that it shaped individuals' initiative, loss of human dignity, and freedom, creating doubts, misgivings, and tension.

b.      He instituted some changes …those with health issues could apply for short-term leaves

c.      College students could depart indefinitely if a midwestern or eastern university would accept them

d.      Despite continuing prejudice, by 1945, about 4,3000 Nisei had entered or resumed college

e.      Work leave allowed about 2,000 to work the fall harvest of 1942.

f.        By 1943, Secretary of War Stimson convinces FDR to allow Nisei internees to serve in the army

g. But still, Lieutenant General Dewit believed that a jap is a jap..a sentiment held by most Americans.

h.      Many Nisie and Issei objected to the pledge to renounce Japanese citizenship and even their religion.  Even as some of them had served valiantly in WWI.

i.        They were also to be segregated within the army

Question 28: 28.

           

Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the USA and faithfully defend the U.S. from any and all attacks by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government power or organization?

Question 27 presumed that a draft-age man should serve a country that had destroyed his and his family’s lives. Question 28 implied that all Japanese in America worshipped the emperor. And Issei, who renounced Japanese citizenship, would be stateless.

j.        Ultimately, question 28 was rewritten, but some 3,000 internees still delayed answering by requestion repatriation to Japan

k.       However, nearly 90 percent answered yes to both questions.

l.        By 1943, 12,000 internees either refused to answer or answered no to both loyalty questions and were transferred to Tule Lake and held under maximum security

m.    A circuit court later described the conditions there as worse than those in a federal penitentiary

n.      After a few months, the Tule Lake works went on strike

o.      Hundreds of internees protested around the building where WRA Director Dillon Myer was visiting

. They demanded better food and worker pay

.      During this samp period, internees suspected of cooperating with camp officials were often beaten by pro-Japan gangs

r.        Martial law was declared -hundreds were imprisoned in camp stockade

s.       Several thousand no-nos at Tule Lake were eventually exchanged for American prisoners of the Japanese.

t.        Their protest of the no-no’s demonstrated the failure of miliary recruitment

u.      About 1,200 Nisei volunteered from all ten camps

v.       But in Hawaii, enlistment offices were swamped with non-interned Hawaiian Nisei -as thousands eventually served in the army, half of those from Hawaii; 800 lost their lives

36. From as many as 120,00 at the peak were interned, 90,000 were still interned when FDR finally ended the evacuation in January 1945.

37.  Half of those interned never returned to West Coast

38.  Deciding to settle in the Midwest or elsewhere

39.  Some 1,900 had died

40.  Survivors of the internment sought reparations -the Japanese-American Evacuation Claims Act provided $100 million ot compensate for lost income and property damage

41.  Distributing $37 million to 26,550 claimants

42.  American citizenship opened to Japanese immigrants beginning in 1952

43.  In 1980 Federal Commission on Wartime Relocation included one former Tule Lake internet, William Maruti

44.  The Commission estimated that losses were 102 billion (in 1980 dollars). In those years, the commission recommended a formal apology, education efforts, and reparations of 20,000 each.

45.  Congress, after lobbying by 100 plus survivors) in 1988 passed the Civil Liberties Act affirming that during 1941-45 Japanese Americans had been incarcerated without adequate security reasons and without any acts of espionage or sabotage.  Motivated by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and failure of political leadership, a reluctant Ronald Regan signed the bill on August 10, 1988 -some 82,200 internees lived to see the moment.

46.  The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of internment on December 18, 1944, in Korematsu v. United States

47. One dissenting Justice, Robert Jackson, called for the legalization of racism.

48.  On the same day, the Supreme Court ruled in Ex parte Endo that the WRA lacked the authority to detain “concededly loyal” citizens; the ruling steered clear of the constitutional issue but was seen as nudging FDR’s announcement to end internment.

49.  In 1983, Korematsu was overturned and based on proof that the federal government had suppressed evidence that the Japanese in America posed no military threat.