P 22 the Japanese Internment: World War II (Overview)

P 22 The Japanese Internment: World War II (Overview)

Early in the morning of December 7, 1941, a way of life ended for all people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast of the United States. Because Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government decided to uproot and exile men, women, and children of Japanese descent, regardless of citizenship. Made under the pressure of wartime expediency, that government decision has become a touchstone for Japanese Americans—an experience by which all other experiences, past and future, are measured.
The Early Japanese in America
The majority of the early Japanese immigrants to America were young men who, like many other immigrants before them, saw America as a land of opportunity. The first Japanese arrived on the West Coast in the 1880s to work as laborers on the expanding railway system or as seasonal agricultural workers. For the most part, those early immigrants, or Issei, had not planned to stay in America but to make their fortune and return to Japan. However, most of the Issei did not achieve that goal and remained as residents of the United States.
Despite the challenges they faced due to the anti-Asian racism prevalent on the West Coast, many were able to establish themselves as farmers, fishermen, or small business owners. Their families grew as more children of Japanese descent (the second generation, or Nisei) were born in the United States. By the 1930s, there were thriving communities of Nikkei (anyone of Japanese descent living in the United States) in all the major coastal cities from San Diego to Seattle, as well as in the major agricultural areas of inland California, Oregon, and Washington.
Evacuation

As tensions began to mount in the Pacific between the United States and Japan in the 1930s prior to World War II, some in the American government and military saw the Nikkei on the West Coast as a potential security risk. They feared that the Nikkei might supply sensitive information to the Japanese government or carry out acts of sabotage against military or industrial centers on the West Coast.
In 1939, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began compiling a "threat list" of all the prominent members of the Nikkei community. In all, more than 1,200 persons were placed on the "A List," a list of those who were thought to pose the highest risk and were to be arrested and detained immediately after the outbreak of hostilities between the United States and Japan. Those on the other lists were to be subjected to varying degrees of observation and scrutiny, including the seizure of their mail and wire tapping of their phones.
Within 24 hours of the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack, the FBI went into action; almost every person on the "A List" was in government custody. They were taken to local FBI field offices to undergo initial questioning and were later transferred to Justice Department holding facilities located throughout the central United States. For months, in some cases up to a year, they were denied any contact with their families. Their wives and children had no knowledge of their location or even if they were still alive. The Nikkei were faced with frozen bank accounts, foreclosed loans, seized property, and an 8:00 P.M. to 6:00 A.M. curfew enforced by the military.
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was persuaded by his advisers to make an extraordinary delegation of executive power. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which gave the military the authority to remove and detain any person living on the West Coast. Without due process of law, all persons of Japanese descent were to be forcibly removed from their homes and sent to holding facilities located throughout the western United States.

Executive Order 9066 by President Roosevelt resulted in the internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans in camps for the duration of World War II:

“[A]s President and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action to be necessary or desirable, to [order] military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any persons to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restriction the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion….”

Internment

The goal of the U.S. government had been to get the Nikkei off the West Coast, away from any area deemed to be sensitive by the military. The government agency in charge of that project was the War Relocation Authority (WRA). Its plan called for the internment to take place in two phases. In the first phase, the Nikkei would be transported to one of 18 quickly constructed assembly centers close to where they originally lived. They would be held there until the 10 permanent facilities further inland were built. The second phase would be their transport to those new, permanent camps where they would be held for the remainder of the war with Japan.
For the Nikkei, the assembly centers turned out to be hastily converted fairgrounds and racetracks. After being loaded onto trains and buses by the military, many families found themselves housed in horse stalls that had been made into living quarters. During the second phase of the internment, the Nikkei were transported to one of the 10 permanent internment camps that were built under the direction of the U.S. Army and were further inland. Like the assembly centers, the permanent internment camps were surrounded by barbed wire fences and had armed guards at the gates and in the watchtowers. The Nikkei were once again housed in barracks.
For convenience, the barracks were grouped together in blocks, which were to serve as the physical and social focus for the interned Nikkei. Each block consisted of 14 barracks, one male lavatory and showers, one female lavatory and showers, a laundry room, an ironing facility, one mess hall, and a recreation hall. Because of the monotony of living in the camps, the administration made an effort to provide organized activities. Each block had a recreation hall used for spare-time diversions or social activities. Those halls were also used for various club activities or any type of meeting.

An interesting, indeed almost paradoxical, WRA plan during the internment was the development of "self-government" programs within the camps. The WRA saw that plan as a way both to run the camps more efficiently and to win the support of the Nikkei interned there. In each camp, there would be a council of Nikkei internees who would advise the camp administration and help implement government policies in the camps. Unfortunately, the self-government programs never really worked. The camp administrations were fearful of giving the councils too much authority. The internees felt they were simply another arm of a government that had imprisoned them and stripped them of their rights.
Aside from the violation of their rights as citizens, the biggest issue to the interned Nikkei was service in the U.S. military. In early 1942, Congress had designated all persons of Japanese descent, even those who were American citizens, as "4C," or "aliens not subject for military service." After intense lobbying by the Japanese American Citizens League, President Roosevelt instructed the War Department to allow Nikkei who were U.S. citizens to register for military service. Many Nikkei, including some Issei, promptly volunteered for service or registered for the draft. Almost all of them felt that military service would be the best way to prove that they were loyal to America.
Resettlement
Starting in 1943, the WRA began a series of programs that attempted to relocate the Nikkei to areas in the East and Midwest and close the camps. However, many of the Nikkei were fearful of leaving the camps. Some feared that they would simply be turned out, without any means of supporting themselves, by the government. Others feared that outside the camps, they would be attacked by anti-Japanese mobs. Almost all the Nikkei knew that once outside the camps, they would not have the traditional support structure of the community.
From 1943 to 1944, the WRA made the process of leaving the camps more and more easy. By the end of May 1944, all that the Nikkei had to do was sign a statement saying that they were loyal to the United States and would register with the WRA field office wherever their new home turned out to be. By December 1945, all the camps, with the exception of Tule Lake, which closed in 1946, were closed. Each Nikkei family had been sent on its way with a government grant of $100 and several booklets of government-issued food coupons.
The Nikkei then began the process of rebuilding their lives. After short stays in a variety of places after the war, many returned to their original homes on the West Coast. What they found on their return varied greatly. Some had been able to make arrangements with non-Nikkei friends to care for their houses and property and were able to resume their lives with relatively little difficulty. Unfortunately, most returning Nikkei found that their houses and businesses had been looted and their property often seized by the state for failure to pay their taxes while they were interned.
The Issei and Nisei quietly went to work. They spent the post-World War II years rebuilding their businesses and farms. Most important, they made sure the third generation of Nikkei, the Sansei, went to college. The goal of the Nikkei after the war was to work hard and assimilate into American society.
For the Issei and Nisei, the internment has become an event that binds the community together and defines them as a generation. Despite all the government concerns, there was not a single documented case of espionage carried out by a member of the Nikkei community.
—Matt Estes

Chicago

American History, s.v. "The Japanese Internment: World War II (Overview)," accessed February 5, 2013. http://americanhistory.abc-clio.com/.

Primary Documents

(1) Mary Oyama, a Japanese American living in Los Angeles, wrote about her experiences in the magazine Common Ground (Spring, 1942)

It couldn't be true! The mythical Japanese-American war which we Nisei and Japanese had never dreamed could really happen. There was a hard, paralyzing stone inside of me.

My young sister-in-law, Sayeko, telephoned. She was the only one of her family here; her mother and father and older brother were all in Japan. The tears in her voice frightened me and I hung up quickly lest I weep, too.

Things happened fast. All the Japanese newspapers were suspended. Many persons lost their jobs. Japanese business went with the wind. Assets were frozen; checks came trickling back. Los Angeles' Little Tokyo was a ghost city; Issei and Nisei alike were afraid to venture out into the streets. Armed guards were thrown around Japanese town "for protection of Japanese nationals."

Nationals and their American-born sons and daughters went about with funereal faces. Suspected aliens were rounded up en masse, swiftly and efficiently by the FBI. The Japanese nationals were left leaderless in this bewildering hour; all the prominent people of the community were taken into custody. In the jails, crowded to overflowing, some committed suicide. A few were guilty, we do not doubt; but others - old people - clutched at death in their fear of persecution. One Issei hanged herself in her cell with her stocking.

My father's business, which depended upon the patronage of Japanese stores, was shot to pieces. My brothers' business, which was import and trade with Japan, was equally dead. Sister Lili's father-in- law, prominent in the Japanese community, was interned pending checkup and investigation. With the head of the family taken away, the young 21-year-old daughter was left as sole support of her mother and two younger brothers. Two older brothers were unable to help financially, as one was in the United States Army and the other interning at a hospital in Kentucky.

My husband was out of a job - Fred, who had never been out of work even during the worst years of the Depression. Every day after the Japanese newspapers were suspended, for which he had been employed as a radio operator, he went out job hunting - to all the factories, the defense industries, the NBC listening post, federal communications, all the employment agencies both private and state; he followed the want ads in the papers - in town and out.

“We were the second family to go into Tanforan and were assigned to this little room. Our bedroom was a horse stall with doors that were split where the horses would stick their heads out. . . . That was our bedroom. My mother, dad, sister and grandmother lived in the outer edge of this little area. When we were assigned to this area, I sat down with tears in my eyes because, here I am an American citizen being held a prisoner in my own native land.

I forget how many months we spent in Tanforan before we moved on to Topaz. We were the first group to go to Topaz and we traveled by train and every time we pulled into a railroad station, the blinds had to be drawn; no one wanted to look out anyway because they were scared; there were armed guards and everything. . . . Topaz was located on a dry lake bed of the former Lake Seiver, full of alkaline dust . . . one mile square with every guard tower 100 yards with a sentry up there with his machine gun. Our barracks, since we were the first group, were incomplete; there were no partitions in the toilets and no toilet seats; the food was so-so, but anyway, we set up camp for the other groups that were coming up. . . .”