Sound Studies in American History III; No. 10; Prisoners of Prejudice

It was a Sunday afternoon in early December 1941 for many Americans a day for making Christmas preparations. Robert Akamatsu, a young Japanese American who worked with the YMCA, was with his family and their Alameda California home. Toshi Endo, later Mrs. Akamatsu, was working in the Santa Barbara home of her employer. And in Los Angeles, June Ishihara, a young office worker, was getting ready to go Christmas shopping. And in these California homes, as was usual all over America in those times, the radio played on. We take you now to San Francisco. One moment, please, while we attempt further contact with Honolulu. Go ahead, Honolulu. The island of Oahu in the Pacific, one of the most thickly populated islands of the Hawaiian group, was attacked by Japanese planes this morning, starting at about 8 o'clock.

No one would believe when we fought semi-der from the two radio stations here, that the islands had been attacked. But when bombs began falling in various parts of the city, and in different army and navy posts and bases, people knew Japan was endeavoring to eradicate America's outpost in the Pacific. I had two girlfriends, you know, real good girlfriends. The three of us worked as domestic in this one home. And Mrs. Hammett called us into the kitchen and said, girls, I have something important to tell you. We didn't know we thought, well, maybe perhaps we were losing our jobs. So she endo later to become Mrs. Akamatsu, which is said Pearl Harbor has been bombed. But we didn't know what that meant. Pearl Harbor had been bombed. That didn't mean anything, because first of all, you didn't even know where Pearl Harbor was. Robert Akamatsu, and June Ishihara later, Mrs. Takamoto. Because it was near Christmas, we were going to go shopping to J-Town.

J-Town, the heart of the L.A. Japanese community, with many ethnic shops, restaurants and businesses. And then I think before we left the house, on the radio, they said Pearl Harbor was bombed. And I knew war was coming. I knew that from 1939, but I didn't know when or where. So in that respect, I would say I was shocked because, you know, it happened. The months ahead would disrupt the lives of all Americans. But none, in quite the same way, the same profoundly shocking way, as the lives of these and thousands of other Japanese Americans living along the West Coast. Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addresses both houses of Congress.

United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces. Of the Empire of Japan. I asked that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and thus hardly attacked by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of law has existed. But Queen the United States and the Japanese Empire. As the U.S. entered World War II, fear and rumors were rampant. And speculation about Japanese attacks off the West Coast of the mainland threw people into general panic. Newspaper headlines blared unfounded sightings of submarines, suspicions of spy networks, and fifth-column activity. Unlike European immigrants, the ESA, or first-generation Japanese aliens, were ineligible for naturalization.

The Nisei, or second-generation Japanese Americans like Akimatsu, Endo, and Takamoto, were born in the U.S. and therefore citizens by definition of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Both groups became targets of blatant, sometimes violent displays of racial hatred, fears, and suspicion. Quite clearly, you cannot understand what happened to Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Without understanding, both the centuries of racism against blacks, against Indians that had existed in the United States. Roger Daniels, professor of American history at the University of Cincinnati, an author of several books on the relocation camp experience. And then, of course, the special anti-Asian sentiment, which was a feature of life in the American West in general, and in the Pacific Coast in particular, from the 1860s on.

This first started as anti-Chinese feeling and agitation, and certainly had much of its early roots in the economic grievances of California working people. But this was quickly transmuted into the notion that, yellow men, along with black men, brown men, and red men, were inferior beings in a nation that was thought to be by and for whites. Most of the East-side Japanese came to the U.S. between 1890 and 1924, and by 1920, about 110,000 persons of Japanese origins had settled, mainly in California, Oregon, and Washington. Adding further ethnic diversity to an already heterogeneous nation, they soon encountered hostility for economic and political as well as racial reasons.

Anti-Asian discriminatory laws emerged. The segregation of Oriental schoolchildren in San Francisco in 1906. Legislation in California against land ownership by Asian aliens in 1913 and 1920. And the U.S. exclusion of Japanese immigrants in 1924. Japan's expansionist actions, beginning with her invasion of Manchuria in 1931, to her attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, fortified American sentiment. The Japan was an aggressor nation. Caught between longstanding racial prejudice and new-found fear of attack were 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry. Two-thirds of the American citizens, the majority of them women and children, Professor Daniels. When the Japanese in the early months of the war, we in a whole string of victories, people begin to react very, very strongly.

And it's this whole combination of events, the overall racist nature of American life, the special anti-Asian racism of the American West, the fact that Japanese Americans were identified with Japan, as in the First World War, German Americans had been identified with Germany. And then finally, the fact that we were losing the war very, very badly. Had the war gone well from the United States from the start, it might have been a different kind of scenario. In February 1942, bowing to pressures from the Secretary of War, local West Coast politicians and media, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, an order which authorized the exclusion of any persons from designated areas for national defense security against sabotage and espionage. The course was set.

American citizens, an alien residence of Japanese ancestry, would be compelled to leave the West Coast on the basis of wartime military necessity. Issues of violations of constitutional rights were considered briefly, and dismissed in the name of military security. Earl Warren, the Attorney General of California and others, felt that acts of sabotage and fifth column activities by the Japanese Americans were imminent, just waiting for the right moment. Professor Daniels. The fact is that he was willing and other Americans were willing to put aside all the old legal safeguards. You don't put people in jail, you don't incarcerate them, you don't take away their property on suspicion, you wait for something to happen. Of course, the authorities argued that to wait for an overt act might be disastrous. The FBI reported no sabotage activity,

and other government counter-espionage specialists attested to the extraordinary degree of loyalty among the Japanese Americans. But President Roosevelt signed Order 9066, and the wartime relocation authority was established. The WRA directed my Milton Eisenhower, brother of General Dwight Eisenhower, was given the task of overseeing the evacuation of the Japanese from the West Coast areas to the mainland interior. The evacuees, as they were called, were given less than a weeks official notice. A week to sell houses and businesses, settle affairs, store personal possessions. One week. Orders were posted April 30th, and we were told to register May 1st or May 2nd, and we left on the 5th, so that's about a week, isn't it? We store down our basement, and some at the church, and some with the U.S. government, people were pretty leery, and we were among them.

The U.S. government said they would store personal property, but only at your own risk. When you're under stress and under time pressure, you don't really care who you rent that place. You've got to get out. You've got to time them. Toshi Akimatsu. We had stored a lot of things in the garage thinking, well, it'll be safe. Because the information you tell us that it will become for three or four months, or three or four months, or everything will be. Okay, so we left everything in the garage, you know. It wasn't to be. They took everything they wanted. By the time when word of evacuation had come up, we had to dispose of everything, June talking about all. So when we were evacuated, all we did was just take what we could carry, what they could carry in two hands. Some others had babies. What can you carry in two hands? You're going to carry the baby, of course, and the baby's essentials and the other. That wasn't much choice.

I think we all went through a period where we just didn't think. We just did what they told us to do. Backage and people were tagged with a family number. We had the rest there as a family unit. So we ended up by getting a family number, which I still remember, two or three or five. Then as head of the family, you had an individual number. Mine was 111-86-AC, and it turned out that she ended up with 111-86-B. Here were people law-abiding American citizens who were forced on very little notice to give up their homes and their property. They were allowed to, in personal possessions, to take with them whatever they could carry. They were put, first of all, in holding pens and places like livestock pavilions, state and county fairgrounds, race tracks like Santa Anita.

And like Tan Ferran near San Francisco. The Japanese were first corralled into one of the 15 temporary assembly centers in Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona until the permanent camps could be built. Horses and other livestock were moved out, and people were heard it in. And Tan Ferran, of course, the first comers, like us, we had the privilege of taking over a stall in a stable. The horses got better treatment than us because they were more valuable, but essentially what they did was put a wooden floor on the stable floor, sprayed some paint, and put a door in front. And that was it. There was no walls. There was no ceiling. And so, from the beginning, it was Camino living because you could hear everybody. Maybe I would have to imagine four or five other people. June Takamoto.

And so there were five of us. My parents, my younger brother and sister and myself. And so we were in this one small stable. And to this day, I can smell the horses. And they provided us with steel cuts and maybe about a two-inch thick mattress. And when it got hot, the cut sank into the asphalt. But who to think? They put assumed beams like cattle in that type of place. After half a year, they were transported like prisoners in trains with drawn shades under armed guards to the permanent relocation camps. Professor Daniels. Ten desolate barbed wire surrounded in closures. And God forsaken places, they are properly concentration camps. Persons were not put there for any crime or any overt act,

or any refusal to do anything. Persons were put in these centers simply because of who they were. The camp's Daniels refers to, were specially selected sites in the high plains, deserts, or swamp lands of Montana, Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, California, Wyoming, and Arkansas. Surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed centuries, over 110,000 Japanese accused of no crime, and with no due process of law, we're literally made prisoners of their own government. Conditions were harsh. We had four company, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, scorpions, and I think we had some long-centered peaches too. And then the healing monsters, they were really ugly, they were yellow and black. They endured snowstorms, dust storms, searing summer heat, swampy conditions,

all with inadequate clothing and poorly constructed shelter. Dylan Meyer, second director of the War Relocation Authority in a taped interview made during the summer of 1943. How the distance it looks like an army camp. The buildings are all one story, frame structure. They're lined up in rows and divided into block. But over some times, 14 black buildings do a block. Each of these barracks is divided into family-sized compartments, about 20 by 25 feet, to accommodate a family of five or six or seven people. The barracks were built hastily, often sloppily, with large cracks between the unseasoned timber planks. Every camp seemed to have had dust storms. The dust would come up through everywhere. I mean, through the cracks around the window, through the bottom of the floor, each barrack was divided into six units, which were called apartments. And each of them came with iron caught with mattress and it popped at least two.

That was essentially us. Oh, you got from 10th round on, of course, it was the Camino living, because we had to line up and line up and line up to go to the toilet. It was the same at all of the camps. Mrs. Takimoto at the Hila Camp near Phoenix, Arizona. The toilet, the pots, they were just sitting five or six in a row without any partition. And you know, when you go through that time of the month, and like, gosh, you want some privacy. But if you wanted to privacy, you go in the middle of the night around 12 or one o'clock when you know that no one else is going to beat there. But we got used to it. Dylan Meyer of the War Relocation Authority. The people in a relocation center are subject to the same rationing restrictions of anyone else. The diet is adequate and nourishing, and the cost is not exceed 45 cents a day for first. The ones who had to eat the food had another story. The Akamatsu's.

Gizzurs. In Tafran, I think, for one week, we ate turkey gizzurs. We got introduced to things we had never seen before in our lives. Like, root of Vegas. But I can still remember to this day, Vienna sausage, parsnips. I think I was some root bakers and orange marmalade. You know, we never ate those things at home. And here, I think we were getting it. I'm not sure, and I think we were getting it practically for every meal. At each center, there is a relatively small administrative staff, but the evacuees themselves do most of the work. More than half the teachers in the school are Japanese-Americans, and a larger percentage of the doctors. But it's almost impossible to take care of sickness of any kind in the home. So almost every case of illness is a hospital case. If this weren't done, epidemics would be almost certain.

The evacuees farmed the land, formed sanitation crews, prepared the meals, taught their children and makeshift schools. The harsh conditions, personal losses and prejudice, led some to despair and suicide. But on the whole, these evacuees were survivors. Most Japanese-Americans were treated with the same kind of humaneness that you get in honor farms for penal offenders. There were perhaps something like a dozen Japanese-Americans were killed. Some of them shot by guards in the camps. But many, many more were born and died in them, so they weren't death camps. But they were concentration camps. The experience was devastating to the family unit. Bob Okamatsu. The kids didn't need their folks. They didn't need folks to take care of them, or give them money, or whatever young people depend on their family for. The only reason for them to even see the family

was to come home and sleep. The WRA realized this as well. Even though the underlying location authority is responsible for the operation of the relocation centers, we're convinced that they are not good things. It isn't a normal way of life. Family life is seriously disrupted. And it's not easy to raise good Americans behind barbed wire. The relocation centers seemed necessary last year, but we're finding that under the influence of the conditions in which they live. Many of the evacuees are losing something very precious to them, and important to the nation. Their faith in democracy. Ironically, in the Hawaiian Islands, site of Pearl Harbor, base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and 2000 miles closer to Japan, most of the Japanese Americans and Japanese aliens were not evacuated. Professor Daniels. The Japanese Americans in Hawaii represent a third of the population. It was simply impossible and impractical to put away one third of the population of Hawaii,

so that although Hawaii was in fact a theater of war, although Japanese Americans were one third of the population, and one would think if they were dangerous anywhere, they'd be dangerous in Hawaii, but that wasn't the case. In the midst of all this, a unique phenomenon occurred. Determine to prove their loyalty to the U.S. and to vindicate their families from the blatant racism that the camp symbolized. Over 25,000 Japanese American men joined the armed forces, serving in the 442nd combat team, the 100th Regimental Battalion, and the Military Intelligence Service in the Pacific. Combining the spirit of the Japanese samurai warrior with the American Go for Broke Sense of Daring and Valor, the men of the 442nd and the 100th became the most decorated U.S. military units in history. By the summer of 1943,

the government was beginning to reconsider the wisdom and practicality and justice of its original decision for three major reasons. First, the tide was turning in the war in the Pacific, ironically with the help of many Japanese American soldiers who served as interpreters with the U.S. Army Intelligence. Second, the military feats of the Japanese American soldiers in Europe were convincing the public of their loyalty. And lastly, not one single act of espionage or sabotage was ever committed during the war by any Japanese American or Japanese alien. The FBI had been right all along. That the Japanese Americans were loyal American citizens, just as were most of the German and Italian Americans who had not been forced from their homes and incarcerated in camps for military security. WRA camp administrators were advocating a fast re-entry into general society. We're hoping to get the great majority out of the relocation centers into private employment, where they can be self-supporting and self-respecting.

Wherever they are needed and where the public will accept them. Most of the camps remained open until 1945, although early releases to college students and workers who found employment in the demilitarized areas away from the west coast was being allowed by the summer of 1942. By June 1943, the first of the evacuees were starting to leave the camps, not always to receptive communities and never able to pick up where they left off. It's very difficult to quantify the human damage that was done and it can be argued, of course, that the Japanese American people, like many other Americans, were simply war casualties. But there's a very real difference. The other American work casualties had their wounds inflicted by Germany, by Japan, by Italy. Japanese Americans had their major wounds inflicted by their own government.

In three cases decided in 1943 and 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the forced removal of the Japanese American people from the west coast. But even more important, it seems to me, is the effect on the country at large and the effect on the Constitution because if this could be done to one particular group, it can certainly be done to another group. The imminent constitutional scholar E.S. Corwin labeled the internment the most drastic invasion of the rights of citizens by their own government that has thus far occurred in the history of our nation. Built to redress these past wrongs have been introduced before Congress. In 1980, the presidential commission was set up and eventually produced a major document called Personal Justice Denied, a report of its commission.

And they made some strong recommendations. Recommendations for Congress to officially recognize and apologize for these past injustices, for a presidential pardon for those Japanese Americans convicted of violating curfew statutes, for a compensatory payment of $20,000 to each of the approximately 60,000 surviving evacuees, and for the establishment of an educational and humanitarian fund to prevent such wartime events. Unfortunately, all our essay parents are gone and they deserve the, you know, an apology. There's got to be some monetary acknowledgement of the injustice that was done. Otherwise, I don't think the thing is settled.

But from my standpoint, I would only ask that the governments think that they aired, they were in error in putting us into a concentration camp. If they would make it publicly known that it happened in USA, that I think would satisfy me. So that's all I ask for is an apology to set the record straight so it won't happen again. Thank you.