1942 INTERNMENT OF JAPANESE IN AMERICA
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY BY LUCY WARNER
FEBRUARY 19, 2017


THIS NPR ARTICLE CONCERNS A WWII SITUATION WHICH OCCURRED SHORTLY AFTER PEARL HARBOR WAS BOMBED. I DON’T REMEMBER ANY MENTION OF IT IN MY HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY COURSES, THOUGH OF COURSE I DID LEARN IT IN COLLEGE. THIS IS THE KIND OF THING THAT I BELIEVE THE RIGHT-LEANING BETSY DEVOS IS LIKELY TO REMOVE FROM THE SCHOOL BOOKS AGAIN, ALONG WITH EVOLUTION AND THE “UNAMERICAN” PROMOTION OF GOOD RELATIONS WITH MINORITIES. I HOPE THAT CAN OCCUR WITHOUT OUR NON-EMPATHETIC PEOPLE CRYING “POLITICALLY CORRECT.” AS CITIZENS, WE NEED TO WATCH THE NEWS FOR THIS KIND OF THING COMING UP AGAIN, AND SPEAK OUT, RATHER THAN SAYING “THAT’S NOT MY PROBLEM.”

IT IS THE PROBLEM OF EVERY CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES. LET US REMAIN A MAINLY BENIGN NATION. GERMANS AND ITALIANS WERE ALSO INTERNED IN WWII. THE JAPANESE WERE PUT TO WORK, FORCIBLY, ON FARMING, WHOSE PRODUCT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE GIVEN TO THE JAPANESE COMMUNITY FOR THEIR OWN NEEDS, BUT INSTEAD WAS SOLD FOR PROFIT. IT’S A SHAME PEOPLE CAN’T JUST DO THE RIGHT THING.

I THINK THE PROBLEM IS THAT EVERYTHING IS COMPLEX, AND OFTEN A DIFFICULT AND URGENT SOLUTION IS NEEDED. THAT CAN MEAN THAT HEARTBREAKING ANSWERS AND DECISIONS ARE MADE TO CURRENT EMERGENCIES. THE VULNERABILITY OF THE WEST COAST CAUSED FEAR THAT SOME AMERICAN JAPANESE WOULD COOPERATE WITH THEIR ASIAN BRETHREN. THAT WAS NOT ENTIRELY ILLOGICAL, BUT THE DESTRUCTION IN HUMAN TERMS WAS A SHAME, AND OUR GOVERNMENT REPARATIONS UNDER RONALD REAGAN WERE SHORT OF THE MARK.

IN MILTON EISENHOWER’S WORDS, “THE UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION OF HISTORY IS PERSPECTIVE.” LET US TRY TO USE THAT INSIGHT AS OUR GUIDE TODAY. SOMETIMES PROBLEMS WOULD BE BETTER SOLVED BY INCREMENTS THAN BY A HUGE SWEEPING MOVE. SEE THE ARTICLES BELOW DEALING WITH THOSE PAINFUL EVENTS.



EXCERPT FROM NPR THE TWO WAY, BELOW:

Korematsu v. United States: The U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Internment -- US Supreme Court, dissent written by Justice Robert Jackson:

“Though in his dissent, Justice Robert Jackson wrote that the decision ‘has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens.’"

He added: "The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."




MILTON EISENHOWER, WHO CARRIED OUT FDR’S PLAN TO MOVE THE JAPANESE OFF THE WEST COAST INLAND, IS THE SUBJECT OF THE FOLLOWING BOOK, THE MAN IN CHARGE. HE WAS PRESIDENT DWIGHT D EISENHOWER’S YOUNGER BROTHER.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/books/review/book-review-letters.html?_r=0

The Man in Charge

To the Editor:

Evan Thomas’s review of Richard Reeves’s “Infamy” and “The Train to Crystal City,” by Jan Jarboe Russell (April 26), asserts that “the man in charge of the internment” of Japanese-Americans during World War II was Gen. John DeWitt. The general was responsible for protecting the West Coast and was indeed very influential in the decisions to relocate the Japanese-Americans, but the man in charge was Milton S. Eisenhower, the future president Dwight Eisenhower’s youngest brother.

In “The President Is Calling,” Milton Eisenhower’s memoir of his service to eight presidents, he related how Franklin Roosevelt summoned him to the White House on March 10 or 11, 1942, and declared without any preliminary pleasantries: “Milton, your war job, starting immediately, is to set up a War Relocation Authority to move the Japanese-Americans off the Pacific Coast. I have signed an executive order which will give you full authority to do what is essential. The attorney general will give you the necessary legal assistance, and the secretary of war will help you with the physical arrangements.” As Eisenhower was leaving the Oval Office, Roosevelt called, “And, Milton . . . the greatest possible speed is imperative.”

Three “agonizing” months later, Roosevelt again summoned Eisenhower and told him he had a new assignment for him and asked for nominees to carry out the rest of the relocation program. When he left, an advisory committee of Japanese-Americans he had appointed presented him with a bonsai tree in gratitude for his efforts on their behalf — an event he described as his only pleasant memory of that dreadful period.

Eisenhower worked on his book while president of the Johns Hopkins University and, as his special assistant, I helped. Reflecting on the relocation experience, he wrote: “How could such a tragedy have occurred in a democratic society that prides itself on individual rights and freedoms? How could responsible leaders make such a fateful decision?” Then he acknowledged: “The unique contribution of history is perspective.”

RON WOLK

WARWICK, R.I.

A version of this letter appears in print on May 17, 2015, on Page BR6 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Letters. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe



http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5153/
THE US SURVEY COURSE ON THE WEB

Milton Eisenhower Justifies the Internment of Japanese Americans

America fought World War II to preserve freedom and democracy, yet that same war featured the greatest suppression of civil liberties in the nation’s history. In an atmosphere of hysteria, President Roosevelt, encouraged by officials at all levels of the federal government, authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan. On March 18, 1942, Roosevelt authorized the establishment of the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to govern these detention camps. He chose as its first head Milton Eisenhower, a New Deal bureaucrat in the Department of Agriculture and brother of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In a 1942 film entitled Japanese Relocation, produced by the Office of War Information, Eisenhower offered the U.S. government’s rationale for the relocation of Japanese-American citizens. He claimed that the Japanese “cheerfully” participated in the relocation process, a statement belied by all contemporary and subsequent accounts of the 1942 events.
Listen to Audio: Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.

Milton Eisenhower: When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, our West Coast became a potential combat zone. Living in that zone were more than 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry: two thirds of them American citizens; one third aliens. We knew that some among them were potentially dangerous. But no one knew what would happen among this concentrated population if Japanese forces should try to invade our shores. Military authorities therefore determined that all of them, citizens and aliens alike, would have to move. This picture tells how the mass migration was accomplished.

Neither the Army nor the War Relocation Authority relished the idea of taking men, women, and children from their homes, their shops, and their farms. So the military and civilian agencies alike determined to do the job as a democracy should: with real consideration for the people involved.

First attention was given to the problems of sabotage and espionage. Now, here at San Francisco, for example, convoys were being made up within sight of possible Axis agents. There were more Japanese in Los Angeles than in any other area. In nearby San Pedro, houses and hotels, occupied almost exclusively by Japanese, were within a stone’s throw of a naval air base, shipyards, oil wells. Japanese fishermen had every opportunity to watch the movement of our ships. Japanese farmers were living close to vital aircraft plants. So, as a first step, all Japanese were required to move from critical areas such as these.

But, of course, this limited evacuation was a solution to only part of the problem. The larger problem, the uncertainty of what would happen among these people in case of a Japanese invasion, still remained. That is why the commanding General of the Western Defense Command determined that all Japanese within the coastal areas should move inland.

Source: Japanese Relocation, produced by the Office of War Information, 1942.National Archives and Records Administration, Motion Picture Division.

See Also:Korematsu v. United States: The U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Internment
"Evacuation Was a Mistake": Anger at Being Interned
Executive Order 9066: The President Authorizes Japanese Relocation



http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5154/

History Matters –
The US Survey Course On the Web

Executive Order 9066: The President Authorizes Japanese Relocation

In an atmosphere of World War II hysteria, President Roosevelt, encouraged by officials at all levels of the federal government, authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, dated February 19, 1942, gave the military broad powers to ban any citizen from a fifty- to sixty-mile-wide coastal area stretching from Washington state to California and extending inland into southern Arizona. The order also authorized transporting these citizens to assembly centers hastily set up and governed by the military in California, Arizona, Washington state, and Oregon. Although it is not well known, the same executive order (and other war-time orders and restrictions) were also applied to smaller numbers of residents of the United States who were of Italian or German descent. For example, 3,200 resident aliens of Italian background were arrested and more than 300 of them were interned. About 11,000 German residents—including some naturalized citizens—were arrested and more than 5000 were interned. Yet while these individuals (and others from those groups) suffered grievous violations of their civil liberties, the war-time measures applied to Japanese Americans were worse and more sweeping, uprooting entire communities and targeting citizens as well as resident aliens.


Executive Order No. 9066

The President

Executive Order

Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas

Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities as defined in Section 4, Act of April 20, 1918, 40 Stat. 533, as amended by the Act of November 30, 1940, 54 Stat. 1220, and the Act of August 21, 1941, 55 Stat. 655 (U.S.C., Title 50, Sec. 104);

Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order. The designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said Proclamations in respect of such prohibited and restricted areas.

I hereby further authorize and direct the Secretary of War and the said Military Commanders to take such other steps as he or the appropriate Military Commander may deem advisable to enforce compliance with the restrictions applicable to each Military area hereinabove authorized to be designated, including the use of Federal troops and other Federal Agencies, with authority to accept assistance of state and local agencies.

I hereby further authorize and direct all Executive Departments, independent establishments and other Federal Agencies, to assist the Secretary of War or the said Military Commanders in carrying out this Executive Order, including the furnishing of medical aid, hospitalization, food, clothing, transportation, use of land, shelter, and other supplies, equipment, utilities, facilities, and services.

This order shall not be construed as modifying or limiting in any way the authority heretofore granted under Executive Order No. 8972, dated December 12, 1941, nor shall it be construed as limiting or modifying the duty and responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with respect to the investigation of alleged acts of sabotage or the duty and responsibility of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, prescribing regulations for the conduct and control of alien enemies, except as such duty and responsibility is superseded by the designation of military areas hereunder.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The White House,

February 19, 1942.

[F.R. Doc. 42–1563; Filed, February 21, 1942; 12:51 p.m.]

Source: Executive Order No. 9066, February 19, 1942.


See Also: Korematsu v. United States: The U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Internment
"Evacuation Was a Mistake": Anger at Being Interned
Milton Eisenhower Justifies the Internment of Japanese Americans



http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/19/516115506/75-years-later-americans-still-bear-scars-of-internment-order

the two-way
BREAKING NEWS FROM NPR

75 Years Later, Americans Still Bear Scars Of Internment
February 19, 20174:48 PM ET
COLIN DWYER

Photograph -- This 1945 photo provided by the family shows Shizuko Ina, with her son Kiyoshi (left) and daughter Satsuki in an internment camp in Tule Lake, Calif. This photograph was taken by a family friend who was a soldier at the time, since cameras were considered contraband at the camp. Satsuki was born at the camp.
Courtesy of the Ina family/AP

It has been three-quarters of a century since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The order, issued just over two months after Japan's surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, gave the U.S. military the ability to designate areas "from which any or all persons may be excluded."

There was no mention of any particular ethnic or racial group anywhere in the order. Nevertheless, the implications were quickly quite clear: Not even a week passed before people of Japanese descent were being ordered to leave their homes in California. Soon, the forced relocation applied to the whole state, as well as much of the rest of the West Coast.

Roosevelt signed another order the next month, creating an agency to usher these people — mostly U.S. citizens — to camps set up expressly to incarcerate them as potential threats.

By the time the last internment camp closed in 1946, roughly 120,000 Japanese-Americans had been held in 10 camps, tar-paper barracks set up in a handful of states.

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
Follow
Britannica @Britannica
#ExecutiveOrder9066 allowed creation of 10 internment camps where Japanese Americans were held for 3 years. #EO9066 http://ow.ly/toCp3097t2I
2:00 PM - 19 Feb 2017
31 31 Retweets 22 22 likes

Beacons In A 'Dark Chapter'

Before an Oregon Senate committee, George Nakata, who was no more than 8 years old when the Roosevelt's order was signed, spoke earlier this week of a "dark chapter in American history ... not found in many school textbooks," according to The Associated Press.

"I can never forget, upon entering the building [where I was incarcerated], the smell of livestock urine, the pungent odor of manure underneath the wooden floors," Nakata told lawmakers, who are considering a bill to establish a Day of Remembrance of the internment. The AP notes that California and Washington have passed similar resolutions.

In their commemorations, many have turned to the courage of a few as a beacon in that "dark chapter" — especially Fred Korematsu, who as a young man refused to be relocated in 1942. Korematsu, a U.S. citizen, took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled against him.

"The majority of justices claimed the detentions were not based on racial discrimination but rather on suspicions that Japanese-Americans were acting as spies," as NPR has reported.

Though in his dissent, Justice Robert Jackson wrote the decision "has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens."

He added: "The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."

That conviction was eventually vacated in 1983 by a U.S. District Court in San Francisco. But "if anyone should do any pardoning," Korematsu said at the time, "I should be the one pardoning the government for what they did to the Japanese-American people."

Japanese-Americans across the country still harbor memories of childhood years spent behind barbed wire.

That includes Roy Ebihara, who recently spoke with StoryCorps.

"I really didn't understand what this all meant and how it would affect our family. I guess I felt we were guilty of something but what, I didn't know," he told his wife Aiko during the interview.

"I just feel that I want to go back and accept that pride, that pride of who we are."

At the time Roosevelt's order was signed, The Los Angeles Times defended the internment — a decision the Times editorial board on Sunday called "our lasting shame."

"The time has come to realize that the rigors of war demand proper detention of Japanese and their immediate removal from the most acute danger spots," the paper wrote in 1942. "It is not a pleasant task. But it must be done and done now. There is no safe alternative."

A year later, the paper pinned their rationale on the idea that "as a race, the Japanese have made for themselves a record for conscienceless treachery unsurpassed in history."

In this respect, the paper was in lockstep with the mayor of its home city at the time, Fletcher Bowron. On member station KPCC, Michael Holland and John Rabe point to Bowron's archived speeches, which referred to citizens of Japanese descent as a threat to the homeland.

Some of his addresses drew on legal trappings for credibility:

"I have merely pointed out a legal theory that native-born Japanese never were citizens under a proper construction of the provisions of the United States Constitution. If they never were citizens, nothing could be taken from them and their position is different. ... [They] are in a class by themselves."

Bowron later "made several public apologies for the treatment of the Japanese citizens of Los Angeles," Holland and Rabe write.

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
Follow
Fran Rossi Szpylczyn @FranSzpylczyn
In 1942 Japanese-Americans were instructed to enter camps, for our "safety." #DayOfRemembrance #NeverForget It *can* happen here.
9:42 AM - 19 Feb 2017
331 331 Retweets 263 263 likes

The Times of 2017, for its part, condemned the claims of its forebears.

The anniversary marks a time "to exercise some humility and to reflect on how we reach our positions on the passionate issues of the day," the paper's editorial board wrote Sunday. "Here's one obvious conclusion: Even in times of stress and fear, we need to keep a firm grip on our core values and bedrock principles."

Others in the U.S. also treated Sunday as a time for reflection — and as an opportunity to cast an eye on the present.

"Curators at the Japanese American National Museum say they see parallels between how Japanese Americans were treated during World War II and how Muslim Americans are treated today," NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports for our Newscast unit.

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
Follow
JP SchnapperCasteras ✔ @jpscasteras
On this day, 75 yrs ago, #EO9066 was issued, which set in motion the internment of 100,000+ Japanese-Americans.
11:44 AM - 19 Feb 2017
866 866 Retweets 584 584 likes

Starting this weekend, the Los Angeles museum is displaying two pages of Roosevelt's original executive order.

"They say they hope younger visitors will have a chance to see firsthand the document that scarred the lives of generations of Japanese-Americans."




http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/02/19/515822019/farming-behind-barbed-wire-japanese-americans-remember-wwii-incarceration
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Farming Behind Barbed Wire: Japanese-Americans Remember WWII Incarceration
February 19, 2017 7:00 AM ET
LISA MOREHOUSE

Photograph -- Many of the Japanese Americans incarcerated at Tule Lake had been farmers before the war. At camp, they were employed as field workers, often for $12 a month. Here, incarcerees work in a carrot field.
Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project via The National Archives


At 98, Riichi Fuwa doesn't remember his Social Security number, but he remembers this: "19949. That was my number the government gave me," he said. "19949. You were more number than name."

That was the number that Fuwa was assigned when he was 24 years old, soon after he was forced off his family's farm in Bellingham, Wash., and incarcerated at the Tule Lake camp, just south of the Oregon border in California's Modoc County.

Seventy-five years ago today, on Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066, which led all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to be forced from their homes and businesses during World War II.

Fuwa was one of almost 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most American citizens and farmers, who were incarcerated in what were euphemistically called "relocation" or "internment" camps. I met Fuwa last summer, when I joined a four-day pilgrimage to Tule Lake undertaken by survivors of the camps and their children and grandchildren.

"I wanted to see the place for the last time," Fuwa told me.

Before the war, nearly two-thirds of West Coast Japanese-Americans worked in agriculture. People like 93-year-old Jim Tanimoto, from the Sacramento Valley town of Gridley. His father grew rice, then cultivated peaches.

Tanimoto and Fuwa's immigrant parents faced laws barring them from owning or holding long-term leases on land. Despite that, by 1940 they and their American-born children grew almost 40 percent of the vegetables in California.


Jim Tanimoto worked on the freight crew, packing and shipping out produce from the Tule Lake farm. Along with many others, he refused to sign the infamous "loyalty questionnaire." He was jailed in a nearby town, and at this former Civilian Conservation Corps camp. He says, "I stood on my constitutional rights. You can't do this to American citizens."
Courtesy of Gen Fujitani
Then, on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese military bombed Pearl Harbor. Resentment and hysteria grew about anyone of Japanese origin, even those born in the United States. Tanimoto remembered, "Then Executive Order 9066 was signed. Things changed."

On Feb. 19, 1942, when President Roosevelt signed the executive order authorizing the removal of anyone from military areas, Japanese-Americans could read between the lines. They knew the order mainly targeted them. Soon, the commanding general for the West Coast determined that all people of Japanese origin – whether immigrant or U.S.-born citizen – in coastal areas had to move inland onto so-called "relocation camps." Many had to abandon their orchards and fields, with crops ready to harvest.

"When I stepped out of the train, the terrain was not a big shock," Tanimoto said. "I knew what the terrain looked like."

That's because, when he was younger, Tanimoto had hunted for deer up in the Tule Lake Basin, when all he could see was dusty land and scrub brush. When, in 1942, Tanimoto and the 15,000 other forcibly evacuated Japanese-Americans arrived at Tule Lake, they saw a landscape dominated by barracks covered in black tar paper.

"Rows and rows and rows of these buildings," said Tanimoto. "We were inside the barbed-wire fence, the armed guard towers. We couldn't walk out of the enclosure. I might get shot." He remembered thinking, "Hey, I'm an American citizen! Now I'm the one being hunted."

Government Farmworkers

Jim Tanimoto and many other once-successful farm owners were about to become field workers for the U.S. government.

The guard towers and rows of barracks have long since been torn down or moved. Our guide on the pilgrimage points out the few remaining buildings, and the huge swaths of farmland once worked by Tule Lake prisoners. Over 1,000 Japanese-Americans worked in the fields, most earning just $12 a month, a quarter of what farmworkers made at the time.

Enlarge this image
Each of the 10 incarceration camps nationwide had working farms. Many of the Japanese-Americans held there, like the women above, worked as field hands.

Densho: The Japanese American Legacy via The National Archives
Agriculture wasn't incidental at any of the incarceration camps. Many of the new War Relocation Authority administrators came right from the Department of Agriculture. Camp locations, though usually in deserts and other inhospitable places, were often chosen for their existing government irrigation projects or agricultural potential. The government's intention was to improve the land for after the war.

Each of the 10 incarceration camps nationwide had working farms, but Tule Lake was different. The land was on a former lake bed, so despite a dusty, snowy and windy climate and a short growing season, it produced enough food for its own mess halls and those at other camps. That production was so essential that when the Tule Lake camp opened, eligible men who refused to work were threatened with $20 a month fines.

Farmworkers at Tule Lake harvested almost 30 crops, including potatoes, rutabagas and daikon radishes. They also grew grain and hay for animal feed, and kept hogs and chickens.

Before the war, Lucille Hitomi's father ran a commercial flower business in Mountain View, Calif. At Tule Lake, he worked the fields, under white supervisors.

"I remember my dad saying, 'I don't know if they were good farmers,' " she said, but those bosses relied on the expertise of the Japanese-American laborers to develop a productive farm. To keep some semblance of normalcy, families like Hitomi's tried to create special meals. It helped that her brother worked at the camp slaughterhouse.

Photograph -- A young field worker loads potatoes grown on the farm of the Tule Lake incarceration camp
National Archives

"I don't know if this was legal," Hitomi remembered, "but sometimes he would bring bits of meat home. My mother brought to camp a hot plate and a frying pan, and she'd cook the meat in the barrack," instead of joining hundreds of others in the mess hall. "I guess it was more like home," Hitomi said.

The stated purpose of these farms was to feed the incarcerated, but camp administrators took produce, grain and hay grown by these imprisoned Japanese American workers, and sold it on the open market – over 2 million tons of it from Tule Lake alone.

Loyalty questioned

One year after ordering Japanese-Americans out of their homes, the government made every adult in every camp fill out a questionnaire. "This outrageous questionnaire was used to separate the so-called loyal people from the disloyal," said writer and historian Barbara Takei, who also attended the pilgrimage.

Jim Tanimoto remembers that two questions caused the most confusion and anger: No. 27 asked a person's willingness to join the armed forces – this, after being incarcerated.

"And No. 28 was sort of like a trick question, 'Would you cut your ties with Japan and the emperor?" he recalled. "Well, I'm an American citizen and a Gridley farm boy. I have no ties with Japan or the emperor, so how was I supposed to answer this question?"

If he had no ties to begin with, he couldn't answer "yes" and cut them. But if he answered "no," the U.S. government would assume he was disloyal.

Tanimoto and all of the other young men in Block 42, his area of the Tule Lake camp, refused to answer. They were arrested and jailed in nearby towns, then at a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp nearby.

"I stood on my constitutional rights," Tanimoto said. "You can't do this to American citizens."

More people at Tule Lake refused to answer these questions, or answered no to one or both, than at any other camp. Additional fences and guard towers went up, and anyone in the whole camp system who didn't answer "yes" to both questions was labeled "disloyal" and was sent to the re-named Tule Lake Segregation Center. This was in the 1940s, two decades before the civil rights movement.

"Now, post-civil rights movement, we realize that the right to protest is a precious American right," Takei said. "It was something that the people who were imprisoned in Tule Lake exercised, and because of that they were punished."

Enlarge this image
One of the few remaining structures at the Tule Lake Segregation Center, the jail, was built in 1944.
Courtesy of Gen Fujitani
A camp that was the largest 'city' in region

By fall of 1943, Tule Lake Segregation Center became the largest "city" in California north of Sacramento, ballooning to nearly 19,000 people, most of them labeled troublemakers. Camp got tense. With a larger workforce, the administrators expanded the farm, and expected a huge harvest, but the laborers complained of poor food rations and major safety concerns.

Then, a truck carrying Japanese-American laborers from the farm had an accident. Nearly 30 worker were injured. One died. Farmworkers refused to go back to work.

"They recognized that they had leverage by having the strike right when the crops are ready to pick," Takei explained. The camp director turned around and brought in Japanese-Americans from other incarceration camps to break the strike.

"These strikebreakers were also paid a dollar an hour, so in two days they could make more than a farm worker at Tule Lake would make in a month," Takei said.

Camp administrators would simply not let the fields go unharvested. A few days later, Takei explained, the Tule Lake laborers became even angrier.

"Workers saw a truck leaving the warehouse area filled with food," ostensibly to feed the strikebreakers. Some 200 people surrounded the truck.

"And that's what caused the camp director to call in a battalion, with the tanks rolling in, and the camp was shut down," said Takei.

Martial law

Japanese-American leaders were thrown in a stockade, with no legal recourse. Within days, martial law was declared.

This marked the end of large-scale farming, and the beginning of two tumultuous years at Tule Lake. The military raided barracks, and hundreds of people ended up in the stockade, then a jail, for months. There were more protests. A radical faction grew in camp, and eventually thousands of angry, scared, or confused Japanese-Americans imprisoned at Tule Lake renounced their U.S. citizenship, actions many felt were made under duress, and which took 20 years to reverse.

Enlarge this image
The Segregation Center was located in the Tule Lake Basin, where irrigated fields still butt up against dusty land, interrupted by scrub brush and dramatic outcroppings
Courtesy of Gen Fujitani

The Tule Lake Segregation Center closed in the spring of 1946, six months after the war ended. What remained were empty barracks that once housed families, and thousands of acres of rich farmland. Riichi Fuwa, 98, remembered that the land he and other Japanese-Americans improved got parceled off to veterans returning from war.

"When the soldiers came back and they wanted to farm, they could homestead that place," he said.

I asked him, jokingly, if he was offered that land. Fuwa just laughed.

Some former incarcerees returned home and eventually rebuilt successful farm businesses. Not Fuwa. His farm was overgrown, all the equipment stolen.

"There's no way to express that feeling when you see the place like that," he said.

He soon left farming forever.

By 1960, the number of Japanese-American farmers dropped to a quarter of their prewar presence. With lost farms, homes and businesses, it's estimated that wartime incarceration cost Japanese-Americans up to $4 billion in today's values. Some of those losses were compensated in 1988, when President Ronald Reagan signed redress legislation offering a formal apology and giving $20,000 to each survivor.

The non-economic losses – to Japanese-Americans, to California, to the whole country – are impossible to measure. Especially now, Takei said, we must remember "how easily people — because of fear and anger — lose sight of our important national values of justice and rule of law." She drew parallels with Muslim Americans, refugees and immigrants, "as though demonizing other people is going to solve our problems."

All we have to do, she said, is look at the World War II incarceration of Japanese -Americans to see that's not true.


Lisa Morehouse is an independent journalist. This story was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, a non-profit investigative news organization. Meradith Hoddinott helped with research.

japanese-american incarceration camps
japanese americans
japanese internment camp
world war ii