The Japanese Internment

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The Japanese Internment •

How did Japanese people arrive and establish themselves in America?

Issei: Japanese people born in Japan then immigrated to the U.S.

Nisei: Japanese people born and educated in America to Japanese immigrant parents

Pearl Harbor

It was 7:55 on December 7th, 1941. In Pearl Harbor, a U.S. military base located in Honolulu, O’ahu, Territory of Hawaii, the Japanese military descended to attack and sabotage U.S. Navy battleships harbored there. Using a series of torpedo bombers, dive bombers, and fighter planes, Japanese forces destroyed 19 U.S. Navy ships and killed 68 people. It was this incident that worsened the reputations of Japanese Americans and marked the beginning of their incarceration.    

A week following the Pearl Harbor attack, the U.S. government began to corral Japanese American community leaders and prominent figures such as journalists, teachers, civic officials, etc. At the end of these initial arrests, an estimated 1,000 issei were arrested and jailed. U.S. security personnel justified these arrests as a military precaution. Simultaneously, the American press was abuzz with hysteria, influencing the perspectives of American society who were quick to demonize the Japanese.  

The Aftermath of Pearl Harbor:

Relocation + Incarceration

  • Executive Order 9066

    Due to the incident at Pearl Harbor and Japan’s opposing stance toward American forces during World War II, Japanese people in America became suspected as Japanese spies and collaborators. As a result, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented Executive Order 9066 which allowed the U.S. Secretary of War and other U.S. military commanders to relocate Japanese Americans living on the West Coast to temporary living communities further inland.

  • Public Proclamation No. 4

    Public Proclamation No.4 (March 29, 1942) initiated the forced internment of Japanese Americans. Japanese Americans were given 48-hour notices to evacuate their homes and retrieve as many of their personal belongings as they could carry before reporting to their assigned concentration camps. After those 48 hours ended, all other property and belongings were seized by the U.S. government.

  • Property Loss

    The total amount of Japanese American property loss is estimated at $1.3 billion while the net income loss is estimated at $2.7 billion.

  • Relocation Centers

    Approximately 112,000 Japanese Americans along the West Coast, almost half of whom were children, were herded into “relocation centers.” These areas had previously been used as racetracks and fairgrounds but were now surrounded by tall barbed wire fences and watch towers. The camps were situated in remote locations in deserts and sparse hillsides such as Topaz, Utah; Minidoka, Idaho; Heart Mountain, Wyoming; Tule Lake, California; and Manzanar, California.

  • Identification Tags

    Japanese Americans were identified within the camps by the tags that they wore on the collar of their clothes. The purpose of these identification tags was to keep families together, however, many families were separated from one another nonetheless.

  • Living Quarters

    Internees were confined within cramped living quarters and provided with limited necessities such as blankets, hot water, food, etc. 4-5 people inhabited army-style barracks that lacked decent privacy and were often uninsulated and inhospitable during the cold winter months.

  • New Lifestyle

    At the beginning of their internment, internees’ lifestyles followed strict almost military-like regiments. This included a 6:45 wake-up call, the eating of meals in large mess halls, curfews, etc. Having had the majority of their personal possessions seized and denied access to culturally traditional objects and food items by the government, traditional Japanese culture began to diminish. For instance, traditional Japanese family structures were disrupted. Such structures emphasized the importance of paying respects to the elderly; however, as children spent the majority of their days outside of the house and ate meals with friends rather than family, distinctive aspects of Japanese culture began to dwindle.

    And as Japanese Americans’ internment became prolonged, the nisei, or younger generations began to cultivate their own routines and culture within the confines of the barbed wire.

  • Community

    In an attempt to reestablish some semblance of normalcy within their lives, internees created schools, places of worship, councils, newspapers, farms, etc. Children attended schools whilst adults labored on farms or found other jobs to occupy themselves. Yet, these efforts to sustain community life were all done behind barbed wire fences, and carefully monitored by soldiers who were given the right to shoot any Japanese American that attempted to escape their confinement.

“Loyal American citizens”

Throughout the duration of their internment, Japanese Americans protested, demanding recognition as loyal American citizens. 

The mandatory loyalty test taken by internees was an initiative asserted by the U.S. government to assess and determine who the potentially ‘traitorous’ Japanese Americans were. The test asked internees to reject allegiance to the Japanese emperor and proclaim their allegiance to the U.S. military instead. Large populations of issei were offended by the test and, as an act of protest, marked “no” to both test requirements. Consequently, the issei were deemed ‘disloyal,’ separated from their families, and, once again, relocated to a high-security concentration camp in Tule Lake, California.

Minoru Yasui

On March 28, 1942, Minoru Yasui, an internee, stormed into his concentration camp’s police station and demanded to be arrested for violating curfew. Yasui insisted that the curfew and, generally, Japanese internment, infringed upon internees’ civil rights.    

Korematsu v. United States

In the court case, Korematsu v. United States, Fred Korematsu, a 23-year-old Japanese American, refused to comply with Executive Order 9066. Eventually, Korematsu was detained by the FBI and tried for his evasion of military orders. Korematsu challenged the legality and constitutionality of Japanese incarceration. He attempted to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, yet the court system maintained that Japanese American detainment was a military necessity and, therefore, not based on race. However, the majority of Japanese Americans did not resist their internment but, rather, attempted to dispel their traitorous reputations through acts of patriotism and obeisance. 

442nd Regimental Combat Team

Young Japanese American men enlisted in the military to demonstrate their American allegiance. The fulfillment of the obligatory military draft was perceived as a means of earning citizenship. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated combat unit consisting of entirely Japanese Americans (⅔ Hawaiian-born nisei, ⅓ mainland-born nisei), was the most highly decorated unit of World War II. Their motto, “Go for broke,” encompassed the group’s willingness to risk everything for home, country, and in the fight against Germans in Europe and racism in the U.S. Today, the 442nd remains uncontested in regard to the number of decorations earned– 4,000 Purple Hearts, 21 Medals of Honor, and 7 Presidential Unit Citations– and the size and duration of the unit’s service.            

Repercussions + Reparations

As the war neared its end, Americans deemed the ‘military necessity’ of the camps, less necessary. In December 1944, the U.S. government began to release Japanese Americans from confinement– by the war’s end and America’s dissolution of internment camps, no Japanese American was ever convicted of sabotage.  

In 1948, the U.S. government provided $38 million in reparations to compensate for the $400 million Japanese Americans lost in property. However, despite the government’s attempts at reparation, the majority of Japanese Americans had no homes, businesses, or assets to return to– they were forced to rebuild the lives that they had, prior to internment, established. 

40 years following Japanese internment, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 into effect. The act officially recognized and acknowledged the “grave injustice” of Japanese American internment during World War II. Through its execution, $20,000 was bestowed upon each Japanese American who survived incarceration. An estimated total of $1.6 billion was paid in reparations to Japanese survivors and their descendants.

Written by Emma Choy

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