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| 1981b | (609) However, despite the poor treatment that they received, only a small number of Japanese Americans gave up their United States citizenship and returned to Japan after the war. Most Japanese Americans struggled to rebuild the lives that had been taken from them after Pearl Harbor. Looking back over the hardships that the Japanese Americans suffered during the war, one Nisei spoke for many when he said, The freedom we had always taken for granted -- as most Americans still do -- began to take on deep meaning when we had been deprived of it. . . . Life in the camps was . . . inadequate and morale-killing. But never . . . did we lose faith in America. |
| 1982a | |
| 1982b | (635) What was life like for Japanese Americans in internment camps? Here is a short description, written by a Japanese American living in a camp: "Barbed wire fences with watch towers and armed guards and searchlights surround an area a mile square set in the middle of a swamp. The barracks are merely bunkrooms. They are built row on row, covered with black tarpaper, unrelieved by any color or individuality. There is no privacy. A family of five has a single room." |
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| 1983b | (168) At the end of the war, the Japanese Americans were released. Most returned to their homes in West Coast states to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, but some moved on. Prejudice against the Japanese remained high for several years, but as war memories faded, it died down. Into the mainstream. There is encouraging evidence that discrimination and prejudice against ethnic groups have declined during the past generation. The decline is probably due, in large part, to education. Another factor in the decline is that most groups are now in the mainstream of American life. The answer to the question, "Why can't they be like us?" is "More and more they are." That in turn raises two more questions. How did the immigrant groups enter the mainstream? And now that most of them have, what is the future of ethnicity in America? We shall explore those questions in the next chapter. |
| 1983c | (444) At the end of the war, the Japanese Americans were released. Most returned to their homes in West Coast states to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, but some moved on. Prejudice against the Japanese remained high for several years, but as war memories faded, it died down. Into the mainstream. There is encouraging evidence that discrimination and prejudice against ethnic groups have declined during the past generation. The decline is probably due, in large part, to education. Another factor in the decline is that most groups are now in the mainstream of American life. The answer to the question, "Why can't they be like us?" is "More and more they are." That in turn raises two more questions. How did the immigrant groups enter the mainstream? And now that most of them have, what is the future of ethnicity in America? We shall explore those questions in the next chapter. |
| 1983d | - |
| 1984 | (425-6) Their imprisonment was based not on suspicion or evidence of treason, but on ethnic origin -- the fact that they were of Japanese descent. "It was really cruel and harsh," recalled Joseph Y. Kurihara, a citizen and a veteran of the First World War, "To pack and evacuate in forty-eight hours was an impossibility. Seeing mothers completely bewildered with children crying from want and peddlers taking advantage and offering prices next to robbery made me feel like murdering those responsible." The internees were sent to flood-damaged lands at Relocation, Arkansas; to the inter-mountain terrain of Wyoming and the desert of western Arizona; and to other arid and desolate spots in the West. Although the names were picturesque -- Topaz, Utah; Rivers, Arizona; Heart Mountain. Wyoming; Manzanar, California -- the camps themselves were bleak and demoralizing. Behind barbed wire stood tarpapered wooden barracks where entire families lived in a single room furnished only with cots, blankets, and a bare light bulb. Toilets and dining and bathing facilities were communal; privacy was almost nonexistent. |
| 1985a | |
| 1985b | |
| 1985c | (249) In 1922, in the case of Ozawa v. United States, the Supreme Court held that certain Asians (such as Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans) could not become naturalized citizens. Thus, although many of the Japanese immigrants living in the United States had wanted to become citizens, the Court had denied them that right. The government only made exceptions for Japanese immigrants who had fought in World War I. Further examples of discrimination against the Japanese came in 1924, when the Congress prohibited all Japanese immigration to the United States. Thus, the government did not allow Japanese immigrants to become citizens and prohibited their relatives from joining them in the United States. Nevertheless, these Japanese were loyal to their adopted country. . . . The President issued this executive order on his own authority, under the Constitution, as commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces. On March 2, General DeWitt established Military Areas #1 and #2 in the western part of the United States. On March 21, Congress passed a law in support of the President's Executive Order and of the subsequent actions of General DeWitt. On March 24, General DeWitt proclaimed a curfew between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. for all persons of Japanese ancestry living within Military Area #1, which comprised the entire Pacific coastal region. On May 9, General DeWitt ordered the exclusion from Military Area #1 of all persons of Japanese background. The vast majority of these people were U.S. citizens born on American soil. These people had thoroughly American attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. Most of them would have felt out of place in Japan. The military sent the Japanese-Americans to the relocation centers far from the coastal region. In effect, this action placed more than 75,000 American citizens who had broken no laws in jail without trials. The government did not charge any of these people with crimes. They could take with them only what they could carry. |
| 1986a | - |
| 1986b | |
| 1986c | (634) In relocation camps, Japanese Americans had to live behind barbed wire. Housing was poor. The people did not understand why they, as American citizens, were singled out. Americans of German and Italian backgrounds were not sent to camps. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that the camps were a necessary wartime measure. Only when an Allied victory seemed certain were Japanese Americans allowed to return to their homes. |
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| 1988 | (619) Class Activity: Invite people who served in the armed forces or who worked in factories during World War II to share their experiences with the class. Some students might like to further understand the experiences of people during the war by interviewing Japanese-Americans who were placed in relocation camps. Yoshiko Uchida was a college student when her family was sent to Topaz, Utah. Like all the camps, Topaz was isolated. The housing barracks were quickly and badly built. Summers were hot and dry, and winters were cold and snowy. Always the air was full of dust. Yoshiko worked as a secretary and a teacher until 1943, when she left for graduate school at Smith College. Her sister Kay also moved east. After the war, Yoshiko Uchida became a teacher and a writer. Several of her books are about Japanese-American life before and during the war. She writes for all Americans, she says, "with the hope that through knowledge of the past, they will never allow another group of people in America to be sent into a desert exile again." (T116) History and . . . Government. As students saw in this section, the federal government took control of the economy and forced the relocation of thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent. Many of these actions were violations or usurpations of Constitutional power. Ask students to recall the Supreme Court's rejection of the National Recovery Act and compare that with the economic controls imposed during the war. Ask students why the government could take over so much of American life during the war, when it couldn't a decade before. Why might Americans agree to forfeit some of their Constitutional rights during wartime? Does this mean that the Constitution can be violated whenever there is a war? Does the Constitution have any meaning during a war? How could the Constitution interfere with the war effort? |
| 1989a | (634) In relocation camps, Japanese Americans had to live behind barbed wire. Housing was poor. The people did not understand why they, as American citizens, were singled out. Americans of German and Italian backgrounds were not sent to camps. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that the camps were a necessary wartime measure. Only when an Allied victory seemed certain were Japanese Americans allowed to return to their homes. [DISCUSSION. Lead a discussion on how wartime conditions often bring about curtailment of civil liberties Have students compare Japanese internment with suspensions of rights during the Civil War and treatment of German-Americans in World War I.] |
| 1989b | - |
| 1990a | (674) The nation's Japanese Americans were detained in the isolated camps for most of the war. In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the forced relocation as a justifiable wartime measure. Not until 1945, when Allied victory seemed certain, were these people allowed to return to their communities to rebuild their shattered lives. |
| 1990b | (571) They then were confined in camps, watched by armed guards, and treated as if they were dangerous. Not until after the presidential election of 1944 did the government change its policy and begin to release these innocent citizens. . . . In time of war it is harder than ever for a free nation to preserve its freedoms. Defending the country becomes a matter of life and death. Dissenters are open to the charge of being traitors. This is a true testing time of democracy. In World War II, except for the disgraceful treatment of Japanese Americans, the nation's record was far better than it had been in World War I. |
| 1990c | (666) Understanding Points of View. COMPARING POINTS OF VIEW. When two people write about the same event, they may study the same evidence and look at the same documents, newspapers, diaries, and letters. Yet they can arrive at totally different conclusions. How is that possible? It is possible because each writer has a point of view. Perhaps the writers are working in different time periods. Perhaps they come from different backgrounds. Most likely they have had different experiences. They may have different ideas about society and about which things are most important. In other words, they weigh evidence differently. Here are two passages about the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II. The first passage was written by John I. McCoy in 1942, just after the removal was completed. McCoy was assistant secretary of the army, and it was the army that carried out the removal. I wonder if anyone realizes the skill, speed and humanity with which the evacuation of the Japanese has been handled by the Army on the West Coast? I am struck with the extreme care that has been taken to protect the persons and goods and even the comforts of each individual. Certainly an organization that can do a humane job like this and still be a fine fighting organization is unique -- and American. I hope other countries that have similar problems will not overlook how an answer has been found irk this country. More than 30 years later, two historians, Leonard Dinnerstein and David M. Reimers, wrote about the same event this way: The hasty removal meant considerable hardship and suffering. Given only Eve days' notice of the evacuation, those interned could take only what they could carry; the government took over and held in storage all other belongings. In addition to the financial losses the conditions in the relocation centers were miserable. At first, the Japanese were placed in temporary quarters, including a hastily converted race track, which lacked basic facilities. Eventually, the government built ten camps, but they were mostly located in barren desert country; hot in the summer and cold in the winter. The surroundings were drab and unattractive, complete with barbed wire, military police, and, in some cases, machine guns. One Nisei intern later wrote of the camp in Arizona, "I must say this scorching Hell is a place beyond description and beyond tears." SKILLS PRACTICE. Compare the writers' points of view in the two passages. How might McCoy's position have influenced his point of view? Dinnerstein and Reimers wrote 30 years later. How might the passage of three decades have affected their point of view? |
| 1990d | (863) Eventually, the government built the "relocation centers" in remote, often arid, sections of the West. ''The Japs live like rats, breed like rats and act like rats. We don't want them," the governor of Idaho announced. The camps were primitive and unattractive. "When I first entered our room, I became sick to my stomach," a Japanese-American woman remembered. "There were seven beds in the room and no furniture nor any partitions to separate the males and the females of the family. I just sat on the bed, staring at the bare wall." The government evacuated about 110,000 Japanese. |
| 1990e | |
| 1991 | (612) There was little privacy in the camps, and whole families were made to live in single rooms. Peter Ota, age 15, was one such Japanese American who was forced to leave his Los Angeles home. Together with his 12-year-old sister and his father, Peter was sent to a camp in Colorado. His mother was too ill to go. After a while, Peter was released occasionally to work on a farm or in a factory. When Peter's mother died, he went to California, under military guard, to get her body. "When they marched me through the train stations," Peter recalled, "the people recognized me as being Oriental. . . . I heard 'dirty Jap' very distinctly." (629) RETURNING FROM WAR. "The war changed our whole Idea of how we wanted to live when we came back." -- Army veteran, 1945. By the time of the war crimes trials, Americans were drifting back to the everyday life that the war had disrupted. Some would look back on the war years as a time of adventure and daring excitement. Others who had lost limbs or loved ones would feel the heartbreak and anguish for years to come. But few would be unmarked by their wartime experience. For some, the war had revealed a dark side of human nature. Japanese Americans like Peter Ota could not shake the bitter memories from their minds: I think of my father. . . . After all those years, having worked his whole life to build a dream -- an American dream mind you -- having it all taken away. . . . His [fruit and vegetable] business was worth more than a hundred thousand. He sold it for five. . . . He died a very broken man. |
| 1992a | - |
| 1992b | |
| 1992c | |
| 1992d | (677) They then were confined in camps, watched by armed guards, and treated as if they were dangerous. Not until after the presidential election of 1944 did the government change its policy and begin to release these innocent citizens. . . . In time of war it is harder than ever for a free nation to preserve its freedoms. Defending the country becomes a matter of life and death. Dissenters are open to the charge of being traitors. This is a true testing time of democracy. In World War II, except for the disgraceful treatment of Japanese Americans, the nation's record was far better than it had been in World War I. |
| 1992e | (677) They then were confined in camps, watched by armed guards, and treated as if they were dangerous. Not until after the presidential election of 1944 did the government change its policy and begin to release these innocent citizens. . . . In time of war it is harder than ever for a free nation to preserve its freedoms. Defending the country becomes a matter of life and death. Dissenters are open to the charge of being traitors. This is a true testing time of democracy. In World War II, except for the disgraceful treatment of Japanese Americans, the nation's record was far better than it had been in World War I. (674C) Section I (pages 675-679). Mobilizing for Defense. FOCUS. To introduce the lesson, break the class up into small groups and have the groups list at least ten significant effects of the war on American society, based on information found in their texts. As soon as they have finished, bring the class back together and have each group list its answers on the board. Then review and discuss the lists with the class. |
| 1992f | (649) One young Japanese American man recalled the experience: "I remember the pain of being labeled a 'dirty Jap' and a 'dangerous enemy.' For me, a Los Angeles teenager of 17, it was a time when my entire value system was thrown out of kilter.2" [2 From "Point of View: A Sorry Part of Our History" by Daniel Kuzuhara, in the Chicago Tribune, August 26, 1981.] |
| 1992g | (473-4) UP CLOSE: A Teenager Is Interned. Fifteen-year-old Peter Ota could not understand what was happening. He had lived in California all his life. His father was a businessman who owned a fruit and vegetable company. Mr. Ota was also a leader of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles. For no apparent reason, the FBI arrested him and a dozen other people at a wedding reception. Peter's father was still dressed in his tuxedo when the FBI agents dragged him off. It was Sunday December 7, 1941. That morning, Japan had bombed the American fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The world changed suddenly for Peter, his family, and 110,000 others of Japanese descent in the United States. Detention and separation. For days, the family waited to hear news of Mr. Ota. Finally, they learned he was in jail. When they found him, he was wearing "prisoner's clothing, with a denim jacket and a number on his back." Peter's mother said nothing. But tears streamed down her cheeks when she saw her husband. The pain was more than she could bear. In a short time, she contracted tuberculosis. She entered a sanitarium and died before the war was over. Mr. Ota was sent away, too, to an internment camp in Missoula, Montana. It was one of 10 such inland camps for Japanese and Japanese Americans. Peter and his 12-year-old sister were alone. Mail was their only link to their father. They received reassuring letters from him. Although heavy black lines from a censor's pen ran across each page, Peter could tell from what remained that their father was all right. In April 1942, the government sent Peter and his sister to a detention center in Santa Anita, California, that had been converted from a race track. They were allowed to bring a toothbrush, small personal items, and some clothes -- basically just what they could carry. They felt lucky because they lived in a boxlike barracks. The less fortunate were housed in stables. They slept on mattresses of straw in stalls meant for horses. A sad reunion. Five months later. Peter and his sister were moved again. This time their father joined them. Nearly a year had passed since Mr. Ota had been interned. In place of an outgoing, successful businessman, a resigned, expressionless figure stood before Peter and his sister. A single Japanese word popped into Peter's mind -- gaman. A "very strong word," he recalled, "it means to persevere . . . [to] take what's coming, don't react." Together at last, Peter, his sister, and his father were herded onto a crowded train. Memories of Mrs. Ota occupied their minds. For days, they rode with the shades drawn toward an unknown destination. Their new "home" was another internment camp, this time in Amache, Colorado. Barbed wire, watchtowers, and armed guards separated the Ota family from the rest of the nation. Looking across the horizon, Peter could see nothing but flat, barren wasteland. Shortly after they arrived, the Otas were assigned a room in a barracks. The 20-foot by 20-foot space contained a potbellied stove in the corner, an electric light bulb dangling from the ceiling, and army cots and blankets. Peter's sister lived there for the next three-and-a-half years, until the camp closed. His father was moved from camp to camp for the remainder of the war. . . . The postwar years. For the younger people, there was time to rebuild their lives after the war. Peter married, and years later his daughter, a lawyer, worked on behalf of an organization seeking reparations for Japanese American internees. Peter's father, forced to sell his business for a fraction of its worth, lived the rest of his life in poverty and died a broken man. |
| 1993a | |
| 1993b | - |
| 1994a | |
| 1994b | (865) Eventually, the government built the "relocation centers" in remote, often arid, sections of the West. "The Japs live like rats, breed like rats and act like rats. We don't want them," the governor of Idaho announced. The camps were primitive and unattractive. "When I first entered our room, I became sick to my stomach," a Japanese-American woman remembered. "There were seven beds in the room and no furniture nor any partitions to separate the males and the females of the family. I just sat on the bed, staring at the bare wall." The government evacuated about 110,000 Japanese. |
| 1994c | |
| 1994d | |
| 1995a | - |
| 1995b | |
| 1995c | - |
| 1996a | (759) Furthermore, the army had not prepared the sites to offer basic sanitation, comfort, or privacy. "We lived in a horse stable," remembered one young girl. Eventually, most Japanese were interned in 10 camps in remote areas of seven western states. No claim of humane intent could change the reality: these were concentration camps. Internees were held in wire-enclosed compounds by armed guards. Temporary tar-papered barracks housed families or small groups in single rooms. Each room had a few cots, some blankets, and a single light bulb. That was home. (759-60) Hirabayashi and Korematsu. Other Japanese Americans challenged the government through the legal system. Fred Korematsu in California and Gordon Hirabayashi in Washington State were arrested when they refused to report for relocation. "As an American citizen, I wanted to uphold the principles of the Constitution," recalled Hirabayashi. But in Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Supreme Court upheld the government's relocation program as a wartime necessity. Three justices dissented, criticizing relocation as the "legalization of racism." Concentration camps in America did not mirror the horror of nazi death camps, but they were built on racism and fear. Worse, they violated the traditions of civil rights and liberties for which Americans believed they were fighting. |
| 1996b | (527) Life in the Internment Camps. The internees were sent to flood-damaged lands at Relocation, Arkansas, to the intermountain terrain of Wyoming and the desert of western Arizona, and to other arid and desolate spots in the West. Although the names were evocative -- Topaz, Utah; Rivers, Arizona; Heart Mountain, Wyoming; Tule Lake and Manzanar, California -- the camps were bleak and demoralizing. Behind barbed wire stood tarpapered wooden barracks where entire families lived in a single room furnished only with cots, blankets, and a bare light bulb. Toilets and dining and bathing facilities were communal; privacy was almost nonexistent. (527) The Supreme Court upheld the government's policy of internment. In wartime, the Court said in the Hirabayashi ruling (1943), "Residents having ethnic affiliations with an invading enemy may be a greater source of danger than those of different ancestry." In the Kurematsu case (1944), the Court approved the removal of the Nisei from the West Coast. One dissenter, Justice Frank Murphy, denounced the decision as the "legalization of racism." |
| 1996c | (256) (3) ROY YANO. "To pack and evacuate in forty-eight hours was an impossibility. I saw mothers completely bewildered with children crying from want and peddlers taking advantage and offering prices next to robbery...." (4) JOE KURIHARA, WORLD WAR I VETERAN. "Colonel Bendetsen [in charge of the relocation] showed himself to be a little Hitler. I mentioned that we had an orphanage with children of Japanese ancestry and that some of these children were half Japanese, others one-fourth or less. I asked which children should we send.... Bendetsen said: 'I am determined that if they have one drop of Japanese blood in them, they must go to camp.'" (5) FATHER HUGH T. LAVERY, CATHOLIC MARYKNOLL CENTER, LOS ANGELES. "I was rather disappointed at the barracks which we evacuees were to live in. I thought at least each individual family would be assigned to a separate apartment. Instead, two or three families were crowded into a six beam apartment, offering no privacy." (6) HEART MOUNTAIN REPORTS DIVISION, MAY 1943. (257-8) INTERNMENT CAMPS FOR JAPANESE AMERICANS: "CHILDREN AWAITING EVACUATION" (5/8/1942) BY DOROTHEA LANGE (NATIONAL ARCHIVES #210-G-2C-1559). "Evacuees ate communally, showered communally, defecated communally. Again with an eye toward economy, no partitions had been built between toilets.... In interior California camps, the hot summer sun beating down on paper-thin roofs turned living quarters into sizzling ovens causing the moors [made of asphalt] to melt." (7) JAPANESE EVACUEE. "The barbed wire stockade surrounding the 18,000 people there was like that of the prison camps of the Germans. There were the same turrets for the soldiers and the same machine guns for those who might attempt to climb the high wiring.... The buildings were covered with tarred paper over green and shrinking shiplap-this for the low winter temperatures of the high elevation of Tule Lake.....No federal penitentiary so treats its adult prisoners. Here were the children and babies as well." (8) CHIEF JUDGE WILLIAM DENMAN, NINTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS, 8/26/49. Look at the picture above of two Japanese American children and an elderly woman who are being deported to an interment camp in 1942. Answer the following questions: 1. How old do you think these two children were at the time of this picture? 2. How old would these two children be if they are still living today? Imagine you are one of the children in this picture, who has lived to be 65 years old. Imagine that you have had several children and many grandchildren and you are showing them this picture of yourself and your sister. What stories would you tell your grandchildren about your experience during World War II in the interment camp and what lessons would you want to teach them regarding this experience? Write your conversation with a grandchild below. |
| 1996d | - |
| 1996e | (461) Review Questions. MULTIPLE CHOICE. 12. In Korematsu v. United States, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that a, the use of the atomic bomb against the Japanese was justified. b. the U.S. had to provide financial compensation to Japanese-Americans sent to internment camps. c. wartime necessity legitimized the relocation of Japanese-Americans. d. the U. S. had violated the rights of Japanese-Americans by sending them to internment camps. (pp. 759-760). (466-7) PRIMARY SOURCE: Two Views on the Evacuation of Japanese-Americans. [From Hearings before the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration. House of Representatives. Washington, 1942.] When President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, he authorized the evacuation of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast. Soon after, a Congressional Committee heard testimony from both California public officials and representatives of the Japanese community who both favored and opposed evacuation. The following excerpts are from California Attorney-General Earl Warren (later the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) and from James Omura. EARL WARREN: Unfortunately, however, many of our people and some of our authorities . . . are of the opinion that because we have had no sabotage and no fifth column activities in this State since the beginning of the war, that means that none have been planned for us. But I take the view that is the most ominous sign in our whole situation. It convinces me more than perhaps any other factor that the sabotage we are to get . . . [is] timed just like Pearl Harbor. . . . We believe that when we are dealing with the Caucasian race we have methods that will test the loyalty of them, and we believe that we can, in dealing with the German and Italians, arrive at some fairly sound conclusions because of our knowledge of the way they live in the community. . . . But when we deal with the Japanese we are in an entirely different field and we cannot inform any opinion we believe to be sound. Their method of living, their language, make for this difficulty. . . . JAMES OMURA: It is doubtlessly difficult for Caucasian Americans to properly comprehend and believe in what we say. Our citizenship has even been attacked as an evil cloak under which we expect immunity, for the nefarious purpose of conspiring to destroy the American way of life. To us -- who have been born, raised, and educated in American institutions and in our system of public schools, knowing and owing no other allegiance than to the United States -- such a thought is manifestly unfair and ambiguous. I would like to ask the committee: Has the Gestapo come to America? Have we not risen in righteous anger at Hitler's mistreatments of the Jews? Then, is it not incongruous that citizen Americans of Japanese descent should be similarly mistreated and persecuted? . . . We cannot understand why General DeWitt can make exceptions for families of German and Italian soldiers in the armed forces of the United States while ignoring the civil rights of Nisei Americans. Are we to be condemned merely on the basis of our racial origin? Is citizenship such a light and transient thing that which is our inalienable right in normal times can be torn from us in times of war? Questions. 1. On what points, if any, do Warren and Omura agree? 2. What is Warren's proof that sabotage is imminent? 3. If you were a Japanese-American, how could you answer that charge? 4. On what basis do you think Warren makes the claim that authorities can deal with Germans and Italians more confidently than with Japanese-Americans? Do you think he is right? 5. In what ways do you agree or disagree with Omura's analogy between Japanese-Americans and European Jews? 6. Based on your reading of the text's discussion of the Supreme Court decisions on the evacuation, how did the Court answer Omura's question about civil rights? How would you answer that question? 7. Suppose Iran launched a surprise attack against the United States in the near future, with terrorists planting bombs in urban areas across the country. Would you recommend detaining Iranian Americans? What if Iran declared war but had only bombed embassies abroad? Discuss the parallels and construct other hypothetical situations, in order to explore what factors contributed most to the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II. |
| 1997a | |
| 1997b | (547-8) Life in the Camps. From the relocation centers, Japanese Americans were moved to 1 of 10 armed and guarded internment camps located in sparsely settled areas. For example, Topaz, a camp in Utah, was 4,600 feet (1,402.08 m) above sea level. Here inmates endured temperatures ranging from 1060 F (41.10 C) in summer to -30'F (-34.5'C) in winter. They also lived in a constant whirlwind of dust. The other camps were similarly barren. Japanese Americans taken to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, also suffered from winter temperatures as low as -30'F (-34.5'C). For those from the mild California valleys, the camps were tolerable at best. One camp resident wrote a poem in the camp newspaper, the Sentinel. Snow upon the rooftop snow upon the coal; Winter in Wyoming -- Winter in my soul. One evacuee, Peter Ota, recalled the camp where he was interned: It's a desolate, flat, barren area. The barracks was all there was. There were no trees, no kind of landscaping. It was like a prison camp. Coming from our environment, it was just devastating. -- As told to Studs Terkel, "The Good War," 1984. This was no exaggeration. Entire families lived in a single room in the barracks, sparsely furnished with cots, makeshift dressers, and bare lightbulbs. Despite the stark surroundings, the evacuees created a number of alternative communities to serve their cultural needs. The Japanese Americans published newspapers; started schools, churches, bands, Boy Scout groups, and softball leagues; built tennis courts; landscaped flower and vegetable gardens; and gave trumpet and tap dancing lessons. They were determined to replenish their lives with the dignity and the resources that they and their children would need when the war ended. Some of the evacuees were released to work at jobs in the interior of the United States before the end of the war. They were allowed to resettle in the East or the Midwest. Most, however, remained in the camps for the duration of the war. Judicial Rulings Support Relocation. The Supreme Court upheld the wartime policies that deprived Japanese Americans of their civil rights. In 1943, in Hirabayashi v. United States, the Court unanimously decided that a curfew order affecting only Japanese Americans did not violate their constitutional rights, Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone wrote: "In time of war residents having ethnic affiliations with an invading enemy may be a greater source of danger than those of a different ancestry:" In December 1944, in Korematsu v. United States, the Court upheld the order providing for the relocation of Japanese Americans. It based its decision largely on the grounds that the judiciary could not second-guess military decisions. One of the dissenting justices, however, termed the decision a "legalization of racism." Nevertheless, the Court also ruled that citizens could not be held in relocation centers once their loyalty had been established. By then, however, the camps were being closed down. The United States recorded both gains and losses in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties during the war years. While African Americans fought hard to win the smallest of victories, Japanese Americans found themselves regarded as enemies of the United States and suffered humiliation and loss of their liberties. As the war ended, however, all Americans looked ahead and hoped for prosperity and justice in a peaceful postwar world. |
| 1998a | (963) At the assembly centers -- racetracks, fairgrounds, and similar temporary locations -- the army had not prepared basic sanitation, comfort, or privacy. "We lived in a horse stable," remembered one young girl. "We filled our cheesecloth with straw -- for our mattress." The authorities at least had the decency to keep families together. Internment camps. Most Japanese were interned in 10 camps in remote areas of seven western states. Notions that the camps might become self-sufficient communities proved wishful thinking. Even resourceful farmers could not raise food in arid desert soil. No claim of humane intent could change the reality -- these were concentration camps. Internees were held in wire-enclosed compounds by armed guards. Temporary tarpapered barracks housed families or small groups in single rooms. Each room had a few cots, some blankets, and a single light bulb. That was home. (964) Korematsu and Hirabayashi. Other Japanese Americans challenged the government through the legal system. Fred Korematsu in California and Gordon Hirabayashi in Washington State were arrested when they refused to report for relocation. "As an American citizen, I wanted to uphold the principles of the Constitution," recalled Hirabayashi. But the Supreme Court let stand military policies aimed specifically at Japanese Americans. The majority opinion stated that "residents having ethnic affiliations with an invading enemy may be a greater source of danger than those of different ancestry," even though the army had never demonstrated that any danger existed. And in Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Court upheld the government's relocation program as a wartime necessity. Three justices dissented, criticizing relocation as the "legalization of racism. Concentration camps in America did not perpetuate the horror of Nazi death camps, but they were built on racism and fear. Worse, they violated the traditions of civil rights and liberties for which Americans believed they were fighting. |
| 1998b | - |
| 1998c | (887) Eventually, the government built the "relocation centers" in remote, often arid, sections of the West. "The Japs live like rats, breed like rats, and act like rats. We don't want them," the governor of Idaho announced. The camps were primitive and unattractive. ''When I first entered our room, I became sick to my stomach," a Japanese American woman remembered. "There were seven beds in the room and no furniture nor any partitions to separate the males and the females of the family. I just sat on the bed, staring at the bare wall." The government evacuated about 110,000 Japanese. |
| 1999a | - |
| 1999b | (764) Furthermore, many army sites did not offer basic sanitation, comfort, or privacy! "We lived in a horse stable," remembered one young girl. Eventually, most Japanese were interned in 10 camps in remote areas of seven western states. No claim of humane intent could change the reality: these were concentration camps. Internees were held in wire-enclosed compounds by armed guards. Tar-papered barracks housed families or small groups in single rooms. Each room had a few cots, some blankets, and a single light bulb. That was home. (765) Hirabayashi and Korematsu. Other Japanese Americans challenged the government through the legal system. Fred Korematsu in California and Gordon Hirabayashi in Washington State were arrested when they refused to report for relocation. "As an American citizen, I wanted to uphold the principles of the Constitution," recalled Hirabayashi. But in Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Supreme Court upheld the government's relocation program as a wartime necessity. Three justices dissented, criticizing relocation as the "legalization of racism." Concentration camps in America did not mirror the horror of Nazi death camps, but they were built on racism and fear. Worse, they violated the traditions of civil rights and liberties for which Americans believed they were fighting. |
| 1999c | (836) Tags with numbers were issued to every family to tie to luggage and coats -- no names, only numbers. "From then on," wrote one woman, "we were known as family #10710." Going to the camp, she had lost her identity, dignity, and privacy. In camps, Nisei and Issei were surrounded by barbed wire and watched over by guards in towers mounted with machine guns pointing inward. Photographers were not allowed to take pictures of the wire or the guard towers. Families and individuals were assigned to apartments measuring 20 by 25 feet in long barracks of plywood covered with tar paper. On average, eight people were assigned to each apartment. A cot, a straw-filled mattress, and three army blankets were furnished to each person. Between rows of barracks were communal bathrooms and eating areas. Within each camp, the internees were expected to create a community complete with farms, shops, and small factories. And within a remarkably short period of time, they did. Making the desert bloom, the internees at Manzanar by 1944 were producing more than $2 million worth of agricultural products. |