The Internment of Japanese Americans in United States History (4 page)

Each family or person living alone had to register. Yoshiko Uchida’s family number was 13453. People were given tags with their family numbers and told to show up later with all the baggage their family could carry. Then they rushed home to pack up or sell their goods.
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Usually, they had no choice but to sell their property for ridiculously low prices. A woman sold a twenty-six-room hotel for five hundred dollars. A man, who had just spent $125 for a new battery and tires for his pickup truck, was forced to sell the entire truck for $25.

Farmers suffered more than anyone else. They had planted crops at the request of government agencies, and they hoped to be allowed to harvest them before the evacuation. The government, however, double-crossed the farmers. It forced them to vacate the land before the harvest. Thus the farmers gained none of the crops’ profits but incurred all of the debts.

Because the evacuation took place in the spring, Mother’s Day flower crops, the best of the year, were abandoned or sold at rock-bottom prices. A strawberry grower pleaded with the government to let him harvest his crop. When he was denied permission, he plowed it under. The FBI charged the farmer with an act of sabotage and sent him to jail.
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Some of the losses were heartbreaking. Evacuees could not bring their pets with them. Yoshiko Uchida gave her dog, Laddie, to a college fraternity. “Be a good boy now, Laddie. We’ll come back for you someday,” she told the collie. Laddie died a week later.
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Some lucky Issei and Nisei knew trustworthy whites. These friends took care of their property during the war. Others were not so fortunate. Many had no such friends and lost virtually everything. Others put their trust in people who cheated them out of their property.

Once they sold their property, the Issei and Nisei packed up what was left. The necessities—sheets, blankets, pillows—went inside the evacuees’ suitcases or bags. Letters, stuffed animals, photographs, toys—the personal items that make a house a home—stayed behind.

Then they rode or walked to the assembly points. Most dressed up for the occasion, as though they were going to church. Yoshiko Uchida’s mother wore a hat, gloves, good coat, and Sunday gloves. Yoshiko wrote, “she would not have thought of venturing outside our house dressed in any other way.”
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Not every white person or institution was heartless. Universities often gave Nisei students credit for the remainder of their terms. Most promised that these students could return at the end of the war. Friends cooked farewell meals for their departing neighbors and drove them to the gathering spots.

Those were uncommon experiences. Ben Takeshita recalled that none of his former friends and neighbors would speak to him as he left. “They were afraid of being accused of being Jap lovers.”
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“We took whatever we could carry,” one evacuee lamented. “So much we left behind, but the most valuable thing I lost was my freedom.”
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International Reaction

Civilians of Japanese ancestry were not displaced just in the United States. If anything, governments of other Western Hemisphere nations treated the Japanese worse than the United States did.

Mexico created a 100-kilometer (62-mile) evacuation zone along its Pacific Coast. Japanese, both citizens and aliens, were removed from the Baja California peninsula and moved inland. Mexican Army troops guarded the coast in case of enemy attack.

Canada forced more than twenty-two thousand people of Japanese ancestry from their homes in British Columbia. Many were moved to camps, where they helped to build a highway through the Rocky Mountains. Men were separated from their families in these camps. After they left the coast, the government, which had promised to guard their land, sold it. The displaced Japanese were not allowed to vote or to serve in the Canadian Army.

Riots by Japanese residents rocked Peru after it was rumored that a Japanese Peruvian would be deported to Japan. An American representative who went to the South American country to see if there were signs of pro-Japan activity by the local Japanese population found none.

Nevertheless, the American and Peruvian governments agreed to the deportation of Japanese Peruvians to camps in the United States. The families of the imprisoned men were “invited” (forced) to join them. After it was determined that they were not dangerous enemy aliens, they were deported back to Peru—on the grounds that by leaving Peru (even though unwillingly), they had violated immigration laws.
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In many cases, they found that Peru no longer wanted them. They were returned to the United States and in many cases eventually obtained United States citizenship.

Ironically, the territory with the largest Japanese population saw the least discrimination. More than one third of all residents of Hawaii had some Japanese ancestry. Japanese labor was considered vital to the civilian and military economies of the Hawaiian Islands. Besides, the views of Delos Emmons, military commander of Hawaii, were the opposite of those of General DeWitt.

The federal government did not intend to operate mass concentration camps, Emmons told Hawaiians. “No person, be he citizen or alien, need worry, provided he is not connected with subversive elements.”
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Other government officials tried to pressure Emmons into removing all Japanese Hawaiians to the mainland. He refused. “The feeling that invasion is imminent is not the belief of most of the responsible people,” he commented. “There have been no acts of sabotage committed in Hawaii.”
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Nevertheless, more than one thousand Hawaiians of Japanese descent were shipped to mainland camps. None were tried for espionage, much less convicted. In fact, only ten people were convicted by the United States government of spying for the Japanese during World War II. All ten were white.

Assembly Centers

At San Francisco, California; Los Angeles, California; and Seattle, Washington, assembly posts, a sea of people and luggage awaited transportation to points unknown.

Evacuation authorities offered storage for evacuees’ possessions. Many had no alternative. They placed their spare possessions in government warehouses or garages, at the sole expense of the owner. If they were fortunate, the possessions were still there intact when they returned years later. Not everyone was fortunate.

Buses hauled the evacuees to the assembly centers that would be their temporary homes. Most passengers were silent, sad, bewildered, disappointed, bitter, and angry.

Most of the assembly centers were fairgrounds, livestock pavilions, or racetracks remodeled to hold the Japanese-American detainees. In 1941, many had gone to these places as customers. Now they were re-entering as prisoners.

“Multimillion-dollar Santa Anita racetrack—the world’s most beautiful and luxurious racing plant—yesterday opened its gates as an assembly center for Japanese evacuees,”
The Los Angeles Times
announced on April 4, 1942. “As nearly as possible, the evacuees will live lives as normal as can be arranged under the circumstances.”
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The reporter might not have thought it “normal” if he or she had to live at the center. Santa Anita’s “apartments” were recently used as horse stalls, housing tenants named Whirlaway, War Admiral, or Gallant Fox. Most apartments had less than two hundred square feet of space. Straw-filled mattresses were used as beds. Meals were all served in communal mess halls. Poor sanitary conditions caused outbreaks of diarrhea.

Everybody had to wait. One resident recalled, “We lined up, for mail, for checks, for meals, for showers, for washrooms, for laundry tubs, for toilets . . .”
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Privacy ceased to exist. Laughter, crying, arguments, snores, sneezes, and conversations of a private nature traveled through the plywood walls. Minoru Yasui recalled, “It was like a family of three thousand people camped out in a barn.”
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Miyo Uchiyama remembered, “You could see between the slats of the buildings. . . . I really felt sorry for some of the teenagers, especially the shy ones. . . . I recall one of the girls lost her mind.”
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Worst of all was the prison atmosphere. High barbed wire fences surrounded the centers. Each corner had a guard tower. The War Relocation Authority claimed that the evacuees were kept in assembly centers “for their own protection.” An evacuee questioned, “If it was for our protection, why did the guns point inward, rather than outward?”
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Instant Communities

Despite the hardships, rules, and discomfort, the evacuees did what seemed impossible: They created communities.

Fortunately, most families and neighborhoods were moved together to nearby centers. Once evacuees got settled in their new surroundings, they looked for their friends. Then they tried their best to recreate the lives that were taken from them. Christian churches and Buddhist temples were set up almost immediately. Schools started, although they lacked books, paper, chalk, and space. Newspapers were founded at some of the centers. Santa Anita published the
Pacemaker
, a free weekly paper. Chris Ishii, a former artist with Walt Disney studios, created Lil’ Neebo, a Nisei cartoon character, for the
Pacemaker
.

Sports occupied the time of many evacuees. What had been a weekend hobby could now become a full-time obsession. Before they entered the Merced evacuation center, Masao Hosina reminded his team, the Livingston Dodgers, to bring their baseball uniforms and equipment with them. The team, which compiled a 34–4 record over the previous three seasons, continued its winning ways at Merced.

If anything, the camp was a boon for the players, said Gilbert Tanji. “We’d win so many games [at Livingston] that pretty soon nobody came to watch us play. So when we go into camp there was more competition—it was more fun.”
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Baseball was the most popular sport, but evacuees participated in many other activities, including basketball, volleyball, and sumo wrestling. Actors and musicians entertained their fellow inmates with musicals and talent shows. Artists and craftspeople displayed their work.

Farmers and gardeners soon produced a variety of flowers and vegetables. The infield at Santa Anita was turned into a huge garden. A group of men at Tanforan made a small park with trees, a waterfall, and a small lake.

There were even special occasions. After one wedding at Tanforan, the bride and groom borrowed a staff member’s car. They drove a few laps around the racetrack, then settled into married life in a horse stall. Several college students received their diplomas by mail at the centers. One student won a medal for high scholastic achievement. A local newspaper noted that the student could not attend the award ceremony because “his country had called him elsewhere.”
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Some of the camps’ activities were ironic. At Tanforan, residents celebrated Flag Day in 1942. They sang “America the Beautiful” and recited the Pledge of Allegiance, honoring a country that was treating them anything but honorably. At the Santa Anita and Manzanar centers, Nisei made camouflage nets. These nets, deemed essential to the war effort, were constructed by citizens who were considered too dangerous to be left free on the outside.

Most found that their friends on the outside had not forgotten them. “There were all sorts of white people who brought food and presents,” said Shig Wakamatsu.
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At first, the visitors were allowed to see their interned friends only from outside the barbed wire fences. Later, the centers created special visiting rooms.

The evacuation centers were intended for short-term stays, yet some were inhabited for more than eight months. Just as residents were becoming used to this life, they were moved once again. Their new homes would be even more forlorn and desolate.

Chapter 5

THEY WERE CONCENTRATION CAMPS

Image Credit: Enslow Publishers, Inc.

This map shows the locations of the ten permanent relocation centers set up for Japanese Americans. Many of these camps were located in areas with extreme weather conditions.