The Internment of Japanese Americans in United States History (8 page)

Gold stars, symbolizing a fallen loved one, decorated barracks at Granada and Minidoka, as well as other American homes. One Issei Gold Star mother lamented, “I cannot describe in words the sadness I feel at the time I received the notice of Kiyoshi’s death in Italy. It is difficult for me to comprehend that my son volunteered and died fighting for the very country whose leaders treated his parents so badly because we were Japanese.”
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Ten Thousand Purple Hearts

The 442nd became known as the Christmas tree regiment because of the many honors it received. Nisei in the Pacific also won well-deserved honors for their heroism. Altogether, Nisei won thousands of awards. These included seven Distinguished Unit Citations, one Congressional Medal of Honor, a Distinguished Service Medal, 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, 22 Legions of Merit, 28 Oak Leaf Clusters to the Silver Star, 1,200 Oak Leaf Clusters to the Bronze Star, 360 Silver Stars, 4,000 Bronze Stars, and nearly 10,000 Purple Hearts.
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President Harry S Truman welcomed the 442nd to the White House on July 15, 1946. He told them, “You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice and you have won.”
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Chapter 8

THEIR JOB WAS TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION

While Nisei were fighting on European or Pacific battle-fields, another type of battle was taking place in American courtrooms. Four very different Nisei young adults sought to end many of the injustices against Japanese Americans. Their cases met with varying results.

Minoru Yasui

Minoru “Min” Yasui was a patriot. He served in the Army Reserve Corps while he was in college. After receiving his law degree, the Oregon native went to Chicago and worked with the Japanese consul. He resigned the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. Yasui could have stayed in Chicago. If he had done so, he would have escaped the punitive laws against Japanese Americans. But his father told him that military service was his patriotic duty. A few days later, the FBI took Minoru Yasui’s father to an internment camp.

Min Yasui returned to his hometown, Hood River, Oregon. He was drafted in December 1941. When he reported and an army recruiter saw that he was Japanese, he was not accepted.

Then he went to Portland. In March 1942, General John DeWitt issued Military Proclamation Number 3: All German enemy aliens, all Italian enemy aliens, and all persons of Japanese ancestry had to obey an 8:00 P.M. to 6:00 A.M. curfew. They had to remain within five miles of their home or business unless they had special military permission.

“It seems to me that no military commander should have the authority or power to designate certain rules and regulations for the civilian population to follow in the absence of martial law,” Yasui explained years later. “A military order distinguishing between one citizen on one hand and another on the basis of ancestry was absolutely wrong.”
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Yasui decided to challenge the curfew. On the night of March 28, he walked into a nearby police station and surrendered. Two days later, he left on bail. Yasui ignored notices ordering anyone of Japanese descent in Portland to report to an evacuation center. Instead, he returned to Hood River. Military police arrested him there a few days later and took him to Portland’s assembly center. He and other Portland area evacuees were sent to the camp at Minidoka, Idaho.

When the date for Yasui’s trial came, military police escorted him to Portland. He rode unrestrained in the car. At nightfall, they did not stop in a restaurant. Instead, the military police officer dropped Yasui off in the nearest jail. The following day, in Portland, Judge James Alger Fee sentenced Yasui to a year in jail and a five thousand dollar fine.

Yasui spent most of the next year in a six-by-eight-foot Portland jail cell. Meanwhile, his lawyers appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court where he lost his case. Justices there ruled that DeWitt’s orders were valid and enforceable.

By August 1943, Yasui had served out his jail sentence. The judge waived the fine. Of course, he still was not free. Upon leaving jail, he was driven back to the Minidoka internment camp.

He did not stay there long. Camp officials released him so that he could recruit Nisei for the army. Yasui traveled around Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska, urging Nisei to show their loyalty by registering for the draft. His message, “Have faith in America,” convinced very few people. Knowing the injustices heaped upon Nisei and Issei on the West Coast, Nisei did not rush to help the government that had imprisoned them.

Gordon Hirabayashi

Gordon Hirabayashi was a student at the University of Washington. Like Yasui, he chafed at the idea of a curfew for those of Japanese ancestry. Why should he be confined while his classmates, including some Canadians, walk freely? He challenged the curfew. “The first [curfew] violation came when I decided to behave like an American, like the rest of my dorm mates.”
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Hirabayashi worried about his parents’ fate. “Legally and technically they were enemy aliens,” he said.
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They and other Issei urged him to worry about himself. “Some of the more cynical Issei said, ‘If anything happens to us, you’ll be there with us,’” Hirabayashi recalled.
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They were right.

Like Yasui, he refused to follow expulsion orders when they came. He noted, “If I refused to comply with curfew, how could I go through with this order. . . . I prepared a statement to hand to the FBI when the time came.”
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He originally planned to take the case to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), but the national ACLU refused to take his case. “Apparently there were too many loyal supporters of Franklin D. Roosevelt who did not want to obstruct his war program,” Hirabayashi guessed later.
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Hirabayashi surrendered in May 1942. He spent five months in jail awaiting trial; then a lower court found him guilty. In July 1943, the Supreme Court heard the case. The highest court, too, found him guilty. He was sentenced to three more months in jail. “I expected us to lose at the lower court level. But when the case reached the Supreme Court, I somehow felt that those nine men up there were different, that they were objective,” recalled Hirabayashi. “Their job was to uphold the constitution. I couldn’t see how they could approve this order.”
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Fred Korematsu

Fred Korematsu had no plans to be part of a court case. The Oakland, California, welder wanted to remain outside the evacuation centers, with his white girlfriend. He was fired from two welding jobs because of his Japanese ancestry. So he used a false name and changed his facial features through minor plastic surgery in order to avoid detection.

Korematsu evaded capture for two months. On May 30, 1942, he was arrested. His girlfriend, persuaded by her family and intimidated by the FBI, broke up with him.

Once inside the evacuation center, Korematsu decided to fight his captivity. “There was a lot of pressure on Fred from other internees. They said, ‘Don’t rock the boat,’” said his attorney Peter Irons.
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That pressure only made Korematsu more determined.

He went to the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. As with Hirabayashi, the national ACLU warned the Northern California chapter not to take the case, but they took it anyway. Korematsu was found guilty on September 8 of remaining in an evacuation area contrary to an exclusion order.

The case reached the Supreme Court in December 1944. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans, both in and out of relocation camps, anxiously awaited the Court’s ruling.

They were disappointed. The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that the exclusion of civilians from a military zone was legal. The majority of judges believed the military authorities’ words that it was impossible to segregate loyal Issei and Nisei from disloyal ones. Justice William O. Douglas wrote, “Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or to his race.”
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Justices Owen J. Roberts, Robert Jackson, and Frank Murphy wrote bitter dissents. Roberts commented, “It is a case of convicting a citizen . . . for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp solely because of his ancestry.”
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Jackson added that if DeWitt’s evacuation order was constitutional, “then we may as well say that any military order [in wartime] will be constitutional and have done with it.”
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Murphy called DeWitt’s order “legalization of racism.”
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Mitsuye Endo

The same day that Fred Korematsu lost his Supreme Court case, Mitsuye Endo won hers. The victory led to the release of thousands of people.

Mitsuye Endo was a twenty-two-year-old California resident who lost her state job as a stenographer in early 1942 because of her Japanese ancestry. Endo went when she was ordered to the Tanforan assembly center. She did not resist when she was moved to the Tule Lake camp. But she contacted the Japanese American Citizens League. The JACL contacted lawyers who agreed to take the case.

Mitsuye Endo seemed to be perfect for a test case. She had a good background. Her brother was in the Army, and her parents had never returned to Japan. She was a loyal Japanese American. Unlike Fred Korematsu, who tried to evade the law, Mitsuye Endo obeyed it. The attorneys petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, a court decision that would declare that she could not be imprisoned without being tried and convicted of a crime.

She had refused opportunities to leave Tule Lake. Voluntary departure from the camp might hurt her case. Finally, the case was called to the Supreme Court. She was surprised that the case went to the nation’s highest court.

Endo had a number of allies. One of them was WRA director Dillon Myer. He hoped Endo would win the case. A definite Supreme Court ruling might end the internments altogether.

Justice Department attorneys, representing the government, realized that they had a hopeless case. The government had to defend Executive Order 9066, which had allowed the military to remove Issei and Nisei from the West Coast. The order was based almost entirely on General DeWitt’s final report; yet they knew that Navy and FBI intelligence reports contradicted DeWitt, whose statements were considered to be incorrect. Yet the government persisted. Yielding on the Endo case would have meant confessing to a mistake that had disrupted a hundred thousand lives and cost millions of dollars.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Endo: Loyal citizens could not be imprisoned indefinitely. The Court ruled that the internment process was constitutional, however. That ruling made little difference. The day before the decision was made, the Western Defense Command revoked the mass exclusion order.

Now Issei and Nisei could return home to the Pacific Coast, and many did. Before the Endo ruling, most of the people who left the relocation camps moved to the Midwest or East. After Endo’s ruling, most went to California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona. In a way, WPA director Dillon Myer got his wish. The days of the camps would soon be over.

Chapter 9

A BLOT ON THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY

Although he was the director of the War Relocation Authority, Dillon Myer did not believe that the law-abiding Issei and Nisei should be held against their will. But the camps were there, and someone had to direct the WRA. If he did not do it, someone less sympathetic to the internees would take his place.

Myer cited several reasons for helping inmates leave: He realized that Japanese Americans would not remain loyal Americans if they were kept captive. Deviation from normal lives would have a bad effect, especially on children. Myer did not want to create a new set of reservations in the United States.

The WRA called the camps relocation centers, and Myer wanted them to live up to the name. Under his plan, evacuees would stay in camps until they could find work outside the evacuation zones. The WRA would help them move into their new surroundings.

Four groups of Japanese Americans gained quick release. The first were Japanese linguists needed in the war effort. About five thousand translators and interpreters went overseas, despite General DeWitt’s objections.

The second group were college students, who would be the Japanese-American leaders after the war. The young Nisei could not return to their universities on the Pacific Coast, but they could study at any eastern or Midwestern college that would accept them.

Since the government offered no scholarships to these Nisei, students had to pay their own tuition. This was difficult for families whose property had been confiscated by the government. The students also had to find a school. Many schools, such as Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, refused to take them. Some turned down the Nisei, claiming they had “military installations on campus.”
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Eventually, 143 institutions of higher learning accepted 3,500 evacuee students.