The Japanese American Internment

How Wartime Internment Affected the Japanese American Community

Name: Sophie Berger Student number: 10440208 Email: [email protected]

Institution: University of Amsterdam Faculty of Humanities

Master Thesis Thesis Supervisor: Professor R. Janssens

Date: 17 October 2014 Contents Introduction ...... 2 Chapter 1. Being Japanese-American in pre-war United States ...... 13 1.1 Introduction to Japanese immigration to the US ...... 13 1.2 Public sentiment, prejudice and discrimination ...... 14 1.3 The Japanese-American experience ...... 17 1.3.1 Issei ...... 18 1.3.2 Nisei ...... 20 1.3.3 Kibei ...... 22 1.4. Conclusion ...... 23 2.1 Public reactions and government actions following Pearl Harbor ...... 24 2.2 Japanese American reactions to evacuation ...... 28 2.2.1 Japanese American Citizen League ...... 29 2.2.2. Organized and individual resistance to evacuation...... 32 2.3 Attitudes in Internment Camps: Friction within the community ...... 33 2.3.1 Conditions in the camps ...... 33 2.3.1 Americanization/Japanization ...... 35 2.3.2 Japanese American Citizen League in the camps ...... 36 2.3.3 Geographical tension ...... 37 2.3.4 Loyalty Questionnaire ...... 38 2.3.5. Segregating the camps: the loyal camps ...... 41 2.3.6. Segregating the camps: Tule Lake...... 44 2.4. Closing of the camps ...... 48 2.5. Conclusion ...... 49 Chapter 3. Postwar attitudes and the reintegration of Japanese Americans ...... 51 3.1. Postwar attitudes of the American public ...... 51 3.1.1. Geographical difference in reception of Japanese Americans ...... 53 3.2. Experience of living in postwar America ...... 55 3.3 Sense of Belonging...... 58 3.4 JACL efforts in postwar years ...... 59 3.5 Conclusion ...... 61 Conclusion ...... 62 Bibliography ...... 65

1

Introduction

Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941, mass hysteria broke out on the West Coast. Many Americans living there accused Japanese Americans of conspiring with the Japanese enemy by helping them with another attack on American soil. Although these suspicions were highly irrational and unfounded, anti-Japanese sentiment grew within American society during this period. President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 granting the military to establish “military exclusion zones” from which people of Japanese ancestry were banned, for fear of their disloyalty towards the United States. The original policy of the exclusion zones evolved in the months that followed the evacuation, or rather relocation, of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast.1 Two-thirds of these relocated people were second generation Japanese Americans, or Nisei, thus holding official American citizenship. Several camps were hastily set up in remote areas east of the West Coast, some of them serving as temporary relocation centers, others as detention centers where many Japanese Americans were to remain until the end of the war. Although life in these camps is by no means comparable with other concentration- or detention centers that were set up around the world during World War Two, these camps did serve as temporary prisons where the internees were housed in rows of barracks in camp fields surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, while their loyalty was being questioned. Some Japanese Americans were given the opportunity to leave the camps, either to work in the labor force, to serve in the US army or to study. The majority of internees however, spent years in the camps until they were closed at the end of the war. After the war, this minority group had to reestablish itself in American society. How they did this, varied between the two generations, who both found different ways to cope with their new situation. War hysteria in society after a foreign attack is not uncommon, but why was the loyalty of this particular minority group called into question much more than that of Italian- or German Americans? This has much to do with public opinion held at that time and the historical perception of Asians in the United States. It is worthwhile to analyze where this

1 Numbers of Japanese American evacuees vary between 110.000 and 120.000, depending on the source. For this work I will work with the estimate of 120.000, consistent to numbers used in WRA’s official report Personal Justice Denied and the Densho Archive. 2 perception came from and how the Japanese Americans reacted to this before, during and after the war. How did the Americans determine whether someone was loyal to the United States or not? And how did public opinion and anti-Japanese sentiment shape the actual sense of loyalty held by the Japanese Americans? Being treated like an enemy in your own country and by the government might lead to a detachment from your country, but how did the Japanese internees react to this situation? And how did they deal with their position in society after the war was over? But most importantly, in what ways did American society enable or disable the Japanese Americans to integrate in society? The key element in my research is the use, meaning and value of the term loyalty. The American government and many of its citizens feared and distrusted the entire group of Japanese American living on the West Coast. Many felt that being of Japanese ancestry meant being loyal to Japan. The internment camps served a dual purpose: getting rid of the supposed threat this minority group posed, and giving this group a chance to prove their loyalty towards the United States. In this work I will focus on the problematic use of the word loyalty and will argue that the Unites States government employed a term for its wartime policy that could never be proved and was therefore never valid. The United States government used the term loyalty to base its entire evacuation and internment policy on, while loyalty could neither be measured nor proven, putting the Japanese Americans in an impossible position, during and after World War Two. Since no one could ever truly prove its loyalty, Japanese Americans had virtually no way to put accusations, assumptions and prejudice behind them and show the American public they too, were and felt American, which caused their problematic position in America’s West Coast society. While many scholars have analyzed the Japanese American internment and the many aspects surrounding the topic, no scholars so far have addressed the problematic use of the word loyalty in the government’s wartime internment policy and its implications for the Japanese American community. A recent Dutch study has addressed the use of the word loyalty quite extensively in a report Identification with the Netherlands written by the WRR (Scientific Council for Government Policy). This report argues that the process of identification is much more dynamic and flexible that commonly understood. The WRR recognizes that people can identify themselves through three different ways and defines these forms as: functional, normative and emotional identification. The first is related to how people identify themselves according to their function in an organization or community, the second is based on identification according to normative lines; such as laws, tradition and 3 politics. The last one is of most importance for my work since it is closely related to the sense of loyalty someone feels for a country, his or hers sense of belonging and pride for a country. The report states that it is possible to have an emotional bonding with more than one country; the country or origin and the country of residence. This means it is possible to be loyal to multiple countries, without causing problems for the bonding with the country of residence. Moreover, the report states that integration can be more successful when people are allowed to be emotionally connected to their country of origin, since this makes them more open to bond with the country of residence. This report emphasizes the fact that it is not possible, nor desirable, to demand people to choose with which country their loyalty lies, since dual loyalty is thinkable too and does not have to pose any problems.2 This is a completely different way to look at loyalty compared to how Americans dealt with the term during World War Two, since the consensus in global politics, culture and even scholarship had always been that in order to successfully integrate in society, one could only have one loyalty and had to disregard their emotional bonding to any other country. This report sheds new light on how we can look at loyalty and identification and shows the great differences with the classic approach that was also used by the Unites States government in the last century. In the case of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast in the prewar and war years, this was indeed the general consensus. Americans wanted Japanese Americans to absorb American habits and lose their traditional Japanese manners and culture, for otherwise integration was not possible. The biggest problem however was, that how much the Japanese American, and especially the American-born Nisei, tried to behave as American as possible, their loyalty could never be measured. They could speak fluent English, play American sports, dress in American fashion and state that they felt only American and not Japanese, there was, and still is, no way to actually measure or prove how loyal someone is. The American government tried in multiple ways, like with the Loyalty Questionnaire that was handed out during the internment, to determine someone’s loyalty, but could never be certain. This meant that how hard someone tried to prove him- or herself being loyal to the United States, it remained impossible to tell. This put the Japanese Americans in an impossible position because there was no way to redeem themselves from their Japanese image. Many Americans, and especially the United States government could not look beyond their Japanese features and heritage and therefore felt that all Japanese Americans were loyal

2 WRR Report, Identificatie met Nederland (Den Haag and Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007), 11-19. 4 to Japan. It is this generalization and notion that one could hold only one loyalty, which put 120,000 Japanese Americans in the internment camps when the war broke out. The Japanese American internment is a topic which received the attention it deserved in academic circles ranging from discussions on political, sociological, to cultural themes. The discussion on whether the internment was a valid and legitimate policy at the time was closed when the American government issued an official national apology to the Japanese community stating the internment was unlawful and based on racial war hysteria. It took until 1988 however, before President Ronald Reagan signed the apology and restoration policy to the individual victims of the incarceration. The wrongfulness of the internment is thus not a topic of debate, however scholars have been discussing the internment by looking at the sociological impact the incarceration had on the different generations of Japanese Americans. A key aspect in this debate is how to look at identity and ethnicity, how those terms can be defined and whether or not these features are flexible and changeable. This discussion is highly relevant when studying the development of the Japanese American society in the years prior, during and after the war, for it can explain if, and how, self-identification of the Japanese Americans was changed by their internment experience. Important to note is that none of these scholars have addressed in their work the problematic use of the word loyalty in the wartime policies. Their work is crucial though for an understanding of how the Japanese Americans themselves dealt with their self-identification and sense of belonging. For Japanese anthropologist Yasuko Takezawa there is a great difference between ethnicity and identity, whereby the latter can develop independently from the former. Many Americans living in the prewar years did not make a distinction between the two terms: being of Japanese ancestry, meant being Japanese, even if they were born and raised in the United States. This phenomenon caused the all-out evacuation of this ethnic group on the American mainland; for the group as a whole was distrusted by United States society.3 For the majority of Japanese American, and especially the American-born Nisei, this generalization was quite difficult. As Takezawa notes in her work, most Nisei identified themselves primarily as Americans, not as Japanese. “In school the Nisei developed their American identity to add to their Japanese ethnicity,”4 she states, confirming too, that these features are flexible and adaptable. Her work is based on Fredrik Barths’ (1969) theory that ethnicity is subjective,

3 With the exception of Japanese Americans living in Hawaii who were exempted from evacuation, since the economy on Hawaii depended on this group as the their main labor force. 4 Yasuko I. Takezawa, Breaking the Silence: Redress and Japanese American Ethnicity (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), 194-6. 5 flexible and can be defined by members of the group themselves.5 Takezawa explores in her work how the different generations of Japanese Americans dealt with this ethnicity and how that related to their self-identification. Takezawa’s 1995 book Breaking the Silence is crucial for my work since it analyzes how the sense of ethnicity and identity has developed during the war years for the different generations of Japanese Americans. Takezawa’s research looks specifically at the transformation of ethnicity and identity after and during the Redress movement after the war, while I am more inclined to look at the immediate effects the wartime internment had on this development and sense of American identity. I will add to her research by also looking at the identification process and experience of the Issei, whereas Takezawa focusses mainly on the later generations, the Nisei and Sansei. Takezawa’s work is mainly based on the numerous interviews she held with Japanese Americans during her stay in Seattle in the 1990s to give an account of their experiences as a minority group in the United States during, but mostly, after the war. Anthropologist Alexander Leighton had a completely different approach to identify the Japanese American community during their internment and stayed in one of the internment camps to conduct his research. For his work The Governing of Men (1945), Leighton studied the Japanese American internees who were held at Poston internment center and tried to analyze how this group behaved during their years in captivity.6 His approach was derived from the notion that analyzing a social group can best be done by putting yourself in the middle of their situation and studying their behavior. This method could determine, in his vision, who the Japanese were. Although his work received a lot of praise directly after it was published, later scholars have suggested that it is impossible to determine group identity by studying them in a unnatural environment as the internment camp was. Leighton’s study does give an interesting account on how an outsider looked at the behavior of an ethnic group and nicely illustrates how the general consensus was during this period concerning the use of the terms nationality and identity. His work is in line with other research written in the same time period, but highly contrasts with the report of the earlier mentioned WRR, which view I share. His work shows that even a respected scholar as Alexander Leighton in that time, could only see these Japanese Americans as Japanese people and did not regard them as American citizens. This shows how widespread the idea was that people can only feel loyal to one country, Japan in this case, and therefore faced grave difficulty proving otherwise.

5 Takezawa, 13. 6 Alexander H. Leighton, The Governing of Men (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1945). 6

My research will deal primarily with internal and external factors that shaped the identity of the Japanese American community. In order to do this I will have to look at both their own experience that may have transformed their identity, as to look at the influence American society and the wartime situation had on their identification. How the Japanese Americans identified themselves was not something decided internally but was almost always influenced by their surroundings. American public opinion was a major factor that could shape and disturb the group’s identity. The perception Americans tended to have of the Japanese is extensively explained by American anthropologist Sheila Johnson. In her 1988 book The Japanese through American Eyes, Johnson traced the commonly held perceptions towards Japanese throughout the second half of the twentieth century. She explained how popular culture shaped, maintained, contradicted and altered the image and stereotypes held by many Americans prior to World War Two.7 Especially the wartime period and the years leading up to that are of high interest for my research and help me to establish an image of the environment in which the Japanese Americans resided. Historian Studs Terkel similarly looked at United States public opinion during the war and documented and collected the oral histories and stories of the various average Americans during World War Two. In his book The Good War: an oral History of World War Two he showed the various reactions and experiences of Americans on his wartime situation.8 Some of these oral testimonies show how white Americans were quite pleased with the removal of the Japanese Americans. To illustrate how the Nisei and Issei dealt with their self-identification, I will make use of several memoirs, written by those Nisei who have experienced the prewar and war years. These memoirs, which I will use repeatedly through my work, will not be used as a matter of proof, but rather as a tool to inject the personal experience and feelings of those people who lived the experience I will write about. The accounts of these former internees will shed light on how they experienced the difficulty in proving their loyalty and commitment to the United States. It would feel wrong for me to talk about emotions and self- identification of others, which is why I let them speak through their memoirs. Next to anthropological and sociological research, many scholars have studied the subject of internment from a social political point of view. Key topic in these studies is the political motivations behind Roosevelt’s decisions and several scholars have questioned

7 Sheila K. Johnson, The Japanese Through American Eyes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), cover page. 8 Studs Terkel, The Good War: an Oral History of World War Two (United Kingdom: Hamish Hamilton Publishers, 1985). 7 whether and how, these extreme measures of evacuation and internment could have been avoided. Historian Greg Robinson for example, has written an extensive account of the role of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in signing the executive order that legitimized the resettlement of more than a hundred thousand Japanese American citizens, and blames Roosevelt for having had a “bad moral compass,” on this issue.9 Robinson’s study mainly focuses on the political side of the internment and specifically investigated Roosevelt’s influence in this but it also makes clear how public opinion and war hysteria influenced the policies made at the time. Professor Ruud Janssens similarly looked at the role of the United States government in handling the war with Japan and why the government took the radical decision to relocate and hold so many people of Japanese ancestry. He concluded herein that the government was forced to take such extreme action to calm the war hysteria and satisfy the American public.10 Although I am particularly interested in the personal rather than the political stories and background of the Japanese American internment, these studies are very relevant for my research since they show how public opinion and war time panic can influence government policy but they also discuss how the anti-Japanese sentiment was shaped and where that was coming from. In order to understand and illustrate how the wartime internment shaped or changed the identity of the internees, I will look at the extensive research that has been done on the internment itself by several scholars. Most scholars who have written about the internment have done this with a political-activist approach; these are scholars who have deemed it important to write about the injustice that was done to this minority group, as a means of making sure something similar as this will never happen again. These include scholars like Roger Daniels, Allen Bosworth, Richard Drinnon and Edwin Spicer (ea.) who have been studying and writing about the internment, its causes and effects to inform the world of the wrongfulness that was experienced by the internees. These scholars, varying from historians to social scientists, have written this work on behave of the Japanese American victims of mass incarceration. I will draw from their work the historical details and events. Some Japanese American scholars, such as Harry Kitano, have been writing about the internment from a similar interest. His account is highly interesting since he, as a Nisei, was a victim of the government’s internment policy and stayed in an internment camp until it closed in 1945.

9 Greg Robinson, By Order of the President. FDR and the internment of Japanese Americans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001) introduction. 10 Rudolf Janssens, What Future for Japan: US Wartime Planning for the Postwar Era 1942-1945 (Amsterdam- Atlanta, GA: Rodopi Press, 1995), conclusion. 8

However, his work can be biased by his own experience and interpretation. Nonetheless this work provides extensive information on the events that occurred during and after the war. My main goal in this research is to analyze if and how the internment changed Japanese Americans’ perspective of the United States and their own position herein. This minority group lived in a period of American history in which they endured multiple negative situations, in which the internment stands out, which makes it highly interesting and intriguing how they dealt with situation, both practically as emotionally. But above all, I want to analyze how American society, and especially Americans living on the West Coast, blocked the integration process of the Japanese Americans. Despite the dire wish of many Japanese Americans to assimilate, it was in the hands of the American society to accept them in their community. Integration is a two-way process in which efforts have to be made by two parties. Essential in this process is the way Americans thought about the term loyalty and how they used and tried to measure it at that time. Many Americans expected the Japanese American population to show and prove their loyalty towards the United States, but no matter what these Japanese Americans did to show it, for many Americans “a Jap was a Jap,” as Commanding General of the Western Defense Command John deWitt said when justifying the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, and this minority group could never really prove they were loyal to the United States.11 And even if they could, it is highly questionable that the Americans would ever allow them to show it. The most problematic issue in this loyalty question is that even if loyalty could never be proven, it was used in a way that suggested it was possible. In this paper I will look at the effects of the wartime internment on public opinion in the United States toward the Japanese American community. In order to support my statement I will therefore have to analyze how the American public acted towards the Japanese Americans, as well as how this minority group reacted to this, both practically as emotionally. The Japanese Americans reaction will not give an all-encompassing response, for the generational differences will have to be taken in consideration, which makes it impossible to generalize their experience. For this work I will therefore look at the situation and experience of each of the generations. Furthermore, to discover a change in perspective, I have to look at multiple time periods in order to establish how and why a development took place. This work is therefore structured in chronological order, starting with the prewar period and the early lives of Japanese immigrants and their children, followed by the war

11 WRA. Personal justice denied: report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilian. http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/personal_justice_denied/ (accessed: January 22, 2014). 9 period which will be described most extensively, and ends with the postwar period which describes the effects and ultimate change in perception caused by the internment. The first chapter will thus give an overview of the societal conditions along America’s West Coast in which the Japanese immigrants lived prior to the war. I will discuss what influenced and shaped the stereotypes of Japanese held by the American public before World War Two broke out. Next to the image produced by popular culture as Johnson described, I will briefly look at historical immigration policy, the socio-economic situation of Japanese Americans prior to the war and how public opinion hereof was formed. Moreover I will analyze how both the Japanese Americans and the West Coast society felt about loyalty and how to show that. In this chapter I will consult opinion polls and personal accounts of Americans living on the West Coast during this prewar period to see how they perceived people of Japanese ancestry in general, and in the United States in particular. This widespread and often negative perception on Japanese Americans might have had a substantial influence on the Japanese Americans living in the United States as well. Important therefore is to analyze how “American” the Japanese Americans felt themselves. This is obviously not a question that can bring a general answer, but it would be interesting to see the various perspectives and experiences these people held on their living situation in the United States, just before the war. I need to look at the different Japanese American generations. First generation Japanese Americans, or Issei, might have had a difference experience living in the West Coast than their children or the second generation, Nisei. How much did public opinion shape the experience of people of Japanese origin? And how “American” did they feel themselves? An analysis of scholarly work and memoirs will provide answers to the chapter’s question: What was the general perception American society had on Japanese immigrants before World War Two and how did this influence the lives of Japanese American immigrants along the West Coast? The second chapter will focus on the United States government’s decision to evacuate and intern the entire Japanese American community and the immediate implications this had on the minority group. Many elements will be explored, starting with the socio-political climate in the United States directly after the 1941 Pearl Harbor bombings, which included a higher degree of discrimination and a growth of anti-Japanese sentiment among the public. To get a sense of the effects and implications of the Japanese bombing, I will extensively sketch the reaction of the United States government and the army, local politicians, lobby groups, American citizens living on the West Coast, and off course the Japanese American community itself. I will analyse if and how the government’s decisions and public sentiment 10 changed the perspectives of the Japanese Americans and how the United States government dealt with the term loyalty in their policy-making. The next part of this chapter will focus on the internment itself and how life in the camps was experienced by its internees. In order to understand the great ordeal and difficulties the internees endured, I will give an extensive overview of the conditions in the camps and the tensions that developed between the internees themselves, which ultimately led to a split within the community. A large focus is directed at the fact that the internees were, quite unexpectedly, turning against each other instead of collectively directing their anger to the United States government and camp authorities. This chapter will answer the question: How did the different Japanese American generations react to their internment and what ways did their attitude towards the United States change? Extensive attention will be given to the issue of the Loyalty Questionnaire and how that illustrates both the United States government’s take on loyalty and the difficulty or impossibility in measuring loyalty. I will again use the scholarly research to describe the wartime period, in and outside the camps, and will illuminate the emotions and perceptions of the internees by using several memoirs. For the concluding chapter I will look at the development of the Japanese American identity after the war, and if and how this was changed for the different generations by their internment experience. It is difficult, if not impossible to test “how American” someone feels or is, and memoirs will not help me to determine this. Instead I will look at the actions and reactions of the former internees after the war, to analyze their determination to be(come) American. Research done by scholar Allen Austin on the postwar effects on this minority group will be a major help for this analysis.12 I will look at the efforts of the different generations to assimilate and integrate in American society and will determine based on these features if the incentives to become Americanized have declined, increased or remained the same. I will hereby look at the results of the loyalty questionnaire, the enrolment in the Nisei army unit, and the wartime and postwar efforts in education, jobs and social patterns and changes. Equally important is to see how public opinion shifted in the postwar period and how this influenced the integration process of the Japanese Americans. Again I will deal with the loyalty issue and the difficulties the use of this term brought for both the American population as the Japanese Americans themselves. Political and legal changes that took place after World War Two will also be taken into account, since they have had major implications for the status of the Japanese American community in United States society. These changes

12 Allen Austin “Eastward Pioneers: Japanese American Resettlement during World War II and the Contested Meaning of Exile and Incarceration” In: Journal of American Ethnic History (2007): 79. 11 and developments will be crucial in determining in what ways American society let this group integrate and feel accepted in society after the war. In this concluding chapter I will try to answer the question: Were the incentives for the Japanese Americans to integrate in United States society altered after the internment and in what way did the postwar attitudes of American society contribute to this?

12

Chapter 1. Being Japanese-American in pre-war United States

To establish whether the internment affected the way American society responded to Japanese Americans, it is necessary to see how this minority experienced their lives in the years leading up the war and in which ways this was effected by the American public. Long before the United States entered the war with Japan in 1941, Japanese Americans encountered problems living on the West Coast. Prejudice and stereotypes shaped the way American society perceived this group and acted towards them. Government policies might have made life for the first generation immigrants, the Issei, even more difficult. During the pre-war years Japanese immigration was restricted, naturalization and ownership of land denied. This generation had therefore great difficulties integrating in society, moreover because they often spoke little English and behaved in traditional Japanese ways. For their Nisei children, who were legal American citizens, these problems did not exist and integration seemed much easier. This generation however, was caught between two cultures; that of their Japanese parents and that of their home country. Self-identification problems occurred often; especially when discrimination and anti-Japanese sentiment began to influence their lives. In this chapter I will analyse the pre-war United States environment and will focus on the question: What was the general perception American society had on Japanese immigrants before World War Two and how did this influence the lives of Japanese American immigrants along the West Coast?

1.1 Introduction to Japanese immigration to the US Since the 1860s Japanese immigrants have been crossing the Pacific to settle on America’s West Coast. Ever since their arrival these immigrants faced grave difficulty integrating in American society, mainly due to strong anti-Asian prejudice and discrimination. The earlier mass arrival of Chinese workers that entered the US during the gold rush in 1848 had spurred anti-Asian sentiment along the West Coast but especially in California. Fear of Orientals, job competition and the wide-held notion that the United States was a “white man’s country,” united a large group of Americans in anti-Oriental movements.13 Throughout the decades leading up to World War Two, more and more restrictions were set up to halt the arrival of more Asian immigrants. The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1908 was one of the first measures taken. According to this agreement between the Japanese government and the United States,

13 Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice (New York: Atheneum , 1968),16. 13

Japan would not send any more emigrants to the United States and in return the American government agreed to allow family reunification for those Japanese immigrants already residing in the United States.14 Japanese immigration stopped completely when the Immigration Act of 1924 was enacted. This law restricted immigration for Eastern Europeans by setting up quotas, but banned the arrival of Asians altogether by adding a provision called the Asian Exclusion Act.15 This provision in combination with the 1790s Naturalization Act, laid the foundation for a rocky soil on which these Japanese immigrants needed to plant their seeds for full integration. The Naturalization Act restricted non-whites to be naturalized, regardless of the duration of their stay. Additionally, the California Alien Land Law of 1913 prohibited non-white aliens to own land. The latter was especially directed at Japanese immigrants who were mainly active as farmers.16 Many Issei however, found ways to go around this by buying land in the name of their Nisei, American-born children. The Japanese’s agrarian success was the main concern for other American farmers that led to this Land Law, but overall anti-Japanese sentiment in California was the key drive for enacting these restricting policies.

1.2 Public sentiment, prejudice and discrimination The first generation Japanese immigrants, the Issei, were born in Japan, emigrated to the United States to build up better lives for themselves or their families and a lot of them succeeded in this. Although public hostility towards them was always in some way apparent, great differences can be seen between urban and rural areas, between cities and even states. A large group of Japanese immigrants settled in Hawaii, an American territory, where they were needed as farm workers. The situation in Hawaii will not be discussed here; primarily because these Japanese immigrants did not face exclusion and evacuation during World War Two- unlike their fellow countrymen on the American mainland. California held by far the biggest Japanese population, western cities in Washington, Oregon and later Arizona held a far lesser degree of Japanese immigrants, making these areas less hostile and discriminatory than it tended to be in California.17 Japanese immigrants living in big American cities were also more prone to face discrimination for there they tended to live in big Japanese communities where assimilation to American ways was less vital than it was in rural areas

14 Janssens, 32. 15 Edward H. Spicer, Asael T. Hansen, Katherine Luomala, Marvin K. Opler, Impounded People (Tuscan: The University of Arizona Press,1969),48. 16 Densho, timeline http://www.densho.org/sitesofshame/timeline.xml, (accessed 5 May 2013).

14 where the Japanese immigrants were scattered throughout the area which forced them to integrate and assimilate.18 Generally speaking, a family living in rural parts of Washington faced less hostilities than families living in Los Angeles, California. However Japanese Americans living on the West Coast could never totally escape some degree of discrimination. In her book The Japanese through American Eyes, Sheila Johnson looked at how perceptions and stereotypes of Japanese were shaped and transformed in American popular culture. In her analysis Johnson selected articles, magazines, movies and books that dealt with Japanese characters, culture and history, which she analysed to discover general depictions and perceptions these authors held on this immigrant group in certain historical periods, starting just before World War Two until the late 1980s. These depictions, Johnson states, give an insight into public opinion held throughout the years.19 She found that the Japanese were often depicted as either aggressive, modest, quiet, sneaky, or excessively loyal to their emperor. Johnson’s overall conclusion is quite remarkably, that the depictions and stereotypes used in popular culture- which often coincides with general public opinion- are directly influenced by the specific political, cultural or economic status of Japan in relation to the United States. When Japan is involved in an aggressive war, or perceived as a threat to the Unites States for their economic success, the depictions and stereotypes used by the American public to describe the Japanese tend to be negative, and vice versa. In Johnson’s words: “Good relations between the two countries at the governmental and the business levels generally contribute to favorable popular images, while states of war, trade embargoes, or other international tensions promote unflattering popular images.”20 Her conclusion is remarkable because she sees prejudice and stereotyping not as something static, but rather as flexible and adaptable to certain situations. We do have to take into account however, that the negative attitude towards Japanese Americans was growing over the years, independently from the political and economic situation of Japan. The war therefore heightened and not started the negative sentiment towards Japanese Americans. But why then was the American reaction toward German- and Italian Americans, ancestors from countries that were similarly aggressive and enemies in the eyes of the United States, less hostile and did these people not face evacuation? A possible answer is that these groups, as Spicer notes, were “less racially visible,” and could therefore hide their ancestry

18 Mary Matsuda Gruenewald, Looking like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese American Internment Camps (Troutdale, Oregon: Newsage Press, 210), 22. 19 Johnson, 6-12. 20 Johnson, 170. 15 better and avoid open discrimination.21 Other factors that contributed to the less hostile attitudes these German and Italian-immigrants faced will be explored in chapter two of this work. Historian Roger Daniels therefore concluded that the anti-Japanese sentiment in California has much deeper roots than wars and economy alone and suggested that this anti- Orient sentiment derived from earlier hostilities towards the Chinese immigrants who arrived in California in massive numbers during the gold rush. The Japanese who came years later were irrevocably linked to the Chinese-Americans and prejudice, hatred and fear increased only more when relations between Japan and the United States became tenser.22 This public fear was maintained by the press that as early as 1907 had started with vague reports and false accusations of the Japanese and the Japanese-American community, spurring anti-Japanese sentiment and negatively influencing the position of the Japanese community in the West Coast. Talk of “The Yellow Peril,” which had become a term directly linked to the Japanese, increased in the United States and was easily picked up by the press. Direct cause for this fear was the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 in which the Japanese proved strong and defeated the Russians. This was the first major war where a non-Western country won a war against an European power. A second cause that shaped the public fear was a bestselling novel by Homer Lea called The Valor of Ignorance, which told the story of the Japanese military powers taking over American territories as Alaska, Hawaii and even mainland California.23 These military actions by the Japanese, real and imagined, spurred the idea of Japanese as evil and aggressive people and were picked up by the press. The California-based Hearst Press in particular started printing prejudiced, false reports on Japanese-Americans, hereby stirring anti-Japanese sentiment on America’s West Coast. Reports ranged from (false) warnings that Japanese immigrants were in fact Japanese soldiers waiting to attack the United States, to stories of Japanese beating up girls, both turned out the be untrue.24 Next to the press, local politics contributed to spreading erroneous, alarming information about the Japanese in the United States. In an attempt to pass a 1920s bill to sharpen restrictions on Japanese landownership, Governor Stephens propagated that the Japanese immigrants had an enormously high birth-rate which would endanger the white Californian community. Although these statistics again were incorrect, it is very well imaginable that these rumors and anti-Japanese propaganda have influenced American’s

21 Spicer, 27. 22 Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice¸106. 23 Janssens, 30. 24 Daniels, The Politics of prejudice, 70. 16 negative attitude towards this minority group.25 Anti-Japanese sentiment in California, thus always there to some extent, increased heavily in the early years of World War Two, before Pearl Harbor, when Japan showed its aggressive and powerful warfare tactics in their battles in the Far East. This fear of Japanese was mostly visible in the exclusion of Japanese in shops, restaurants, public places and even in schools. This fear was often passed on to young children. One American recalls that even at the age of four he was told to fear the Japanese; another American recalls that at the age of sixteen, “we were dreadfully frightened of the Japanese. For years we were told of the yellow hordes. […] Even before Pearl Harbor we were scared of them.26 These and many other first- hand reports show how the American public, especially on the West Coast was indoctrinated with the idea that Asians and in particular the Japanese, were people to be scared of and to avoid. Public hostilities in early 1941 became that fierce, that several groups, such as Christian churches and a group of Californian University presidents were established to alter and slow down the anti-Japanese sentiment and protect this minority group, with little success however.27 This was the environment in which newly arrived Japanese immigrants tried to settle in peace in the early twentieth century, facing discrimination, exclusion, denial of rights and severe prejudice, based on no rational grounds or justified fears.

1.3 The Japanese-American experience The Japanese came to the United States either for economic reasons, for religious reasons or as political refugees. The first group made the move to the United States primarily to work hard, earn as much money as they could, and eventually return to Japan. Many Japanese of this generation, the Issei, therefore made little effort to fully integrate in American society, learn the language and adopt American ways. The longer they stayed however, and had Nisei children, the more they assimilated.28 The second and third group of Japanese that immigrated to the United States for religious or political reasons came with the aim to stay. These groups consisted of Christian Japanese wanting to live in a Christian country and those who were banned from Japan for opposing the glorification of the Emperor.29 The reasons for moving are of crucial importance when dealing with the question of loyalty these immigrants felt for Japan and the United States.

25 Ibid., 89 26 Terkel, 27 &36. 27 Page Smith, Democracy on Trial The Japanese American Evacuation and Relocation in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 13. 28 Ibid., 53-55. 29 Ibid., 57-60. 17

The previously described hostilities and political restrictions the Japanese-Americans faced deeply influenced their experience living in the United States. Each generation reacted differently to their American environment, and experiences between Issei and their Nisei children varied greatly. Since the Issei were ineligible for naturalization, and thus citizenship, they tried to cling more to the culture of the only official citizenship they had: the Japanese. Most Nisei tried hard to assimilate in American society, often facing difficulties with their dual heritage. Although no generalizations can be made, I will try in this second half of the chapter to describe the experiences of these Japanese-Americans, based on memoirs written by them, of their stay and loyalty towards either Japan or the United States.

1.3.1 Issei More than other immigrant groups, the Issei generally held on to their Japanese roots very strongly, partly because of their enormous pride in being Japanese and partly because their unsecure legal status in the United States made them consider moving back to their mother country. Many Issei felt very connected to their home country where their families still lived, but it did not necessarily mean that they would support Japan when a war broke out. This was however, the fear of many Americans, who mistakenly took their loyalty to Japan for a disloyalty to the United States. One returning element in the Japanese-American memoirs is the typically traditional Japanese core that almost all Issei had. The traditional Japanese culture was brought with them to the United States and often implemented in their new homes, mainly to be seen in Japanese food, the importance to join clubs (typical for more immigrant groups), their modest and shy public behaviour, and the most controversial feature: their devotion and loyalty to the Japanese emperor, and in second place to the parents.30 Monica Sone, a Nisei woman who grew up in Seattle, tells in her memoir Nisei Daughter how this tradition manifested itself in her youth and that of her brother by their Issei parents. She recalls traditional Japanese festivities such as “Tenchosetsu,” which was the celebration of the Emperor’s birthday. On this day, she writes: “There, to our humble eyes, the photograph of Emperor Hirohito himself was revealed. Only once a year was the Emperor’s likeness unveiled to the public. It was a sacred moment.”31 Sone also admits that she did not understand half of what was going on, but for her Issei parents and the Issei community, these were important moments that reinforced their Japaneseness.

30 Smith, 68. 31 Monica Sone, Nisei Daughter (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press,1978), 66-67. 18

One crucial reason for the Issei to strongly hold on to their Japanese culture was the pride they felt in being Japanese; a sentiment universally held under Japanese citizens, something that was imposed on them by their culture. This pride had not much to do with nationalism or loyalty in a war-like sense, as stated by Spicer et al., but rather has to do with being proud of your ancestry.32 Yoshiko Uchida, a Nisei woman, describes her Issei parents similarly in the memoir Desert Exile she wrote in 1982 documenting her family’s experience in the United States before and during World War Two. She writes: “He [Papa] was Japanese and proud of his land and his heritage. Although both my parents loved America, they always held at the core of their being an abiding love for their native land.”33 Further on she says:

My parent’s Japaneseness was never nationalistic in nature. They held the Imperial family in affectionate and respectful regard, as did all Japanese of their generation. But their first loyalty was always to their Christian God, not the Emperor of Japan. And their loyalty and devotion to their adopted country was vigorous and strong. My father cherished copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution of the United States, and on national holidays he hung with great pride an enormous American flag on our front porch, even though at the time, this country declared the first generation Japanese immigrants to be “aliens ineligible for citizenship.34

This dual sense of loyalty and pride towards both Japan and the United States might have been highly confusing for many Americans who during the tense relation between both countries, misinterpreted the sense of Japanese pride most Issei held, for the loyalty towards their Emperor; America’s enemy. The loyalty they did feel for the United States is almost surprisingly; as Uchida’s account illustrates, even though they lived in a country that denied their right for citizenship, the Issei still felt themselves loyal citizens. This Japanese pride also manifested itself in the large group of Issei urging their Nisei children to attend Japanese language school after their regular, American classes. These schools were typically very traditional and taught not only the Japanese language, but also martial arts and traditional Japanese culture and manners.35 The fact that these schools did little to truly “Japanize” the Nisei children I will discuss later, important in this context is that the Issei community on America’s West Coast tried strongly to hold on to their Japanese ancestry, traditions, culture and pride. This might very well be the reason that the Japanese were targeted and questioned on their true loyalty much more than the German- or Italian- American community, people from countries who were in much the same way enemies of the

32 Spicer,198. 33 Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 82),22. 34 Ibid., 36. 35 Smith, 77. 19

United States and seemingly aggressive nations, even in the years before 1939, an element I will expand upon in the next chapter. Another important explanation of the Issei’s strong ties to their Japanese culture is the previously named consideration for many Issei to eventually return to Japan. As mentioned earlier, Japanese immigrants entered the United States for different reasons; some came to stay and others came only for a few years of hard work. In the 1920s and 1930s when many Issei immigrants had settled their businesses and formed families, the wish of returning to Japan became less prominent nevertheless, their legal status did not improve but became unstable over the years with more restrictions on citizenship and landownership. These Issei only had legal status in Japan and many therefore kept in mind the forced or voluntary move back to their country of origin. Increasing discrimination and hostilities the Japanese- Americans faced in the West Coast spurred this idea of eventually leaving the United States.36 As Spicer beautifully worded in his work Impounded People: “It was a practical interest which nourished the fading sentimental interest.”37 It is therefore understandable that many Issei did not work that hard to assimilate in American society and kept their Japanese culture alive.

1.3.2 Nisei For the American-born Nisei, it was a totally different situation in which they tried their very best to adopt to American ways, often rejected their parent’s Japaneseness, manners and their forced Japanese education, and in most ways felt much more American than Japanese. These differences between the first- and second generation immigrants, is an often seen phenomenon. Historian Marcus L. Hansen has seen this pattern in multiple immigrant groups, in which the second generation wants to disregard their heritage, while the third generation often wants to re-establish its cultural roots.38 While the Issei parents tried their best to slow down the Americanization of their children, this was ultimately inevitable. In terms of manners such as modesty and politeness most Nisei behaved in the ways of their traditional Japanese upbringing, but life outside the house in their American schools and environment influenced their ways. While most Nisei were sent to Japanese language schools, the success of these schools was often disappointing, as Page Smith notes in her work. The low number of Nisei who fluently spoke Japanese suggests that the attempt to Japanize the second

36 Spicer, 199. 37 Ibid., 38 Takezawa, 203. 20 generation was not very effective.39 For many Nisei, growing up as a Japanese-American was quite challenging, for although official American citizens, they did face similar (albeit not legal) discrimination and hostile reactions as their Issei parents. Although all Nisei felt completely American, their looks and ways aroused suspicion, fear and prejudice by the American community which made life in the United States often hard. Yoshiko Uchida recalled in her memoir: “In spite of the complete blending of Japanese qualities and values into our lives, neither my sister nor I, as children, ever considered ourselves anything other than Americans. At school we saluted the American flag and learned to become good citizens.”40 She goes on telling that she refused to go to Japanese language school because that would accentuate our “differentness,” something we, Nisei, tried very hard to overcome in those days.41 These two conflicting cultures combined with their Asian looks made full assimilation in American society difficult, maybe more so than for other immigrant groups that came to America’s West Coast. The hostilities directed at them felt perhaps more painful than for their Issei parent, who in a more distinct way were Japanese, often did not speak English fluently, or without accent, and were not official naturalized United States citizens. Racism and exclusion before the World War Two was apparent in housing, public places and school activities. Yoshiko Uchida recalled facing this discrimination in her high school, shops and restaurants and explained why the wish to fit in and be American for many Nisei was so strong that they tried everything to be accepted. Uchida wrote: Society caused us to feel ashamed of something that should have made us feel proud. Instead of directing anger at the society that excluded and diminished us, such was the climate of that times and so low our self-esteem that many of us Nisei tried to reject our Japaneseness and the Japanese way of our parents. We were sometimes ashamed of the Issei in their shabby clothes... their inability to speak English, their habits and the food they ate.42

This memory gives a clear example that Nisei felt and wanted to be accepted as American citizens, but that their ways and appearances often made this quite difficult. These Nisei were fully educated as American citizens, had the same rights and enjoyed living in the United States, despite the difficulties they faced as a negatively stereotyped minority group. Although most memoirs do not recall a miserable childhood in living in the United States, these actions and prejudices did impact their personalities and lives which makes it even more impressive how loyal and American they felt, regardless of how the environment

39 Smith,78. 40 Uchida,40. 41 Ibid., 42 Uchida, 41-42. 21 treated them. Another example of how these hostilities were experienced is given by Monica Sone when she recalls how she and her mother were rejected in their search for a house in Washington years before the war broke out:

She [the house owner] said dryly, “I’m sorry, but we don’t want Japs around here,” and closed the door. […] Mother took my hand... and after a while, she said quietly, “Ka-chan, We just have to bear it, just like all the other unpleasant facts of life. This is the first time for you, and I know how deeply it hurts; but when you get older, it won’t hurt quite as much. You’ll be stronger.” Trying to stop the flow of tears, I swallowed hard and blurted out, “But Mama, is it so terrible to be a Japanese?” […] All day I had been torn apart between feeling defiant and then apologetic about my Japanese blood.43

This account illustrates the anger felt towards discrimination, but the will and pride to be an American ultimately over won this anger, urging some of them even more to assimilate to American life and reject their Japanese background. During the war years and internment this deep rooted loyalty towards the United States felt by a majority of Nisei prevailed over much of the anger and resentment towards the US government’s decision of internment, resulting in the cooperation and compliance with the several war authorities. Overall the experiences described in these memoirs show how and why the Nisei’s sense of Americaness was formed, sometimes challenged, but ultimately overcome by their dire wish to be fully accepted in their home country as an fully integrated American citizen.

1.3.3 Kibei For the final group, the Kibei, this sense of Americaness was much less prominent. The majority of the Kibei felt strong ties with Japan rather than with the United States. The Kibei were American-born Nisei who spent part off or all of their education in Japan to eventually return to the United States. Encouraging Nisei to be educated in Japan was an incentive by the Japanese government that aimed to get Japanese-Americans back to Japan to learn the Japanese ways and culture. Many Issei parents found herein a great opportunity to educate their children in the same traditional Japanese way they had enjoyed themselves and used it to halt the Americanization of their children.44 Whereas this Japanese education in the United States for Nisei children was not a big success as I have mentioned earlier, education in Japan was. These Kibei were during their education indoctrinated with the divinity of the Emperor and full loyalty towards him. Their manners were strict and formal, their Japanese language fluent. Many Kibei when returning to the United States resented the free and informal

43 Sone, 114-115. 44 Smith, 75-76. 22 character of their fellow Nisei, who were by their American environment and school far more Americanized in ways of clothing, behaviour and values. Resentment the other way around is probably more striking; some Nisei had admitted they did not like and understand the formal and excessive Japanese behavior the Kibei held towards them. During their time in Japan when Japan’s military strength increased heavily, some Kibei when back in the United States would brag about Japanese superiority and their military might, often to the dismay of their Nisei peers who were more inclined to stories of American superiority and strength.45 Other Kibei however, condemned their Issei parents for sending them away, depriving them of opportunities to speak English fluently and to assimilate in American society, which often made them outcasts in the eyes of their Nisei peers.46 This group might have struggled with its identity; but their environment did not make it any easier for them since their sense of belonging and loyalty was so mixed and never clear.

1.4. Conclusion The Kibei were, as I will discuss in chapter two, therefore the most fiercely and aggressive opponents during the start of World War Two of the American government and the internment. How these different groups acted and reacted towards each other and the American government and society, I will discuss in great detail in the following chapter. For now it is important to note that all three groups of Japanese-Americans shared a different attitude towards the country they lived in. Although all felt American in most ways and no proof exists of any Japanese American ever been accused of conspiring with the Japanese government, they all had a different sense of belonging towards the United States. Since dual loyalty is possible, as I established in my introduction, it is likely that many Issei and some Kibei felt loyal to both Japan and the United States. This never means they were disloyal to the United States, but that they had a sense of belonging in both cultures and countries. Most crucial in this period however, is that the West Coast citizens, and especially those living in California, did not give the Japanese Americans any chance to show their loyalty towards the United States. For many people in California, anti-Japanese sentiment was so high that there was nothing the Japanese Americans could do to prove themselves to be good American citizens. Even before the war, this minority group was stuck by the assumption that loyalty could be measured in some way.

45 Sone, 127-9. 46 Spicer 53. 23

Chapter 2: Wartime Internment: Breaking up the Japanese American Community

The Japanese American community living on America’s West Coast often faced hostilities and discrimination by their American environment and anti-Japanese sentiment reached an ultimate high after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. War hysteria broke out among the public which forced the United States government to take action. Lobby groups, the press and local statesmen on the West Coast pressured Congress to alleviate the potential threat and danger that was caused merely by the presence of Japanese Americans. This eventually led to Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 that made the evacuation and relocation of all Japanese Americans living on the West Coast possible. Two-thirds of the evacuees were American- born, second generation Japanese Americans (Nisei), but their citizenship did not prevent them from being relocated to the ten internment centers that were hastily set up by the government. How the different Japanese American generations dealt with this treatment varied drastically. Loyalties and attitudes towards the United States began to shift for many internees, resentment towards their government grew and the different ways of coping with the situation eventually led to a painful divide within the Japanese American community itself. This leads me to the question: How did the different Japanese American generations react to their internment? In what ways did their attitude towards the United States change and the other way around?

2.1 Public reactions and government actions following Pearl Harbor When in December 1941, Japan suddenly attacked the United States navy at Pearl Harbor, war hysteria broke out along America’s West Coast. The United States was now directly involved in the war against Japan and the West Coast was now considered most vulnerable for further attacks. Prior to the Pearl Harbor attack most Americans objected to American involvement in the war, but this attitude changed directly after Japan attacked Hawaii. Japan declared the war against the United States, which ultimately brought the United States in an all-out war with Japan’s allies Germany and Italy, who declared war to the United States too. The fear and panic, that broke out among Americans living on the coast, especially in California, manifested itself in the negative and hostile attitudes towards people in the United States affiliated with any of these enemy nations. On December 7, the day of the attack, the FBI rounded up enemy-alien community

24 leaders and those deemed to pose a threat to national security. This included people of German- as well as Italian and Japanese ancestry. Out of an estimated number of 3,600 arrested, more than half were Japanese and were predominantly Issei.47 This massive roundup stirred up fear and anger towards these enemy- aliens and enemy-citizens, which was further increased by the press. The American government issued propaganda material in the form of posters and articles, warning the American public that these people with ties to those enemy countries America was fighting, could not be trusted. Newspapers printed these and other stories, scapegoating these groups by blaming them for the Pearl Harbor attack and for involving the United States in this war. These citizens all feared mass evacuation and insecurity and rumors made them feel extremely anxious.48 People of Japanese ancestry suffered the most, for the negative sentiment towards them that already existed was now confirmed and could only increase. German and Italian immigrants were targeted too, but public opinion towards them was far less hostile than towards the Japanese. The Japanese were directly blamed for the attack and years of suspicion and prediction that the Japanese would attack the United States now came true. Shops and public places put up signs and posters denying access for Japanese Americans at a far higher rate than in the years before the war. Newspapers started to spread false rumors of Japanese fishermen who collaborated with Japanese submarines through their shortwave radios, and accused Japanese farmers of marking airstrips in their strawberry fields to guide Japanese war planes. These and other similar stories, have never proven to be true, but the mere suspicion of such behavior made enough Americans fear and despise the Japanese American community. Rumors proved to me more powerful than facts and there was not much the Japanese could do about it, since everyone was accused of being unpatriotic in American newspapers.49 German- and Italian Americans had the great advantage of being white and not physically different from other Americans, which enabled them to hide their ancestry, while Japanese Americans could not hide their physical appearance that resembled that of the enemy. German Americans, furthermore, had been through a similar situation during World War I and therefore knew they had to lay low, renouncing their German roots, stop speaking German and act as “American” as possible.50 In order to avoid being targeted as the enemy themselves, a group of German Americans had started a negative propaganda campaign

47 Allen R. Bosworth, American Concentration Camps ( New York: WW Norton & Company Inc, 1967),46. 48 Spicer, 37. 49 Ibid.,39. 50 Smith, 26. 25 against the Japanese Americans, stirring up public hatred by publishing false and racist rumors on the Japanese residing in California.51 The spreading of yellow-peril pamphlets had started around 1907, as I have mentioned in chapter 1, but its tone and racist remarks intensified when the Second World War broke out. Italian- and German Americans gained some sympathy because of human-interest stories that appeared in local newspapers that pleaded for their innocence and difficult situation. Since German- and Italian Americans had gained a fair amount of influence in business, politics and social affairs, their leaders could increase public support for their German and Italian communities. Mayors of two West Coast cities, for example, were of Italian descent and were therefore able to position their Italian American community in a more favorable way.52 Most remarkable was the attention for famous baseball player Joe DiMaggio, whose parents were of Italian decent and were, along with other enemy aliens, evacuated from California. Their story encouraged many Americans to sympathize with their situation and those of other Italian- and German families who faced similar hardship. Pity and sympathy for these Italian and German Americans created a more favorable public opinion among America’s society. Because the first generation Japanese Americans were denied naturalization, they never had had the opportunity to become influential figures in political, social or financial institutions, and therefore had no people to vouch for them and plead for their acceptance and sympathy.53 Opinion polls held throughout wartime years showed how public opinion on these ethnic groups differed substantially. The Public Opinion Quarterly held one of these polls and found that the majority of respondents thought of the Japanese as a people who always wanted war. Numbers increased as the war continued, but surprisingly when asked the same question about German Americans in another poll, negative numbers were dramatically lower and more Americans believed the Germans to be inherently good people.54 The big change between attitudes towards Japanese and German and Italian immigrants, was that it was Japan that had directly attacked United States territory. It was Japan that had declared war and the Japanese government who was responsible for the Pearl Harbor bombings. Despite the fact that the bombing occurred far from the United States mainland in Hawaii, many Americans felt this to be a direct attack on their country. When the community leaders of German, Italian and Japanese Americans, were

51 Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice, 74. 52 Smith, 113. 53 Spicer, 38. 54 Janssens, 40-41. 26 incarcerated directly after the December attack, the United States’ government had to decide what to do next. In the short term a few measures were taken: funds of all enemy aliens (people of either German, Italian or Japanese descent) were frozen, a curfew was set up that denied these enemy aliens and non-aliens (American-born) to be in certain places at certain times and prohibited them from traveling beyond set perimeters, and all foreign-language newspapers were closed.55 The latter measure made it difficult for some to fully understand what was going on around them and in the rest of the world, which caused a lot of confusion.56 Government talks about evacuating all enemy aliens, had started directly after the attack, but finally reached a decision of February 19, 1942, when President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, granting the Secretary of War and other Army Commanders to establish military exclusion zones wherever they deemed it necessary.57 The order could only be deemed constitutional if there was a militarily necessity for it, and despite reports and advisers that found no evidence of Japanese American being disloyal, Roosevelt pushed through. EO 9066 granted people like General DeWitt, who had the role of protecting the West Coast, to do whatever necessary to protect the war effort. DeWitt, who held strong anti-Japanese feelings, had convinced Roosevelt that such action was needed and marked over eighty-six exclusion zones along the coast, predominantly in California, that prohibited access to all enemy aliens.58 Although not literally stated in the Order, these measures were mainly aimed at Japanese Americans and in a far lesser sense aimed at Italian- and German Americans. DeWitt felt that the presence of people of Japanese origin posed a nation security risk, and since he said that it was impossible to distinguish the loyal from the disloyal, he proposed to evacuate them all. Japanese Americans living in these militarized zones had to evacuate immediately, with only a few days’ notice, which often resulted in grave financial losses.59 For many Japanese Americans it soon became clear that their evacuation was based more on racial grounds than on the actual threat they posed to society. The large community of Japanese living in Hawaii did not face evacuation, because their absence would jeopardize the American economy (since they were indispensable for farm work), which proved to many that the “national security argument,” was just an excuse to validate evacuation for those on

55 Roger Daniels, Prisoners without trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993),53. 56 Spicer,41. 57 Smith,127 58 Smith,111. 59 Uchida,57. 27 the mainland.60 The President’s Executive Order, however, had the overall support of the American public, who were eager to see the Japanese Americans leaving the West Coast. Opinion polls that were held along the three Western states in 1942 showed that 75 percent of South Californians strongly supported the internment, followed by 50 percent of respondents in Washington, 56 percent in Oregon and 44 percent in Northern California who agreed on the evacuation and internment.61 While Attorney General Biddle had once said: “no enemy group would be condemned wholesale,” this was not the case for the Japanese community.62 Eventually every person of Japanese descent living on the West Coast had to evacuate, American-born or not, which resulted in the evacuation of 120,000 people. Italian- and German Americans never faced mass evacuation; only those who were suspicious or seemingly dangerous, were arrested or evacuated. The manner of mass evacuation that only applied to Japanese Americans shows the racist anti-Japanese sentiment that prevailed in this wartime period.63 Public opinion and Roosevelt’s executive order reinforced itself over and over. While the president could sign this order because of its overall support of the public, public fear and anxiety increased when the order was actually put into action: why would the government evacuate and intern harmless and innocent people, was a remark that was often heard. Many people deemed the Japanese dangerous just because they were being evacuated and, according to their government, posed a security threat.

2.2 Japanese American reactions to evacuation In the months between the Pearl Harbor attack and the announcement of their evacuation, the Japanese Americans living on the West Coast were anxious about what would happen to them. When news came out that Issei leaders all over the coast were arrested by the FBI, Japanese families decided to burn many of their Japanese belongings that could imply some sort of loyalty to Japan. Flags, photographs, Japanese books and dolls were destroyed by these families, but the absence of these materials did not lessen suspicion people felt towards them.64 In her memoir Monica Sone recalls how her family too was advised by friends to do

60 Roger Daniels, Prisoners without trial, 47. 61 Pollways Bangor Daily News: blog by Political Scientist Amy Fried http://pollways.bangordailynews.com/2011/12/29/national/government-public-opinion-research-and-the- japanese-american-internment/ (accessed at June 24th 2014). 62 Spicer 38. 63 Ibid., 64 Smith, 92. 28 this to protect her father: “You must destroy everything and anything Japanese which may incriminate your husband. It doesn’t matter what it is, if it’s printed or made in Japan, destroy it because the FBI always carries off those items for evidence.”65 Getting rid of these Japanese belongings often had deep impact on the families, and especially the Issei, because these items reminded them of their family and ancestry. Sone writes:

Wearily we closed our eyes, filled with an indescribable sense of guilt for having destroyed the things we loved. This night of ravage was to hunt us for years. … I realized that we hadn’t freed ourselves at all from fear. We still lay stiff in our beds, waiting.66

House searches and arrests by the FBI were so common that Japanese American families lived in fear for months, as this quote illustrates. Being of Japanese ancestry during these times was extremely hard and left its mark for the rest of their lives. Feelings of guilt, fear and insecurity dominated during this time and had traumatic effects on all Japanese American generations.

2.2.1 Japanese American Citizen League The fear and anxiety that was felt by the Japanese community was overpowering, especially since many fathers and community leaders were now arrested and interned by the FBI for questioning. With the absence of prominent Issei leaders, a clear guidance on how to handle this situation was missing. The Japanese American Citizen League (JACL) that consisted of young Nisei mostly, stepped up to fill this gap. These Nisei JACL members held strong American views and fiercely denounced strict Issei culture and tradition. The JACL was established in 1929 to aid and guide other Nisei by promoting assimilation in American society. At the time the war broke out the JACL had between 5,700 and 9,000 members in fifty chapters along the West Coast.67 Before the war many Issei and some Kibei were very critical of the JACL because they felt these Nisei were becoming too Americanized, with no or minor regard for the Japanese culture.68 After Pearl Harbor, criticism on how the organization handled the wartime situation intensified gravely and JACL membership and support declined steadily over the next five years.69 While most JACL members felt resentment towards actions taken by their

65 Sone, 154. 66 Ibid., 156. 67 Bosworth, 150. 68 Spicer, 53. 69 Richard Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism (Berkeley, LA, London: University of California Press,1987) 66. 29 government and army, they saw no other way than to cooperate with American authorities and urged everyone in their communities to do the same.70 Leaders expected that full resistance would lead to a violent and dangerous situation for the Japanese community, especially since hatred and fear under the American public became more harsh as the war went on. Compromise and negotiating with the United States authorities did not seem possible either, which made them decide to cooperate, albeit “under protest” with their government.71 The JACL repeated federal authorities’ statement to the Issei and Nisei community to explain why evacuation was necessary:

You are not being accused of any crime. You are being removed only to protect you and because there might be one of you who might be dangerous to the United States. It is your contribution to the war effort. You should be glad to make the sacrifice to prove your loyalty.72

Although many Japanese Americans saw that resistance to their evacuation was difficult, they could not understand why and how the JACL could comply with the United States Army and the recently set up War Relocation Authority (WRA) so easily, seemingly without any effort to protect their own community from this mass evacuation of innocent citizens.73 Members of the JACL were named US Army lap dogs, traitors and Inu (Japanese for “dog(s)”). Earlier friction that was felt before the war between the Issei, Nisei and Kibei generations now began to rupture entirely.74 When news of mass evacuation came, the JACL helped the evacuees with selling their houses, farms and belongings and provided the community with information and WRA announcements and evacuation instructions. They also set up a five point program that served as guidelines on how to act and behave to serve both the American as the Japanese American cause. These points included volunteering for the United States Army or the American Red Cross and, “working to eradicate subversive activities within the Japanese communities.”75 This last point became controversial because many perceived it as a “declaration of war on the pro-Japanese Issei, Nisei and Kibei,” as Page Smith notes in her work.76 With this advice Japanese Americans were to become traitors by having to sell-out people from their own community, who were not “American” enough. This JACL advice resulted in more overt critique on the organization and marked a deeper split between the pro-

70 Spicer, 56. 71 Uchida, 57. 72 Spicer, 60 73 The WRA was set up on March 18, 1941 by a Presidential executive order. The WRA’s primary function was to oversee and administer the ten Relocation Centers. 74 Spicer 54 75 Smith, 98. 76 Ibid,. 30

American and pro-Japanese or traditional Japanese groups, since the latter felt this to be a personal attack. The traditional Issei, Kibei and pro-Japanese Nisei reacted fiercely against the JACL, which put the organization in a difficult position. On the one hand they tried everything to convince the United States government that the Japanese American community was harmless, loyal and innocent, but when resistance against them increased, it was hard to prove this point to the War Authorities.77 Next to this, the United States government cancelled the initial voluntary Nisei army enlistment. Many Nisei men had already registered for service but were suddenly denied when the government decided to evacuate and intern every single person of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast. This angered many Nisei who now felt they had no other way to prove their loyalty to the United States. This also became a major issue as the war continued. The fact that the JACL was unable to convince the war authorities that Nisei enlistment was important, sincere and by no means dangerous resulted in more resentment towards the Japanese organization. Many young Nisei had far less problems with JACL actions and complied silently. As Yoshiko Uchida, a Nisei girl from California said:

My sister and I were angry that our country could deprive us of our civil rights in so cavalier a manner, but we had been raised to respect and to trust those in authority. To us resistance or confrontation, such as we know them today, was unthinkable and of course would have had no support from the American public. We naively believed at the time that cooperating with the government edict was the best way to help our country. 78

Monica Sone, a Nisei girl living in Seattle at the time of evacuation, recalls the bewilderment and frustration she and her brother felt when they, American-born citizens, had to be evacuated too. We were quite sure that our rights as American citizens would not be violated, and we would not be marched out of our homes on the same basis as enemy aliens. […] Doesn’t my citizenship mean a single blessed thing to anyone? […] First they want me in the army. Now they’re going to slap an alien C-4 on me because of my ancestry.79

The fact that there was nothing they could do about their situation made her angry. The day instructions for evacuation came she knew their fate was set. “Up to that moment, we had hoped against hope that something or someone would intervene for us,”80 Sone said.

77 Smith,99. 78 Uchida, 57. 79 Sone, 158. 80 Ibid.,166. 31

Unfortunately, intervention attempts failed utterly.

2.2.2. Organized and individual resistance to evacuation. Since the JACL proved to have little power to alter the government’s decision, other organized groups and individuals stepped up to challenge the constitutionality of the mass evacuation. The Tolan Committee, led by Congressman Tolan, held hearings in the five major cities along the West Coast during which supporters and opponents of mass evacuation could be heard. While the majority of the American public supported evacuation, some non- Japanese organizations mingled in the discussion on behave of the Japanese American population. The earlier mentioned Committee of National Security and Fair Play, or shortly Fair Play Committee, advocated for the loyalty and innocence of the Japanese American community and opposed their internment. The Fair Play Committee attended most meetings of the Tolan hearings that were held in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, and got support from new local members (notably church leaders and University presidents) who joined the committee. Unfortunately, their efforts made no real difference since the mass evacuation procedure continued.81 Three Japanese Americans, namely Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui were brave enough to challenge their evacuation or violation of the set curfew too, but they too could not win their case or convince the government of the unconstitutionality of their evacuation. More strikingly the Supreme Court found their claims void and upheld the legality of mass internment.82 This grave injustice by a government institution they had always respected, angered Japanese Americans even more. These failed efforts, by either the Fair Play Committee, local supporters of the Japanese American cause, or individuals, could not bring a halt to the forced evacuation. Even though opposition and resistance did not seem to work, many Japanese Americans must have felt that the JACL could have done more to help their cause, especially since non- Japanese people and organizations came to their aid. Furthermore the JACL had tried to strike a deal with the WRA, opting that only Nisei could hold office while in camp. They hereby tried to oust the Issei population, who held the power and authority in most Japanese American communities. The JACL was also renounced by many for supposedly selling out

81 Ellen Eisenberg, "As Truly American as Your Son": Voicing Opposition to Internment in Three West Coast Oregon Historical Quarterly 104 4 (Winter, 2003), 548. 82 Ibid.,558 32

Issei-leaders they deemed dangerous for the American cause.83 For many it was frustrating to see that the Japanese community and organizations did not protect their own group properly, when outsiders seemed to be able to organize themselves better to help the Japanese Americans. Since resistance did not seem to be an effective option, most Japanese Americans decided to cooperate with the authorities. And so the Japanese Americans had no other choice than to prepare for evacuation. When it became clear how conditions in the internment camps actually were, anger, frustration and even violence between the groups who cooperated with the army and those who openly resisted cooperation, became inevitable. Issei, Nisei, Kibei and JACL members were about to enter more friction and confrontation than ever seen in the once tight Japanese American community.

2.3 Attitudes in Internment Camps: Friction within the community Life in the camps differed drastically with the lives the Japanese American had experienced before evacuation and resulted in increased tension within the community, along the lines of generations, geographical backgrounds, and the question of loyalty. Resentment felt towards the United States government now spread to resentment towards other members in their own community. A resentment was still felt long after the war was over. Next to the fact that these families lived in barbed and guarded territory, which caused anger and anxiety, customs, traditions, family structures and living situations also changed drastically.

2.3.1 Conditions in the camps Mass evacuation generally took place in two phases in which the Japanese American families first moved from their homes to temporary Assembly centers, to be moved later to the ten, more permanent Relocation Centers. The centers were big, primitive camps consisting of endless rows of barracks and surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. Most relocation centers were located in remote places in America’s interior where the climate was harsh. Most camps had to deal with extreme heat, drought and dust storms, or with extreme cold, snow and wind. During the first year facilities were few and primitive. The food was bad, barracks were bare and had to be shared by several families which made privacy non-existent. Bathrooms and toilets were primitive, often lacked doors and were set up in central barracks around camp. The internees were allowed to work in the field or at the camp’s facilities for extremely low wages varying between twelve to nineteen dollars a

83 Drinnon, 67. 33 month.84 Frustrating for many internees was the segregation of the Japanese- Americans and white staff members. Whites and Japanese were segregated on the work field, had segregated housing areas, separate mess halls and facilities. This divide between races reinforced the Japanese’ feeling of inferiority which angered them. “The organized discrimination of center life was an unforgettable shock,” as the authors of Impounded People wrote. Anger against white staff members increased when the discriminatory practices in camp became more clear and prone.85 This anger began to visualize later on in camp, when internees deemed to be too friendly with the white staff became victims of violence. Moreover, internees were told they were being held in internment camps for their own security; since hatred towards theirs group had spurred throughout the United States. But if they were really here for their own security, why were the machine guns pointed inside the camps and not outside? The barbed wire surrounding camp and the watchtowers’ light shining in the camp every night were clear signs that they were being guarded instead of being protected.86 Life was harsh in the camps, where boredom, anger and frustration ruled above everything. The lives of Japanese Americans changed drastically, here in the camps. Many Japanese families, especially those who had previously lived outside of California or in more rural areas, had never lived in an all- Japanese community. For the Issei, living closely with other Japanese was comforting and enjoyable. For the more Americanized Nisei, this was not the case.87 Many started resenting the traditional ways of the Issei and tried even harder to become westernized. Furthermore, families moved to primitive barracks with little room and virtually no privacy. Since daily meals were served in the mess halls, family dinners in the privacy of the family did no longer exist. Children spent more time with people their age than with their own families and ate wherever they pleased. Family tradition and strict family structures based on traditional Japanese manners, thus faded heavily, which gave the Issei parents little authority and control over their children.88 Mary Matsuda, a sixteen-year-old Nisei at the time of internment recalls:

I could see the traditional Japanese ways were changing as the children became more Americanized … They became more independent and often disobeyed their parents. The young people were rebelling and there didn’t seem to be much that could be done about it. Some teenage

84 Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II (Hinsdale, Illinois: The Dryden Press, 1971), 93. 85 Spicer,88. 86 Drinnon, 45. 87 Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973), 11. 88 Miné Okubo, Citizen 13660 (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press,1983),89. 34

boys and girl began walking through the camp openly holding hands … Some girls wore very short skirts and tee shirts … Established Japanese traditions were unravelling.89

The friction between the two generations that had already existed began to increase throughout the years in camp. Since parents had virtually no control over their rebelling children, violence, aggression and theft also became more prominent among the younger Nisei. Before the camps these Nisei were often strictly raised with high moral standards. Aggression, rebellion and violating rules were rarely seen in pre-war Japanese American communities, but conditions in the camps caused these manners to take root.90

2.3.1 Americanization/Japanization Both internees and the American WRA organized activities. Many Issei took the opportunity to promote Japanese traditions by organizing courses and lessons in Japanese martial arts sports, traditional flower arranging, dancing, painting, cooking etcetera. These activities were more popular among the older Issei and the more traditional Kibei, but intense boredom in the camps brought even Nisei to join these activities.91 Meanwhile the WRA took the opportunity to try to Americanize the Japanese community. In the schools that were set up, Americanization attempts started as soon as the schools began, where children were taught American history, culture and literature. For the Issei daily Americanization classes were held.92 The WRA also organized American activities and courses, to promote American culture and sports. Baseball, basketball, tennis and other tournaments were held, American movies were shown weekly and libraries began to fill up with American books. The most criticized attempt at Americanization was the daily pledge of allegiance to the American flag that schoolchildren had to perform. The mandatory pledge was criticized by many for its hypocrisy. Mary Matsuda, who was a sixteen-year-old Nisei at the start of internment, remembered being stunned by having to pledge. In her memoir she writes:

We had to pledge allegiance to the American flag. I could see the barbed-wire fence in the background. I don’t think we should have to do that here, do you?” I asked bitterly. Of course, there had been hundreds of times that I enthusiastically repeated the pledge back home, but we all did it without giving a thought to what it represented.93

89 Matsuda Gruenewald, 98-9. 90 Uchida, 132. 91 Okubo, 169. 92 Okubo, 167. 93 Matsuda Gruenewald, 81. 35

Her mother replied by saying: “I can see your point. It’s difficult to pledge your allegiance to a country that treats us this way, isn’t it?” and she continued that nothing could be done about it. “You know there are times to be silent and persevere. This is one of those times.”94 The majority of the Japanese American community similarly thought that silence and patience were the best ways to cope with this situation. Customs like the pledge however, made it particularly difficult to cooperate and silently comply with the Caucasian camp staff and the WRA. 2.3.2 Japanese American Citizen League in the camps Members of the JACL had to evacuate just as their fellow Japanese Americans, but had a difficult time in the camps. The earlier mentioned hostility towards the JACL who were so openly criticizing the traditional Issei, became more fierce and led to actual violence in the camps. Throughout the first year in the camp, word had spread that several prominent JACL leaders, like Mike Masaoka -one of the most renowned ones- had been active as informers for the American intelligence agencies, by identifying Issei they deemed dangerous hereby aiding in their arrest. Many believed the JACL made these false claims in order to secure leading positions for themselves in the camps; by getting rid of the prominent Issei leaders. On June 5 1942, the WRA implemented a provision, recommended by the JACL, that excluded Issei from elective office in the camps.95 This angered many internees, especially Issei, who already had a problem with the way these JACL members cooperated with the white WRA and camp authorities. Frustration and anger towards the JACL erupted in violence and aggression in some of the camps. It resulted in a general strike in Camp Poston in November 1942 and the most famous case of JACL violence: the December riots of Manzanar, in 1942.96 Next to the existing JACL resentment, in Camp Manzanar word spread that only Nisei who had never lived in Japan, or were never educated there, had the opportunity to leave the camps and relocate elsewhere. This infuriated the Kibei and widened up the gap between Niseis and Kibeis. The overall frustration, boredom and bitterness ultimately led to the beating of a Nisei JACL member by a group of Kibei men.97 A group of pro-Japanese or rather anti-JACL people badly beat up Fred Tayama, a leader of the JACL, who was accused of being too friendly with the white staff members. The attack on him started a chain reaction when one of the suspects, a young Kibei cook, was blamed for the attack. Pro-Japanese lynch

94 Ibid., 95 Drinnon, 70. 96 Ibid., 97 Bosworth, 158-9. 36 mobs sprung up and began roaming the camp. When things were getting out of hand, the military police intervened, unfortunately with fatal results. In an attempt to disperse the mob, two young Nisei men were shot and killed, ten others were severely injured by the same police forces.98 Turmoil and agitation in the camp continued a few more weeks, but the split within the Japanese American community remained in place for many years. An observer of the incident, Richard Brewer Rice, noticed that the riots were not merely JACL members against anti-JACL groups, but rather that the Kibei took advantage of these two groups and “exploited the rift between the other two.”99 Not just JACL members, but everyone, including Issei, who seemed to cooperate with the US army too peacefully could be called inu, but now the term was used for collaborators or informers. Jeanne Wakatsuki remembers people calling her father inu, because he was released from an interrogation camp sooner than other Issei men. He was accused of being an interpreter for the FBI and for buying out his freedom. This accusation broke him mentally, as did for many other men who were called traitors and collaborators by their fellow countrymen.100 Another Nisei girl Yoshiko Uchida, who spent some time in a camp in Topaz recalls how Issei who were too friendly with the Caucasian staff were threatened. Although the WRA had implemented a policy that excluded Issei from elective offices, many Issei were active in camp councils and leadership positions. These Issei too held close contact with the white staff members which made them vulnerable for acts of violence. The split and anger between the “cooperative” internees and the “rebellious” internees, was greater than ever. Where the JACL wanted to cooperate with the war authorities, promote Americanism and good behavior, they also fused negative attitudes towards the traditional Issei. Some JACL members felt the Issei were a millstone around their necks; that they were holding the Nisei back in assimilating in American society.101 In short, all groups had little sympathy for each other and even though only a small percentage of all internees actively engaged in this battle, the tension it caused was felt throughout all camps. And this was only the beginning.

2.3.3 Geographical tension Resentment within the community was also felt between Californians and those Japanese

98 Ibid.,161. 99 Ibid., 100 Wakatsuki Houston, 66-67. 101 Charles Kikuchi, The Kikuchi Diary: Chronicle from an American Concentration Camp, edited by John Modell (Urbana, Chicago, London: University of Illinois Press,1973), 164. 37

Americans that had lived in the northern part of the West Coast, in the states of Oregon and Washington. Because anti-Japanese sentiment had always been much more severe in the California than in the other coast states, the anger and frustration evacuated Californians had was much more intense. Intense discrimination and overt racism had already made them bitter, but the sudden evacuation and aggressive government actions intensified this bitterness. Where people in the northern states typically had a couple weeks to evacuate and thus more time to sell their property, people living in the military exclusion zones along California’s coastline, had often only a couple of days’ notice before their removal. They had to sell or sublet their houses, farms, shops, boats and all properties in a matter of days, often with great financial losses, which had deep psychological impact on these families. Moreover, Californians had witnessed much more aggressive arrests of Issei leaders, and many fathers or husbands were taken from their homes to alternative internment camps or prisons. In the eyes of many Californian Japanese Americans, the northerners had much less to complain about and differences between the two groups often erupted in hostility and violence. Mary Matsuda, who grew up in Washington, experienced this hostility herself while she and her family were interned in camp Tule Lake. She remembers:

Tension gradually began to increase around camp. Groups of boys, mostly from California, were restless and openly bitter about evacuation and continued confinement. They began roaming the camp, looking threatening. The traditional discipline and the moral code of the Japanese family were disintegrating. Now, angry young men began to harass people confined at the camp. One day, […] a group of boys from California made nasty remarks about us “people from the north.” […] I saw one of the boys “accidentally” bump into a boy from Vashon [WA] and apologize profusely as if mocking the Japanese way… After that interaction, I was afraid to go to church alone.102

2.3.4 Loyalty Questionnaire Tension within the community heated up when the United States War Department and the WRA began with the distribution of the Loyalty Questionnaire in February 1943. The questionnaire served a dual purpose: First of all the United States army decided they needed more manpower and wanted to recruit Nisei soldiers. Second, the WRA wanted to separate the loyal from the disloyal in order to make early leave clearance for the loyal Japanese Americans possible. Strangely enough this loyalty test was only conducted after everyone was rounded up in a camp and was never done before evacuation. The FBI did not want to conduct the massive investigation, which is why the inexperienced WRA drafted the

102 Matsuda Gruenewald, 110. 38 questionnaire by itself.103 The United States army had rejected Nisei enlistments directly after the Pearl Harbor attack, but opened up this possibility and created the questionnaire to recruit loyal men. Recruiters began roaming the camps and were holding meetings to recruit Nisei soldiers. The WRA used this opportunity to filter out the loyal from the disloyal Japanese Americans, which could be qualified for early leave. The dual purpose of the questionnaire and the inexperienced men who drafted the form, resulted in vaguely defined questions and caused confusion among the internees. Furthermore, in many camps the purpose of the questionnaire was never made clear and stayed entirely vague. Every internee over the age of seventeen was asked to fill in the questionnaire. Question 27 and question 28 in particular caused the Japanese American community to split up further than anything else before had done. Question 27 asked: “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?” and question 28 asked: “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any and all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance to the Japanese Emperor or any other foreign government, power, or organization?”104 The army and WRA had decided that when “yes,” was answered to both questions, this person would be considered loyal to the United States. One or more “no,” answers to these questions would mark someone disloyal to the United States. This method seemed simple, but both questions caused considerable trouble for different groups and individuals. Question 27 was aimed at Nisei men willing to fight for the United States. For fear they would suddenly be drafted after answering “yes,” to this question, some kept the question empty or answered “no.” For older women and Issei this question was altered and asked for willingness to volunteer as a nurse in the US Army. Question 28 posed a different problem, particularly for the Issei. The Issei were denied citizenship and naturalization by the American government and by foreswearing allegiance to Japan they could suddenly become stateless. This would become a serious problem when Japan would win the war. Others read this question as a trick question in which the word “foreswear,” implied they actually had been loyal to the Emperor before the war, and by answering “yes,” admitted this. The biggest problem many Japanese Americans had with the questionnaire was the hypocrisy of the questions: they were asked to swear allegiance to a country and or fight for a country that

103 Drinnon, 50-51. 104 Densho National Archive, http://www.densho.org/learning/spice/lesson5/5reading5.asp, retrieved: May 22, 2013. 39 evacuated and interned official American citizens without proof or due process of law.105 Both the WRA and the JACL strongly urged the internees to answer both questions with “yes,” in order to be regarded loyal to the United States. Answering “no-no,” to these questions became a measure of resistance. Pro-Japanese, anti- American groups, or angry Nisei on the other hand, began to advocate for this type of resistance. Where first the Californians and the Northerners, the JACL and pro-Japanese groups and Issei and Nisei, were breaking away from each other, now the “no-no,” and the “ yes-yes” sayers became the primary and most destructive separation within the Japanese American community. How to answer the questionnaire, and especially question 27 and 28, was often discussed with the entire family. The questionnaire left many confused especially since the form was titled “Application for Leave Clearance.” Some families did not want to relocate, and what would happen to the elderly when the children were going off to war or school?106 Since most Japanese American families in the camps were quite traditional, the father or eldest brother made the decisions for the rest of the family. However, in some families the questionnaire led to severe debate and friction among the different generations. This was primarily the case for Nisei men who were fit to serve in the United States army and by answering both questions with “yes,” risked the chance of being send to war. Some Nisei men found serving in the army, which turned out to be a segregated all-Nisei combat unit, to be the best way to prove their loyalty to the United States, while other Nisei men highly resented the American government for their internment, their denial of civil rights, their denial of army service when the war started and the general treatment they and their families endured. As Joshiko Uchida, a Nisei girl who stayed at Camp Topaz, mentioned in her memoir especially the proposal of a serving in a segregated all-Nisei combat team, led to many questions and doubts: Why, we wondered, couldn’t the Nisei simply serve as other Americans? Why should they be singled out when it hadn’t deemed necessary to create an all-Italian or an all- German unit? Wouldn’t a segregated unit simply invite further discrimination and perhaps simplify their deployment to the most dangerous combat zones? 107

A small but significant group of Issei, Kibei and Nisei answered one or both questions with “no,” as a protest to the United States government and its agencies, or because they were not willing to serve in the United States army, or because of fear of becoming stateless. Some Nisei stated they wanted to serve in the army, on the condition that the civil rights of their

105 Ibid., 106 Drinnon, 79. 107 Uchida, 135. 40 families were restored. Since they questionnaire only accepted yes or no answers, nobody could clarify or motivate their answers. A simple no on the form was enough for the authorities to declare them disloyal.108 Those Nisei men of draft age who answered both questions negatively were being called no-no boys. Revolts and resistance around the loyalty oath was particularly heavy in Camp Tule Lake, which I will expand upon later in this chapter. 78,000 questionnaires were distributed to the internees over the age of seventeen and 75,000 of these answered the questions. Some refused to fill in the questionnaire as a way of protesting against their internment. Around 6,700 internees answered questions 28 with no and two thousand others were also deemed disloyal for the answers they gave.109 The results varied from camp to camp depending on past events, the amount of information that was provided and the threats that were made.110 The latter had a significant influence on the results and future events in Camp Tule Lake. However, the overall majority of internees, around 65,000 people, answered both questions with yes. These people saw the opportunity to finally being able to prove their loyalty and hoped to leave the camps before the war would end. Answering these questions was never easy and almost always led to fierce discussions in the family and their community. For the fear of being split up as a family, most families decided to answer these questions similarly. The questionnaire resulted in tumult in every internment camp and tension soared tremendously. People who had answered yes, resented the people who had answered no, and the other way around. Camp meetings were held by both parties, the pro- American JACL and the angry Anti- American internees, to convince internees to answer the loyalty questions in a particular way. Intimidation and aggression between the two groups increased and made people in the camps feel unsafe. Camp communities had split in two parties and eventually the “loyals” were being separated from the “disloyals.”

2.3.5. Segregating the camps: the loyal camps The questionnaire had created massive chaos in nearly every camp. Soon after all questionnaires were filled in, the process of segregating the loyals from the disloyals began. Many internees were happy with the segregation since peace and quiet slowly returned to the camps. Those internees who had answered no on one or two of the troubled questions were

108 Uchida, 136. 109 Daniels, Prisoners without trial, 69. 110 Drinnon, 80. 41 removed to Camp Tule Lake, the camp where most no-sayers resided. The majority of 65,000 loyals stayed in the camp they were in. With the segregation in place and the process of army enlistment and early leave clearance could finally start. The process for both was long and time consuming. The Army enlistment required physical and mental exams that were relatively standard, determining who of the young Nisei men would be fit to serve in the US Army. Some 1,200 Nisei men volunteered for the army (note that the actual procedure of signing up and volunteering was a distinct one than showing willingness to serve as asked in the questionnaire!) 800 of these men passed the tests and left to for training and battle in the years that followed. The decision to serve was often difficult, since they had to fight for a country that denied their rights, and to leave family and friends behind in the camps. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, a Nisei girl interned in Manzanar tells how why her brother enlisted: “Woody was that kind of Nisei, anxious to prove to the world his loyalty, his manhood, something about his family honor.”111 For Jeanne and the rest of the family this decision was a difficult one. Mary Matsuda, another Nisei Girl who spent her time at camp Minidoka also witnessed her brother Yoneichi going off to war to save her family’s honor. She recalls her mother saying: “We know Yoneichi-san carries the burden for our family and for all other Japanese families to fight with courage and bring honor to our community.”112 This was the spirit and motivation for many Nisei soldiers to join the army. Other Nisei soldiers just saw this as an opportunity to leave camp. After the war the 442nd Nisei Combat Unit was celebrated for being one of the most decorated units that had served the United States. Note the hypocrisy for this unit who aided the liberation of Jewish prisoners in Dachau in 1945, when their family members were being kept in American internment camps.113 Joining the United States Army was not the only way of leaving the camp before the war ended. Soon after the initial camps opened, many farmers in the West and Mid-West saw an increasing need for farm laborers. With all those hardworking Japanese Americans shipped off to camps in the midlands, these white farmers saw an opportunity to employ a number of evacuees who were eager to leave the camps, even for just a little while. In the years to come, a few thousand Japanese Americans temporarily left the camps to work in the fields nearby, where the white farmers arranged housing opportunities for the seasonal workers who spent two or three months in the field, making money for their families who were still in the camps.

111 Wakatsuki Houston, 123. 112 Matsuda Gruenewald, 154. 113 Densho National Archive http://densho.org/ (accessed May 12, 2013). 42

After the loyalty questionnaires were completed in the spring of ’43, young Nisei had the opportunity to permanently leave the camps to go eastward, where they could go to school or find a job. Many Nisei took this opportunity, although the decision to leave family and friends in the camps was never easy. This process of application was slow and time consuming since the WRA had drafted strict rules and measures before anyone could leave. Only those Nisei who had answered both question 27 and 28 of the questionnaire with yes, could apply for this so called Early Leave Clearance, provided by the WRA. The process could start only after receiving a reference of good behavior during camp by one of the Caucasian staff members and clearance by the FBI. Anyone who applied needed to find a (Caucasian) mentor in the new place of residence that could arrange for a job, an education and housing. When they had found such a person (which were mostly members from organized Church groups who aided these Nisei), they had to sign a form consisting of extensive demands. Nisei who wanted to leave had to approve to the terms of living in white housing only, outside the borders of the Exclusion Zone in the West, they were not allowed to form Japanese groups or even to decorate their houses in Japanese style. In short, they needed to life and act as American as possible, in a truly American environment. They were obliged to inform the WRA of their activities, progress and give of the change of address as soon as they moved; in this way the WRA could always keep track of these young Nisei.114 These extreme measures and the checks the authorities took show how the WRA still handled these Nisei, who had proved themselves loyal and trustworthy Americans, with extreme caution. Despite this fact, some seventeen thousand Nisei, mostly between the age of eighteen to thirty, could leave the camps and resettle in other parts of the United States.115 With the segregation of the “no-no’s” and the early leave of many young Nisei, life in the camps began to change. Peace and quiet returned to the camps and as the years proceeded, schools, hospitals, mess halls, sports fields, and shops became of better quality and made the place more livable for most. Improvements were largely the work of internees themselves, who voluntarily set up organizations, facilities and activities. Monica Sone witnessed this herself as she recalls: “By fall Camp Minidoka had bloomed into a full grown town. Children went to school in the barracks.. A small library was started.. [And] All church activities, Protestant, Catholic and Buddhist, were in full session.”116 Next to the improved conditions the overall atmosphere in the camps changed for the better. Jeanne Houston, who

114 Drinnon, 52. 115 Daniels, 110. 116 Sone, 195. 43 stayed in Camp Manzanar until its closing, writes:

For all the pain it caused, the loyalty oath finally did speed up the relocation program. One result was a gradual easing of the congestion in the barracks… In block 28 we doubled our living space. …Once the first year’s turmoil cooled down, the authorities started letting us outside the wire for recreation. …But the camp itself had been made livable. Public shows of resentment pretty much spent themselves over the loyalty oath crises… What had to be endured was the climate, the confinement, the steady crumbling away of family life… My parents and older brothers and sisters, like most of the internees, accepted their lot.117

Life in the camps thus began to take a different shape; not only were the “troublemakers” or no-no’s moved to another camp, the young Nisei began to leave the camps as well. Families were now separated and for many the quiet camp life became a bit too quiet. When Monica Sone returned to camp to visit her parents a year after she had moved to Chicago, she saw the dramatic change: “The camp was quiet and ghostly, drained of its young blood. All abled- bodied Nisei men had been drafted into the army. The rest of the young people had relocated to the Midwest and East to jobs and schools.”118 Overall, most people who remained in the camps were happy to see the peace return within the community after the removal of the aggressive and rebellious members of the Japanese American community. Although the quietness and boredom bothered some, for the majority it was a relief to build up their camp life in peace. The camp communities worked together to improve the camps and daily activities which made harmony within this group grow steadily. With the leave of the Nisei, the remaining internees started to live in an all- Issei community in which there was room to actively engage in Japanese activities and culture. Flower arrangement, traditional Japanese games, and handcraft were some of these traditional Japanese activities that remained them of their lives in Japan. Most Issei spoke predominantly Japanese with their Issei friends. As calm as life was in the nine loyal camps, so chaotic and aggressive was the climate in the disloyal camp, Tule Lake.

2.3.6. Segregating the camps: Tule Lake As the questionnaire had resulted in a split between the loyal and disloyal internees and after considerable tension, both in the camps as in the rest of American society, Congress and the War Department decided to segregate the two groups. The press was advocating that the no no’s were dangerous and disloyal and urged for their segregation.119 The “disloyals” were to

117 Houston 96-98. 118 Sone, 231. 119 Bosworth, 177. 44 be send to Tule Lake Relocation Center, which was one of the ten relocation camps. Many “loyal” internees welcomed this action for it could finally put an end to the tensions and tumult in the camps. In order to avoid the confusion of the purpose the questionnaire and to determine actual disloyalty towards the United States, those people who either refused to register or answered no on question 28, were interviewed by WRA staff and were asked for their motive to refuse or negatively answering the questionnaire. If the negative answers remained the same after the hearings, they would be deemed disloyal and sent to Tule Lake. Those who changed their answers during the interview were placed on “probation,” until their true loyalties were determined. The WRA and United States Army asked whether the internee’s loyalty lied with Japan or with the United States.120 Authorities seemed to believe that loyalty towards Japan immediately meant a disloyalty towards the United States and refused to see that loyalty for both countries did not pose any danger to the United States. The difficulty, especially for the older Issei who had close family in Japan, in choosing their loyalty is neatly described in Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s memoir where she reconstructs the interrogation of her Issei father by the United States Army. When Mr Wakatsuki is repeatedly asked who he wants to win the war he answers: “When your mother and your father are heaving a fight, do you want them to kill each other? Or do you just want them to stop fighting?”121 This example nicely illustrates the difficult position many Japanese Americans were in during the war. Most internees resented the United States government so much for the treatment they deserved and there forced internment, that their loyalties began to shift. This did not mean that sympathies towards Japan grew, but rather that sympathies towards the United States fell. While the large majority had always felt loyal towards the United States, the war heavily changed their perception and made them wary of actions by the government. Next to their unlawful evacuation and internment, many started to realize that the pre-war actions by the United Stated and its people, towards the Japanese American community was inexcusable. The strict immigration regulations that limited Issei’s civil rights became more prone and added up with the anger of internment. Prohibitions for Issei to became naturalized, to own land and bring their Japanese relatives to the United States, combined with the racist and discriminatory behavior of Americans living on the West Coast, spurred anger, frustration and the realization that they were not wanted in the United Stated, not by the federal and state

120 Dorothy S. Thomas and Richard Nishimoto, Japanese American evacuation and resettlement: The Spoilage (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1946),87-88. 121 Wakatsuki Houston, 64. 45 governments, but also not by its citizens. Some Japanese Americans therefore wished to go back to Japan as soon as the war was over, because attitudes in the United States became unbearable. This even led to a movement of pro-Japanese internees who advocated for mass renunciation of American citizenship, in order for these people to be able to move to Japan.122 The Japanese Americans who, even after a double-check, were deemed disloyal for negatively answering the loyalty questionnaire or refused to answer at all, were to be segregated from the “loyals” and were send to Tule Lake. Those internees that had started revolts, showed violent or aggressive behavior or were deemed dangerous in other ways, were send to Tule Lake too. The loyal people residing in Tule Lake were send to various other relocation centers. Many internees embraced the segregation program because this would make an end to the dangerous tension and intimidation between the two groups. In total twelve thousand “disloyals” were send to Tule Lake from other camps, the same number of people left to one of the nine other camps, and six thousand old- Tuleans remained in Tule Lake. An estimated eighteen thousand “disloyals,” or troublemakers were being held in this camp; a camp that was built to fit fifteen thousand people.123 The anger and frustration among the protesting and rebelling internees and the lack of space in Tule Lake resulted in riots and aggression towards the white staff members. The tension in Camp Tule Lake was felt throughout the center long before the actual segregation of loyals and disloyals took place. Historian Richard Drinnon has written extensively about these revolts in his work Keeper of Concentration Camps. The Registration Crisis of February 1945 marks the start of the extreme tension and cause of revolts, riots and aggression among the internees. When the United States government decided to distribute the loyalty questionnaire, the separate camps had their own ways to implement the measure. Tule Lake camp authorities made up their own rules informing the internees they had only nine days to register and that failure to register would be punished with either a 10,000 dollar fine and/or twenty years imprisonment. These terms were nothing more than false threats, not supported by the War Department, but internees were not aware of this invalidity. Camp newspapers and pamphlets were distributed throughout the center to inform the internees of these measures.124 While most people silently complied, a group of internees living on Block 42 felt that the compulsory registration and loyalty questionnaire was ridiculous and refused to cooperate. They even drafted a petition not to register and distributed this throughout the

122 Thomas and Nishimoto, 333. 123 Drinnon, 82. 124 Ibid., 92. 46 camp. This boycott resulted in tumult and heightened tension among the internees but this action exploded fully when the supposed deadline to register was met and twenty seven Japanese Americans were arrested for refusing to sign up. The revolts had created so much tumult that the military police showed up in the camps, armed with machine guns and rifles and started to make arrests and threats. By the end of March some 3,000 internees had refused to register. Everyone that had refused to sign up was send to another camp, thirteen miles East of Tule Lake where they were questioned by the FBI. Most were send back a few days later but some others were sent to an isolation center in Leub, Utah, where they were forced to work without receiving payment.125 Over seven groups of resisters, from different internment camps, were brought to this jail-like isolation center where they were extremely well guarded.126 With the Tule Lake resisters sent to another camp, the peace did not quite return to the camp. Martial law was imposed, there were some 12,000 soldiers, 300 guards, four armed guards on every block and five to six radio cars patrolling the camp. Note that ‘only’ 18,000 internees were guarded by so many guards.127 The young Nisei girl Mary Matsuda lived in Tule Lake with her family when this crisis occurred. In her memoir she writes how difficult it was to live in this aggressive climate: “The threats and beatings continued. The camp administration called in the Army and imposed martial law. The soldiers with their rifles patrolled the camp daily, but the increasing tension and occasional uprisings made me more fearful.” The tension in the camp worsened throughout the year, but luckily Mary and her family who had filled in the questionnaire positively, were transferred to camp Heart Mountain where all the loyals resided, when the segregation of loyals and disloyals took place.128 Where Matsuda went into a camp where disturbances were low and peace and quiet finally returned, the climate in Tule Lake remained aggressive. After the segregation was complete all troublemakers from the different camps were now united in one center. This segregation made one crucial difference in the Japanese American community: where since the start of the internment two groups were formed; the group that quietly abided with the imposed rules and cooperated with the camp authorities, and the group of resisters who were above all, the Pro-Japanese and Anti-administration, now these two groups were separated, the violence and aggression was no longer directed toward the opposite group, but rather toward the white camp authorities, the WRA and the United States government. The end of

125 Ibid., 86-89. 126 Ibid., 103. 127 Drinnon, 107. 128 Matsuda Gruenewald, 133. 47

1943 was marked with riots and revolts, a farm strike was held after a truck incident where an inmate was killed, demonstrations were held and even a hunger strike was started. Every one of these events were directed at the WRA and camp authorities, who even built a stockade in the middle of the center to imprison those who caused trouble. The actions taken by the internees and camp authorities caused a downward spiral: the more the internees resisted, the more implications were put into place by the authorities, which again frustrated and angered the internees. Overall the climate in the camp was severely tense and opposition towards the United States grew steadily which stayed this bad until the camp closed. In 1944 United States’ Congress changed some of her renunciation policies which made it possible for Japanese Americans to renounce their American citizenship and could therefore be deported back to Japan. An estimated 7,222 people applied for this deportation, and not surprisingly, the overall majority who applied was staying at Camp Tule Lake.129 The people held in the other nine camps had clearly chosen to comply with the United States authorities and wanted to stay and fit in the American society. The angry resisters at Tule Lake, on the other hand, had grown more angry with the American government and some were so fed up they decided to take the drastic measure of renouncing their citizenship, 65 percent of these were American-born. Extensive hearings were held in which the overall majority regretted their decision and applied for restoration of United States citizenship.130 It is, however, notable how far some of the internees would go to bring an end to their internment and what extreme measures crossed their minds: giving up their birth right.

2.4. Closing of the camps Throughout the war several Japanese Americans had tried to fight their imprisonment by filing law suits against the United States Government for their wrongful internment. Most cases were dismissed by the courts or were lost by the Japanese American plaintiffs on the grounds that the American government had the right to detain people during wartime. The decisive case that was held before the United States Supreme Court on December 18, 1944, finally made an end to the internment of the thousands of Japanese Americans staying in the camps. The Supreme Court ruled in favor in the Mitsuye Endo Case; declaring the detention of Japanese Americans without due process of law, unlawful.131 The WRA predicted the positive outcome and announced on that same day that all camps should be closed by

129 Daniels, Concentration Camps USA, 116. 130 Ibid., 131 Harry H. Kitano, Japanese Americans: the Evolution of a Subculture (Los Angeles: University of California, 1969),40. 48

December 31, 1944. One day before, on December 17, the WRA had decided to open up the West Coast for the Japanese Americans, which made their return possible for the first time since their evacuation. These decisions led to the end of the internment although it took about a year before the camps were actually closed. Most internees voluntarily stayed in the camps as long as possible, since many had no property to return to. Others were reluctant to go back to the West Coast where prejudice, discrimination and hatred towards them were thought to be as high as it was directly after the Pearl Harbor bombings. Some Japanese Americans therefore decided to start a new life on America’s East Coast or up North. Between October and December 1945 all camps were closed, except for camp Tule Lake, which stayed open for another year. The Japanese American community, and especially those people who returned to the West Coast, was reunited. However, the split that had occurred within the camps between the internees that had answered yes-yes on their questionnaire and the no-no’s still remained throughout the years that followed, without violence though. Many scholars have noticed that the Japanese American community behaved differently in the camps than what was expected of them. Historian Harry Kitano writes about this:

Riots, assaults, and other forms of violence “not typically Japanese,” were now encountered for the first time in the Japanese- American group. The effects of the special situation can clearly be seen in the fact that such behavior ceased as soon as the camps were closed.132

2.5. Conclusion It is not easy to get a straight answer on the question I posed at the beginning of this chapter. In short I can conclude that the overall majority of Japanese Americans remained absolutely loyal to the American cause, despite the fact they were treated with so much suspicion, prejudice and their unlawful internment. Since the Pearl Harbor bombings, Americans turned against the Japanese Americans more fiercely than ever. Discrimination spurred and the no Japanese American was to be trusted. They were excluded from society more than ever before which made integration impossible. No matter how much the Japanese Americans

132 Kitano, 37.

49 wanted to prove their loyalty towards the United States, American society would not let them. The loyalty questionnaire seemed to be the best test to establish their loyalty, but the many problems the questionnaire provoked, shows how difficult, if not impossible, it is to determine someone’s loyalty. Most notably this chapter highlights how the Japanese American internees turned against each other far more than towards the US government. Generational differences, geographical differences and alternate views on how to react to their internment, split up the community in two opposing parties. The efforts of the camp authorities, the WRA and JACL to Americanize their internees with providing Americanization classes, introducing American sports and traditions, equaled the efforts of the Japanese American internees who in their own way, brought Japanese culture, language, sports and arts into the camps. In the camps the internees were thus exposed to both cultures. The overall majority of the internees answered the loyalty questionnaire positively, only a fraction revolted and some Nisei even served in the United States Army. These actions suggest that throughout everything, the great majority of internees decided to prove their loyalty by silently abiding with the authorities. Unfortunately, their actual loyalty could never be measured, nor proven, which made it impossible to persuade the American public and government that they were fully committed to the United States. During the entire evacuation- and interment period, American society demanded something from the Japanese Americans that was impossible to give: the proof that they were loyal to the Unites States. By demanding the impossible, the Japanese Americans were put in an intolerable situation for years.

50

Chapter 3. Postwar attitudes and the reintegration of Japanese Americans

The evacuation and internment of some 120,000 Japanese Americans influenced both the lives of the internees and the attitudes of postwar Americans. For many Americans it became clear, as the war ended, that the internment of a complete minority group was unlawful and unnecessary. The Supreme Court had just deemed the evacuation unconstitutional in 1944 and no proof was ever found of Japanese Americans working as spies or endangering the United States. Moreover, President Truman had ordered for two atomic bombs to be dropped on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing massive casualties. This use of nuclear bombs received a lot of attention among the American public. Many Americans were shocked by the use, power and impact of the bombs, and some developed a sense of shame or regret towards the action. John Hersey’s book Hiroshima which was published in 1946, was a major bestseller at the time and told the story of six survivors of the nuclear bomb. The story reflected political criticism of the use of nuclear bombs and opened the eyes of its readers by making them aware of the dramatic effects the bomb had had.133 The end of the internment and the return of the Japanese Americans within American society changed the attitudes of both internees and the American public. The guilt over Hiroshima, the success of the segregated Nisei army unit in Europe, the geographical spread of Japanese Americans that took place after the war and the numerous successful Nisei efforts to change the position of Japanese Americans in the United States, all helped to shape different attitudes in the American and the Japanese American society. However the internment had left its scars: being detained for years, without charges, by their own government, had not left the Japanese Americans untouched. In this chapter I will look at the postwar effects of the internment and will focus on the question: Were the incentives for the Japanese Americans to integrate in US society altered after the internment and in what way did the postwar attitudes of American society contribute to this?

3.1. Postwar attitudes of the American public Truman’s decision to use atomic weapons on Japan to end the war had immediately led to mixed reactions by the American public. Many felt the actions should have not come without

133 Sheila K. Johnson, American Attitudes Toward Japan, 1941-1975( Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1975), 37-38. 51 warning, felt the act to be racist or found the war could have been stopped by taking less extreme measures. Anthropologist Sheila Johnson, who has studied American attitudes towards the Japanese, argues that statements like those above “have undoubtedly helped to soften our attitudes towards the Japanese in the postwar period: if they were beastly during the war, we were beastly too.”134 The sudden shift in public opinion is quite intriguing, to say the least. Indeed, feelings of guilt and regret over Hiroshima were felt by a large share of Americans. However, this sudden end of the war also meant that the potential danger of Japanese Americans declined. Now the war was over, there was no reason to fear this group and furthermore it became more clear that none of the internees had done anything harmful to the country at the start of the war. No proof was ever found of Japanese Americans spying for Japan, contemplating or aiding the attack on Pearl Harbor, or any other act against the state. This realization became more and more prone once the war was over and the Japanese Americans returned to society. The unconstitutionality of the evacuation and detention of this minority group was established by the Supreme Court in 1944 which strengthened the attitudes of Americans that indeed the internment had been wrong. Next to the Supreme Court, political and military leaders who had been at the core of decisions to intern the Japanese immigrants, began to realize this wrongfulness. Most ironic is the changing attitude of General De Witt who had ordered the evacuation arguing “a Jap’s a Jap,” but who later joined the Japan America Society, helping Japan-American relations.135 In the years following the end of the war the United States federal government began campaigning for more racial tolerance, which included tolerance for people of Asian ancestry.136 President Truman, for example, signed Executive Order 9981 in 1946, abolishing racial discrimination in the US army. Overall, the negative attitudes towards the Japanese Americans the US society had long held diminished slowly. Many scholars have argued that the great efforts of the Nisei army (the 442nd Regimental Army Unit in particular) fighting for the United States in Europe, helped to ease negative sentiment and discriminatory behavior towards he Japanese Americans. These young Nisei soldiers had finally found the opportunity to show their loyalty to the United States and had proven this the hard way. The unit was rewarded with more decorations than any other World War Two unit, which gave them positive publicity and much national attention.

134 Johnson, American Attitudes toward Japan, 33. 135 Bosworth, 247. 136 Daniels, Concentration Camps USA, 162. 52

It must seem now that the Japanese Americans received a warm welcome when they left the camps after the war to join American society once again. This is true only for most former-internees who went to the Eastern and Northern areas in the United States, but those who went back to the West Coast, and especially to California, things changed only slowly.

3.1.1. Geographical difference in reception of Japanese Americans Most Japanese Americans, who were now scattered around the country, were friendly received by the American public. Especially Americans in cities as Chicago, Salt Lake City, New York and Boston had witnessed the arrival of the Nisei during the war, and the Issei after their internment, had few problems with the presence of this group and many citizens helped them finding jobs and housing. In these Eastern and Northern cities, the Japanese Americans lived no longer in “ethnic ghettos,” as they often had in California, but were spread around the cities. The factors mentioned in the previous section contributed to these favorable attitudes, but more importantly to note is that for many Americans outside of the West Coast, this was the first time they actually met these people of Japanese descent. If they had any prejudice, they could now meet them in person and adjust their views.137 Spicer, Hansen ea. have argued in their work Impounded People, that the goal of the resettlement during the war (for those Nisei internees that were deemed loyal based on their answers on the loyalty questionnaire) was the dispersal of the internees into the country and to help them integrate in their new environment outside the West Coast.138 Whether this was the actual reason for the resettlement of these Nisei remains a question; data as collected in Bosworth’s account shows the incredible costs of the internment (to provide housing, clothing, food and facilities for 120,000 people was no small price) and suggests that internees leaving the camp was a great cost reducing effort, rather than an ideological reason to let these Japanese Americans integrate in the larger society.139 Since the West Coast was still closed until the end of the war, the WRA had not much choice than to make integration for the loyal Nisei work as smooth as possible. Whatever the reason behind this resettlement, it turned out to be very effective. The overall majority of Nisei who had left the camp during the war remained in the Northern or Eastern cities where they had found friends, jobs and housing. After the war many Issei parents joined their Nisei children, at least for a while. Whereas almost no Nisei returned to the West Coast after 1945, the majority of the Issei

137 Spicer, 277. 138 Ibid., 278. 139 Bosworth, 237. 53 did.140 Overall it turned out that the Nisei thrived very well in their new surroundings where they were accepted without many problems. The biggest factor contributing to this acceptance is perhaps that these Japanese Americans were mostly young Nisei who spoke perfectly English and behaved “American.” These Nisei did not carry the burden of living with their Issei parents who had often more trouble with the English language and acted in traditional Japanese ways, that was often rejected by their former neighborhood and friends. Provided with a new start in the Northern and Eastern parts of the US thus worked out incredibly well for most Nisei. Some scholars, among which Allan Austin, have controversially argued that the internment has given the Japanese American community positive outcomes that would not have happened without their time in the camps.141 Austin hereby overlooks the mental scars the internees were left with, and their problematic self-image, but might be right in the opportunities that changed the community. I will come back to this issue when I speak of how the Nisei endured these times themselves. For now let me continue with the sentiments that were felt along America’s West Coast as the war ended. Some Americans on the West Coast, and especially in the bigger cities in California, were not as friendly and welcoming once the internees returned to their hometowns; for some time after 1945, shops and restaurants still used signs banning Japanese from their enterprise. Mass meetings were held to stop the internees from returning to their homes and boycotts were held along the coast to prevent some job sectors popular among Japanese from hiring any of the former-internees. Discrimination was not solely confined to California; in Oregon too, protests against the Japanese returning were held, and in one case even the names of local Nisei soldiers were taken off the public honor wall.142 Historian Roger Daniels, however, stressed in one of his books that the anti-Japanese campaign that was held on the West Coast in the years directly after the war, was largely ineffective. Daniels suggests this was partly due to local- and state legislation that helped the return of the evacuees by setting up housing programs and similar aid. Far more convincing is his argument of the overall changing demographics of the West Coast. Ever since the war broke out the three states became more and more industrialized which in effect drew more people to the West. An estimated three million people had moved to the West Coast between

140 Ibid., 293. 141 Allan W. Austin, “Eastward Pioneers: Japanese American Resettlement during World War II and the Contested Meaning of Exile and Incarceration” In: Journal of American Ethnic History (2007): 58-84. 142 Daniels, Concentration Camps USA, 161. 54

1940 and 1950, in search for work. This group of internal migrants consisted of many Mexicans and African Americans, making the population along the West Coast far more diverse than ever before. The relatively small group of returning Japanese Americans became far less visible and significant over the years.143 In the two decades following the end of the war, more Japanese Americans returned to the West Coast. By now the negative public sentiment and prejudice had been largely faded away as it had in the rest of the country. Opinion polls have shown how much the public opinion had shifted between 1942 and 1966. In both years the respondents were asked what features they felt applied to the Japanese. In 1942, 73 percent of respondents found Japanese to be “treacherous”, 63 percent found them “sly”, 46 percent found them “warlike.” In 1966 these percentages had dropped to respectively, twelve, nineteen and eleven.144 Once the first signs of the civil rights movement began to appear, and the JACL began to assess the damage that the war had done to their community, more white Americans began to sympathize with the Japanese American cause and a large number actually joined their struggle for reparation and redress.

3.2. Experience of living in postwar America Within twenty-five years after their evacuation and internment the Japanese American community was labeled as a “model minority.” Still today Japanese Americans rank among the most successful minority group in the United States, due to their overall high educational degree, high ranked positions in governmental and business jobs and their average low criminal record. Whether this label is correct can be disputed, especially since the Japanese Americans themselves reject the term for its distorted historic meaning, but it does illustrate the drastic change in perception the Japanese American community witnessed in such a short period of time. 145 The one defining element that made this change possible is the tremendous efforts the Nisei took in assimilating within the American society. After the camps were closed the Nisei had come of age and had overshadowed their Issei parents who had grown old. The Nisei generation was now controlling the community by providing community leaders and starting new institutions. The Issei had lost its important character quickly after the war ended. The

143 Ibid 162. 144 Asia Society, Gallup polls images Chinese and Japanese http://asiasociety.org/gallup-polls-images-chinese- and-japanese (accessed June 24, 2014) 145 Densho National Archive- http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Model_minority/ (accessed: June 1, 2014) 55

Nisei were now responsible for building up the Japanese American community and decided both individually as collectively that assimilation within American society was the way to move forward. They silently followed the instructions the JACL had been calling for all this time. Especially those Nisei that had left the camps earlier during the war, moved to the Northern and Easters cities in the United States, found jobs, housing and friends there, quickly adapted to their new environment. While in camp, both the WRA and the JACL had urged the Nisei to reject their Japanese roots as much as possible and becoming fully American. Since the WRA had warned the loyal Nisei that once outside the camp, they should avoid other Nisei, rumors started to develop that they were not allowed to walk on the streets with more than three Nisei together or visit a restaurant with more than five Nisei. Hansen and Spicer ea. have argued that these rumors were so believable in during this time, that most Nisei tried to avoid gatherings with other Japanese Americans.146 How crude this may sound, in a way this made their integration and acceptance possible in American society. By avoiding other Nisei, they had to socialize exclusively with other Americans. Since these Nisei spoke perfectly English and were willing to work hard to prove themselves to be good citizens, most of them found proper jobs without enduring much problems and thus integrated quite easily in society. There were still areas in which Japanese Americans were not accepted, in typically white groups such as the Girls Scout and certain student sororities for example, which could be a painful experience for the Nisei.147 But for most groups and organizations they were not excluded. On the contrary, as Roger Daniels argues; Nisei had a general tendency to be active in middle class institutions and were thus often actively engaged in various social groups. Because of their determination to work hard, many Nisei developed high academic skills and could enter high skilled professions. This success was overshadowed by the fact that their wages were still substantially lower than those of whites doing the same work.148 Even after the camps had been closed and the Japanese Americans could again go wherever they wanted, many Nisei stayed in their new found city or area, sometimes even joined by friends and family that had made the trip East- or Northbound instead of returning to the West. The Nisei massively followed the JACL’s advice to abandon the Japanese culture with which they were raised, something their Issei parents had not done.

146 Hansen, 282. 147 Wakastuki Houston, 170. 148 Daniels, Concentration Camps USA, 171. 56

After reading multiple memoirs it seems that many Nisei felt a sense of shame in being of Japanese ancestry, a shame that had increased during the war due to hostile reactions towards them, but which remained imbedded in their minds for some time after 1945. Japanese American scholar Yasuko Takezawa notes in her work that for most Nisei Americanization was the tool to survive. While before and during internment the Nisei had learned to be Japanese and American, after the war they had to reject their Japanese heritage altogether in order to assimilate in American society.149 More than just having to lose their ties with Japan, these Nisei felt they needed to prove themselves to be good Americans in order to be accepted. Jeanne Houston wrote in her memoir how she too struggled with these feelings:

I instinctively decided I would have to prove I wasn’t different, that it should not be odd to hear me speaking English. From that day forward I lived with this double impulse: the urge to disappear and the desperate desire to be acceptable…. I wanted to declare myself in some different way, and- old enough to be marked by the internment but still too young for the full impact to cow me- I wanted in.150

The Nisei felt the need to represent the entire community and thus work extra hard to become fully Americanized. Notably, they even taught their children to behave white and rejected their Japanese heritage. Living among whites in Eastern and Northern cities of the US made it easier to cut the ties with their heritage; much easier than it had been living on the West Coast, surrounded by other Japanese Americans and Issei who proudly acted out their cultural habits. But still it was far from easy for these Nisei to simply forget the culture they were raised with. The internment left deep scars among many Nisei: the discrimination they had endured before and during the war was confirmed by their treatment as second-rate citizens when they were collectively send to concentration camps. Takezawa noted in her work that many Nisei developed a sense of guilt and shame in being of Japanese origin. This shame might be the reason why the Nisei tended not to talk about their internment for years: as if their internment reminded them of their status as second-rate citizens, while they worked for years trying to prove they could become first rate Americans. These feelings manifested itself among many Nisei who came to develop a problematic self-image by rejecting childhood habits and forcefully adopting new ways and manners; just in order to be accepted.151 For many Nisei it took years before the shame faded and they could again be proud of

149 Takezawa, 125. 150 Wakatsuki Houston 159-160. 151 Takezawa, 120. 57 their Japanese ancestry. The efforts of the JACL for redress and recognition for the wrongdoings of the United States government helped to get this pride back, but in a more profound sense, as Takezawa states, it was the ethnic pride they had been taught in their childhood that eventually returned to the surface after years of repression. The Issei helped in many ways to reconnect their Nisei children with Japanese pride and culture. For the Issei the return to American society was a lot harder. They remained in camps until the war was over, since unlike their Nisei children, they could not apply for early leave clearance. The Issei had stayed in the camps for four years, surrounded solely among other Issei and young Nisei under eighteen. For many Issei it was difficult to leave this close community they had built up with their fellow internees. During the later years in camp when most Nisei had left, the Japanese culture had become more prone. After years of confinement they now had to integrate within the actual American society, that had treated them so badly during evacuation. Although some Issei joined their children outside the West, the majority of Issei went back to their hometown along the West Coast. Unfortunately for most Issei, their houses, farms, shops and belongings had been sold when they had to evacuate. Jobs were taken over by others and the negative sentiment in many areas remained there for quite a while. In short, they had to start all over. By working hard without complaining and with the help of local government and their Nisei children, most Issei were able to rebuild a comfortable life again. Unlike the Nisei, they held on tight to their Japanese heritage, but because their dominant role in the public sphere had been strongly diminished and was taken over by their more Americanized children, their culture was not so visible in society. Compared to their children many Issei had little contact with Caucasians and clung to each other for company. For some Nisei it was difficult to cope with the traditional habits of their parents; Jeanne Houston recalled in her memoir, the embarrassment she felt when her father bowed to thank her teacher, in an all-American crowd at her school. This bow reminded her of everything she wanted to reject.152

3.3 Sense of Belonging The crucial question now is whether the internment had affected the sense of belonging the Japanese Americans felt toward the United States. When looking at the postwar behavior of both Issei and Nisei the conclusion can be made that their commitment toward the United States seemed not to be scattered by their internment. On the contrary; most Japanese

152 Wakatsuki Houston, 167. 58

Americans worked harder and were more motivated than ever to become fully American. Takezawa too, argues that the Nisei have always maintained their allegiance to the United States, under every circumstance, how badly they were treated. A quote by Helen Kageshita nicely illustrates how she and other Nisei felt about this: “We still feel the same amount for our country. Our country betrayed us, but that does not lessen our allegiance. This is our country.”153 And that is exactly what many Nisei felt: they were American citizens and knew no other country than the United States; how bad they treated them, after all it still was their country. The numbers give a similar result. During their internment the overall majority had already pledged their loyalty by means of the loyalty questionnaire, but now, after the war, holding tight, waiting and enduring the internment, had seemed the way to prove they were loyal. Only 4724 Japanese Americans decided to return to Japan after the war; 2,000 of those were children accompanying their parents. Out of 120,000 internees only this fraction returned; not because of being disloyal but possibly because they feared the reaction of the American public or had always wanted to return to Japan.154 Even most No-No’s and other “disloyals” found their way back in American society eventually, more than anything because actions for redress, apologies and the government’s admittance of their wrongdoing were finally making their way into the country. The No-No’s did however, keep a low profile long after the internment was over. Their actions during the internment have been a sensitive topic within the community for several decades. The conflicting manners on how to endure the internment had split up the community in two, and only long after the war was over, the No-No’s and draft resisters were rewarded for their brave action and resistance by their own community. Although the No- no’s were eligible for redress just like the other former-internees, they had to wait until the 1990 JACL National Convention for the formal acknowledgement of the JACL that their actions during the war had been patriotic and loyal after all.155

3.4 JACL efforts in postwar years Although the JACL had a very troublesome reputation during the years of evacuation and internment due to their intense cooperation with the United States government and WRA, in the postwar years the JACL delivered a major contribution to various government actions that

153 Takezawa, 183. 154 Bill Hosokawo, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc, 1969), 435. 155 Takezawa, 170. 59 greatly improved the status and lives of the Japanese Americans. Ironically, the JACL, the No-No’s biggest enemy during internment, was a key factor in the postwar celebration of these Japanese Americans that had fought for justice. The Redress movement started immediately after the end of the internment and was led by the JACL. They worked hard to convince the victims of the internment to claim their losses. Many Japanese Americans filed their claims, but only a small amount of all claims were eventually paid and the process turned out the be very slow and inefficient, with the last claim being paid only in 1965.156 The redress turned out to be symbolic rather than paying the actual losses back, but for many Japanese Americans it felt good to get some acknowledgement of the US government that their internment was wrong. The position for Japanese immigrants in the US changed slowly but continuously, mainly through extensive lobby efforts by the JACL through time. Things started to change with the adoption of the McCarran-Walter act that was passed in 1952. Although the act was mainly set up to tighten immigration policies, it opened up immigration for the Japanese after decades of denial since provisions in the act made family reunification possible and established a quota for specific immigrant groups. Although the quota for Japanese was low, it finally made immigration possible for their community once and for all. JACL’s biggest accomplishment was the naturalization of Issei that now for the first time could be regarded as legal United States citizens. The lobbying efforts by the JACL also led to the 1952 Supreme Court decision that the Alien Land Laws were unconstitutional, meaning that Japanese Americans could legally hold agrarian lands.157 Many Sansei, (third generation Japanese Americans, children of the Nisei) were very active in the Redress movement and lobbied extensively for justice of their incarcerated parents and grandparents. These Sansei were remarkably more prone to take action than their “silent” Nisei parents; only those Nisei that had joined the JACL worked hard for this cause, most Nisei wanted to put the past behind them and move on. For many Issei and Nisei the chapter of internment could be finally closed when the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was passed. This act consisted of a national apology by the US government for the injustice that had been done to the Japanese Americans during the war and was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. This national apology came with reparations for the victims of the incarceration and consisted of an amount of 20,000 dollar

156 Daniels, Concentration Camps USA, 168-9. 157 Ibid., 60 for each victim.158 Many Japanese Americans finally had the feeling they were no longer second rank citizens, but with these formal apologies they could see themselves as first class citizens. For some, redress felt like a restoration of their ethnic pride, Takezawa states in his work.159

3.5 Conclusion The internment had caused quite some damage for the Japanese American community, but despite the injustice and wrongdoings they endured, they had not lost faith in their country. More than anything, the internment experience might have stimulated their efforts to be a good American citizen, by proving their worth to society. Especially the determination of the Nisei to assimilate fully in American society by envisioning the theory of the melting pot, they acquired a high ranked status in their country. For many the road was long and tough, especially for the Issei who endured great financial losses, and for the Nisei who had to reject their heritage, but at the end of the day, the Japanese American community stood its ground and overcame their hardship. Most notably, the successful integration in the postwar period can be attributed to the changing public opinion of the American public. The success of the Nisei army unit, guilt over Hiroshima and the internment, and the geographical spread of the Nisei, all contributed to a more positive view on the Japanese Americans. For the first time Japanese Americans started to be accepted by the public, especially when legal and political changes, in favor of the Japanese Americans, materialized. Despite the fact that their acceptance in society began to grow after the war, many Japanese Americans were scarred for life by this experience. Not necessarily by the internment experience itself, but rather by the frustration of being put in an impossible position acting on a demand to prove something that can never be measured: their loyalty. How hard they tried to show their goodwill, commitment and loyalty towards the United States, it always remained an impossible demand to convince the Americans of their true feelings.

158 Takezawa, 187. 159 Ibid., 171. 61

Conclusion

The Japanese American community has gone through a big ordeal while living in the United States, but despite prewar prejudice, the unlawful evacuation and wartime internment, the community, and especially the Nisei, managed to overcome the trouble they encountered and ultimately integrated successfully in American society, mainly due to the shifting public opinion towards Japanese Americans that gradually took place after the war. There are however, great generational differences in the way the community dealt with their situation. For the older Issei, prewar discrimination and resentment was felt much more than for their Nisei children. These immigrants generally held on to their Japanese culture, did not speak English fluently like their children and stayed in close contact with other Japanese families. Since naturalization for this generation was denied and many Japanese families, especially in the cities of California, lived in ethnic enclaves, the need for assimilation and integration was much less present, than that of their American-born children. After the start of the war, it were these Issei who had so sell their houses, farms and businesses, bringing with it great financial losses. In the camps it were these people who saw family structures falling apart, who saw the Nisei taking over organizational structures and leadership, and who had to stay in the camps until the war was over. Many complied silently with camp- and government authorities, mainly because of their weak legal status in the United States which made them more vulnerable than their children. Being surrounded by other Issei diminished the need to Americanize and might even stimulated the interest for Japanese culture. When the camps closed and the war had ended, most Issei eventually returned to the West Coast. Since the majority of Issei had been growing old during their years of internment, their need for assimilation and Americanization remained quite weak. Although negative public sentiment on the West Coast had turned drastically within a few years after the war, many Issei were still conceived as alien. How different did this all turn out for the other two-third of the internees, the Nisei, who were after their internment, more determined than ever to become American. In the prewar years, this generation had been raised to be both Japanese and American. Even then many Nisei struggled with their Japanese heritage, were ashamed of their parents traditional Japanese behavior and tried hard to fit in with their American surrounding. This shame and guilt of being Japanese was strongly reinforced by the US

62 government when the whole community was rounded up, evacuated and interned, without any charge or due process of law. This group was singled out and perceived as a threat, only based on racial grounds. Especially for the Nisei this was particularly painful because it deeply violated their rights as American citizens. The years in camp were quite confusing for many Nisei, who slowly became more Americanized through WRA and JACL efforts. Through Americanization classes, saluting of the flag, actively engaging in self-government, the celebration of American sports, holidays and culture, and the loosening ties with their Issei parents, the Nisei began to rethink their identity once more. The majority silently endured the problems surrounding the loyalty questionnaire which resulted in a split within the community, but most wanted to prove their loyalty and determination to become American by enlisting in the Nisei army, or moving out East to integrate in mainstream society and cutting their ties with their Japanese heritage. It seems that more than anything the internment made, especially the Nisei, determined to integrate, to become a part of the society that had put them behind barbed wire. It might have seem that they did not have another option than to try this hard to be accepted by American society, but in fact, by doing this they had really made a choice. It should be very understandable to loathe the country that treats you unfair, unlawful and even violates your constitutional rights by locking you and your family up in shabby barracks for years, on no specific grounds, only because you are of Japanese descent. The Nisei could have chosen to leave the country, going to Europe, Mexico or Japan, that had lost the war, being so fed up with their government that the best option was to leave. They could have revolved to their own country once they were free and their internment was declared unconstitutional. They could have decided to act like their parents; staying in the US and reaping its benefits, living together in an ethnic enclave, Japan-town, where they did not have to dismiss their origins and the cultural habits they were grown up with. Where they did not have to feel ashamed of their culture and characteristic traits. But instead they chose to stay in their country and make the best of it and effectively but silently worked on their integration within this society. What therefore intrigues me more than anything is that despite all the injustice they endured, the Nisei kept and amplified the tremendous determination to become fully accepted by American society, willing to disregard their own cultural heritage completely, to work harder than any other to get a successful career, and to behave just as what is expected of them. It thus seems that throughout everything they experienced, the internment strengthened, rather than weakened the Nisei’ determination to become fully American. But it was not this determination alone that helped them integrate. Only after the internment the 63

United States had slowly began to lift its barriers; naturalization, immigration and landownership for Issei was no longer restricted, but most importantly, public opinion among American society began to change drastically. Discrimination and exclusion slowly diminished and acceptance of Japanese Americans increased. The Supreme Court’s decision that the internment was unconstitutional, together with the use of atomic weapons against Japan, brought feelings of guilt and shame to many Americans, who now realized that the Japanese Americans had never been an actual threat to them. These suddenly changing public attitudes, together with the Nisei’s efforts to adapt to American society, contributed to the successful assimilation of Japanese Americans. The most important conclusion of this work however is, that the Japanese Americans problematic position in America’s West Coast during World War Two, was caused by the impossible demand of the United States to prove their loyalty, while this is virtually impossible to do. Since loyalty is never to be proved, but was highly demanded by the public, the Japanese American community could never get rid of prejudice, accusations and negative attitudes against them. Nothing they did or said during the wartime years could convince the Americans of their sense of belonging to the United States and their determination to be American. The only thing most Americans saw during these years were their Japanese features and habits, and since the notion of having more than one loyalty was never accepted, the Japanese Americans had their appearances against them. Their position changed only after socio-economic and political changes in America’s postwar years. Ultimately the American wartime policies were based on the empty term loyalty that could never be measured.

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