From Private Moments to Public Calls for Justice:
The Effects of Private Memory on the Redress Movement of Japanese Americans
A thesis submitted to the Department of History,
Miami University, in partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for Honors in History.
Sarah Franklin Doran Miami University
Oxford, Ohio
May 201
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ABSTRACT
FROM PRIVATE MOMENTS TO PUBLIC CALLS FOR JUSTICE:
THE EFFECTS OF PRIVVATE MEMORY ON THE REDRESS MOVEMENT OF
JAPANESE AMERICANS
Sarah Doran
It has been 68 years since President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the internment of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans. This period of internment would shape the lives of all of those directly involved and have ramifications even four generations later. Due to the lack of communication between family members who were interned and their children, the movement for redress was not largely popular until the 1970s. Many families classified their time in the internment camps as subjects that were off limits, thus, leaving children without the true knowledge of their heritage. Because memories were not shared within the household, younger generations had no pressing reason to fight for redress. It was only after an opening in the avenue of communication between the generations that the search for true justice could commence.
The purpose of this thesis is to explore how communication patterns within the home, the Japanese-American community, and ultimately the nation changed to allow for the successful completion of a reparation movement. What occurred to encourage those who were interned to end their silence and share their experiences with their children, grandchildren, and the greater community? Further, what external factors influenced this same phenomenon?
The research for this project was largely accomplished through reading memoirs and historical monographs. There has been a sufficient amount of information published about the actual internment experience, although few historians have focused on the transformation of the community from one of silence and shame to a group of individuals willing to stand up to the government. In order to analyze the communication patterns, numerous personal testimonies were viewed. There are many recorded interviews that are available due to the Commission on Wartime Internment and Civilian Relocation that were instrumental in building a solid argument and added a personal touch to the numerous governmental documents reviewed.
It can be concluded that while a great multitude of factors led to the redress movement that culminated in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the education of the younger Nisei, or second generation Japanese Americans, or Sansei, third generation Japanese Americans, played a major role in this shift in communication patterns. Once they were introduced to the internment as a part of their own heritages and were able to contextualize the injustice done to their relatives and in many cases infant selves they were able to turn the shame their parents and grandparents into anger that served as a catalyst for change. Their college experiences also introduced them to other ethnic groups who retained pride in their histories and inspired the Japanese Americans to do the same, while also getting them involved in various civil rights movements that were concurrently changing America.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank everyone who was been supportive of me while I endeavored to complete this thesis. Thank you for encouraging me, for listening to me complain, and for reading the many drafts I have worked on.
To the many professors in the history department I have been lucky enough to work with
Thank you so much for all that you have taught me over the last four years. I came to Miami in love with history, but I am leaving with deeper appreciation for the past and for those who have spent their lives studying it because of your passion for the subject and dedication to your students.
To my advisor Dr. Tammy Brown
Thank you for agreeing to work with a student you didn’t even know on the most time consuming project of her college career. I will never be able to thank you enough for all of the guidance and support you have offered me over the last three semesters and I hope that you are as proud of this final work as I am. You never once acted frustrated with my failure to meet deadlines and never had anything but positive words about my work and for that I must also thank you. While I know I was not the perfect advise, we made it through this program together.
To Dr. Jensen
I don’t know that I have ever had a bigger cheerleader. You are always so positive and encouraging that you make students want to perform their best for you. On days when I was discouraged by the daunting task ahead, you were always available to answer my questions and make me feel as though this was in my reach. The History Honors Students are so lucky to have you and I know that you will be missed the next two years.
To Dr. Charlotte Goldy
As I have told you before, you are one of my favorite people. When I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write a thesis, you told me that I could do it, and because I have never wanted you to be disappointed in me or my work, I did. There has never been another piece of work in which I have had so much pride, so thank you for encouraging me. I will miss our visits, but promise to continue to send you book titles throughout the years.
Finally to my Parents
Thank you for all of the love and support you have shown me over the years. I am the person I am today because of your guidance and the wonderful examples you set for me. I will never be able to thank you enough for all of the books you bought, drafts you proofread, and times you told me I could do anything I wanted to do.
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Table of Contents
I. Introduction: Executive Order 9066, Camp Experiences, and Early Changes Amongst the Japanese-American Community ....................................................................................................................................Page 9
II. Chapter One, “Enryo”: Restrained Speech, Shame, and Assimilation
..................................................................................................................................Page 33
III. Chapter Two, “Shikata Ga Nai”: Education, Organization, and the Public Sphere
..................................................................................................................................Page 53
IV. Chapter Three, “Gaman”: Testimonies, Healing, and Redress ..................................................................................................................................Page 76 V. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................Page 101
VI. References ................................................................................................................................Page 107
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Introduction
Executive Order 9066, Camp Experiences, and Early Changes Amongst the
Japanese-American Community
Figure 1.1: Dorthea Lange, Saulte of Innocence,April 1942 [data-base online] (library of Congress, Accessed 12 April 2011); Available
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/wcf/wcf0013.html, Image ID: Prints and Photographs Division (92) LC-USZ62-17124
Donna Nagata was six years old when she was first introduced to her mother’s
“camp” experience. Believing this camp to be one like the YMCA camps she had attended, she asked her mother “was it fun” and was dismayed when her mother responded “not really.”1 This exchange could have been a commonplace conversation between mother and daughter, yet it was not. It was a daughter’s introduction into the horrors of her mother’s past. The two were not discussing day camp where arts and
1
Donna Nagata, Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment (New York: Palgrave MacMillian, 1993), vii.
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crafts are the most important activity of the day, but rather they were talking about the mother’s time interned by the United States Government, an experience equated with imprisonment.2 Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Roosevelt, on the advice of the Secretary of War, called for the forced evacuation of the Japanese Americans with Executive Order 9066. This order followed several attempted curfews that had proven difficult to implement and calls for Japanese Americans to voluntarily move further inland or back to Japan. The order “authorized and directed the Secretary of War to prescribe military areas in such places...from which any or all persons may be excluded, and... the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War ....may impose in his discretion.”3 The President approved it on February 19, 1942, and although there is no direct mention of the Japanese Americans in the order, as historian Greg Robinson writes, “the government officials involved well understood that the order was designed solely to permit mass removal of Japanese Americans.”4 It was war hysteria and fear that combined to create one of the greatest circumventions of civil liberties ever experienced in the United States.
2
Ibid., 5.
3 Executive Order 9066, February 19, 1942; General Records of the Unites States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives
4 Greg Robinson, A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2009), 93.
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Figure 1.2: Map of the ten camp locations taken from All Aboard Magazine
(Spring, 1944), Courtesy of Ms. A. Iwata, Japanese American National Museum (97.194.4) http://www.janm.org/projects/clasc/map.htm
The concentration camps in the U.S. were not the death camps that come to mind when one thinks of WWII. However, they did revoke the inalienable rights of United States citizens and restrict the freedom of 110,000 Japanese Americans between 1941 and 1946. Ten camps were constructed for such a purpose and until they could be completed, large venues such as racetracks and fairgrounds were used as assembly centers for all those Americans of Japanese descent who were evicted from their homes and dutifully reported to be interned. After the war ended and the Japanese Americans were allowed to return to life in the mainstream, they found that much of what they left had been looted or destroyed.
For the $148 million filed in losses after the internment, the Japanese-American population only recovered $37 million.5 They faced not only the great burden of starting again with little money, but also had to face continued discrimination and the challenge
5 Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1996), 19.
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of reintegration into the established American culture. Many of those interned cataloged this period of their lives with other taboo topics of conversation and were silenced by shame. In a study conducted on Sansei, the grandchildren of the first generation Japanese Americans, it was discovered that “ a lowered sense of self-esteem stemming from the internment has been reported in both the Nisei and Sansei.”6 Nisei is the Japanese word used to describe the second-generation Japanese Americans. It was also a cultural trait of the Japanese to follow the mandates of those in authority and this custom was largely responsible for the fact that “ the evacuees turned themselves in at the appointed time and place with such orderliness as to astound the Army.”7 While those who were interned largely preferred silence about the internment, when the children of those who were interned discovered this part of their heritage, they asked questions. It was a subject largely overlooked in public schools and the vast majority of students were forced to ask reluctant family members to provide them with the details. All the same, Nagata found that “silence about the camps existed both within and outside of the Japanese American community.”8 The movement for redress stove to break this silence. This push for redress sought an apology from the government for the injustice done to the Japanese Americans during the Second World War. A cash payout was eventually also won by the Japanese Americans, but the movement was less about receiving monetary repayment as
6 Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment. New York:
Plenum Press, 1993, 152.
7 Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1996, pg 78.
8
Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment. New York:
Plenum Press, 1993, 188.
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it was a recognition of the inalienable rights all citizens are guaranteed under the Constitution.
Concurring civil rights movements undertaken by other minority groups in the
1960s largely sparked the movement for redress. It was not begun until such a late date because many Japanese Americans were too busy rebuilding the lives they had lost to petition the government.9 Furthermore, the topic was still too fresh to discuss, and the pain too real. As Donna Nagata wrote, “pursuing redress would necessitate the reopening of wounds that most wished to forget and could draw attention to Japanese Americans at a time when many saw assimilation as necessary to their reintegration.”10 It was commonly thought that if the victims of internment fought for redress they would only attract negative attention and would be viewed by the general public as segregating themselves from the very communities they were trying to blend into. These fears were overridden by urgency in the 1980s due to the large number of Issei, first-generation Japanese Americans, and Nisei victims who were dying. Not only did the Nisei and Sansei desire to see redress accomplished during their parent’s lifetimes, but they were demographically in positions that would allow them to devote time and energies to the movement. The Nisei had been able to make a place for themselves in society and due to their newfound economic and political power they had the time and resources to pursue this fight. By the 1980s, many of the Nisei were in their retirement years and the Sansei had reached adulthood, where they “were in positions to express their concerns as
9 Mitchell T. Maki, Harry H.L. Kitano, and S. Megan Berthold, Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 58. 10 Ibid.,87.
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well.”11 At this point in time there were several Congressmen of Japanese American descent who could also assist with the passage of a bill that would offer the Japanese Americans the ends they sought. With this changed dynamic in the Japanese-American community, a bill was sent to the House of Representatives in 1983 to provide redress, but it stayed there for four years without passing.12
Finally in 1988, the Civil Liberties Act was passed. This act gave to each surviving victim of the internment $20,000, accompanied by a formal apology from the President. Included in this bill was also a fund designated for educational purposes. Although the monetary gift was far from enough to cover the financial or emotional distress the government had caused the Japanese Americans, there was a sense that “a formal apology without payment would be a hollow gesture.”13 Unfortunately, after the passage of the bill little else changed. Some families refused the money because it was not nearly enough, but others received the $20,000 and tried to move on with their lives. All the same, after 68 years there is still little discussion or education regarding the plight of the Japanese Americans and the actions of the United States government that forced them to endure such hardships.
The question I wish to pose is How did the memory of the internment, as passed between parent and child, lead to the redress movement of 1988? What happened to the memory of the internment within the Japanese-American community that led to increased calls for reparations? Did the discussions within the home lead to the heightened support
11 Ibid., 204. 12 Ibid,. 193. 13 Ibid., 196.
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for justice or was the Civil Liberties Act simply the culmination of the prior attempts at redress?
I must answer that the drive for redress was sparked by an increase in communication within the home. It is my belief that because the Sansei had time to fully understand the implications of the internment and the Nisei had time to cope with their pasts, that after so much time spent waiting in silence, the time had come to take personal action. There has been a lot of research done on the redress movement itself; however, I want to understand the personal drives and paths that are responsible for the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. This question’s answer is directly related to the future of human rights in the United States. If the nation can justify the violation of the rights of citizens in this instance and have the Supreme Court deem that action constitutional, what rights can truly be considered inalienable? Furthermore, if all that is required to rectify that injustice is a small cash handout, what is to say the government won’t find it a worthy investment the next time such an event occurs? Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes once said, “You may think that the Constitution is your security—it is nothing but a piece of paper. You may think that the statutes are your security-they are nothing but words in a book.”14 This statement could not ring more true for the Japanese-American citizens during World War II. Two-thirds of those interned were American citizens by birth who assumed their rights would be protected under the Constitution. They were wrong.
14 Review, by Samuel J. Konefsky, The Yale Law Journal, May 1952,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/793521?seq=3 (Accessed April 16, 2010)
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Fred Korematsu was one such citizen who sued the federal government in 1944 under the belief that his conviction was unconstitutional. He was convicted because he failed to report after Executive Order 9066 mandated that all citizens of Japanese descent leave the restricted areas. Before the Supreme Court, Korematsu argued that it was a clear violation of his right to due process to intern him, along with the other 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, without trial. His argument, however, fell on deaf ears, and the Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutionally acceptable to intern the Japanese Americans. Through this decision they created the strict scrutiny test. This test maintains that if there is a compelling governmental interest and it is narrowly tailored, the government has the right to take from citizens certain rights.15 Although the majority opinion claimed there was a military necessity behind its decision, it was based on falsified documents and the justices’ own personal biases. There was absolutely no evidence of the military necessity of the internment of the Japanese Americans, which requires that one views this event as a great mistake within the history of the United States, one that plausibly could repeat itself. Korematsu himself believed that as long as the decision from his case stood in the federal court “any American citizen [could] be held in prison or concentration camps without a trial or a hearing.”16 If the memory of this injustice was glazed over for little more than the cumulative $1.2 million that was given to victims, there is no knowing that the government will not see fit to act in such a fashion again in the future due to the relatively low cost.
15
Dr. Augustus Jones, Classroom Discussion, February 26, 2010.
16 Peter Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases (. Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1993), 371.
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One of the most recent events to strike the nation in a parallel manner occurred on
September 11th, 2001. This was the first attack on U.S soil since Pearl Harbor, which was of course the advent of the plan to intern the Japanese Americans. Following September 11th, there was much fear and suspicion towards Americans of Middle Eastern descent that was reminiscent of the feelings that surrounded the Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. Although there was not a violation of human rights like the internment after September 11th, there were many small ways in which loyal American citizens were penalized for a heritage over which they had no control. The racial profiling that occurred in this country after September 11th mirrored the way in which the Japanese Americans were treated after the bombing on Pearl Harbor. In both cases, the large majority of the minority population played no role in the event itself, yet they were discriminated against because of their racial ties. One Japanese-American internee described his camp experience in the 1940s as demeaning, saying “I felt like I was a piece of shit, actually. As kids we made the best of what was available, but deep down it still felt like I was filthy.”17 This feeling has since been recreated in a number of loyal Americans who have been victim to discrimination for purely racial purposes. The threat of separation still exists in the integrated world of today because there is precedent in the court that would stand for racial prejudice when there is “a compelling government interest” in taking such an action.18 Although Korematsu had his conviction vacated by the state of California, the Supreme Court has yet to overturn its decision, meaning that
