Volume 5 | Issue 11 | Article ID 2588 | Nov 03, 2007 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus

Blood-Sacrifice in the Politics of a Nation-State. Japanese- Americans in Hawai'i During and After World War II

Teresa Goudie

Blood-Sacrifice in the Politics of a Nation- The only path to achieving initial levels of State. Japanese-Americans in Hawai'i acceptance and tolerance and eventually to During and After World War II gaining political and social power, seemed to be for the diaspora to display patience and Teresa Goudie fortitude and to exhibit an exemplary record as hard-working and law-abiding members of the Summary community. Consequently, their actions were frequently governed by the presumed attitudes This article examines the impact of acts of and expectations of the majority who forced blood-sacrifice on the establishment and upon the diasporic community preconceived politics of a nation-state by focusing on the assimilationist attitudes, which typically ranged different experiences of the Japanese diaspora from complete segregation and exclusion to an accelerated program of assimilation based on on the United States mainland and in the disavowal of prior cultural beliefs and Hawaiian Islands during and after the Second traditions. However, there is one exception that World War. seemed to hasten the desired result of total inclusion and acceptance: the act of blood- There is a manifest and recurring pattern of sacrifice. suspicion, hostility and prejudice that has historically greeted members of ethnically I refer to the self-sacrificial action intrinsic to diverse diasporic communities, especially the war-time volunteers who willingly risk their founding members, when they attempt to lives for the good of their new country. For a resurrect their lives in a new country after an diasporic community, such acts of blood- often traumatic departure from their homeland. sacrifice can almost be viewed as acts of This seems especially true when the diaspora redemption: they are thereby able to prove possesses immediately identifiable physical their loyalty, love and gratitude to their characteristics that differentiate themhostland, their new home. Most importantly, significantly from those already established in they can prove theirright to live there the host land. Skin, hair and eye colour, for alongside those with birthright-privileges. In example, as well as other physical andthis essay I will illustrate the importance of sometimes cultural characteristics immediately acts of blood-sacrifice in the establishment and identified the waves of African immigrants into continuation of a nation-state and will also Europe, Eastern Europeans entering Western examine the significance of the link between Europe and America, Asians into the United such acts and the subsequent positioning of a States, England and Australia and so forth. diasporic community within that nation-state. I Their clearly discernible ‘otherness’ made them propose that the very act of blood-sacrifice be readily identifiable targets for discrimination, examined as an integral element of a diasporic exclusion, even acts of violence. community’s assimilationist thrust.

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I will focus on the remarkably different situation of the Japanese diaspora within parts of North America, specifically, why those in the mainland United States were subjected to a systematic and unconstitutional removal and incarceration from their homes during World War II, while those in the Hawaiian Islands escaped the same fate. What was the impact of this disparity on soldiers of Japanese ancestry from the mainland and the Islands and how did this difference affect their social and political position in the post-war years? This is not, of course, to suggest that the discrimination and segregationist practices of pre-war America disappeared in the post-war era on either the mainland or the Hawaiian Islands. I am suggesting rather that the wider community’s perception of the voluntary acts of sacrifice impacted upon the speed and the extent to which these two groups were accepted as rightful and deserving members of American society. Although great progress has been made in their successful integration, the extent to which they have been truly accepted Memorial to the Japanese-American 442nd continues to be a contentious issue in some Regimental Combat Team quarters to this day. The link between acts of blood-sacrifice and the diasporic community is under-theorised and under-researched. With the notable exception of Kelly and Kaplan’s work on the Indo-Fijians and the Japanese-Hawaiians, scholarly studies are rare. The case of the Japanese-Hawaiians offers a unique insight into the consequences of acts of blood-sacrifice. Drawing on Kelly and Kaplan’s framework, I will examine literary and oral histories to illustrate the impact of such acts on their community. I begin with a brief overview of the history of the Japanese diaspora and how it established itself in North America. I build on Benedict Anderson’s insights in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalismto examine the pre-war and wartime periods of their history in order to explain why the emergence of feelings of patriotism and nationalism, which he defines as “an imagined political community” (Anderson 1991:6),

2 5 | 11 | 0 APJ | JF emerged at different moments in the history of Japanese-Americans on the mainland compared to Japanese-Hawaiians. Anderson argued that the imagined community is an example of a cultural artefact of a particular kind which has evolved to command a profound level of emotional legitimacy and arouse deep psychological attachments and this should assist us to better comprehend the willingness of wartime volunteers.

(Non) Internment Women plantation workers in Hawai'i, The first Japanese immigrants arrived on early 20th century American soil in 1868 as part of the Meiji government’s aim to rapidly modernise Japan. In the years leading up to the attack on Pearl The early immigrants, landing primarily in Harbor, anti-Japanese sentiment reached fever Honolulu and San Francisco, faced severe pitch in step with mounting US-Japan conflicts hardship, yet they persevered and thousands in Asia, eventually leading to the imposition of more flocked to try their luck in the land of US sanctions on Japan. The 1908 Gentlemen’s opportunity. On the mainland, as theAgreement and the 1924 Immigration Act had population of Japanese immigrants slowly effectively ended Japanese immigration and the increased, so too did anti-Japanese sentiment, 1913 California Alien Land Law had barred especially in California. Propaganda whipped Japanese immigrants from purchasing land. up fears of ‘Oriental invasion’ fuelled prejudice Despite these obstacles, however, many even though, as Bill Hosokawa points out, in Japanese families were building successful the first nine years of the twentieth century, farming and agricultural businesses which only about 139,000 Japanese immigrants caused growing tension, notably in California. arrived on the mainland compared to the Groups such as the ‘Native Sons of the Golden arrival of nearly 10 million EuropeanWest’ lobbied for complete segregation of the immigrants during the same period. In fact, the Japanese and key influential figures such as percentage of Japanese on the mainland never San Francisco mayor (later senator) James rose above 0.11% of the entire population Phelan used the increasing aggression of the before American entry into World War II Japanese Imperial Army in Asia in the 1930s (Hosokawa 2002:96). It was quite a different and early 1940s to justify his call to halt the story in Hawai’i, however. Although thespread of the ‘yellow peril’ by any means immigrants also endured open hostility and necessary. When, on December 7, 1941, acts of racism, the small population of Hawai’i Japanese planes all but obliterated the meant that the large numbers of Japanese American naval ships stationed in Pearl Harbor, plantation workers soon outnumbered all other the US responded by declaring war on Japan ethnic groups, including native Hawaiians, the following day. Caucasians and Chinese. [1] The Japanese and Japanese-American population on the mainland and in Hawai’i was instantly targeted as possible (indeed, probable) saboteurs and traitors by virtue of bloodline, regardless of all other factors

3 5 | 11 | 0 APJ | JF including citizenship. With political groups and successfully convinced Roosevelt to sign the newspapers calling for the removal of all Executive Order, [2] was clear about his persons of Japanese ancestry, on February 19th feelings on Americans of Japanese ancestry, as 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in his famous speech in which he stated: authorising the evacuation and internment of over 120,000 people, including some 70,000 The Japanese race is an enemy race and while Nisei (second generation Japanese-Americans, many second and third generation Japanese born in America) who were American citizens, born on United States soil, possessed of United from their homes on the west coast as an act of States citizenship, have become ‘military necessity’. In some cases, families ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted. were given as little as 48-hours before they . . . A Jap’s a Jap. They are a dangerous element were counted, sorted, tagged and finally . . . .[3] herded onto darkened buses and trains, guarded by heavily armed members of the He consistently tried to persuade Roosevelt to Military Police. Treated like prisoners, they act quickly in order to separate and incarcerate were sent first to ‘assembly centers’, many of the Japanese in Hawai’i also, an idea that them hastily whitewashed horse stalls in which Roosevelt favoured.[4] Despite their desire to entire families were forced to live in the space isolate the Japanese in Hawai’i and the fact that previously occupied by one horse, and then Hawai’i was the most obvious place for a ‘fifth onto ‘relocation centers’, that is internment column’ to exist, however, only about 1,700 key camps, in which they were forced to stay, on community leaders were ever evacuated from average, for approximately three years (See Hawai’i and interned on the mainland (National Smith, 1995 and Hosokawa, 2002). Archives, RG210 and Office of the Secretary of War, RG107). Why were the majority of Japanese-Hawaiians spared the fate of the mainlanders?

The ‘Aloha Spirit’

The fact that Japanese constituted the largest ethnic group and Chinese a second large group, was among the reasons why ideas about the ‘inscrutable Oriental’ and fear of the ‘yellow peril’ were not felt as strongly in the Hawaiian Islands as they were on the mainland. Another reason was their integration into the local culture. From the early twentieth century, it was predominantly Japanese and Hawaiian Granada Relocation Center cultures that merged to create what locals call the ‘aloha spirit’.[5] The strength of this spirit Those were the events that occurred on the was exhibited by the few Japanese-Hawaiians mainland; in Hawai’i, events following the who were sent to internment camps on the attack on Pearl Harbor were very different. mainland. They instinctively sought each other After the attack, Hawai’i was placed under out and found comfort and solace in a shared martial law which would have cleared the way culture, history and language, differentiating for the mass evacuation of the Japanese there themselves from mainlanders. This is also. Lieutenant General John DeWitt, who demonstrated in this excerpt from an

4 5 | 11 | 0 APJ | JF internment camp report[6]: How did they become so indispensable to the spiritual aspect? Anderson posits that the two "Hawaiian cohesiveness – and most important forms of imagining that first separation from the emerged in Western Europe in the eighteenth “mainlander group,” is shown in century were the novel and the newspaper. For distinct clothing (geta, readers of a newspaper, a simultaneous colors in certain variety, flowered imagining occurs – a society is created shirts for men, lei consisting of those in the articles and their worn around neck at parties). . . readers; the different articles and the the use of Hawaiian ‘characters’ in them are connected in the minds pidgin. . . and a difference at of the readers who, in turn, are connected to all points in manners, other readers who are reading the newspaper musical instruments and that same day. The arbitrariness and recreational forms. The juxtaposition of the articles and the Hawaiians are a tight in-group, simultaneity of the readers creates an imagined cohesive, and apart community (Anderson 1991:35): from all other locality groups" (Ogawa Collection, 2, 98). "[The reader is] well aware that the ceremony he What ultimately saved the Japanese-Hawaiians performs is being replicated from mass internment, however, was economic simultaneously by realities. Not only was Roosevelt’s desire to thousands (or millions) of others of transport them all to the island of Moloka’i, the whose existence former leper colony, a logistical nightmare but he is confident, yet of whose their large population meant they were the identity he has not the backbone of both the labour force and, slightest notion." ironically, the war effort as exemplified by this letter from Secretary of War Stimson to the The fraternity created by the rapidly expanding House of Representatives on the 8th July 1942: newspaper readership within the Japanese diasporic community both on the mainland and "The Japanese population is so in Hawai’i is clear.[7] But Anderson’s argument interwoven into the that the most important aspect of language is economic fabric of the Islands that “its capacity for generating imagined if we attempted to communities, building in effectparticular evacuate all Japanese aliens and solidarities” (Anderson 1991:133), seems citizens all business, particularly applicable to the fraternity created including that concerned with the amongst the Japanese-Hawaiians whose bond building up of our was strengthened by their unique pidgin defenses, would practically stop" language and to the pidgin language they (Ogawa Collection, shared with other diasporic groups in Hawai’i. 10, 362). The importance of Hawaiian pidgin, which was created by the early plantation workers as a It was not just the economy that would suffer means of communication across linguistic from the removal of the Japanese; their integral divides by incorporating all their various role to the aforementioned ‘aloha spirit’ would languages, cannot be underestimated. In this certainly be extremely harmful to the morale of case, not only was it crucial to communicate the wider Hawaiian community. amongst themselves, it also created solidarity

5 5 | 11 | 0 APJ | JF among Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese conquered nation. . . . Remember and Hawaiian labourers. Their significant you’re fighting to contribution to the common language and the preserve decency and the right to feeling of fraternity in Hawai’i, their role in the a peaceful pursuit ‘aloha spirit’, meant their removal would have of life for all mankind. It is your had a debilitating effect on morale throughout duty to fight for home, the islands. Not only were Japanese-Americans country, and humanity" (Ogawa far more integrated and assimilated in Hawai’i, 1980:334-335).[8] but something that strengthened that bond and differentiated them further from Japanese on This was a commonly-held belief among Nisei the mainland, was the willingness of many to in Hawai’i who were not faced with the make the supreme sacrifice for their new conflicting emotions associated with the crisis country. and trauma of internment as mainlanders were. Their volunteering was based on a sense of A Question of loyalty duty for their country. Their decision was an easier one to make because it was not After the attack on Pearl Harbor, manycomplicated by the betrayal that interned Hawaiian Nisei volunteered in emergency Japanese-Americans on the mainland faced. medical units and a battalion of the Hawaiian National Guard, which included 1,500Nisei , Given this situation, it is understandable why was deployed into the hills to oppose the the number of volunteers from the mainland rumoured Japanese invasion (Toth, 2007). was low in contrast. In 1943 the Director of the Those who were unable to fight stood in line for War Relocation Authority, Dillon Myer, issued hours to donate blood. When theNisei were what is now known as the ‘loyalty forcibly disarmed and relieved of their duties, questionnaire’ to all internees above the age of they formed unarmed voluntary units to 17 in order to determine their eligibility to perform essential defence work. They were so volunteer. Reaction in the camps was mixed; anxious to help defend their home that a trial many viewed it as an opportunity to prove their all-Hawaiian Nisei combat team, the 100th loyalty to the country and were eager to fight, Battalion, was formed, consisting primarily of as did those in Hawai’i. However, their pre-war Nisei draftees. Based on their success, situation as prisoners in their own country the formation of the now-famous 442nd must have been a very bitter pill to swallow Regimental Combat Team was proposed in indeed and some regarded it as the final insult 1943. Although only 1,500 Japanese-Hawaiians causing them to turn their backs on America were required as volunteers for the 442nd, completely.[9] All were torn between their nearly 10,000 men rushed to enlist immediately situation as internees unjustly imprisoned on (See Chinen & Hiura, 1997). The spirit of the Japanese-Hawaiians is captured in thisthe one hand, and the duty to serve the country anonymous essay written by a young Hawaiian and avoid being branded as traitors. Issues of Nisei just before he volunteered: family loyalty also came into play. Would the government care for their families if they died "Remember, it is one of the prime in combat? It seemed extremely unlikely, given duties and their internment and the precarious nature of obligations of a citizen to bear their parents’ alien status. In the end, although arms in defense of 67,000 men were deemed eligible to volunteer his country. You don’t want to be a from the camps, only 1,200 did so (Ngai, 2004: member of a 184 and Smith, 2005: 301-302).

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When Japanese-Americans from the internment they faced in their own homeland, but in a camps were sent to the army training Camp radically different manner. They refused to Shelby in Wisconsin, the division between volunteer through the ‘loyalty questionnaire’ Hawaiians and mainlanders was palpable. The that was distributed throughout the camps in mainlanders thought the Hawaiians were 1943. They resisted or refused to ‘prove’ their inferior because of their pidgin language and loyalty in such a manner while their their relaxed attitudes; the Hawaiians thought constitutional rights were violated. the mainlanders were condescending with their Consequently, all resisters and their families proper English and polite manners. Thewere moved to the Tule Lake camp which was Hawaiians called the mainlanders ‘kotonks’ – redesignated as one for housing ‘disloyal’ that being the sound their heads made when Americans. The stigma that was attached to knocked on the floors of the barracks!being a resident of Tule Lake and therefore, Mainlanders responded by calling thebeing branded disloyal, was one that continued Hawaiians ‘buddhaheads’ – a term of contempt to haunt its residents for decades. Between derived a play on words derived from the January 1944 and December 1945, the Draft Japanese word buta meaning pig. However, the was reintroduced into the camps, and 325 Nisei two groups quickly found peace and solidarity men refused induction and used the when it came to fighting the enemy in Europe opportunity to protest against the and many mainlanders even began to pick up unconstitutionality of their internment. They pidgin, further reinforcing the importance demanded that their citizenship rights be language plays in creating a sense ofrestored before they would comply with draft community. When the Hawaiian volunteers orders. This was denied and 263 men were learned more about the fate of the families of convicted and sentenced to a minimum of three the mainlanders (and some visited the camps years in a federal prison (Ngai, 2004: 185). during breaks from training), they wereDespite the fact that the vast majority of these incensed.[10] They felt that they were in effect men were fighting the same forces of fighting two wars—the war against fascism and discrimination and persecution in America as the war against the persecution that their those who chose to fight in the European friends and families faced back home. theatre, a great deal of hostility and anger was generated against those who chose to refuse the call to arms from both the wider American community (it ‘proved’ their disloyalty) and the Japanese-American community, of whom many believed the only way to prove their loyalty to America was to make the ultimate sacrifice. Sadly, the stigma, the anger and the hostility towards these resisters is something that continues in some quarters to this day.

It is interesting to examine the rationale behind the Nisei soldiers who felt such deep attachment for their country in the face of strong provocation, for what Anderson termed “the inventions of their imaginations. . . [and] Tule Lake Relocation Center why people are ready to die for these inventions” (Anderson 1991:141). Whilst the Others chose to fight against the persecution community is imagined, their imagined

7 5 | 11 | 0 APJ | JF relationship has the capacity to create deep, would determine the future of the Japanese emotional ties linking friends, family and diaspora and they would be repeatedly strangers. It is this fraternity that makes it recalled. possible for so many to make the ultimate sacrifice, to die for their country. While it is The Japanese-American soldiers had a golden common practice to refer to the roots of opportunity to prove their worth to those who nationalism as being embedded in fear and discounted them as second-class citizens. hatred and of its affinities with racism,Therefore although elders worried about their Anderson argued that the nation also inspires children serving in the military[12], especially great love and patriotism, evident in the given their internment, their brave exploits in national cultural productions of art, literature Europe were proudly reported in the various and music, but most significantly, it also spurs camp newspapers and the stories of their acts of self-sacrifice. Thus dying for one’s sacrifices are still celebrated today as examples country, he argued, assumes a moral grandeur of great loyalty. Journalist John Terry set the and exemplifies the extent to which the nation tone by writing favourably about theNisei inspires love within its people, creating a soldiers as early as their training period: special kind of contemporaneous community. ". . . over and beyond the normal Blood-sacrifice loyalties of a Caucasian citizen whose place is I turn to Kelly and Kaplan in order to consider secure and why the battlefield acts of Japanese-Americans unquestioned, these men feel they were so instrumental, not just for ensuring the have to furnish survival of their traumatic history, but also for striking proof of their the future prosperity of their diasporic Americanism, and that the community – two aspects of which are, in fact, battlefield offers them that intertwined. It was not just the ‘aloha spirit’ opportunity. . . . Their and the fact that they were not interneden future place in America, and the masse that explains the phenomenal rise in future of their social and political standing of the Japanese- brothers, sisters and children. . . is Hawaiians. The most important factor in bound up in determining their postwar status was the fact their record in battle as members that several thousand young men made the of the 442nd ultimate sacrifice for their country.[11] Thus combat team. They know it. . . . the political power was not just taken by those with boys of the “claims of priority for primordiality” but also by 442nd are a credit to their country, those involved in the Pacific and European to Hawaii, to “theatrics of bloodshed” (Kelly and Kaplan their parents, to their uniform. . . . 2001:64-65). Where Anderson argued that it is They are good patriotism that motivates the individuals of a citizens, ready to prove it with nation to make these supreme sacrifices, Kelly their lives. . . ." and Kaplan suggest that it is above all the value (Ogawa 1980:336-341).[13] of the stories of martyrdom that motivate individuals. The narratives of the suffering of the victim and the death of the martyr inspired camaraderie and strengthened the bonds within a suffering community. These narratives

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The importance that Kelly and Kaplan placed on the stories of sacrifice was foreshadowed in Renan’s 1882 essayQu’est-ce qu’une nation?[16] in which he emphasised the sacrifices an individual can make for the good of the community to the establishment of a nation. Renan argued that the memory of the blood that has been shed is far more important to nationalism than the blood of a ‘race’ – people understand one another if they have worked and suffered alongside one another, 442nd Regimental Combat Team despite differences in language, culture and traditions. In this manner, a strong nation In fact, the 442nd/100th remains the most based on sorrow and sacrifice is born and the highly decorated unit of its size in American blood shed by the Nisei legitimised their claim military history.[14] And even as one Hawaiian for power in the political arena. They had Issei tanka poet expressed his sadness at his proven themselves to be loyal participants in family’s unjust situation: the continued strengthening of the nation by making the ultimate sacrifice. TheNisei as "Sailing on the same ship – individuals had sacrificed themselves for the The son, community, in Renan’s terms, and in so doing A U.S. soldier; constituted an important part of the nation. The His father, value of their actions is in their stories of A prisoner of war" (Nakano martyrdom: & Nakano 1983, 29). [15] "A great aggregation of men, with another Issei woman confided to her diary the a healthy spirit and importance of sacrifice and determination for warmth of heart, creates a moral the privilege of citizenship: conscience which is called a nation. When this moral "Someone who sincerely desires to conscience proves its become a citizen of strength by sacrifices that demand the United States – before he could abdication of the claim that right, individual for the benefit of the must exert an earnest endeavor to community, it is develop an attitude legitimate, and it has a right to of humility and faith toward exist" (Renan 1994:18). acquiring this privilege" (Gorfinkel 1996: 101). The last statement foreshadows Anderson’s claim that those who are willing to make this There was an acceptance and understanding sacrifice assume a moral grandeur and it is within the majority of the Japanese diaspora, from this platform that the Japanese- especially among those who had a family Americans, especially the Japanese-Hawaiians, member serving in the military, that their were able to consolidate their post-war political actions on the battlefield were essential in power by passing on memories through the order to prove their loyalty and ultimately to generations and utilizing them politically. pursue the equal rights of citizenship. Walter Benjamin stresses the importance of

9 5 | 11 | 0 APJ | JF keeping such memories and, through those soldiers and their acts of blood-sacrifice, the memories, the dead, safe from danger: rest of the community is able to prove its loyalty and worth as US citizens. "To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it 'the way it really was' (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. . . . Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins" (Benjamin 1970:257).

U.S. Senator Spark M. Matsunaga’s speech entitled Rededication[17] echoes Benjamin’s words:

If we are to give any real meaning to our observance of this national Memorial Day, we must here resolve as individual citizens that the story of the heroic dead whom we honor shall not lay buried with the dead, but will be kept alive to inspire the poor, the downtrodden, and the disillusioned to rise above social injustices. U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye. We must resolve not only to make ourselves, but to help others, to become better Americans For example, war veteran and current U.S. in a greater America for a safer world (Hawaii senator, Daniel Inouye, recalled the memory of Nikkei History Editorial Board 2000:399-400). the wartime sacrifices by paralleling his own political campaign with the war. He delivered a Similarly, veteran Yoshiaki Fujitani argued in speech in the mid-fifties in response to claims his essay Kin No On – Gratitude to my that his democratic party was a pawn of the Country[18] that the action of the Nisei was a communists, saying: way to express gratitude to their country, that the respect they gained was “earned at a very "I put the notes for my speech into dear price, and we should be forever grateful my clenched teeth for their sacrifice” (Hawaii Nikkei History and tore them in two with my only Editorial Board 2000:102). The reiteration of hand. . . . [his other the memories of wartime battles and trauma hand was lost in battle during are crucial to prevent the dominant, grand WWII] ‘But I cannot help narratives of white America from drowning out wondering,’ I said, ‘whether the their voices of suffering and martyrdom. people of Hawai'i will Thanks to the exploits of the braveNisei not think it strange that the only

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weapon in the potently, the ways that the rhetoric Republican arsenal is to label as of blood shed, communists men so stories of blood sacrifices for recently returned from defending nation can irrigate, liberty on the firing ennoble, and even sanctify the lines in Italy and France. Let me projects of many speak for those of us interested claimants" (Kelly and who didn’t come back – I know I Kaplan 2001:81). speak for my colleagues on this platform, and Although a certain sense of finality seems to be for good Democratic implied in that statement, the opposite is in fact candidates everywhere in these true. Even if the memories of the victims and Islands – when I say martyrs are preserved in rhetoric, the trauma we bitterly resent having our does not simply end there, nor should it if it can loyalty and patriotism be used to enrich, educate and inspire future questioned by cynical political generations. Although it can be argued that the hacks who lack the sacrifices made by the Japanese-Hawaiians courage to debate the real issues became a collective act that hastened the end in this campaign’" of their own cycle of trauma, the internment (Ogawa 1980:393). and the inability to volunteer for military service in the same manner meant that the Inouye successfully used the memory of the traumatic experiences of the war are links in a shedding of the blood of the Japanese- still-continuing chain of trauma for Japanese- Hawaiians to defend their loyalty and Americans on the mainland. patriotism; their shed-blood was turned into a political tool. Ogawa’s statement that “[b]lood Prominent Japanese-American author Jeanne had been shed so that the Japanese could Wakatsuki Houston wrote: unquestionably assume a significant role in the Island economy and social system” (Ogawa ". . . the most effective way 1980:325) is consistent with Kelly and Kaplan’s Japanese-Americans could argument that “shed blood can be powerful combat the attitudes that put them tools for social movements out to make or in places like unmake political limits” (Kelly and Kaplan Manzanar was to shed their blood 2001:80). The memory of blood-shed needs to on the battlefield. be remembered, recalled, deployed and passed The all-Nisei 442nd Regimental on to future generations. The importance of blood-shed to a diasporic community cannot be Combat Team was the understated or underestimated. most decorated American unit in World War II; it also "[W]e need to be more attentive to suffered the highest percentage of the ways that blood casualties and arguments can be used both for deaths. They were much admired, and against diasporic and the JACL populations – not merely the sons strategy succeeded. This was of the soil, blood of visible proof that these descent arguments, but also, and 110,000 people could be trusted" sometimes very (Houston 2000: 85).

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The visibility of the trustworthiness of the sacrifice for the good of their community and Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Hawaiians is their country. The internment and the loyalty evident in President Reagan’s speech, delivered questionnaire that the mainlanders were forced when he signed the first Redress Act on August to endure deterred some from initially 10, 1988, thereby beginning the process of volunteering, mostly due to their concern for reparations for the survivors of the internment their families behind barbed wire, but when the camps. His words recalled Kelly and Kaplan’s draft was reinstated, the majority were happy argument of the politics of blood-shed that to oblige. On the other hand, without the dethrones the belief in the priority ofimpediment of mass internment, the Japanese- primordiality: Hawaiians were able to offer themselves to the military immediately following the attack on Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach Pearl Harbor. As a result, they were able to is all of one color. America stands unique in the fight and rise above any future suspicions that world, the only country not founded on race, may have been cast upon the loyalty of their but on a way – an idea. Not in spite of, but community. Thus the sacrifices of Japanese- because of our polyglot background, we have American soldiers empowered the diaspora by had all the strength in the world. That is the providing stories of martyrdom and their American way (Hosokawa 2002:524-525). improved position in the post-war years was in no small part a result of the sacrifice of Similarly, veteran Ted Tsukiyama wrote an individuals of the wartime generation. essay entitled An American – Not a Japanese Living in America [19] in which he says: References

The blood our men shed in the Anderson, Benedict. 1991.Imagined ultimate dedication to country was Communities: Reflections red – just as red as the blood of any on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. other fallen American hero. And I London: know that because of those eight Verso. hundred white crosses with Japanese names. . . . (Hawaii Benjamin, Walter. 1970. Illuminations: Essays Nikkei History Editorial Board and Reflections. 2000:339). Edited by Hannah Arendt and translated by Harry Zohn. Concluding remarks London: Jonathan Cape.

It was the decorations on the soldiers for Crost, Lyn. 1994. Honor By Fire: Japanese- Houston, the blood-drenched beaches for Americans at War Reagan and the white crosses for Tsukiyama in Europe and the Pacific. Novato, California: that delivered visible proof of the loyalty of the Presidio Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Hawaiians Press. and justification for their right to advance without discrimination in American society. The Chinen, Karleen and Arnold T. Hiura. 1997. comprehensive internment of the Japanese- From Bento to Mixed Americans on the mainland and the strategic Plate: Americans of Japanese Ancestry in incarceration of certain Japanese-Hawaiian Multicultural leaders did not prevent Japanese-Americans Hawaii. Los Angeles: Japanese-American from offering their lives as acts of blood- National Museum.

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Nakano, Jiro and Kay Nakano, eds. and trans. Smith, Page. 1995. Democracy on Trial: The 1983. Poets Japanese-American Behind Barbed Wire. Honolulu: Bamboo Ridge Evacuation and Relocation in World War II. Press. New York:

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Simon and Schuster. mayor of New York and other key political figures, this was never implemented.Nisei Tateishi, John, ed. 1984. And Justice for All: An veteran Min Hara writes of how that decision Oral History of continues to affect him: “The humiliation of the Japanese-American Detention Camps. New being rounded up and herded into a railhead York: Random just because we looked like the enemy was House. indescribable. Why only us Japanese-Americans and not the Germans and Italians who were Thomas, Dorothy Swaine and Richard S. also in a war against the United States of Nishimoto. 1946. The America? My anger, shame and frustration Spoilage: Japanese-American Evacuation and from that day hasn’t subsided for the injustices Resettlement. Berkeley: University of California we’ve suffered from our very own government. Press. It has been forty-three years since that day and we still haven’t had our day in court for our Toth, Catherine E. 2007. “Timeline of AJAs, unjust confinement” (Japanese-American Joining WWII Fight.” National Museum:65-66). Honolulu Advertiser. June 17. [3] Original quote from the Los Angeles Times, Tule Lake Committee, ed. 2000.Second April 14, 1943. Various other West Coast Kinenhi: Reflections newspapers quoted this particularly infamous on Tule Lake. San Francisco: Tule Lake statement and he made several other similar Committee. statements on record both in the public press and in official documents such as the Uchida, Yoshiko. 1982.Desert Exile: The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Uprooting of a Internment of Civilians (1982:66). See also Japanese-American Family. Seattle: University Nagata (1990:135), Hosokawa (2002:260), and of Thomas and Nishimoto (1946:20). Washington Press.

Notes [4] Roosevelt sent a memo to the Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, on February 26, 1942 [1] Indeed, King Kalakaua appealed to the stating: “Like you, I have long felt that most of Emperor of Japan in the 1880s to encourage the Japanese should be removed from Oahu to emigration to Hawai’i not just as contract one of the other islands. This involves much labourers but also in order to supplement the planning, much temporary construction and languishing Hawaiian population. This meant careful supervision of them when they get to that by the early 1940s, with a population of the new location. I do not worry about the nearly 158,000, the Japanese in Hawai’iconstitutional question – first because of my constituted over 37% of the islands’ total recent order [9066] and, second, because population. At 127,000 on the mainland, the Hawai’i is under martial law. The whole matter Japanese made up less than 1% (National is one of immediate and present war Archives, RG210). emergency” (Ogawa Collection, 3, 244). Thankfully, the Hawaiian Military Governor [2] In fact, DeWitt also proposed theGeneral Delos C. Emmons was thoroughly internment of those of German and Italian convinced of the loyalty of the Japanese in extraction. But as, for example, Joe DiMaggio’s Hawai’i and consistently resisted the cries for father was an Italian immigrant, as was the their mass internment.

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[5] From an interview with Dennis Ogawa, joined the 442nd, many of whom were grateful University of Hawai’i, January 2004. to be relieved of the unthinkably difficult decision of choosing between family and [6] The ‘Tule Lake Community Analysiscountry. Reports, December 1944 to February 1945.’ [12] There are several poems about the [7] In fact, the newspapers were extremely conflicting emotions the Issei had about the important not only to the establishment of the military service, such as this poem about Issei new Japanese diaspora but also to the next man Masa Nakahara: generation, the Nisei, who established the JACL’s newspaper, The Pacific Citizen. During “My son George, his picture the internment, newspapers again played an was in the paper yesterday: important role in maintaining the community Nisei Interpreters Quiz Jap within each camp, the largest of which held Prisoner. The picture was so fuzzy, nearly 19,000 internees. Hard to tell who was who. They looked like kids to me – [8] “To Volunteer or Not?” (Ogawa 1980: like my sister’s boys 332-335) was first printed in Paradise of the in Japan” (Roripaugh 1999:31). Pacific May 1945, pp 11-12. [13] Article by John Terry “Summing Up the [9] Indeed, at the same time that the WRA AJAs at Shelby” originally appeared in a sought volunteers from within the internment brochure entitled “With Hawaii’s AJA Boys at camps, Roosevelt issued a statement which Camp Shelby, Mississippi” as part of the read: “No loyal citizen of the United States newspaper Honolulu Star Bulletin, 1943. should be denied the democratic right to exercise the responsibilities of his citizenship, [14] Especially well-known is the story of Sadao regardless of his ancestry. The principle on Munemori. As a result of his selfless act of which this country was founded and by which it throwing himself on a grenade to save two of has always governed is that Americanism is a his men during a crucial battle in the matter of the mind and heart. Americanism is Apennines, he was posthumously awarded the not, and never was, a matter or race or Congressional Medal of Honor. See Crost ancestry. Every loyal American citizen should (1994, 253-256). be given the opportunity to serve this country wherever his skills will make the greatest contribution - whether it be in the ranks of our [15] Tanka poem entitled On the Ship to the armed forces, war production, agriculture, Mainland. Government service, or other work essential to the war effort” (Uchida 1982:135). [16] The quote is taken from the translation of Renan’s essay by Ida May Snyder. Paris: [10] This observation comes from reading Calmann-Levy, 1882, 26-29. several memoirs, diaries, oral interviews and so on. See Ogawa, 1980; Crost, 1994, Hawaii [17] Matsunaga was one of the first Japanese- Nikkei History Editorial Board, 2000 and Hawaiian senators. His speech was delivered at Tateishi, 1984. a Memorial Day address at the Fairmount Cemetery in Denver, Colorado on May 30, 1968 [11] After conscription was reintroduced on the (Hawaii Nikkei History Editorial Board mainland, several thousand mainlanders also 2000:95-400).

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[18] Hawaii Nikkei History Editorial Board Teresa Goudie is Lecturer in Japanese Studies, (2000:94-103). University of New South Wales. [email protected] [19] Hawaii Nikkei History Editorial Board (2000:335-339). She wrote this article for Japan Focus. Posted at Japan Focus on November 24, 2007

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