ABSTRACT

“ALL OF US MUST MAKE SACRIFICES TO HELP TOWARDS UPHOLDING AMERICAN IDEALS”: JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT PRINT CULTURE DURING WORLD WAR II

During the World War II internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans, the internees published newspapers in each of the assembly centers and relocation camps. Both the government officials and internees used the center newspapers to disseminate different discourses and rhetoric throughout the interned population. The U.S. government officials in charge of the assembly centers used the newspapers to spread nationalist messages designed to coerce the internees into passive obedience with the relocation orders and used patriotic sentiments to appeal to the Japanese American internees. In the case of the internees, the newspaper articles and editorials published illustrate how the Japanese Americans dealt with internal conflict over their bicultural identity, conflict which stemmed from the disagreement over what tradition would be dominant in the centers, Japanese or American. The newspapers also demonstrate how the internees attempted to reach a delicate balance between these two clashing sides. The center newspapers create a new image of the relocation specifically exemplifying the diverse difficulties, disputes, and administrative oversight the internees dealt with throughout their relocation. This thesis will illustrate this point through articles and editorials from select assembly centers.

Tiffany Anne Polfer August 2011

“ALL OF US MUST MAKE SACRIFICES TO HELP TOWARDS UPHOLDING AMERICAN IDEALS”: JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT PRINT CULTURE DURING WORLD WAR II

by Tiffany Anne Polfer

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History in the College of Social Sciences California State University, Fresno August 2011 APPROVED For the Department of History

We, the undersigned, certify that the thesis of the following student meets the required standards of scholarship, format, and style of the university and the student's graduate degree program for the awarding of the master's degree.

Tiffany Anne Polfer Thesis Author

Daniel Cady (Chair) History

Lori Clune History

Blain Roberts History

For the University Graduate Committee:

Dean, Division of Graduate Studies AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION OF MASTER’S THESIS

X I grant permission for the reproduction of this thesis in part or in its entirety without further authorization from me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction absorbs the cost and provides proper acknowledgment of authorship.

Permission to reproduce this thesis in part or in its entirety must be obtained from me.

Signature of thesis author: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the members of my committee: Dr. Daniel Cady, Dr. Lori Clune, and Dr. Blain Roberts for their support and guidance in this journey. Your countless hours and days spent on edits and answering my questions has helped me create this, what I believe to be a, fresh look on an important aspect of American history, thank you. In addition to these three, I would also like to thank other faculty members in the History Department. Thank you for making my three years at California State University, Fresno enlightening, educational, and entertaining. I would also like to thank Special Collections at the Henry Madden Library. Adam, Jean, and Tammy, I can honestly say that I would not have written about internment publications if not for your wonderful Japanese in World War II collection. Thank you for your support and encouragement. I have been surrounded by wonderful graduate students in my years here, but two are worthy of special attention. Stephanie, you have helped me through this arduous process in so many ways, but particularly your ability to encourage me through tough times. Charles, you have been the best peer editor I have ever had. You always read my work and helped me get over my breakdowns and frustrations with my inability to form coherent sentences at times. Both of you have made this process a wonderful trip, thank you. To my wonderful family: Heather Bartell, Stephen, James and Kathy Polfer, you have been a wonderful support system for me and I could not have asked for a better one. Thank you for enduring my freakouts and for faking interest in my historical dissertations. All of you have made me the person I am today and I thank you for sticking with me. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

A CITIZEN’S SACRIFICE: INTRODUCTION ...... 1

The Lead Up to Imprisonment: Historical Background to the Internment ...... 3

Center Publications: Internee-Produced Newspapers ...... 7 “UNITED WE WIN!” WORLD WAR II MEDIA AND NATIONALIST RHETORIC ...... 14 “Our being here is really a small part.” Internee Newspapers and Governmental Discourse ...... 17

FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER’S FRONTIER THESIS REIMAGINED ..... 24 “TOO MUCH OF A ‘NIP’ PROGRAM.” CULTURAL CONFLICT THROUGH NEWSPAPERS ...... 30

“Tolerating the Other Side”: Cultural Conflict through Song and Dance ...... 35 “The National Game is the Main Interest.” Cultural Harmony through Sport ...... 38 ILLUSTRATIONS OF CONFLICT THROUGH NEWSPAPERS: CONCLUSION ...... 42

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 45

APPENDICES ...... 50 APPENDIX A: LIST OF DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE DETENTION CENTERS ...... 51

APPENDIX B: LIST OF ASSEMBLY CENTERS ...... 53

A CITIZEN’S SACRIFICE: INTRODUCTION

In 1942, by order of President Franklin Roosevelt, the U.S. Army rounded up and relocated 115,000 Japanese from the west coast. American citizens accounted for over half of this number, and their interment is now understood as one of the most egregious violations of civil liberties in the country’s history. The U.S. Army forcibly removed Japanese and Japanese Americans from their homes, and in the process, people lost their land, farms, and belongings. It was these interned people who witnessed Japanese American Citizens’ League (JACL) President Saburo Kido’s speech in 1942 at the Fresno assembly center, a fairgrounds converted to hold Central Valley Japanese and Japanese Americans. Kido, who routinely promoted Japanese cooperation with internment, in his speech proclaimed, “Although the Nisei are going through trying times, all of us must make sacrifices to help towards upholding American ideals.”1 His audience of 5,344 Japanese internees resided at that time in horse stalls converted into barracks. The majority of the internees previously held farms and owned houses, but they lost everything in the process of relocation. One internee, a child of nine at the time, remembers the center as less than hospitable and “naturally surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.”2 The sacrifice Kido advocated amounted to the confinement of 115,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans, without legal recourse and without cause - the largest relocation and imprisonment of non- combatant U.S. citizens in American history.

1 “Saburo Kido Visits the Center,” Fresno Grapevine, 8 July, 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed March 3, 2010). 2 Tim Taira, interview by author, Fresno, CA, July 23, 2010. 2

This thesis will use center newspapers, published by internees, to illustrate how the U.S. in charge of the internment used these publications to spread different nationalist rhetoric designed to coerce cooperation from the internees. The newspapers also highlight the underlying conflict within the centers between government officials and internees over editorial freedom and administrative oversight. The center newspapers also exemplify the internal conflict within the internees over what tradition, American or Japanese, would be the dominant cultural expression. The newspapers illustrate how conflicts arose and how the editorial staffs attempted to negotiate inter- and intra-cultural contests. These newspapers create a new image of the relocation, one illustrating the diverse and numerous disputes the internees dealt with, and represent a way the internees voiced their apprehension about the unknown relocation process and attempt to navigate between differing factions. More so than previously recognized, camp newspapers illustrate how these conflicts shaped the internee experience in the centers and camps. In addition, newspapers served a dual function for disseminating the pro-government discourse as well as serving as a sounding board for the internees’ cultural dialogue. A close reading of camp newspapers gives historians a better sense of the diverse difficulties internees faced, beyond the physical and economic toll of the internment.3

3 The earliest historical monographs on this topic, written in the late 1940s, begin to tackle the argument that the Japanese internment was not based on military necessity, but rather, was a reflection of local politics and society’s racial fears. For this argument, see Carey McWilliams, Prejudice; Japanese- Americans: Symbol of Racial Intolerance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1944) and Morton Grodzins, Americans Betrayed: Politics and the Japanese Evacuation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949). Other historians elaborated on the racial agitation and the part it played in the internment decision. Leading monographs in this historiographical approach are Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971) and Daniels, The Decision to Relocate the Japanese (Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1975). Modern historians and sociologists contend that the internment was a state decision, and the country’s racial fears did not play a 3 The Lead Up to Imprisonment: Historical Background to the Internment In 1940, 126,947 Japanese and Japanese Americans lived in the United States, approximately 94,000 of whom resided in California.4 The California Japanese faced hostility, paranoia, and blatant racism from a number of California citizens, the majority of whom were Caucasian. Prior to the internment, a number of articles published in the San Francisco Chronicle reveal the pervasive anti- Japanese sentiment. Native whites called for government action to increase defense against the so-called “yellow peril.”5 In the early 1900s, nativist organizations, such as the Native Sons of the Golden West and their sister organization, Native Daughters of the Golden West, strove to limit Japanese migration. According to nativists, the Japanese were an inferior race with violent

part in this decision. For this argument, see Francis McCollum Feeley, America’s Concentration Camps During World War II: Social Science and the Japanese American Internment (New Orleans, LA: University Press of the South, 1999) and Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (New York: William Morrow Company, 1976). Another historiographical approach focused on the internment’s effects on the Japanese and Japanese Americans following their release, specifically concentrating on the economic and social consequences. For this approach see Leonard Broom and Ruth Riemer, Removal and Return: The Socio-Economic Effects of the War on Japanese Americans (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1949) and William Petersen, Japanese Americans: Oppression and Success (New York: Random House, 1971). Some authors diverge from the standard historical conversation and argue that the internment was legitimate and legal. For this non-traditional approach see Page Smith, Democracy on Trial: The Japanese American Evacuation and Relocation in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995) and Lillian Baker and Karl R. Bendetsen, American and Japanese Relocation in World War II: Fact, Fiction, & Fallacy (Medford, OR: Webb Research Group, 1990). 4 Daniels, The Decision to Relocate, 4; Daniels, Prisoners without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 8. In this paper, I refer to both Japanese and Japanese Americans. However, at times, I refer to the Japanese, specifically those born in Japan, as Issei and the Japanese Americans, those born in America, as Nisei. I use these terms interchangeably, but for clarity’s sake, the term Issei refers to Japanese immigrants and Nisei refers to Japanese Americans, U.S. citizens. 5 One article called for the removal of Japanese from California because they were labor competition for white women: “Japanese a Menace to American Women,” San Francisco Chronicle, 1 March, 1905, 16. Another called for a limit on the amount allowed to migrate from Japan: “Japanese Bring Vile Diseases,” Chronicle, 13 March, 1905, 8. On March 10, the Chronicle published information about a new anti-Japanese league designed to remove Japanese from San Francisco because native-born Californians feared the migrating Japanese would soon outnumber white citizens. “Arm against Yellow Peril,” Chronicle, 10 March 1905, 1. All articles can be found on the Densho online archive at http://archive.densho.org/main.aspx (accessed January 29, 2011). 4

tendencies who would bring about the moral decline of American society, and compromised the “racial integrity of the nation.”6 On December 7, 1941, the attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, seemingly confirmed nativists’ fears. No evidence linked the Japanese in the United States to Pearl Harbor, but many on the mainland called for retaliation against the West Coast Japanese and Japanese Americans.7 Immediately following Pearl Harbor, U.S. government agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the U.S. Army limited the official reprisal for the attack to a small group of prominent West Coast Japanese and Japanese Americans. The government swiftly targeted those suspected of having ties with Japan. Japanese-owned banks closed all their accounts and the U.S. Treasury froze all economic assets of Japanese immigrants. The military and local police forces established mandatory curfews and required all Japanese, including American citizens, to carry identification cards.8 The FBI and the U.S. military had already begun to watch Japanese neighborhoods before the attack on Pearl Harbor and from these neighborhood watches, they compiled lists of potential enemies.9 Using these lists, the FBI and local police forces launched raids on

6 Daniels, Prisoners, 4. The term “nativist” refers to organizations or individuals who saw minority groups as a threat to the assumed purity of the nation. Nativists typically were born in America and the majority of them were Caucasian. An example of one of the anti-Japanese arguments from the nativists is found in “The Japanese Character: Why Contact Must Impair Our Civilization,” San Francisco Chronicle, 26 March 1905, 1. This article also illustrates the nativist fear that the Japanese will outnumber pure white citizens, which would lead to the downfall of the white race. 7 Jeffrey F. Burton, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W. Lord, Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese Relocation Sites (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 25. 8 Lawson Fusao Inada, Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2000), xi-xii. 9 Bill Hosokawa, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (New York: William Morrow, 1969; reprint, Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2002), 214 (page citations are to the reprint edition). 5

Japanese civil and business leaders, including Buddhist priests and those who frequently traveled to and from Japan.10 The FBI also used information from the U.S. Census Bureau and Japanese societies such as the JACL to round up Japanese with close ties to Japan and sent them to Justice Department prison camps in the interior of the U.S. (Appendix A).11 The Japanese on these lists were the first ones the FBI rounded up and relocated into these federally owned prison camps.12 By December 11, 1941, five days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the military had already detained 2,192 Japanese and Japanese Americans.13 A number of California politicians and civic leaders believed these efforts insufficient. One month after Pearl Harbor, numerous west coast newspapers and business leaders began to call for the removal of all Japanese and Japanese Americans from California, Oregon, and Washington.14 These demands were the result of widespread fear because of the Japanese army’s advance into the Philippines. In order to ameliorate this fear, General John L. DeWitt, Western Defense Command’s top official, launched a campaign to relocate the remaining Japanese from the west coast, citing military necessity.15

10 Paul Spickard, Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformation of an Ethnic Group (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 101-102. 11 Ibid., 104. 12 E.J. Friedlander, “Freedom of Press Behind Barbed Wire: Paul Yokota and the Jerome Relocation Center Newspaper,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 44, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 304; Miné Okubo, Citizen 13660 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1983), viii. 13 Friedlander, 304. Over 7,000 Japanese from both America and Latin America were held in these camps, ran by the Immigration and Naturalization Services in the Department of Justice and the U.S. Army. For a list of these camps, see Appendix A. 14 Spickard, Japanese Americans, 104. Several newspaper editorials and articles began to echo this call for the internment of the Japanese. Some articles even went so far as to call for the mass slaying of aliens, such as Henry McLemore in his editorial, “‘Internment’ for Enemy Aliens” found in Japanese American Curriculum Project, Wartime Hysteria: The Role of the Press in the Removal of 110,000 Persons of Japanese Ancestry During World War II (San Mateo, CA: Japanese American Curriculum Project, 1973), 2. 15 Spickard, Japanese Americans, 105-106. 6

On February 19, 1942 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed Secretary of War Henry Stimson to designate the west coast as a military area. He also gave General DeWitt the power to exclude anyone from the region he deemed necessary, namely the Japanese. After Executive Order 9066’s passage, DeWitt declared Washington, Oregon, California, and part of Arizona Military Areas One and Two, and required all Japanese in these areas to relocate to camps outside of these boundaries.16 Military Area Number One referred to the three pacific coast states’ western-most region, while Number Two covered the rest of these states not covered under Military Area Number One.17 Between March and May 1942, the military moved Japanese within these prohibited areas into temporary assembly centers supervised by the Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA).18 There were fifteen temporary assembly centers located in California, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington, all away from the areas closest to the pacific coast (Appendix B).19 The WCCA found areas which satisfied three specific requirements in order to increase the relocation’s efficiency and decrease the costs. These centers had to be located on sites with previously established buildings with running water and power, close to areas with a large Japanese population, and have enough space to fit the estimated 112,000 Japanese

16 Ibid., 107. 17 For a map of Military Areas One and Two see, United States Army, Western Defense Command and Fourth Army, Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943), 16. For an explanation and a detailed description of these prohibited areas, see J.L. DeWitt, Public Proclamation No. 2, March 2, 1942, found in Roger Daniels, ed., American Concentration Camps: A Documentary History of the Relocation and Incarceration of Japanese Americans, 1942-1945 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1989), 317-330. 18 Hosokawa, Nisei, 329. 19 Friedlander, 304. For a list of assembly centers, see Appendix B. 7

living on the west coast.20 By June 5, the WCCA completed the first phase of DeWitt’s relocation plan, moving over 100,000 Japanese into assembly centers away from Military Areas One and Two.21 Inhabitants were required to stay in these centers until the more permanent relocation camps were completed.

Center Publications: Internee-Produced Newspapers While the internees stayed in these centers and camps, they published newspapers at least three times a week. The editorial staffs of these newspapers used this public medium to disseminate rules and regulations, as well as relevant news to the centers and the camps. The assembly centers very rarely ran articles focusing on the war overseas, choosing instead to focus on center-related events such as Fourth of July celebrations, baseball games within the centers, and rules and regulations affecting the center population. The first established newspaper, the Manzanar Free Press, from the Manzanar assembly center and relocation camp, located at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, claimed the internees designed the publication to cover camp policy and internee- sponsored activities.22 The Tanforan Totalizer, from the Tanforan assembly center located in Northern California, explained that the Totalizer “is intended to be this center’s paper in every way. Its interests are those of all the residents here. It is not the organ of any self-seeking group and it will not play any politics.”23

20 Ibid., 322. 21 Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis, The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of the Japanese- Americans During World War II (New York: MacMillan, 1969), 145. 22 The Manzanar Free Press began publication on April 11, and it was the very first center to publish. United States Army, Final Report, 213. “Editorial,” Manzanar Free Press, 11 April 1942, http://archive.densho.org/main.aspx (accessed December 5, 2010). 23 “Editorial,” Tanforan Totalizer, 15 May 1942, http://archive.densho.org/main.aspx (accessed December 6, 2010). 8

The internees in the different centers and camps established their respective newspapers with these purposes in mind. The editorial staffs designed these publications to be the internees’ mouthpiece, yet they were hardly immune from playing politics. They still had to accommodate the demands of the military administration within the centers, and later the War Relocation Authority (WRA) administration in the camps. The internees dealt with military censorship, the fear and unfamiliar circumstances of internment, as well as a general anxiety over what would happen in the centers and camps. In spite of these issues (or some would argue, because of them), the WCCA wanted to convince internees to quietly comply with the relocation orders. Their main instrument was the centers’ newspapers, specifically due to the government control of all aspects of the editorial process. Newspapers became tools for the WCCA to disseminate wartime propaganda, much like propaganda posters and Hollywood films. Newspapers also illustrated the internal strife within the internees over the dominant cultural practices. Through articles attempting to reach a delicate balance between two conflicting factions, the newspapers demonstrate how the interned were split and the various efforts the editorial staffs attempted to bridge the gaps between the two embattled sections. Newspapers served dual functions in the centers: a method for the U.S. government to circulate ideas designed to quell unrest, and an avenue for the internees to achieve stability within the Japanese and Japanese American center populations. The articles and editorials published by the editors illustrate both functions clearly because of how they expressed governmental discourse and how they communicated the cultural schism within the centers’ internees. 9

Newspapers contained editorials, recapped center talent shows, covered athletic functions such as baseball games and judo matches, and disseminated different WCCA and Army regulations concerning the internees. The very first newspaper, the Manzanar assembly center’s Free Press, published its inaugural edition on April 11, 1942.24 In time, almost all fifteen assembly centers boasted their own newspapers, which were typically printed for the three to four months the centers operated. According to the WCCA’s Final Report, government officials managed everything related to the center newspapers. They had full editorial control over what the internees wrote, picked the editorial staffs, and supervised who received the newspapers in the centers.25 In regards to publishing internees’ articles, the Final Report stated, “the young editors had the assistance and guidance of the Public Relations Representative who saw that news items were confined to those of actual interest to the evacuees.”26 In order to ensure the newspaper’s compliance with governmental messages, these WCCA representatives had to give final approval for each article and editorial, limiting the editors’ ability to publish what they desired.27 The WCCA oversight ensured the publication of rhetoric matching the nationalist discourse created by the WCCA and the WRA. In general, public relations representatives disallowed articles criticizing the internment or the U.S. Army, even though these sentiments existed within the interned population.28 The

24 United States Army, Final Report, 213. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 A number of oral histories collected after the internment express the anger, discontent, and the critical attitudes that the internees had towards the U.S. authorities during their relocation. One such edited 10

WCCA and the internee editorial staffs used these newspapers to prove the American identity of the internees, their loyalty to the demands and order of President Roosevelt and the U.S. military, and to create some semblance of normalcy within the centers and camps.29 The editors attempted to accomplish these goals by focusing on community activities, thereby ignoring, or minimizing, the internment’s hardships. If the editors did acknowledge these hardships, it was usually in a positive manner, by using these hardships as an illustration of what the internees could learn or benefit from their internment. In keeping with these objectives, the editorial staff printed articles designed to pacify the internees with rhetoric intended to reassure the internees of the positives stemming from the internment. The newspapers editors had to balance their obligation to their fellow internees to represent the internee position and fears with their duty to the WCCA administrators, and these administrators had to find internees who seemed willing to comply with their demands. The majority of the newspapers’ editors were of college age, generally born in the U.S., and had some experience in the publication process, working as reporters or editors prior to their internment. Oski Taniwaki, editor-in-chief of the Mercedian, was the only one discussed in this paper born in Japan; he migrated to the U.S. in 1910, but he was classified as a legal resident alien with an alien registration and a social security number. A small number of editors visited Japan for a year or less, and, for the most part, did not attend a Japanese Language school. I argue that the fact that the editors, more or less,

collection of oral histories is John Tateishi, ed., And Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese American Detention Camps (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999). 29 Lauren Kessler, “Fettered Freedoms: The Journalism of World War II Japanese Internment Camps,” Journalism History 15, no. 2-3 (1988): 72. 11

shared these above attributes contributed to the reasons why the WCCA hired them as editors. The WCCA believed that this shared background would lead the editors to be more willing to allow editorial oversight, while still publishing articles that the internees would connect with and read.30 The center editors did not seem to represent any threat to the regulation and editorial oversight from WCCA officials. However, just because their resumes and reputations matched the unspoken criteria does not mean the center editors supported or believed the rhetoric they published. The editors had to publish the WCCA-approved articles in order to actually issue a center newspaper. These editors also used the newspapers for their own means as well. They used these publications as a method to reassure the center residents by writing articles designed to foster a semblance of normalcy and building a sense of community within the centers’ barbed wire fences. A number of different articles illustrate this community-building endeavor; for example, the Fresno Grapevine staff published an article celebrating the recreation staff that set up various community activities that allowed the internees an appearance of relaxation and to be actual participants in this leisure time.31 The editorial pages were where the editors published articles disseminating the nationalist discourse as well attempt to quell their readers’ fears and apprehension towards the internment.

30 All information found on the newspaper editors discussed is from the National Archive and Records Administration: War Relocation Authority records online database located at http://aad.archives.gov/aad/series-description.jsp?s=623&cat=WR26&bc=%2Csl (accessed May 7, 2011). 31 “Recreation Leaders Pave Way for Organized Play,” Fresno Grapevine, 8 July 1942), http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed May 20, 2011). A number of newspapers even included columns published regularly covering center community life. For example, the Tulare News published an editorial that covered center life and community titled “A Bit of Center Life,” and the Grapevine had “Between the Barracks.” Both of these editorials, and the others from different newspapers, specifically focused on community life in their respective centers. 12

The articles dedicated to this nationalist discourse maintained the sentiment Mike Masaoka, JACL National Secretary, expressed in his Japanese American creed, drafted and publicly read on May 9, 1941.32 This creed and other statements by JACL leaders, particularly the statement by JACL president Kido on March 8, 1942, exalted the idea of full cooperation with the relocation in order to prove the internees’ loyalty.33 Kido, born in Hawaii in 1902 and a lawyer from Japantown, San Francisco at the time of relocation, stated, “as patriotic citizens and law-abiding residents, we should be willing to place our future into the hands of the Federal government.”34 Although he never spent time in an assembly center, choosing instead to move directly to the Colorado relocation camps, Kido urged his fellow JACL members and Nisei to remember they relocated because the internees were loyal citizens and their government asked them to move.35 In his March speech, Kido stated, “We are going into exile as our duty to our country because the President and the military commander of this area have deemed it a necessity.”36 Masaoka, born in Salt Lake City, Utah and never interned, claimed in his JACL creed to “actively assume my duties and obligations as a citizen, cheerfully and without any reservation whatsoever, in the hope that I may become a better American in a greater America.”37 Both Kido and Masaoka pledged to

32 Utah Senator Elbert D. Thomas read Masaoka’s creed in the United States Senate Chamber on May 9, 1942. The creed can be found on Portland JACL, “The JACL Creed,” Portland JACL, http://www.pdxjacl.org/about/jacl-creed/ (accessed April 2, 2011). 33 Full text of Kido’s statement can be found in Bill Hosokawa, JACL: In Quest of Justice (New York: William Morrow, 1982), 364-369. 34 Ibid., 367. 35 Ibid., 368. 36 Ibid. 37 Portland JACL, “The JACL Creed,” http://www.pdxjacl.org/about/jacl-creed/ (accessed April 3, 2011). 13 obey any relocation order to prove their loyalty and American identity. This message, perfectly suited for WCCA needs, spread through the newspapers with articles reinforcing the internees’ dedication to America through the Japanese American sacrifice, their internment.

“UNITED WE WIN!”1 WORLD WAR II MEDIA AND NATIONALIST RHETORIC

Throughout American history, government officials have often found newspapers to be useful tools in coercing the general population’s beliefs and opinions. During World War I, the U.S. government employed mainstream media to influence public opinion and increase support for the war efforts, using the Committee on Public Information (CPI) as a means to persuade the public to follow the Army’s regulations and restrictions.2 However, during World War II these efforts were much more subtle. Rather than articles blatantly expressing government wishes for compliance with internment orders, newspapers published editorials and articles that inferred a connection between obedience and patriotism, indirect ways to support the government’s stance on internment. The U.S. military and various other federal organizations, used newspapers to circulate discourse designed to shape public approval of political actions, such as the Japanese internment. In this case, the newspapers were also an ideal method to show the conflicting sides of the internment. On one side, the WCCA employed newspapers to disseminated messages designed to compel the internees to cooperate with the internment out of loyalist sentiments. On the other side, the Japanese American editors adopted these same ideas in order to placate internee fears and concerns, though they still urged the internees to cooperate. However,

1 Poster titled “United We Win,” printed by the Government Printing Office for the War Manpower Commission: National Archive and Records Administration Still Picture Branch, 1944. Located at “Powers of Persuasion,” National Archives and Records Administration, located at http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/powers_of_persuasion/united_we_win/images_html/united_we_win.html 2 Allan M. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942-1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 2. A good study on the role of print culture and propaganda during World War I is Troy R.E. Paddock, ed., A Call to Army: Propaganda, Public Opinion, and Newspapers in the Great War (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2004). 15

the difference between government calls for cooperation and editorial urgings is the editors advised the internees to comply with the internment because it was a test of the internees’ strength rather than loyalty-based compliance. Other forms of government-controlled, or at least government-supervised, media also propagated this nationalist discourse to guide and manipulate the American public. Different government organizations, specifically the Office of War Information (OWI) and the War Production Board (WPB), produced propaganda posters as “an especially fitting medium for the expression of American war aims: why we fight, what we fight for.”3 The main message these posters circulated was one of sacrifice. The OWI and WPB, through these posters, hoped to convince Americans to buy war bonds, conserve fuel and food intake, and sign up for various war industries. These two organizations styled these posters to encourage American to fully support the U.S. war efforts. During World War II, Hollywood, at the behest of the U.S. government through agencies such as the OWI, produced films classified as “incentive films,” aimed at increasing workers’ morale in order to boost war production.4 In addition to these films aimed at war industries, Hollywood also produced films directed to the general American public, stating the war overseas was fought for the defense of the American ideals of liberty, equality, and security, as well as defeating the U.S.’s fascist enemies.5 However, Hollywood also played a role in the racist sentiment against Japanese and Japanese Americans with films such as Little Tokyo, U.S.A. (1942) which implied any Japanese, citizen or not, was always

3 William L. Bird, Jr. and Harry R. Rubenstein, Design for Victory: World War II Posters on the American Home Front (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), 17. 4 Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 61-62. 5 Ibid., 73. 16

going to be loyal to the Japanese emperor, making them a threat to American safety.6 Films not directed by Hollywood agencies portrayed a different outlook on the internment. While Little Tokyo described the internment as necessary because of the threat the Japanese represented, films produced by OWI characterized the internment as a loyalty test for the internees, or as an adventure for the west coast Japanese. The OWI film, Japanese Relocation (1942), is an example of these messages. As the narrator, Milton S. Eisenhower (head of the War Relocation Authority, the organization in charge of the relocation camps), stated in the film, “The evacuees cooperated wholeheartedly. The many loyal among them felt that this was a sacrifice they could make on behalf of America’s war effort.”7 In addition to the loyal citizens’ sacrifice, the OWI presented the internment as an adventure for the twentieth-century pioneers. The internment was simply another opportunity for the internees to prove their Americanism and to prove their loyalty to the U.S. government officials who ordered, or authorized, their relocation, namely President Roosevelt. Through articles and editorials disseminating these messages, the editorial staffs fulfilled the requirement imposed by the WCCA, to distribute their missives to the internees themselves. However, it is also apparent the editors saw these articles as a way to calm the internees’ apprehension over their unclear future.

6 Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (London: Collier MacMillan Publishers, 1987), 72. George Bricker, Little Tokyo, U.S.A., directed by Otto Brower, Los Angeles, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 1942. 7 Milton S. Eisenhower, narr., Japanese Relocation, directed by U.S. Office of War Information, Los Angeles, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1942. This section is found between 3:58-4:07. 17

The editors hoped to reassure the internees that if they cooperated like true citizens, they would pass this WCCA test.

“Our being here is really a small part.”8 Internee Newspapers and Governmental Discourse The center newspapers focused on different nationalist rhetoric in their editorials and articles: one of patriotic sacrifice from loyal citizens and the eastward expansion of the twentieth-century pioneers. The most significant rhetoric was the one of loyal sacrifice. Keeping in line with the film Japanese Relocation, the newspapers published editorials positioning the internment as a necessary sacrifice for patriotic and loyal American citizens. In the Santa Anita assembly center, located in Southern California, the Santa Anita Pacemaker editor Eddie Shimano wrote columns reinforcing this patriotic sacrifice message. One such example published on July 4. Shimano, a reporter living in San Francisco at the time of internment, lambasted Japanese and Japanese Americans who outright criticized the internment.9

Disrupters, who are consciously or unconsciously aiding our enemy, would insist that certain conditions necessary for our total war effort (i.e., rationing of supplies, conscription of men and industry, and evacuation of people) are not “light and transient” conditions and therefore violate the principles of democracy… [they] would deny that this war against fascism must be won at any cost.10

8 Marii Kyogoku, “Editorial: Women and the War,” Tanforan Totalizer, 29 August 1942, http://archive.densho.org, (accessed November 13, 2010). 9 Eddie Shimano was born in Washington, near Seattle, in 1911. He visited Japan once in his life, for his twentieth birthday, 1931. He attended college in San Francisco, completed four years, but never received a degree. He could not speak, write, or read Japanese and he had no Japanese Language School experience. Information found in the National Archives and Records Administration online database for Japanese internees located at http://aad.archives.gov/aad/series-escription.jsp?s=623&cat=WR26& bc=%2Csl. 10 Shimano, “Free men in a Free World,” Santa Anita Pacemaker, 7 July 1942, http://archive.densho.org, (accessed February 13, 2010). 18

Shimano equated those against the relocation with the U.S.’s fascist enemies. According to Shimano, those who spoke out in opposition to the internment acted much like the overseas enemies, and their actions damaged the U.S.’s war efforts. Loyal citizens supported the internment and the disloyal did not. The internment was a necessary sacrifice for the Japanese Americans. If the internees cooperated, they profited. When America wins because of their efforts in the internment, the Japanese Americans would live in a better world following their release.11 Through his editorial, the Pacemaker emphasized the theory of sacrifice through cooperation in order to help the U.S. win World War II. In the Tanforan assembly center, Tanforan Totalizer editor Taro Katayama, a graduate student from San Francisco, published an article reinforcing the JACL’s stance of cooperation.12 In a June town hall, speakers only presented supportive opinions towards the interment and reinforced the national sacrifice discourse. Dave Tatsuno from San Francisco and Ernest Takahashi from Fresno, both prominent members of the JACL, “counseled ‘voluntary cooperation’ with the Federal program of evacuation.”13 Their messages reiterated what Kido and Masaoka stated publically: to cooperate meant to support the U.S. government in a time of war. The JACL members, and the center Nisei, stressed this because they believed the internees could support the U.S. war efforts through their sacrifices.14

11 Ibid. 12 Taro Katayama, born in 1914 in Utah, moved to San Francisco to attend college, and was in the process of obtaining a graduate degree at the time of the internment. He never visited Japan, nor attended a Japanese language school, but he could speak Japanese. At the time of internment, Katayama was employed as a newspaper reporter. Information found in the National Archives and Records Administration online database for Japanese internment located at http://aad.archives.gov/aad/series-description.jsp?s =623&cat=WR26&bc=%2Csl. 13 “Pros and Cons of Nisei Attitude Discussed,” Tanforan Totalizer, 6 June 1942, http://archive.densho.org, (accessed March 3, 2010). 14 Ibid. 19

On June 13, Nori Ikeda, also a graduate student from San Francisco, urged the internees to actively participate in the internment because their

contribution can be in the form of consciously doing our best in the work set up for us at the relocation centers. Thus can we prove our sincerity when we say we are behind the United Nations in this struggle for complete victory of a ‘free world’ over a ‘slave world.’15 Ikeda’s letter reaffirmed the JACL’s stance of cooperation to prove the internees’ loyalty and dedication to the U.S.’s defense and war efforts. This letter, published in the Totalizer on June 13, reiterated the JACL testimony before the Tolan Defense Committee in the National Defense Hearings in February 1942. This testimony stated, “a large number of people have remarked that they will go where the Government orders them to go, willingly, if it will help the national defense effort.”16 Ikeda repeated this statement, by claiming to support the U.S. through her cooperation, and urging all other internees to do the same in order to prove the Japanese American loyalty. On August 18, Katayama published an editorial supporting this claim in which the internment became secondary to the U.S.’s ultimate goal of winning the war. Katayama argued a U.S. victory against “Hitler and Togo and Mussolini and all their lesser fascist confreres is the one aim that must transcend all others.”17 The Totalizer editor hoped to convince his readers to understand, the internment was the only way the Japanese Americans, at least those who could not serve military duty because of age, ability, or gender, could contribute to the war. A

15 Nori Ikeda, “Letter to the Editor,” Tanforan Totalizer, 13 June 1942, http://archive.densho.org, (accessed June 13, 2010). 16 National Defense Migration, National Defense Migration Hearings on H.R. 113, 77th Cong., 2nd sess., 1942, 11465. 17 Katayama, “Editorial, Tanforan Totalizer, 15 August 1942, http://archive.densho.org, (accessed July 21, 2010). 20

letter from Tanforan schoolteacher Marii Kyogoku, a college graduate from Alameda, restated Katayama and Ikeda’s message. Her August 29 letter stated the Japanese “must realize that in a way which is so important to win, our being here is really a small part.”18 These examples from the Totalizer propagated the rhetoric of the internment as a necessary sacrifice from loyal Japanese American citizens. On July 4, Richard Itanaga, City Editor for the Fresno Grapevine, published an editorial also pleading for the internees to consider America’s democratic beginnings and to remember that the internment served as their sacrifice towards U.S. war efforts. Itanaga, a high school graduate from Fresno, believed through the internees’ sacrifice, they had “a part, however small, towards making sure that there will be Independence Days for countless years to come.”19 For those unable to join the U.S. Army, the internees should sacrifice for the U.S.’s defense through their internment. By cooperating with the relocation, the internees proved their loyalty and dedication to democracy’s defense during World War II. On June 13, Grapevine editor Ayako Noguchi, a Tulare sales clerk prior to internment, stated that the 1942 Flag Day was more significant than previous years because of World War II and because the U.S. was battling fascist enemies who sought “to annihilate the freedoms symbolized by the Stars and Stripes.”20

18 Marii Kyogoku, “Editorial: Women and the War,” Tanforan Totalizer, 29 August 1942, http://archive.densho.org, (accessed November 13, 2010). 19 Richard Itanaga, “Between the Barracks: Today is the Day of Days for All of US Americans,” Fresno Grapevine, 4 July 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections, (accessed July 8, 2010). 20 Ayako Noguchi, “Flag Day,” Fresno Grapevine, 13 June 1942, http://ecollections.lib. csufresno.edu/specialcollections, (accessed February 19, 2011). Noguchi was interned during her sophomore year of college. She could only speak Japanese, however, she did not attend a Japanese language school and she never visited Japan. Though she worked as a sales clerk in Tulare at the time of relocation, her registration card with the WCCA listed her potential occupation as one in the news media, as a reporter, editor, or author. Information found in the National Archives and Records Administration 21

Because of these fascist threats, Noguchi urged her readers to show their “unswerving patriotism” because this year, the internees “are determined to preserve the American way of life and to that end are making great and unprecedented sacrifices.”21 These articles from the Grapevine illustrate how the newspapers perpetuated the rhetoric of the internment as a patriotic sacrifice from loyal internees designed to help the U.S. war efforts, both overseas and on the home front. On June 17, 1942, Pinedale Logger editor George Watanabe, in an article celebrating the internees’ production of camouflage nets, also highlighted how these efforts contributed to the internee sacrifices in the name of American citizenship.22 He claimed that these endeavors served as “endeavors of the evacuees’ loyalty and patriotism, which have been so sharply questioned since Pearl Harbor. They serve as boomerangs to the many fascist elements who are attempting to bring the race element into the present conflict.”23 Much like the other editors and reporters, Watanabe believed these actions could rehabilitate the internees’ reputation in the U.S. and hopefully, work towards the internees’ early release from the centers. Through their war production, the internees “will continue to prove to their fellow citizens that they are far from being merely

online database for Japanese internment located at http://aad.archives.gov/aad/series- description.jsp?s=623&cat=WR26&bc=%2Csl. 21 Ibid. 22 George Watanabe, born in 1913, lived in King County, Washington at the time of internment. He was in his junior year of college, and he worked as a reporter prior to his relocation to Pinedale. He could only speak Japanese, and he did have experience in a Japanese language school growing up. He never visited Japan before the internment. Information found in the National Archives and Records Administration online database for Japanese internment located at http://aad.archives.gov/aad/series- description.jsp?s=623&cat=WR26&bc=%2Csl. 23 Watanabe, “Evacuees and the War Effort,” Pinedale Logger, 27 June 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections, (accessed April 12, 2011). 22

‘sunshine patriots.’ Come what may, we will continue aiding the nation’s war efforts in whatever manner possible.”24 These newspapers circulate the idea of the internment as a patriotic sacrifice for the internees, similar to rations, fuel conservation, or military service American citizens, including the Japanese American internees, experienced. The internment was the best way the internees could show their loyalty and dedication to the U.S. The newspapers’ editors published articles emphasizing the benefits internees could receive from the internment, specifically a better life following the U.S. victory, a rehabilitated public image, and the satisfaction from helping their country win the war, all gained through their cooperation with internment. This was an editorial choice, conscious or not, designed to ease the internees’ concerns, fears, and anger over the relocation. A July 8 speech by JACL president Kido summed up this premise. In his speech, he urged the internees to cooperate because “although the Nisei are going through trying times, all must make sacrifices to help towards upholding American ideals.”25 Since General DeWitt forced the internees to leave their homes, friends, and businesses, they had no other choice but to be cooperative. However, Kido even placed this cooperation strictly in the patriotic sacrificial rhetoric. Through the internment and relocation, the internees could “show the other Americans that we too can take it and serve our country in its job of winning this war.”26 This message, apparent in a number of internee publications, was one way in which the WCCA hoped to coerce the internees to cooperate. Because they portrayed the

24 Ibid. 25 “Saburo Kido Visits the Center,” Fresno Grapevine, 8 July 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections, (accessed March 3, 2010). 26 Ibid. 23 internment as a patriotic sacrifice, they expected the internees to see their relocation as their duty as American citizens, and would cooperate with their internment. However, if this failed, the WCCA and the newspapers had another means to convince the internees to obey the relocation orders.

FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER’S FRONTIER THESIS REIMAGINED

Another discourse apparent in these publications is the idea of the relocation to the interior as a representation of a pioneering adventure, and through this adventure, the internees completed their Americanization. This rhetoric is similar to Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis from the 1890s. According to Turner, the western frontier was important to society because it created a unique American identity through the conquering of the wilderness.1 Through his argument, he illustrated how the frontier, as the “meeting point between savagery and civilization,” played an important role in the development of the American identity.2 The newspapers disseminated this idea within the internment centers, albeit an updated version. However, the underlying theory remained the same: the internees were moving into the interior U.S. to encounter untamed land and it was their patriotic duty to make the deserts flourish, all in a quest to further their Americanization. Turner argued that “the frontier is the line of the most rapid and effective Americanization.”3 Because of the vast openness of the west, and in the twentieth-century Japanese American pioneers’ case, the interior, these explorers used the wilderness as an opportunity to develop their unique American identity without the influence of other cultures.4

1 Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920), 2-3. 2 Ibid., 3. 3 Ibid., 4. 4 Ibid., 22-23. Because the east coast was dominated by European immigrants and culture, according to Turner, the west represented a blank slate for the pioneers to develop something uniquely American without the influence of these mixed cultures. In the case of the internees, the centers represented a way to develop their own American identity, and these center publications endorsed this message. 25

For the Japanese American pioneers, and the nineteenth-century westward expansionists, the frontier represented the best way to express the American identity. In the practice of “taming the wilderness,” these pioneers formulated American values. According to Turner, the main ideal expressed was

the ideal of discovery, the courageous determination to break new paths, indifference to the dogma that because an institution or condition exists, it must remain. All American experience has gone to the making of the spirit of innovation; it is in the blood and will not be repressed.5 The center publications used this same idea to encourage the internees to cooperate with the relocation to the interior. Rather than presenting undue hardships involved with moving a far distance from their homes, the relocation to the camps represented a quick route to a full American identity, untouched by the Japanese influence found on the west coast. Kido’s March 1942 address to national JACL members reiterated this pioneer sentiment when he stated

Let us look upon ourselves as the pioneers of a new era looking forward to the greatest adventure of our times. Let us conquer whatever frontiers may await us with the same fortitude as did our fathers and mothers who contributed more to the development of the west than most of us realize.6 The JACL saw the internment as a pioneer adventure and realized the opportunity the internment gave the internees to play a role in the development of untamed lands, much like their original American pioneers in the west. The film Japanese Relocation used the JACL’s explanation of the relocation to emphasize this modern-day reimagining of Turner’s thesis. The internees were off to a new venture, “in land that was raw, untamed, but full of opportunity.”7 According to Turner, the taming of this raw land created America,

5 Ibid., 306. 6 Bill Hosokawa, JACL: In Quest for Justice (New York: W. Morrow, 1982), 369. 7 Japanese Relocation (1944), approximately 6:31-6:32. 26

and in the case of the internees, the camps illustrated the way the Japanese Americans could create their own American identity, one styled after the western pioneers to place the internees in the historical drama of America’s creation.8 These internee newspapers were an ideal place to disseminate this idea through articles and editorials highlight the belief of the move to the camps was an adventure, and another opportunity to prove the internees’ American identity.9 After DeWitt issued his second order to move the internees from the west coast to the interior U.S. (states such as Arkansas, Arizona, and Wisconsin), Fresno Grapevine editor Noguchi published articles and editorials articulating this pioneer message. On August 5, in her column, “Pineknot Portrait,” she wrote, “Our best wishes go with them as they venture out to meet with the trials of resettling in an unfamiliar environment.”10 According to Turner, the move to the frontier was simply an extension of America’s universal inclination to experience the unfamiliar and to develop it, so these internees were acting as Americans as they, as Noguchi put it, settled in this “unfamiliar environment.”11 Through articles accentuating this pioneer adventure through settling in states with unfamiliar climates, locales, and population, the newspapers portrayed the

8 Turner, The Frontier, 4. 9 One such method the newspapers used to spread this discourse was through reports and descriptions of the internees’ new homes, sometimes bordering on wilderness reports with specific focus on the surrounding environment, presence of streams, agricultural possibilities, and weather reports. For example, Miye Yamasaki published a column titled “Our Promising Home” in The Mercedian once the Merced Assembly Center knew that they would be transferred to the Granada Assembly Camp, once the Center closed. Yamasaki, “Our Promising Home,” The Mercedian, 11 August 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed April 12, 2011). 10 Noguchi, “Pineknot Portrait: Good Luck,” Fresno Grapevine, 5 August 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed January 28, 2011). 11 Turner, The Frontier, 5; Noguchi, “Pineknot Portrait: Good Luck.” 27

continued forced relocation as an adventure, one designed to incorporate the internees into American historical legacy as twentieth-century pioneers.12 In order to get a better idea of the internees’ new homes, the centers sent advance crews to finish building the camps, scout the location, and send back reports of what the internees could expect. These center newspapers published these reports in special segments designed to appease the internees’ apprehension over where the WRA would move them. These reports described the surrounding environments, agricultural conditions, the barracks and layout of the camps, as well as other more basic descriptions needed for the internees to prepare for their move. These reports, in addition to this practical purpose, also served an ideological function. These articles and editorials from the advance reports further articulated this pioneer rhetoric. On September 9, 1942, Noguchi portrayed the advance crews as pioneers, experiencing what the internees would experience when the rest of them move. “The advance crew will encounter numerous shortcomings in opening the center for our arrivals. They are to be commended for volunteering to pave the road.”13 The advance crews, in the opinion of the newspapers, were the original Japanese American pioneers and they left the centers in order to make the road a little easier for the rest of the internees, in order to facilitate an easier process of Americanization through taming the wilderness and “making the desert flower.”14

12 Another editorial by Noguchi illustrated this issue when she wrote the move to the camps “is pioneering work and must be done with courage, sincerity, and hard work,” values which Turner celebrated from the original westward pioneers. By using this rhetoric, Noguchi and the newspapers either consciously or unconsciously compared the Japanese Americans with the westward pioneers. Noguchi, “Responsibility Ahead,” Fresno Grapevine, 26 August 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu /specialcollections (accessed March 23, 2011). 13 Noguchi, “Community Service Vital at Relocation Center,” Fresno Grapevine, 19 September 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollection (accessed March 23, 2011). 14 Japanese Relocation (1944). 28

Thought the editorial staffs may not have fully endorsed this message, they still participated in disseminating this discourse because they published articles supporting the WCCA’s representation of the internee relocation. The Japanese American relocation was not simply a forced move due to military necessity, but rather a situation where the internees could play the role of pioneer, settling in untamed lands, much like Turner’s nineteenth-century explorers.15 The WCCA used this image to convince the Japanese to cooperate with the relocation, placing the internees into the creation of an American identity and allowed them to play another significant role in American history. Through the center newspapers, the WCCA disseminated their message. On September 30, Noguchi, in one of her final editorials for the Grapevine, wrote:

Our relocation is imminent. We know where we are going; we know how we are going to get there; we know, at least to a limited extent, what to expect. We know we are going to start from the bottom and build up; we know we are pioneers in a cavalcade depicting courage, ingenuity, patience, and determination.16 Noguchi emphasized the typically American values of “courage, ingenuity, patience, determination,” values typical of the westward pioneers faced with the unknown land of the savage west, according to Turner.17 The newspapers portrayed the internees as patriotic pioneers. In the camps, and through this rhetoric, the Japanese American, in the words of modern film critics Abé Nornes and Fukushima Yukio, to take “the place of white settlers in this documentary western scenario.”18 Though these articles seemingly supported

15 Ibid., 6:31. 16 Noguchi, “Editorials: Realizing Our Hopes at the Relocation Center,” Fresno Grapevine, 30 September 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollection (accessed April 12, 2011). 17 Turner, The Frontier, 28-32. 18 Abé Mark Nornes and Fukushima Yukio, The Japan/America Film Wars: World War II Propaganda and its Cultural Contexts (Langhorne, PA: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994), 217. 29 this message, one can see the internees’ underlying concern over their new homes. The WCCA designed this pioneer rhetoric to enable ready cooperation, but the editors used these messages to calm their readers’ fears of the unknown land in which they were going to live. The internees had no idea what to expect, and these advance crews were really pioneers scoping the land around camps. The reports and editorials supporting this pioneer rhetoric, on the one hand, disseminated the WCCA’s message and nationalist discourse to control the interned population. On the other hand, these articles also expressed the internees’ anxiety over the issue of not knowing where they were going, how long they would be there, and what they would encounter. These newspapers served a dual function: communicate the WCCA’s rhetoric and convey the internees’ apprehension and hopefully, appease their fears.

“TOO MUCH OF A ‘NIP’ PROGRAM.”1 CULTURAL CONFLICT THROUGH NEWSPAPERS

The center newspapers were not only methods for the WCCA to disseminate their messages, but they also served as a way to illustrate the cultural divide within the internees. In various articles and editorials, the split between the assimilationist attitude and the traditional cultural purists is apparent through reactions to various center events and programs celebrating both American performances and Japanese culture. However, this divide began before the internment with the JACL’s younger members leading the attack on traditional Japanese practices. These attacks continued into the centers and the camps and it is through the newspapers that historians can identify the different factions and the attempts from the editors to bridge this cultural rift. Prior to World War II, JACL members urged their fellow Japanese Americans to ignore the cultural practices and traditions of their parents. The 1930s was an antagonistic period between these two factions, the cultural purists and American assimilationist.2 Primarily, it could be seen as a generational

1 Oski Taniwaki, “Be Better If,” The Mercedian 10 July 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed April 12, 2011). 2 The idea of a generational divide within a minority culture is also apparent in the Los Angeles African American community in the 1920s, particularly the NAACP and W.E.B. DuBois’s production of The Star of Ethiopia, a pageant designed to celebrate African identity. The NAACP’s younger members viewed the older members as “inactive relics who barred the way of younger, more aggressive activists.” The older members viewed the NAACP youth as brash and overly aggressive in their plans and actions. This antagonistic relationship stemmed from differing opinions of how the NAACP should handle the African American experience and issues in Los Angeles during this time, and the production of The Star of Ethiopia presented a stage for this antagonism to come to a head. Doug Flamming, “The Star of Ethiopia and the NAACP: Pageantry, Politics, and the Los Angeles African American Community,” in Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s, edited by Tom Sitton and William Deverell, (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001): 145, 149. This experience reflects the generational divide that the Japanese and Japanese Americans experienced prior to World War II. However, unlike the NAACP approach, the JACL wanted to assimilate with American culture while the older Japanese immigrants wanted to maintain their Japanese traditions. 31

divide, with the Issei holding onto their cultural traditions and the Nisei attempting to overthrow this adherence to Japanese institutions and celebrating American customs.3 However, there was still some generational overlapping, with instances of Niseis arguing for Japanese traditions and Isseis promoting American practices. Similar to situations with other ethnic communities, the JACL-Japanese conflicts centered on control: who would dominate the discourse and determine the cultural practices of the Japanese Americans. This battle for control carried on into the centers and the camps. Back by various officials, the JACL dominated the cultural practices of the internees and designed the internment culture to adhere to American customs.4 The JACL’s younger members wanted to command the cultural practices of the internees, which meant, for them, celebrating American identity while marginalizing Japanese traditions.5 Some Niseis recall the JACL leadership promoting the assimilationist theory because “if you would take over in American ways of behavior, you would succeed as an American and you would succeed in becoming assimilated and accepted within the American society.”6 Though Nisei dominated the assimilationist faction, there were still a number of Issei who wanted to acculturate themselves with the western identity in order to become fully Americanized. A former Japanese Baptist minister illustrated this when he explained why so many Isseis converted from Buddhism to Christianity. The main reason was that “they associated Christianity with the

3 Kurashige, Lon. “The Problem of Biculturalism: Japanese American Identity and Festival before World War II,” The Journal of American History 86, no. 4 (March, 2000): 1633. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Frank Miyamoto, interview by Stephen Fugita, transcript, Densho Digital Archive, Seattle, WA., digital id, denshovh-mfrank-02-0017 (accessed May 20, 2011). All oral histories from the Densho Digital Archive can be found at http://archive.densho.org/main.aspx

32

west, or Christianity with the dominant society. So they felt that to become Americanized, it’d be to their advantage to become Christian.”7 Even though these converted Isseis were raised Buddhist or Shinto, they became associated with Christianity and the Protestant churches in the centers and camps in order to fully assimilate. The opposite faction, the cultural purists, argued for the continuation of Japanese traditions. These purists argued for the internees to maintain the Japanese traditional practices, such as Buddhist-originated ceremonies and dances, songs, and performances. One internee recalled his father, an Issei, urging his son to remember his Japanese identity, claiming “you should always think you’re Japanese, don’t envy somebody.”8 The Isseis and the Nisei cultural purists urged their fellow internees to honor their Japanese heritage and to celebrate their history. Though dominated by Isseis, some Niseis supported this endeavor, claiming they connected strongly with their bicultural identity as Japanese and American. Tsuguo Ikeda, born in Portland, Oregon in 1924, recalls, “To me it felt comfortable being Japanese, and I also knew I was an American. But it was predominately being Japanese. Then, of course, community, Japanese school, and church are all Japanese, and it felt, a real sense of comfort being Japanese.”9 Ikeda, and other Nisei, identified strongly with the sense of community created by the Japanese cultural practices and institutions and because of this, they did not support the JACL’s stance of cultural assimilation in order to Americanize.

7 Paul Nagano, interview by Stephen Fugita and Becky Fukuda, transcript, Densho Digital Archive, Seattle, WA., digital id, denshovh-npaul-01-0001 (accessed May 21, 2011). 8 Shoichi Kobara, interview by Tom Ikeda, 18 November 2008, transcript, Densho Digital Archive, Seattle, WA, digital id, denshovh-kshoichi-01-0016 (accessed May 20, 2011). 9 Tsuguo “Ike” Ikeda, interview by Alice Ito, 27 September 2000, transcript, Densho Digital Archive, digital id, denshovh-itsuguo-01-0007, (accessed May 20, 2011). 33

These two different approaches, the JACL’s assimilationist approach and the other internees’ cultural purism, created an antagonistic relationship concerning the centers’ celebrations and performances. The JACL argued, with the support of various WCCA official mandates, for limiting Japanese cultural expression, while the cultural purists wanted to maintain at least a balance between both traditions.10 JACL national secretary Mike Masaoka, who lived in Salt Lake City during the internment, became the unofficial spokesman for the JACL assimilationist stance during the beginning of the internment. He “envisioned the concentration camps becoming model American communities,” and supported various efforts to make this the standard practice by ignoring Japanese cultural practices and institutions.11 The JACL wanted the centers and camps to develop the “spirit of Americanism” and the celebration of American identity.12 In order to achieve this, the assimilationist faction advocated the support of American culture through various song and dance performances with patriotic overtones, and the center publications were an ideal method for the JACL to do so. However, the editorial

10 The WCCA issued various mandates restricting events and items in Japanese. The WCCA banned meetings where Japanese would be spoken, some songs that were in Japanese were banned (mostly military marches), and books written in Japanese were banned (only Japanese-American dictionaries and Bibles were allowed). An example of these restrictions appeared in the Mercedian, the newspaper for the Merced Assembly Center. On July 26, the WCCA banned books and magazines in Japanese, but “the Bible and hymn books are an exception to the rule.” “Nihongo Books Taboo,” The Mercedian, 26 June 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed April 7, 2011); On July 10, the Mercedian notified the Center residents that Japanese newspapers were considered contraband, but “the recent restriction placed on all Japanese print does not include the Japanese recorded music being played in the Center.” “Nihongo News Not Allowed,” The Mercedian, 10 July 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed April 7, 2011). 11 Paul Spickard, “The Nisei Assume Power: The Japanese Citizens League, 1941-1942,” Pacific Historical Review 52, no. 2 (May 1983): 165. 12 Ibid. 34

staffs also paid credence to the cultural purist stance by publishing articles endorsing, or supporting, traditional Japanese song and dance performances. The editorial staffs hoped to reach a compromise between American assimilation and the traditional Japanese culture. They began to illustrate the Japanese American bicultural identity through the promotion of programs and the publication of editorials emphasizing the Japanese culture and American identity of the vast majority of the internees. In this way, the Japanese American editors distanced themselves from the JACL’s stance of strictly American culture, and used the newspapers to show how the internees expressed their biculturalism with programs highlighting both Japanese traditions and American culture.13 Fresno Grapevine editor, Noguchi, urged the internees to honor this compromise and to cultivate both their Japanese and American cultures. In his editorial on August 8, Noguchi advocated for the internees to respect both cultural identities because if they neglect one heritage, they run the risk of developing “too one-sided and neglectful of things which matter, allowing our thoughts to become stagnant and our perspective narrow and poor.”14 Noguchi used his column to argue for a compromise between the two views. His editorial did not emphasize one culture over the other, illustrating this editorial belief in the importance of both the Japanese and American culture for the internees.15

13 According to Rutledge Dennis, biculturalism is a problematic idea because he argued that everyone is born a monoculturalist, or a single cultural being. With Dennis’ theory, children in a bicultural situation According to Dennis, children in a bicultural situation will emphasize only one part of their heritage rather than both. In the case of the Japanese American internees, the Nisei developed their American heritage over their Japanese culture. However, this idea of monoculturalism is challenging because, once in the camps, the internees represented their Japanese heritage through performances of traditional Japanese dances, songs, and through their participation in Judo and Sumo. Rutledge M. Dennis, ed. Biculturalism, Self Identity, and Societal Transformation. (Bingley, UK: Emerald JAI, 2008), 3. 14 Noguchi, “Cultural Cultivation Vital to our Physical Well-Being,” Fresno Grapevine, 8 August 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed April 3, 2011). 15 Ibid. 35

Noguchi’s editorial, and others, exemplifies the editorial staff’s conciliatory approach. However, there was still an antagonistic relationship between the two sides within the various centers, which is apparent through the types of editorials and reactions to the center performances of traditional Japanese dances and songs. These articles highlight the internal strife and the struggle for dominance between the assimilationists who argued for exclusively American practices and the cultural purists who demanded for traditional Japanese performances.

“Tolerating the Other Side”: Cultural Conflict through Song and Dance Various center functions featured performances of traditional Japanese dances in order to pacify the Issei and the cultural purists. On July 29, Noguchi’s column, “Pineknot Portrait,” included Issei comments and generally favorable critiques, claiming, “they were especially pleased with the Japanese numbers.”16 One such number performed was the traditional Japanese folk dance, Urashima Tarō, and to a “nostalgic critic” like Noguchi, it was pleasing to experience traditional Japanese dances.17 In the same column, Noguchi also acknowledged the presence of more traditional American songs, sung by the Fresno Assembly Center Quartet. This performance, and the talent show on August 5, illustrates the uneasy balance the editorial staffs had to reach in order to give equal attention to both Japanese traditions and American popular culture to pacify both sides.18

16 Noguchi, “Pineknot Portrait,” Fresno Grapevine, 29 July 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed April 3, 2011). 17 Ibid. Urashima Tarō is the Japanese legend of a fisherman who rescued a turtle and is rewarded with a visit to the Dragon God, Ryūjin. Urashima Tarō (Mount Kisco, NY: Guidance Associates, 1971). 18 On August 5, the Grapevine recapped another program, the “Community Variety Program,” that featured different performances of songs, American marches, and the Center’s symphony orchestra, which played patriotic (American) marching music. In addition to these pieces, the program also included Michiye Nishimura, a Nisei girl, who performed the Matsuzukushi dance, a traditional Japanese dance. 36

In a continuing effort to reach a compromise, the editorial staffs also published articles advertising the creation of traditional Japanese cultural clubs, in order to encourage the Nisei, and the centers’ JACL members, to develop their Japanese heritage. As evidenced by Noguchi’s August 8 editorial, the various center editors wanted to persuade the Nisei to remember their Japanese identity and to use these clubs to foster their Japanese culture. In the Merced assembly center, the Mercedian editor Tsugimo Akaki wrote an article advertising the creation of a traditional Japanese dance club to teach interested internees Japanese dances like the Urashima Tarō and the Bon Odori dances.19 The club creators designed this organization to teach “interpretive, creative, folk and social,” dances in order to reaffirm the internees’ Japanese heritage through dance and song.20 However, this conflict still existed despite the editors’ insistence on cooperation between the assimilationists and cultural purists. The Mercedian editor-in-chief Oski Taniwaki published an editorial illustrating this internal strife.21 Taniwaki interviewed various Merced assembly center internees, and

Variety Show Presented by Center Stars,” Fresno Grapevine, 5 August 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed April 3, 2011). 19 The Odori dance is performed at traditional Buddhist Bon Odori festivals. The Bon Odori festival is the Buddhist Festival for the Deceased. It traces its origins to India, but the Japanese Buddhist tradition stems from the legend that states Nokuren, a disciple of Oshaka-sama, rescued his mother from purgatory, or Gakido meaning world of greed. He is helped by his master, Oshaka-sama, as he instructs Nokuren to give offerings in order to save his mother’s soul. Eventually, Nokuren’s mother is resurrected and on that day, Nokuren creates the “Bon” dance, or the dance of gratified supplication. The Center’s Bon Odori pageant was designed to pay respect to the deceased and serve as offerings for the resurrections of the departed’s souls. On July 14, Akaki publicized the Merced Center’s Odori pageant which included: a presentation of the Bon Odori dance by Center residents, traditional music played over the Center’s loudspeaker, and an informational meeting explaining the origins of this festival and the cultural implications of these performances. In addition to these performances, the Center’s taiko drummers also performed. “‘Bon Odori,’ A Pageant,” The Mercedian, 14 July 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu /specialcollections (accessed April 11, 2011). 20 “Variety Dancing,” The Mercedian, 23 June 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu /specialcollections (accessed April 2, 2011). 21 Taniwaki was born in the Shikoku Island in Japan in 1904. He arrived in the United States in 1910 and lived in Isleton, California until the time of internment. He spoke, wrote, and read both English 37

some Niseis disagreed with recent center talent shows because they were, in their words, “too much of a Nip-program.”22 Because the shows heavily featured Japanese traditional performances such as odoris performed by young Nisei women in kimonos, these Niseis interviewed by Taniwaki were offended. They claimed the talent shows would be better and more entertaining if they limited the amount of time given to traditional Japanese dances and, instead, highlighted more American-based routines, such as tap dances and popular American music from the center’s musical groups.23 In the same editorial, Taniwaki also interviewed Isseis and older Niseis who said, “we should have more of it,” referring to traditional Japanese acts, because they have been “tolerating a lot of English programs.”24 According to Taniwaki, the talent show failed to reach a satisfactory compromise. The inclusion of traditional Japanese dances offended the assimilationist Nisei, and conversely, the Isseis wanted more Japanese traditions because the programs, in their opinion, were overwhelmed with American performances and routines. In this case, the internees did not reach a fair compromise. Younger internees argued, in order for the internees to be American, the centers should celebrate the Niseis’ American identity and their Japanese heritage ignored. For the older internees, though American popular culture was fine for some performances, they still desired more traditionally Japanese performances in order to reach a compromise between the two factions.

and Japanese, and completed one year of college in the United States. Information found on the National Archive and Records Administration: War Relocation Authority records online database located at http://aad.archives.gov/aad/series-description.jsp?s=623&cat=WR26&bc=%2Csl (accessed May 7, 2011). 22 Oski Taniwaki, “Be Better If,” The Mercedian 10 July 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno .edu/specialcollections (accessed April 12, 2011). Nip is short for Nipponese, which refers to Japanese citizens. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 38 “The National Game is the Main Interest.”25 Cultural Harmony through Sport The one aspect of cultural expression that lacked this cultural division was athletic competitions. The center editorial staffs gave equal space to both traditionally Japanese sports such as sumo and judo as well as American sports like baseball and basketball. The editors, much like in the case with cultural dances and songs, wanted to reach an understanding between these two factions in the centers and decided the best way to achieve this compromise was to devote equal attention to both cultural sports. The editors and internees were more successful when it came to compromising over sports. The internees had both Japanese and American sports in the centers, and the editors hoped to negotiate an agreement through their coverage of both of these traditions. One sport seemed to bridge this cultural divide more effectively than all others - baseball. Baseball was very popular in the assembly centers with both Issei and Nisei internees.26 In fact, though baseball was an American sport, the Issei were the majority of baseball spectators in the Fresno assembly center. A sports column writer noted that “one discovers that these non-English speaking people really have quite a knowledge of the finer points of the good old American pastime.”27 The older generation, the Isseis, experience American institutions though the various baseball teams in the centers. As this column illustrated, “as most of the recreational activities have been

25 Sam N., “Saturday P.M.,” Fresno Grapevine, 22 August 1942, http://ecollections.lib. csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed April 9, 2011). 26 There have been a number of monographs written about baseball in the camps, but the most informative is Kerry Yo Nakagawa, Through a Diamond: 100 Years of Japanese American Baseball (San Francisco: Rudi Publishing, 2001). Nakagawa’s monograph includes a discussion on the baseball games within the centers and camps as part of a larger study on how baseball served as a method for the Japanese to rebuild their dislocated communities. 27 Sam N., “Saturday P.M.,” Fresno Grapevine, 22 August 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno. edu/specialcollections (accessed April 9, 2011). 39

designed primarily for the younger generation, the national game is the main interest for our older folks.”28 In addition to the fair amount of attention given to the baseball games, the sports editors in the various centers also acknowledged the popularity of the internee-created judo and sumo clubs.29 A number of different centers published articles and editorials illustrating the cross-generational appeal of these Japanese sports. May Moriguchi, reporter for the Tulare News, noticed a number of girls joining judo clubs, so the appeal of the traditional Japanese sport crossed gender lines as well.30 Over fifty young Nisei signed up for a judo course in the Fresno assembly center.31 In the Merced assembly center, well over 1000 internees, Nisei and Issei alike, watched a sumo tournament in July.32 In the inaugural match for the Pinedale Assembly Center Sumo Club, over 300 spectators came out to watch

28 Ibid. 29 Examples of these articles: “Sumo Begins,” The Tulare News, 1 July 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed April 10, 2011); “Judo Today,” Fresno Grapevine, 4 July 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed April 10, 2011). The U.S. Army’s Final Report states, “Sumo squads were divided into East and West, as in old Japanese custom. The referee appeared in gala costume to add to the ceremonial atmosphere.” United States Army, Final Report, 210. For more information on the connection of Sumo and the traditional Japanese religion, Shinto, see: Richard Light and Louise Kinnaird, “Appeasing the Gods: Shinto, Sumo, and ‘True’ Japanese Spirit,” in With God on Their Side: Sport in the Service of Religion, eds. Tara Magdalinski and Timothy J.L. Chandler, (New York: Routledge, 2002):139-159. For more on the importance of Judo within Japanese culture, see: Inoue Shun, “The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kanō Jigorō and Kōdōkan Judo,” in Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan, ed. Stephen Vlastos, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998): 163-173. 30 May Moriguchi, “Sportette by May,” Tulare News, 4 July 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed May 19, 2011). 31 “M. Noguchi Teaches 50 Pupils Art of Judo,“ Fresno Grapevine, 4 July 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed May 19, 2011). 32 “East Dumps West,” The Mercedian, 24-25 July 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed May 19, 2011). 40

Nisei sumo wrestlers hold the club’s first match and to spread the word to get more members.33 The internees and the editorial staffs compromised on this issue of cultural expression through sports and emphasized both traditionally Japanese and American sports. Unlike the case with the centers’ songs and dances, no sports editorials contained interviews with Niseis arguing over whether or bit there were too many “Nip” sports or Isseis claiming offense at the preponderance of American sports. Rather, these two factions, the assimilationists and the cultural purists, participated in both cultural practices readily, and the center publications illustrated this fact. The lack of cultural conflict in sports stemmed from the way Nisei and Issei viewed sports prior to internment. While the traditional songs and dances had strong Japanese religious and societal connections, judo and sumo’s religious implications dissolved over time after its introduction to America.34 Originally, the Issei used these traditional sports to impart Japanese cultural norms and values to the young Nisei who were not exposed to them through Japanese Language Schools or through other Japanese institutions.35 The Niseis, however, viewed sports as a pastime; they did not hold the same ceremonial values the Isseis argued they did.36 However, despite this transformation, sports still represented a sort of

33 “Sumo Pit Set for Practice,” Pinedale Logger, 27 June 1942, http://ecollections.lib.csufresno.edu/specialcollections (accessed May 19, 2011). 34 Brian Niiya, ed., More Than a Game: Sport in the Japanese American Community (Los Angeles: Japanese American National Museum, 2000), 78. 35 Ibid., 22-23. 36 Ibid., 88. 41

compromise, a way that the Issei and Nisei could both encourage American identity as well as preserve the relationship with the Japanese culture.37 In the centers, sports represented a method to maintain normalcy though the Japanese Americans were interned. Baseball played a large role in the creation of normalcy because this sport represented how life was like before internment and allowed the internees to create an optimistic view of life – how it was and how it could be again after the U.S. Army released them.38 For all internees, sports, but especially baseball, maintained a consistent link from the pre-war Japanese American community to the internment centers and relocation camps.39 The Isseis had already been introduced to baseball, with profession tours from American baseball teams in Japan as early as the 1890s. When the Isseis came to the U.S., they quickly set up baseball leagues in their own communities, which established this strong connection with the American national pastime, a connection they maintained in the centers and camps.40 For the Niseis, as well as the WCCA and WRA administration, judo and sumo were simply a way to alleviate boredom, rather than impart cultural norms. In fact, camp Nisei taught U.S. military personnel judo, mainly because it was a form of unarmed, nonlethal combat, perfect for military training purposes.41 Because of these reasons – continuity with pre-internment life, sanitized versions of the sports – athletics did not engender as much cultural strife than more traditional Japanese dances and songs.

37 Ibid., 16-17. 38 Nakagawa, Through a Diamond, 76, 78. 39 Niiya, More Than a Game, 27. 40 Ibid., 21. 41 Roy Murakami, interview by Richard Potashin, 8 January 2009, transcript, Densho Digital Archive, Seattle, WA., digital id denshovh-mroy_3-01-0041 (accessed May 30, 2011). ILLUSTRATIONS OF CONFLICT THROUGH NEWSPAPERS: CONCLUSION

Newspapers served a number of functions in the centers. They spread information, rules, and regulations. And they fostered community development. In addition to these objectives, the newspapers also operated as WCCA tools to disseminate nationalistic discourse and pioneer rhetoric. As the WCCA Final Report states, the center administrations controlled the vast majority of the newspapers’ publication process. They selected the editorial staffs, paid for the publication costs, and had final approval for the published articles.1 Because of this all-encompassing oversight, the WCCA found the newspapers ideal tools to circulate discourse designed to control the internees. The WCCA used the newspapers to disseminate the image of the internment as a necessary sacrifice for loyal Japanese American citizens. Through their cooperation, the internees could prove their loyalty. The newspaper editorial staffs, chosen for their education, experience, and, for the most part, the lack of major ties to Japan, published articles and editorials that promoted this rhetoric. According to the WCCA and the JACL, if the internees viewed their internment as a crucial sacrifice for the defense of the country, along the lines of war bonds and rations the rest of the country experienced, the Japanese would be less likely to resist their internment. Another prevalent message was one of pioneer adventure. Much like Turner argued in 1893, the newspapers portrayed the move to the interior as an adventure, one in which the internees could create a stronger American identity. Turner argued that by moving west, the nineteenth-century pioneers established

1 United States Army, Western Defense Command and Fourth Army, Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943), 213. 43

American culture, founded on the ideals of democracy and individualism. In the twentieth-century, the newspapers proposed for the internees to fill this role in the harsh and unknown lands surrounding the camps. By classifying the Japanese Americans as pioneers, much like Turner’s pioneers, the internees were no longer a displaced population; rather, they placed the internees directly in the recreation and reenactment of American history, as pioneers designed to Americanize the marginalized Japanese and Japanese Americans. Newspapers also highlighted the internees’ conflicting opinions, particularly in regards to cultural dominance. The centers were a place of internal division when it came to which culture the internees celebrated and practiced. One main faction within the centers was the assimilationists, primarily younger Niseis and dominated by JACL members, who argued for complete disregard for traditional Japanese culture. On the opposite side, the cultural purists, mostly Issei, urged for a resurgence of traditional Japanese customs. The newspapers illustrate this generational divide through editorials and articles attempting a neutral balance towards these two approaches. The only place where the internees achieved this neutrality was on the sports fields. Here the Issei and the Nisei remembered and participated in both American sports, especially baseball, and traditional Japanese sports, such as sumo and judo. Center publications also show the undercurrent of conflict that existed in the centers; the conflict between WCCA rhetoric and editors who did not fully accept these messages, and inner conflict between different generations regarding cultural dominance. By illuminating these conflicts, the newspapers illustrate the diversity of hardship the internment presented. Not only did the internees have to deal with their forced relocation away from their homes, friends, businesses, losing millions in the process, but they also dealt the unease associated with not 44 knowing what would happen, and internal strife over what identity should be preserved. These newspapers reveal the complexities of the internment on both an individual and public level. This closer look at the newspapers illustrate that the centers themselves are an important aspect of this historiography and that the internees had to deal with a number of conflicting forces that dictated how their interned lives would turn out. Center newspapers reflect this intricacy of the internment and illustrate the effects of the internment from the start of the process to the internees’ release. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY

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List of Department of Justice Detention Centers 1 Location Total Dates Notes Pop. operated Crystal City, Texas ~ 4,000 1942-1947 Also included German and Italian aliens, arriving December 1942 Kenedy, Texas ~ 2,000 1942-1946 After July 1945, housed Japanese POWs Kooskia, Idaho ~ 256 1943-1945 Included South American Japanese Fort Lincoln, North Dakota ~ 700 1939-1947 First held Italian and German POWs; February 1945, first Japanese Americans Fort Missoula, Montana ~ 3000 1941-1944 Included over 1,200 Italians Fort Stanton, New Mexico ~ 58 1939-1945 A separate camp from the detention (Japanese Segregation Camp center for German POWs #1) Santa Fe, New Mexico ~2,100 1942-1946 After 1945, agitators from other camps held here Segoville, Texas ~ 100 1942-1945 Originally held female Japanese American teachers, but expanded for Latin American Japanese families.

1 Information found at J. Burton, M. Farrell, F. Lord, and R. Lord, “Department fo Justice and U.S. Army Facilities,” located at http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/anthropology74 /ce17j.htm (accessed June 14, 2011). APPENDIX B: LIST OF ASSEMBLY CENTERS 54

List of Assembly Centers1

Center name Max Pop. Total Pop. Dates (All 1942)

Puyallup Assembly Center 7,390 7,628 May 29 – September 12

Portland Assembly Center 3,676 4,290 May 2 – September 10

Marysville Assembly Center 2,451 2,465 May 8 – June 29

Sacramento Assembly Center 4,739 4,770 May 6 – June 26

Tanforan Assembly Center 7,816 8,033 April 28 – October 13

Stockton Assembly Center 4,271 4,390 May 10 – October 17

Turlock Assembly Center 3,661 3,699 April 30 – August 12

Salinas Assembly Center 3,586 3,608 April 27 – July 4

Merced Assembly Center 4,508 4,669 May 6 – September 15

Pinedale Assembly Center 4,792 4,823 May 7 – June 23

Fresno Assembly Center 5,120 5,344 May 6 – October 30

Tulare Assembly Center 4,978 5,061 April 30 – September 4

Santa Anita Assembly Center 18,719 19,348 May 7 – October 27

Pomona Assembly Center 5,434 5,514 May 7 – August 24

Mayer Assembly Center 245 245 May 7 – June 2

1 Information found in Hosokawa, Nisei and Burton et. al., Confinement and Ethnicity, various pages. California State University, Fresno

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Tiffany Anne Polfer Type full name as it appears on submission

June 16, 2011

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