Legacy of Injustice Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the ]apanese American Internment CRITICAL ISSUES IN SOCIAL JUSTICE Published in association with the International Center for Social lustice Research, Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. Series Melvin J. Lerner and RHH Vermunt Editors: Washington University University of Leiden St. Louis, Missouri Leiden, The Netherlands Recent volumes in this series JUSTICE Views from the Social Sciences Edited by Ronald L. Cohen JUSTICE IN SOCIAL RELATIONS Edited by Hans-Werner Bierhoff, Ronald L. Cohen, and Jerald Greenberg LEGACY OF INJUSTICE Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment Donna K. Nagata NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE STUDY OF JUSTICE, LAW, AND SOCIAL CONTROL Prepared by the School of Justice Studies Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona SCHOOL DESEGREGATION RESEARCH New Directions in Situational Analysis Edited by Jeffrey Prager, Douglas Longshore, and Melvin Seeman SOCIAL JUSTICE IN HUMAN RELATIONS Volume 1: Societal and Psychological Origins of Justice Edited by Riel Vermunt and Herman Steensma Volume 2: Society and Psychological Consequences of Justice and Injustice Edited by Herman Steensma and Riel Vermunt THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF PROCEDURAL JUSTICE E. Allan Lind and Tom R. Tyler A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual shipment. For further information please contact the publisher. Legacy of Injustice Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the ]apanese American Internment Donna K. N agata University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan Springer Science+Business Media, LLC Llbrary of Congress Cataloglng-In-Publlcatlon Data Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of lnjustlee : explorlng the eross-generatlonal l~paet of the Japanese-Aoerlean lnternoent / Donna K. Nagata. p. em. -- (Crltleal Issues In soelal justlee) 1neludes blbllographleal referenees and Index. 1. Japanese Amerleans--Evaeuatlon and reloeatlon, 1942-1945. 2. Clvl1 rlghts--Unlted States. 3. World War, 1939-1945--1nfluenee. I. Tltle. 11. Serles. D7S9.8.ASN33 1993 973'.0495S--dc20 93-3927 C1P ISBN 978-1-4899-1120-9 ISBN 978-1-4899-1118-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-1118-6 © 1993 Springer Science+Business Media New York Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1993. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1993 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher. Für my parents Preface At the age of 6, I discovered a jar of brightly colored shells under my grandmother's kitchen sink. When I inquired where they had come from, she did not answer. Instead, she told me in broken English, "Ask your mother." My mother's response to the same question was, "Oh, I made them in camp." "Was it fun?" I asked enthusiastically. "Not really," she replied. Her answer puzzled me. The shells were beautiful, and camp, as far as I knew, was a fun place where children roasted marshmallows and sang songs around the fire. Yet my mother's reaction did not seem happy. I was perplexed by this brief exchange, but I also sensed I should not ask more questions. As time went by, "camp" remained a vague, cryptic reference to some time in the past, the past of my parents, their friends, my grand­ parents, and my relatives. We never directly discussed it. It was not until high school that I began to understand the significance of the word, that camp referred to a World War II American concentration camp, not a summer camp. Much later I learned that the silence surrounding discus­ sions about this traumatic period of my parents' lives was a phenomenon characteristic not only of my family but also of most other Japanese American families after the war. "It's like a secret or maybe more like a skeleton in the closet-like a relative in the family who's retarded or alcoholic," said a woman whose mother was also in a camp. "Everyone tiptoes around it, discussing it only when someone else brings it up, like a family scandal. I'm aware of the shame of it, but it's really a paradox. It wasn't anything she did to be ashamed of. There were things done to her, like a rape victim!" In fact, her mother and my parents-along with more than 110,000 Japanese Americans-were moved from their hornes to concentration camps located in desolate areas of the United States. Forced to sell their belongings and evacuate, they took only what they could carry and wore vii viii Preface impersonal numbered tags for identification. Most ]apanese Americans were forced to move twice-first to assembly centers at horsetracks and fairgrounds, where many lived in animal stalls; and later to the barren, hastily constructed camps themselves. Barbed wire and armed guard towers surrounded the camps despite the fact that approximately two­ thirds of those incarcerated were D.S. citizens. More than 90% of the ]apanese American population on the D.S. mainland lived in confine­ ment, for up to 4 years, without the right to a trial or individual review. Although the American government claimed that the action was neces­ sary to prevent espionage by ]apanese Americans in this country, it would eventually be revealed that there was no evidence to support the military necessity for such drastic measures (Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians [CWRIC] (1982). Ironically, at the same time that ]apanese Americans were living in concentration camps and considered hazardous to national security, 23,000 additional ]apanese Americans (including the relatives of those in camps) served in the D.S. military during World War 11, protecting the American ideals of equality, justice, and democracy (Daniels, 1988). These were American-born second-generation Japanese American (Nisei) men who enlisted directly from the camps and from Hawaii in an effort to prove their loyalty to the Dnited States. The service record of the Nisei was exemplary. The all-Japanese American 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team were among the war's most decorated units, and the work of Nisei in military intelligence contributed signifi­ cantly to the American war effort. In 1980, nearly 40 years after the war, the D.S. government seriously reviewed the facts and circumstances surrounding the internment and recommended redress for the injustices suffered by the Japanese Ameri­ cans during the war. At that time, an act of Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. The commission conducted hearings in cities across the Dnited States, receiving testimony from more than 750 witnesses including former interne es , government officials, and historians. Based on these testi­ manies and volurnes of government documents, it concluded that "there was no justification in military necessity for the exclusion" and, ac cord­ ingly, "there was no basis for the detention" (CWRIC, 1982, p. 10). The commission summarized its findings as follows: The broad historical causes which shaped these decisions were race preju­ dice, hysteria and a failure of politicalleadership. Widespread ignorance of Japanese Americans contributed to a policy conceived in haste and executed in an atmosphere of fear and anger at Japan. A grave injustice was done to American citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry. (CWRIC, 1982, p. 18) Preface ix While historians are now able to develop a retrospective accounting for the causes of the internment, it is more difficult to document the long-term effects of that injustice. The writings that do exist describe the social and psychological suffering created by the internment and forced evacuation (e.g., Mass, 1986; Morishima, 1973). Although they had done nothing wrong, many Nisei felt ashamed and humiliated by what hap­ pened to them, and some even blamed themselves for not being Ameri­ can enough. Today the aftereffects from the internment elude casual inspection. Educationally and economically, both those ]apanese Americans who were interned and their offspring seem outwardly successful and un­ affected by their experiences of racism; they have accomplished much. Discussion of what happened has been conspicuously absent from classroom history books, and the vast majority of Americans know little, if anything, about the internment. Only through efforts leading to the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which apologized for wrongful imprisonment and authorized the payment of $20,000 redress to each surviving internee, has the silence begun to break. Most adult children of the internees, third-generation ]apanese Americans (Sansei), were born after the war and did not experience the internment. Although they were born and raised in the United States like their Nisei parents, these Sansei-who are now primarily in their 30s and 40s-have experienced significantly less overt racism than their parents. Yet recognizing the great injustice that took place, they carry with them the legacy of their parents' internment. Time has not severed the psychological ties to events that preceded them, nor has the fact that their parents will not openly discuss the internment. On the contrary, the vast majority of Sansei feel that the incarceration has affected their lives in significant ways, and the re cent ]apanese American redress movement was "led largely by younger ]apanese Americans whose parents and grandparents still bore the psychological scars of intern­ ment" (Irons, 1983, p. 348). What is the nature of this legacy? How is the impact of one genera­ tion's historie injustice passed on to the next generation? And what long­ term effects has the internment had for the offspring of those who were incarcerated? These are the questions addressed in this book through data collected for the Sansei Research Project.