The Japanese Internment and World War II: What Happened and Why?

While the Japanese internment today is viewed as one of the most embarrassing mistakes the United States has made, it certainly was not always viewed that way. The Japanese internment, which began with Executive Order 9066, basically called for the government to round up Japanese people and put them in "camps" with armed guards until the end of World War II. While public support for this internment was high, looking back on it, there seems to have been no real reason for their imprisonment. The Japanese Americans were never convicted of any crime or proven to have any involvement in spying for Japan.

The internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II was part of a larger movement of anti-oriental sentiment as evidenced in a law like the Chinese Exclusion Act in the late 1800s. Chinese were the first group specifically excluded from this country, and the Japanese were the second group. The Japanese were viewed as "yellow peril" and were prevented from becoming citizens. In 1900 the San Francisco mayor James Duval Phelan spoke out publicly against the Japanese. He said, "The Japanese are starting the same tide of immigration which we thought we had checked twenty years ago...Personally we have nothing against the Japanese, but as they will not assimilate with us and their social life is different from ours, let them keep a respectful distance" (Yancey 15). By 1905, being greatly influenced by all the sensationalism in the newspapers, Western legislators made statements like "Japanese laborers, by reason of race habits, mode of living, disposition and general characteristics, are undesirable...They contribute nothing to the growth of the state. They add nothing to its wealth, and they are a blight on the prosperity of it, and a great and impeding danger to its welfare" (Daniels 11). People like Takao Ozawa fought the courts to become citizens, and the end result was a very convoluted one. Basically, loyalty to one's country did not matter. Even skin color did not matter; only one's ethnic group mattered. Japanese were unable to become U.S. citizens. They were looked down upon because people thought they were taking jobs and opening businesses that would take away jobs from Americans.

Directly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, Japanese and Japanese Americans in the United States were being rounded up and classified as "enemy aliens." These "dangerous" people were transported immediately to some camps, and they were not all Japanese. These people were teachers, businessmen, religious leaders, journalists, and other professional people. "By February 16, 1942, the Justice Department camps held 2, 192 Japanese, 1, 393 Germans and 264 Italian 'enemy aliens" (Murray 3). They were removed from general society and then other restrictions were placed on the Japanese. For example, they could only travel within a range otherwise they had to visit a central location to obtain a pass. They had a curfew. They were required to carry identification at all times. They had to get rid of all electronic devices, like cameras, radio transmitters or weapons. These items were termed "contraband" and they were items that the government thought they might use to communicate with ships offshore. Basically, the government was keeping really close tabs on them. Japanese banks were closed and accounts were frozen. At this point, many newspapers began running articles to coerce people into more discrimination. In fact, Japanese people had to ward off violent attacks in some cases.

When Roosevelt issued Executive 9066, even more people were taken from their homes. Of the 120,000 people removed from their homes, more than two-thirds were U.S. citizens. "Most scholars now agree that their decision was not simply the product of wartime hysteria but reflected a long history of anti-Japanese hostility fueled by economic competition and racial stereotypes" (Murray 5). This began with exclusion acts and Alien Land acts. In California, the Japanese were even excluded from the public schools. Surely, the Japanese were easier to spot than Italians or Germans, but there was also much less prejudice toward these other two groups, which is a big reason why they were not rounded up in large numbers and interned. Besides, excluding the Germans and Italians would have meant interning the parents and/or relatives of national icons, like Joe DiMaggio. Interning over 1 million people would not be practical or politically acceptable, especially when many Germans came here fleeing Hitler and concentration camps. Even though the Germans did attack the West Coast submarines, they were not interned. There were some restrictions placed on them, but they were not interned the way the Japanese were. However on the East Coast, there was no proof that Japanese were communicating with offshore submarines and yet people were convinced that the Japanese were disloyal. On February 14, 1942, General DeWitt sent a memo to the Secretary of War to suggest the internment of all Japanese. "The Japanese race is an enemy race" and that their "racial affinities were not severed by migration" (DeWitt). He went so far as to say that the "very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date" was a "disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken" (DeWitt). In the end, public opinion supported the evacuation of Japanese Americans although 9066 was worded specifically to avoid the idea of interning American citizens. Roosevelt ended up taking the advice of DeWitt and ignoring his own intelligence that basically stated that the Japanese were no more likely to be disloyal than any other group. Though this act was sold to the public based on the idea that the United States feared that the Japanese in the United States would become spies for the Japanese during the war, two-thirds of the internees were American citizens and over half of those were children. In the end, Japanese and Japanese Americans along the West Coast were interned for the duration of World War II. People were so paranoid about the Japanese on the West Coast that no explanations were needed as to why other groups were not interned or even why Japanese were not interned in Hawaii where there were large concentrations of them. Nobody really cared as long as they were being interned on the West Coast.

The way that the process went is that first all Japanese and Japanese Americans were taken to "assembly centers" after being given only a week to register their families. They were then divided up and taken to relocation camps from there. These camps included: Tule Lake, CA; Manzanar, CA; Minidoka, ID; Heart Mountain, WY; Topaz, Utah; Poston, AZ; Gila River, AZ; Granada, CO; Jerome, AK, and Rowher, AK. Executive Order 9066 told them to bring only what they could carry including all their own tableware and sheets. They could bring no family pets. They could store property at their own risk, which basically meant that they had to sell or otherwise get rid of everything they had. In some cases, they had to do all of this in less than 24 hours. Selling fast meant that they sold their possessions at a fraction of their value. They sold their homes, their businesses, their restaurants for only pennies on the dollar in some cases. The economic impact of this was great. They did not know where they were going or for how long, which made it all the more difficult to pack or get rid of belongings. Even though reserve banks were set up in places like San Francisco to be custodians for things like houses and cars, most internees did not know how much money they would need. Therefore, the tendency was to liquidate everything. This created a true buyer's market and internees were ripped off time and again. In the words of one internee, "People who were like vultures swooped down on us, going through our belongings offering us a fraction of their value. When we complained to them of the low price they would respond by saying 'you can't take it with you so take it or leave it'" (Yancey 39). It was difficult being suspected of disloyalty to one's country, but they did not fight back. They were determined to prove their loyalty to their country, so they went to the camps willingly.

While they were not anything close to the concentration camps of Germany, the conditions of the internment camps was poor overall. The Japanese people were not hurt or tortured, but they were held against their will in less than wonderful conditions. Most of them were horse barns at racetracks or fairgrounds. They didn't smell good. Eventually they were sent to camps run by the WPA, and these camps were run by military police and surrounded by barbed wire. The camps were located on swamp-like or desert-like land where it either got really hot or really cold. The Japanese Americans were unused to either. Their medical care was existent but inadequate.

Many of these internment camps were actually placed on Indian reservations. The Native Americans were never compensated for the use of their land. After the war, the government bulldozed many of the buildings they had built to house the Japanese, so the Native Americans did not even get to keep the improvements that had been made upon their land.

They were assigned to blocks, which were barracks broken up with moveable partition walls or, in some cases bed sheets. "The average room for a family of six measured twenty by twenty-five feet" (Yang 12). Privacy was almost unheard of because either the rooms were divided by a sheet or the dividers did not reach all the way to the ceiling. The bathrooms also had no stalls. They just consisted of large rooms of sinks and toilets and showers. Internees created stalls even out of cardboard because they were simply appalled by the lack of basic privacy. There were frequent plumbing issues due to overuse. One internee summed up his living experience as:

The kitchens are not up to Army standards of cleanliness...The dishes look bad...gray and cracked...Dishwashing was not very satisfactory due to an insufficiency of hot water...Soup plates being used instead of plates, which means that the food all runs together and looks untidy and unappetizing" (Rogers 89).

They had to make their own furniture if they wanted some. They were given only a bed with no mattress or blankets. The food at the mess halls was generally unappetizing and not compatible at all with their cultural ways. For example, they might eat rice with fruit on top, which is something the internees would never eat. Rice was not a dessert for them. Since many of the camps were located in the desert, the food was always mixed with sand because of all the blowing sand.

Marielle Tsukamoto describes a typical day for her in the camp in an interview.

"A typical day in an internment camp such as Jerome would begin with families getting up. Remember we did not have any water in our rooms. We just had one light bulb and a small stove. We had to get dressed and go to the middle of the block to use the toilet, wash up and take showers. Usually there were people waiting in lines. After you brushed your teeth and cleaned up, you had to go to a separate building for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They had two sessions. If you were late or forgot your ticket, you could not eat. We stood in line for the food, which was served on metal trays, and we sat at long wooden tables with benches. There really wasn't much to do the rest of the time. My dad ran the recreation center for our block. Mother organized and coordinated YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association) and USO activities. The USO was organized to welcome Nisei soldiers who were visiting their families. At night we would stay in our room. We didn't have TV in those days. And we did not have a radio" (Tsukamoto).

One of the ideas Tsukamoto highlights is that people had to wait in line for everything-to eat, to use the bathroom, etc. Life was basically one monotony after another although internees did all kinds of things to improve their environments from beginning educational courses to starting baseball leagues to planting gardens. They actually built baseball fields themselves and formed leagues to play baseball. They did everything they could to make their lives seem as normal as possible. They basically formed little cities inside the walls of these camps that functioned much like neighborhoods on the outside with their own beauty shops, produce stores, newspaper, etc.

Many of the ways of the camp really undermined the traditional way that Japanese families operated. For example, parents had jobs so kids had lots of unsupervised time. Children could eat meals with other children rather than with parents. The whole set up of mess halls meant that lots of people ate together rather than eating alone with families. Because paying jobs were only given to Nisei, which means American citizens, many young adults began to take on the role of breadwinner for their families. Their parents could not get jobs and were thus kind of ousted from their positions of authorities in their families. This was an extremely hard transition and made many feel unneeded in their own families.

Many people were insulted by camp security and rules. For example, they were frisked when they entered. Random searches were performed anytime of the day or night. People still had curfews, and even bathroom visits after 9 p.m. were forbidden. Always in sight were armed guards. Internees were told that the guards were there for the protection of the internees, but they sure did not behave that way.

All internees were asked to answer two questions. Question #27 asked:

"Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?" and Question #28 asked: "Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization?" These people were not allowed to become U.S. citizens, which means that if they answered yes to question 28, they also renounced their citizenship to Japan. They were citizens of nowhere. Those who answered no to both questions were segregated from their families and moved to Tule Lake. At Tule Lake, there were eventually some big riots. The government also drafted Japanese Americans out of the internment camps and into the army. Incredibly, by 1944, over 1,500 Japanese Americans from the camps volunteered to fight for the United States in World War II. In fact, an all Japanese unit had great success. "For its size and length of service, the 100th Infantry Battalion / 442nd Regimental Combat Team became the most highly decorated unit in U.S. history" (Exploring). They had achieved seven Presidential Distinguished Unit Citations, a Congressional Medal of Honor, 47 Distinguished Service Crosses, 350 Silver Stars, 810 Bronze Stars, and more than 3,600 Purple Hearts. They had proved their loyalty to the United States even though they were drafted from the prison camps themselves.

Finally on December 17, 1944, the Japanese interment ended. However, it wasn't until March 20, 1946 that the last of the internment camps closed. This was Tule Lake. Some internees were hopeful that they could reconnect with outside life in the same way they had before the war. Others were fearful that they were too old to start all over again. Others yet were bitter and disillusioned about the whole subject of internment and tired of being pushed around by the United States government. Delegates from all the internment camps came together and made suggestions for their re-integration into society. These recommendations included low interest loans, civil service jobs, re-instatement of business licenses, and the government trying to buy the property back. Unfortunately, the WRA ignored almost all of their suggestions. Instead, each family was given $50 (only $25 for individuals) and train fare back to the place from where they had been evacuated. Resettling was even more difficult. Many returned to their homes to find them vandalized. Many others sensing the anti-Japanese sentiment still strong did not return home. They, in turn, settled on the West Coast or in the Midwest. One famous example is Hood River, Oregon. "No Jap" signs were posted here and Japanese people cold not eat in restaurants or buy fuel or groceries. Because they were discrimated against, jobs were hard to find. They had to start over from scratch. Between material goods, land and appreciation values, their monetary loss is in the billions of dollars. The Evacuation Claims Act of 1948 only gave them back less than 10% of all that they lost monetarily. No one person could receive more than $2500. They could not file at all for loss in income, personal inconvenience, hardship, suffering or death.

The emotional impact was just as important. All of the internees were damaged in some way by imprisonment. Since many of them were children, they did not understand what had happened or why. In an interview that Nancy Araki did for the Smithsonian Institute, she stated, "I started kindergarten there and that was very traumatic. It was really difficult, both because I just felt really alone and just having the experience of not knowing where I am, and who I was in relationship to everything else, and there was just some hostility, um within the township. For example, you know, I couldn't get an ice cream cone... and that was, you know, for an adult, that seems, probably doesn't mean too much, but for a little kid, it meant a lot" (Smithsonian).

The camps have made it onto the list of historic registers today and in some cases, one can visit them as museums of our past. Minidoka has been renamed Idaho Centennial Site, and it was designated as a national monument.

It wasn't until 1952 that Japanese were even allowed to become American citizens. In 1948, Congress provided for minimal reparations to be made for citizens who were interned, but it wasn't until 1988 that an official apology was given. This was called the Civil Liberties Act. In this document signed by President Reagan, the injustice of the internment was finally acknowledged and education programs were put in place to educate others of these injustices. Also, in 1988, $20,000 was given to each survivor. Again, this number is minimal in comparison with what the internees lost.

The impact of the Japanese internment was huge for many parties. Many whites in California made large financial gains from the internment of the Japanese. The impact was devastating on the Japanese whether it be emotional or financial. Many eventually did speak out about the betrayal of their country simply because the events of the internment were still having large and lingering impacts on their lives. Redress is important and it certainly came too little and too late for them although some would argue that at least an apology was issued. The United States has never made apologies to African Americans or Native Americans. However, the internment in many ways destroyed and devastated a culture and a generation.

Works Cited

A More Perfect Union. Retrieved March 14, 2009 at http://americanhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/experience/index.html

Daniels, Roger. Concentration Camps, U.S.A.: Japanese Americans and World War II. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972.

DeWitt, J.L. Final Report, Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942. Retrieved March 14, 2009 at http://www.sfmuseum.org/war/dewitt0.html

Exploring the Japanese Internment. Retrieved March 14, 2009 from http://www.asianamericanmedia.org/jainternment/camps/questions.html

Murray, Alice Yang. What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? Retrieved March 14, 2009 at http://books.google.com/books?id=SgWT1sglrL0C&dq=japanese+internment&lr=&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0

The Learning Page. Marielle Tsukamoto: A Firsthand Account of Japanese Internment. Retrieved March 14, 2009 at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/99/fear/interview.html

Yancey, Diane. The Internment of the Japanese. San Diego: Lucent Books, 2001.