Internment
- History Fix Podcast
- 17 hours ago
- 17 min read
Episode 143: How the US Government Forced Japanese Americans Into Its Own Version of Concentration Camps
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It’s February 1942 and you’re a born and raised American citizen living on a farm in California. Born of immigrant parents, you’ve worked hard your entire life to carve out the life they’d dreamed you’d have here in this beautiful country, this land of opportunity. You’re well aware that 2 months ago the Empire of Japan attacked a US naval base called Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. You’ve seen it in the news. You’ve felt the rumblings of fear growing. Your neighbors give you funny looks, shrink away as you pass them on the street. It’s strange because, while you certainly look Japanese, you’re just as American as they are. You’ve never even been to Japan. But your hair, your eyes, your skin, they betray you. On February 19th an executive order is announced: Executive Order 9066. In it, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces that all those deemed a threat will be removed from the western part of the country due to quote “military necessity.” It doesn’t mention Japanese Americans specifically, though. You’re certainly not a threat. You brush it aside and carry on with work on the farm. A little over a month later more direct orders are given. The US Army issues the Civilian Exclusion Order and it’s a lot more specific. Those of Japanese descent living in the western states must prepare for immediate removal. You have one week, one week to settle your belongings, give away your farm, pack your bags, and report to an assembly center. You’ll trade your comfortable bed in the farmhouse you built with your own two hands to sleep on the floor of a horse stall at an old dilapidated racetrack. What would you do? How would you respond? This may sound like the plot of some fictional dystopian drama but for 120,000 Japanese Americans in 1942, this was reality and the perpetrator wasn’t the Galactic Empire, Oceania, Gilead (gill-ee-ud), Lord Voldemort, or even Nazi Germany, it was the United States government. Let’s fix that.
Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and this is History Fix where I tell surprising true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. Last week I covered the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and really the events that led to it, what was happening with Japan that led them to attack the United States. I also talked a lot about the sort of domino effect that that attack started. It prompted the US to declare war on Japan and also to declare war on Germany. The Pearl Harbor attack is what got the US involved in World War II. And the US was a major force in helping to bring that war to an end. I even put out a mini fix episode this past Wednesday over on patreon about the “back door to war” theory that the US knew about the impending Pearl Harbor attack and let it happen in order to have a reason to join the war. Definitely check that out, the patreon link is always in the description. But, in a lot of ways in last week’s episode I really glorified the United States in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack, in their response to it and the aftermath of that. But there’s a whole nother side to it that’s much less glorious. Because, while the US presented as a united front to the world, joining allied forces, the UK and the Soviet Union in the fight for justice, the fight to take down evil regimes, at home, they were actually acting much more like one of those evil regimes than many people realize. Yes, this week we’re talking about the Japanese American internment camps that were used from 1942 until 1946 to forcibly remove and incarcerate innocent, mostly American citizens, based solely on race. This exceedingly shameful act by the US government is not talked about enough. Japanese Americans don’t tend to be very squeaky wheels. But this history is more important right now than it has possibly ever been.
According to Densho.org, a nonprofit organization that seeks to preserve the history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, and a major source for this episode, linked in the description, quote “The story of World War II incarceration, and the decades of racial discrimination and government surveillance against Japanese Americans that preceded it, has never been more relevant. As we grapple with contemporary controversies surrounding immigration, terrorism, and the infringement of civil liberties in the name of public safety, parallels between past and present abound. Understanding this story offers opportunities for difficult, thought-provoking conversation and raises important questions: How does a democracy weigh individual rights against national security? Who is considered a “real” American? Does this change during times of fear? What is our responsibility to citizens and immigrants denied their constitutional rights?” end quote. All questions that are extremely valid right now. So let’s get into the story.
To understand how 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced into what can only really be called concentration camps, 80,000 (that’s two thirds) 80,000 of them full blown American citizens, we have to first trace the roots of Japanese immigration to the United States. This started in 1885 when Japanese laborers began immigrating to the Kingdom of Hawaii to work mostly on sugar plantations. Notice I said Kingdom of Hawaii not State of Hawaii because Hawaii was its own sovereign nation in 1885 and arguably still is. That’s episode 59. Anyway, Japanese laborers began flooding into Hawaii to work on plantations that had mostly been set up by Americans who would eventually conquer the island nation against its will. The Americans in charge of these plantations were cool with all the Japanese immigrants because they needed the cheap labor. Just really using and abusing people on all fronts here. The goal of these Japanese immigrants was not to work on sugar plantations their whole lives though. That was hard, backbreaking work. That’s not the end goal. Many of them worked on plantations just long enough to climb the ladder up to more agreeable forms of work. For some that meant moving to the western United States where they worked on railroads, sawmills, farms, etc. Over the next few decades, a few hundred thousand Japanese immigrants moved to the western United States, at the same time really that European immigrants - Germans, and Italians, and Irish - were flooding in on the east coast.
Predictably, soon after Japanese immigrants arrived, they were subject to extreme discrimination. This became a full blown movement known as the anti-Japanese movement and led to the US banning immigration from Japan in 1908. And not only immigration, they banned travel from Japan as well. I do want to point out that, while the US government did highly restrict the number of immigrants entering the country from Europe starting in the 1920s, it never outright banned immigration or travel from places like Germany, Italy, Ireland, etc. You know, white person countries. I just find that interesting. Anyway, there was a loophole, though. Even after the banning of Japanese immigration, family members of Japanese immigrants already living in the US were allowed in. They were allowed to come join their family. So this led to an interesting phenomenon over the next few decades. The Japanese immigrants who arrived when it was still allowed in the late 1800s and early 1900s were mostly men, right? They came over as laborers. That’s a pretty male dominated profession. What we see after immigration is banned is the importing of what were called picture brides, tens of thousands immigrant women, who were essentially mail order brides for these Japanese American men already living in the United States. So, they’re called picture brides because a matchmaker in Japan would facilitate an exchange of photographs between a woman in Japan and a man in the United States. And, if they agreed to it, they would be married at a ceremony in Japan in which the man, the groom, would obviously be absent. But that was okay according to Japanese marriage laws. He didn’t have to be there for the marriage to take place. Then the guy goes, hey this lady is my wife, because she is, and she gets to immigrate to the US to join him. So immigration continued in this way, mostly of women which led to a generation of Japanese American children being born in the United States. And there are names for these groups. Japanese immigrants who were born in Japan, first generation immigrants, were called issei. If they were born in the United States of immigrant parents, second generation, they were called nisei and then the children of the nisei, the third generation, were called sansei. So with all these picture brides entering the country, we see this second generation nisei emerge. These are full blown American citizens. If you are born in the United States, you are a US citizen, Amendment 14, Section 1, Clause 1 of the US Constitution.
So, by the time Pearl Harbor goes down in 1941, most Japanese Americans are full blown, born and bred, American citizens. As tensions rose between the US and Japan, we start to see unfounded fear and suspicion, specifically targeted at Japanese Americans. According to the National World War II Museum quote “Japanese victories in Guam, Malaya, and the Philippines helped fuel anti-Japanese-American hysteria, as did a January 1942 report claiming that Japanese Americans had given vital information to the Japanese government ahead of the Pearl Harbor attack. Many Pacific Coast citizens worried that local Japanese Americans might help the Japanese military launch attacks in their region. Walter Lippmann, a journalist whose columns were carried by newspapers across the United States, argued that the only reason Japanese Americans had not yet been caught plotting an act of sabotage was that they were waiting to strike when it would be most effective. Another influential columnist, Westbrook Pegler, put it more bluntly: [quote within a quote] ‘The Japanese in California should be under armed guard to the last man and woman right now and to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over.’” end quote. Just for being of Japanese descent. These people have done nothing wrong. Most of them have never been to Japan. But cries for putting them under armed guard are going out regardless.
The idea arises that, maybe they don’t need to be locked up, they just need to be relocated. Just get them off the west coast. But then there’s a problem. Other states don’t want them either. Montana Governor Sam C. Ford responded to the idea of Japanese Americans being relocated to his state quote “Our people cannot tell an American-born Japanese from an alien. When casualty lists start coming in… I fear for the safety of any Japanese in this state,” end quote. So some begin deluding themselves into thinking that actually locking up Japanese Americans, incarcerating them and not just relocating them, is for the protection of the Japanese Americans. To keep them safe. Or, they’re at least using that as an excuse. Although one former Japanese American detainee later pointed out quote “If we were put there for our protection, why were the guns at the gun towers pointed inward, instead of outward?” Great question. Other state leaders didn’t even try to veil their racism as false concern for Japanese Americans. According to Idaho Attorney General Bert Miller quote “We want to keep this a white man’s country. All Japanese [should] be put in concentration camps for the remainder of the war,” end quote. That is a direct quote. Don’t be on the wrong side of history y’all. This Bert Miller guy out here looking a fool now. What, it’s not okay when Nazi Germany does it but you’re somehow the exception? Don’t be a Bert Miller.
At first the government didn’t want to act. This kind of action would require incarcerating Japanese Americans, many of whom were US citizens, without any clear reason. That’s super sketch. Both Attorney General Francis Biddle and Secretary of War Henry Stimson opposed taking action against Japanese Americans. But public demand for action grew, those were newspaper columnists I quoted a minute ago, not military experts or government officials. The media is calling for something to be done, some kind of protective measures against Japanese Americans and eventually the military is too. Biddle and Stimson give in. They advise FDR that removal of Japanese Americans from the western part of the country is necessary which leads to the signing of executive order 9066. This order, to be clear, says nothing about Japanese Americans. It establishes military areas from which anyone can be excluded for any reason. The military can kick anyone out of these areas for any reason. But, the reason is, though it’s not actually stated, the reason is being of Japanese descent. That’s the only reason they need. That's the any reason.
By late March 1942, many Japanese Americans received word from the military that they had one week to set their affairs in order and report to assembly centers from where they would be sent on to what were called “relocation centers.” We tend to call them internment camps today but, relocation center, internment camp, they are essentially concentration camps. One week to set their affairs in order. Many of these people owned property. They had farms with ready-to-harvest produce at the time. They were forced to walk away from it all with no expectation of ever getting any of it back. Most of them didn’t. The assembly centers were usually set up at old fairgrounds or racetracks and the conditions were horrific. One assembly center, which is a very nice sounding name for what it really was, but one assembly center was set up at Santa Anita Park, an old racetrack in Southern California. Entire families were forced to sleep in horse stalls with dirt stalls.
Now, they weren’t kept there long at least. After a few weeks or months they were sent on to one of 10 internment camps set up by the War Relocation Authority mostly in the west although two of them were in Arkansas. These internment camps really weren’t any better. Whole families were packed into army style barracks where they had very little privacy or protection from heat or cold. According to the National World War II Museum quote “Despite these conditions, the incarcerated Japanese Americans did what they could to make the camps feel as much like home as possible. They established newspapers, markets, schools, and even police and fire departments. At the Rohwer War Relocation Center in southeastern Arkansas, Japanese American high school students had their own band, sports teams, clubs, and activities like senior prom and student council. Flipping through the pages of the school’s yearbook, however, the makeshift barracks of wood and tar paper, the guard towers, and the barbed-wire fences visible in the photos are an obvious reminder that the experiences of these students were anything but normal,” end quote.
Surprisingly, the vast majority of Japanese Americans who were forced into these camps were from the continental US. Only around 1,500 people were incarcerated from Hawaii. Now that’s strange for a few reasons. One third of Hawaii’s population at the time was of Japanese descent, around 150,000 people. But only 1,500ish were incarcerated. Also, Hawaii was where the attack by Japan happened, the attack on Pearl Harbor. But, for whatever reason, they aren’t really worried about the Japanese Americans in Hawaii. It’s really only those on the west coast they’re worried about.
After understandable unrest in the internment camps in the fall of 1942, I honestly can’t believe there weren’t full on revolts, but after unrest, the War Relocation Authority that was in charge decided to do this weird little loyalty test thing. Basically they went to each of the Japanese Americans they had forcibly incarcerated and they asked them two questions. Number one, do you reject allegiance to the Japanese emperor and, number two, are you willing to serve in the US military? Which, the second question to me is such a slap in the face. Are you freaking kidding me? You have imprisoned me in a concentration camp for absolutely no reason, based solely on my race, and you’re asking if I’ll serve in your military? What, you want me to help you out now? It’s bananas. Those are the two questions they asked for this loyalty test though. Most people answered yes, yes. Yes I reject allegiance to the Japanese emperor, yes I’ll serve in the US military. About 8,500 people, mostly American born second generation men answered no, no. Not because those answers were accurate, but just because they were genuinely infuriated and insulted that they had even been asked either of them under the circumstances. Understandable. All of those who answered no, no were labeled as disloyal, separated from their families and sent to separate internment camp specifically for troublemakers in Tule Lake, California. But this little loyalty test sort of backfired. They had now separated the loyal Japanese Americans from the disloyal ones. Is there really a need to keep the loyal ones locked up if they’d already proven their loyalty? Why are we continuing to incarcerate loyal US citizens?
In 1943, Japanese Americans were once again allowed to join the military, hence question number two I suppose. And this is just, the level of insulting here is hard to take. They’re like, “give up everything you have, move into this horse stall, you have no rights, we don’t care that you’re a US citizen, you still look Japanese, oh but actually we really need troops right now cause of the whole World War II thing, you can actually leave this concentration camp if you’ll come help us fight the war. We’ll allow it.” And they do you guys, quite a few of them do, bless their hearts. Most joined from Hawaii where they weren’t actually being mass incarcerated but quite a few also came directly from the internment camps. They left their families incarcerated by the very country they went off to fight for. Most of them joined the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team which fought in some of the most dangerous battles of the European front of World War II and became one of the most decorated units in the war. Some of them also joined intelligence units in the Pacific theater as Japanese language specialists because they spoke Japanese, pretty handy eh? Didn’t realize what kind of value you had in that horse stall eh? They translated and interrogated enemy forces which contributed immeasurably to allied success in the war. I just have a really hard time with this. These guys are freaking heros. They are war heroes. And they’re are doing it, they’re risking their lives, to fight for a country that has literally guns trained on their children locked inside of barbed wire fences. That is not an exaggeration. That’s how dystopian this whole thing actually was.
Finally, eventually, government officials start to get weird feelings about what’s been going on. Attorney General Biddle, remember him? He was like “no it’s a terrible idea. Okay, it’s a good idea.” Now he’s all “okay it’s a terrible idea” again. These higher ups start to urge the president to end the relocation program as soon as possible. A lot of this probably had to do with the impressive military service. Also several cases had reached the Supreme Court which, in a series of spectacular fails, upheld the obviously strictly racially based incarceration of Japanese Americans as somehow constitutional. But, pressure is obviously rising. Even after one of those failed supreme court case, Justice Murphy said quote “I join in the opinion of the Court, but I am of the view that detention in Relocation Centers of persons of Japanese ancestry regardless of loyalty is not only unauthorized by Congress or the Executive but is another example of the unconstitutional resort to racism inherent in the entire evacuation program. As stated more fully in my dissenting opinion in Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu v. United States… racial discrimination of this nature bears no reasonable relation to military necessity and is utterly foreign to the ideals and traditions of the American people,” end quote. I love how he’s like “I agree with the court’s decision to incarcerate this innocent man but also it’s utterly foreign to the ideals and traditions of the American people.” Just sayin’. But, opinions are obviously changing. By December 1944 FDR declared the period of quote “military necessity” to be over and Japanese Americans began to be allowed back to the Pacific coast region. This was, of course, a long and drawn out process. That one internment camp for the troublemakers at Tule Lake didn’t officially close until March of 1946.
But, you know, after spending literal years in a concentration camp, it’s not very easy to just jump back into your old life. Many attempted to return to their old home towns but were met with a rude reception. It was clear many of their neighbors did not want them back. A lot of the Little Tokyos they’d built had been taken over by other ethic minority groups. There was a lot of competition for housing and jobs because they had been forced to give all that up. Those returning to rural areas didn’t have their farms anymore. They had no livelihood. Everything had been taken from them. Many had to start over as farm laborers. It’s estimated that camp residents lost a collective $400 million dollars in property during the time they were incarcerated.
But, pretty immediately, after the war ended at least, Americans began to snap out of it, this weird anti-Japanese trance they had been in. They realized pretty quickly just how wrong this whole thing had been. A lot of that had to do with the military heroism of Japanese American troops during the war. Also, another thing though, the recently released Japanese Americans weren’t complaining. They were just going home to literally nothing and being like “oh well.” I don’t know if that’s a cultural difference or what. Like I said, they were not squeaky wheels at all. According to densho.org quote “Japanese Americans were soon being proclaimed a model minority,” end quote. In 1948, just two years after the final internment camp was closed, the government paid some $38 million dollars in reparations although I’ll remind you that the estimate for property value lost sat at $400 million so, like, thanks, I guess? But where’s the rest?
Everything was pretty quiet until the 1960s when some younger Japanese Americans became inspired by the Civil Rights movement to finally speak out about the injustices suffered by their families. This eventually led to the Redress Movement in the 1970s which led to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 signed by President Ronald Reagan. This, finally, 46 years later, acknowledged the injustice of Japanese American internment and apologized for it. It also paid out $20,000 to each person still living who was incarcerated. It’s a nice gesture but I don’t think that even begins to cover years of imprisonment and giving up everything you’d worked to achieve in life. But hey, thanks Ron.
Despite the obvious setbacks and generational trauma suffered by Japanese Americans, they ultimately made a stunning comeback. After attempting to return to their homes in the west only to find nothing for them there, many moved east instead. Since then they’ve graduated from the best schools in the country and excelled in high level professional jobs. They’ve made countless contributions to technology and infrastructure, culture, not to mention farming and agriculture which they completely transformed on the west coast. It’s a testament, I think, to their resilience and their work ethic, to not let injustice hold you back. You can sit and stew. You can throw your hands in the air and give up. You can use oppression, discrimination as an excuse for everything that’s wrong in your life, and it would be warranted, honestly, but would it help? Would it serve you? Or you can get up and succeed anyway. You can succeed despite it all. You can dust yourself off and carry on. Is it easy? No. Is it possible? Yes. Post World War II Japanese Americans proved to us that it’s possible and we owe them something in return. We have to remember this story. We have to remember their plight, the injustices that they suffered. We have to be the squeaky wheels. Densho.org writes quote “Keeping memories of the incarceration alive also gives Japanese Americans the power—and responsibility—to speak out when other groups are unfairly targeted because of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or other identity. Having once been victims of such discriminatory policies, Japanese Americans are keenly aware of that history. This gives their voice special authority in speaking out for others,” end quote. I agree with that. But I don’t think Japanese Americans alone should bear the responsibility. I think everyone who knows this history, who knows what a slippery slope this sort of forced relocation and incarceration based solely on race is, has a responsibility to speak up when they see it happening again. So let me ask you this, honestly, do you see it happening again?
Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. As always, source material for this episode can be found in the show notes. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.
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