Kim Dalton

Mrs. Myers

Comp & Grammar

10 October 1997

An American Atrocity

On March 24, 1942, a decree called Executive Order Number 1 was issued. The decree ordered certain citizens to leave their communities peacefully, sell their belongings, and voluntarily journey to a camp where they would be guarded from the world outside. These citizens had no idea what was going to be done with them. They had committed no crime against their country except to be born into their race. Thousands upon thousands were herded to camps where they were held for as long as three years. This unfortunate incident did not happen to the Jews in Nazi Germany; it was the real life drama faced by many American citizens of Japanese descent in the United States during W.W.II. Though the creation of Japanese concentration camps was said to have been for the Japanese Americans’ own protection, it was motivated by racism, violated their rights as US citizens and never should have been allowed to happen.

There were several causes for relocation. The elevated war paroxysm after the attack on Pearl Harbor was a major influence. (Murase 1) After the bombing, America was officially at war with Japan and Japanese Americans were considered to be an increasing threat to our nation’s security. Americans believed that the Japanese might be disloyal to America in a fight against their native land. The public opinion demanded that something be done and President Roosevelt felt he had no choice but to act. According to the August 16 edition of the New York Times, by issuing the Executive Order, the President gave Lieutenant General John L. De Witt authority to "exclude any person, American citizen or alien" from the westernmost eight states of the nation by reason of "military necessity." (28E)

The Japanese complied with the Executive Order for the most part, though it was not an easy transition. After registering at one of the sixty-four Civil Control stations established near centers of Japanese American concentration, individuals were converted into numbers. (Weglyn 77) The U.S. government instructed all "aliens and nonaliens" to arrive at assembly centers on specific days. The government referred to Japanese Americans in this way to keep from infringing upon the rights of "citizens." (Tateishi xix) One week to ten days was usually given for winding up business. Because executive order gave the Japanese so little time to prepare for the evacuation and because it restricted the Japanese to whatever the evacuee could carry, there was a frenzy by the Japanese to get rid of their excess property. Warehouse space was donated by the government for storage during the internment, but all property kept there was stored "at the sole risk" of the evacuee. (Weglyn 77) Because they knew that the Japanese had to leave too quickly to get the market price for their possessions, bargain hunters descended on the Japanese and duped them out of their property for a fraction of their worth. (Tateishi xix)

On the specified assembly dates, evacuees were transported by Army-commandeered trains or busses from the evacuation depots to assigned "reception centers." Twelve of these temporary detention compounds were located in California and three others were in nearby states (Weglyn 79) According to an August issue of the New York Times, these assembly centers were at first considered to be temporary, though many evacuees ended up staying for much longer than originally anticipated and were usually converted race tracks or fair grounds. (50,000 28E) Both types of facilities were already equipped with sewage, water, and electrical systems. Stadiums and livestock stalls and stables, though odoriferous, could house large numbers of people immediately. Humanitarian groups tried to act on behalf of citizens kept at race tracks, but the Public Health Service would not condemn the stables as unfit for humans despite the smell and reports that the stalls were causing disease. (Weglyn 80)

Housing was built for Japanese when stall space was unavailable. These almost windowless hovels were constructed with poor materials for the sake of economy and typically consisted of plaster covered by a layer of tar paper. (Weglyn 89) Though the walls provided some protection from the wind, the cheaply constructed floor allowed freezing air to enter the shacks, sometimes at a temperature of 30 degrees below zero. The thin roofs offered no protection during the summer in the central California camps as the scorching sun turned living quarters into sizzling ovens, sometimes causing floors to melt. Alan Taniguchi, who spent his internment in a converted horse stall, recalled "falling on the cot and going to sleep and finding myself sleeping on the floor - the legs of the cot had penetrated the asphalt topping and sunk. The bed frame had ended up resting on the floor." Trying to cut costs resulted, at several locations, in housing that resembled chicken coops because they had been built so low.

There was little to no privacy for internees. At the camps, evacuees dined and bathed communally; no dividers were constructed between toilets for economy’s sake. At the urging of several Caucasian churches, partial dividing walls were eventually installed, but the doors to those dividers were not. (Weglyn 79-80)

Evacuees were chiefly served canned goods like pork and beans, hash, and canned wieners. Few fresh fruits and vegetables were available to them. Japanese internees were fed very little, and many starving youths raided neighboring mess halls. At the Santa Anita Assembly Center, 800 Nisei volunteers helping with an Army camouflage net had a sit down strike because they felt weak. They said they had not been receiving enough food to have strength to do the work. There was also a lack of adequate medical care for internees. During the first ten days of the Tanforan Assembly Center, only one woman doctor attended the needs of thousands. Equipment and medicine were hard to obtain, and new born babies slept in cardboard cartons. (Weglyn 81)

The camps provided the Japanese with little to do, so many found different ways to occupy their free time. Some transformed the camps into flower and rock gardens. Furniture was hand crafted. A strong sense of community was established as evacuees became more involved by volunteering as recreational directors, physicians, orthodontists, mess hall workers, sanitation workers, stenographers, clerks, policemen, sign painters, and reporters for 5 cents per hour in pay. (Weglyn 82-83) In a July 1942 issue of The New York Times, an article discusses several detainees who put together the fist advertisement-supported newspaper in a concentration camp at Manzanar. (Japanese Evacuees 28C)

Schools were created so children would not fall behind in their studies and hobby clubs were formed for adults. Classes, meetings, and lectures could not be held using the Japanese language unless supervised by a Caucasian, and all books written in Japanese except those pertaining to religion were seized. (Weglyn 83)

Many other rights of the detainees were violated. The camps were surrounded with barbed wire and guarded with machine guns, and Japanese were shot if they looked like they were trying to escape. An internee noted : "There were soldiers with machine guns at the camps. If we were being protected, why weren’t the machine guns pointed outside? They were pointed into the camps." (Drinnon 43) Prisoners that were to be tried were sometimes denied due process of law; they were refused private counsel with a lawyer or defender. (Drinnon 130)

Beatings were reported in several camps. In one camp, "Tule Lake," Japanese were repeatedly abused without provocation by a guard by the name of Schmidt:

Even before the horror of the internment camps was brought to a close, many Americans were already realizing that their implementation had been a tremendous mistake brought on by the war hysteria. A June issue of The New York Times discussed a survey conducted in 1942 titled "The Bill of Rights in War." The survey reported that most Americans ranked the forced removal of Japanese from the West Coast to be "unfavorable." (28A) One of the most outspoken of the sorrowful was Justice Francis Biddle; "We never should have moved the Japanese from their homes and their work. It was un-American, unconstitutional, and un-Christian." (Weglyn 114)

When asked about the evacuation and relocation of Japanese-Americans, James J. Martin said it was "a breach of the Bill of Rights on a scale so large as to beggar the sum total of all such violations from the beginnings of the United States down to that time." (Weglyn 67)

According to the article ‘Nisei’ in the Groliers Multimedia Encyclopedia, the Supreme Court did not share the same sentiments as many of the American people. In the 1944 case of Korematsu v United States, it supported the Japanese West-coast internment. The court said that the internment had not been implemented because of racism, but for the safety of the American people as a whole. The court also stated that it was aware of the hardships caused but, as Justice Hugo Black commented, "hardships are a part of war, and war is an aggregation of hardships." (Steamer 1) It wasn’t until 1988 that the United States was finally ready to issue formal apologies for its abuse of Japanese-American rights during WWII. Tax-free awards of $20,000 were given to each veteran of the internment camps. (Nisei 1)

One of the most lasting effects of the concentration camps were the psychological ones. During the evacuation, evacuees and camp staff members were told repeatedly that the "detention centers" were not concentration camps. It was continually stressed that the people being kept there were not captives even though they were under constant surveillance and were being held against their will. (Weglyn 79)

These lies were repeated so often that they were finally accepted by the Japanese and their guards. Even today it is difficult for former captives or camp workers to admit the true nature of the encampments. (Weglyn 112)

The most tragic thing about the Japanese evacuation and relocation (which cost the lives and livelihoods of so many) is that it was probably not even necessary. In Hawaii, which was closer to Japan than the west coast of California and where Japanese formed the largest ethnic group, no measure was taken against the Japanese Americans, and no disloyalty was reported. (Ethnic 1)

The evacuation and relocation of Japanese Americans was a singular event in America’s history. During those years of infamy, the Constitution was outrageously violated and American citizens became victims of a society plagued by racism. The government abused the trust of its subjects to protect their rights and adopted West Coast bigotry. The internment was a horrible personal injustice to those who endured it, but for all Americans, it remains a shameful betrayal of the principles upon which this nation was founded. (Tateishi xxvi)

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