In February of 1942, two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing military personnel under the authority of Lieutenant General John DeWitt to relocate individuals of Japanese descent from their homes on the West Coast. The ensuing incarceration of American civilians stands as a shameful mark upon our history, both in concept and in execution.
I’ll start with the obvious — America is supposed to be a place of freedom. We have civil liberties and our supposedly inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Yet the Army was permitted to round up innocents and send them to isolated camps in poor climates for the then unknown duration of the war.
Were they? Innocents, I mean? Well, let’s see. According to Paul Kitagaki Jr., “Fewer than 3 percent of them might be inclined towards sabotage or spying… and the FBI already knew who most of those individuals were.” So yes, the vast majority of the over 100,000 people relocated were, in all probability, completely innocent. Furthermore, though people of Japanese descent were targeted, individuals with German and Italian ancestry were left alone, despite those nations also being our enemies at the time. This suggests that Japanese-Americans were picked out for reasons independent of the war, which is an implicitly racist approach, as can be seen in John DeWitt’s statement, “A Jap’s a Jap. They are a dangerous element, whether loyal or not,” and in the fact that his report leading to Executive Order 9066 was “filled with known falsehoods” (USHistory.org). Not only this, but the criteria for being “evacuated” was being at least 1/16 Japanese. That, for reference, means one of their great-great-grandparents was from Japan. In truth, most of the Nisei, Japanese-Americans born in the States, had never even been to the country they were suspected of holding hidden loyalties to. As Supreme Court Justice Murphy said, “…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.”
If this wasn’t bad enough, the details of the relocation proved equally detestable. For starters, the evacuees were given only a week’s notice, and instructions to bring only what they could carry. For most, this meant that their homes, their stores, and the majority of their possessions were lost, sold in a hurry and “often for pennies on the dollar.” (Library of Congress.)
After that, they were kept in “assembly centers” while the more permanent “relocation centers” were built. Assembly centers were usually fairgrounds or racetracks, not meant for human habitation, and the internees instead had to sleep in sheds meant for livestock. According to History.com, the Santa Anita Assembly Center “…was a de-facto city with 18,000 interred, 8,500 of whom lived in stables.” It goes on to state that, along with the poor housing conditions and the close quarters the civilians were forced into, the sanitation in most of the camps was also substandard and not enough food was provided. In essence, not only were their rights as American citizens systematically stripped away, but they were treated more like cattle than as people.
The relocation camps were better, but they were by no means good. There were ten permanent housing camps, two of which were on Native American reservations — despite the protests of tribal councils — and all of which were chosen for their remote locations. The climates were harsh, and, though the government hoped to make the camps somewhat self-sufficient, their choice of location meant arid soil that was less than ideal for farming.
Families, usually four or five to a building, were housed in tarpaper barracks without running water. They ate in communal mess halls, usually eating “mass produced army-style grub,” (USHistory.com) and used shared restroom facilities. While the internees were provided with education for the children and jobs for the adults, there was an ever-present reminder of their incarcerated status in the armed guards, watchtowers, and barbed wire keeping them there.
As time passed, added insulation to the barracks and a growing cultural flavor within the camps, each its own small town, made the incarceration more comfortable. At the same time, however, due to the forced and limited nature of their new communities, significant parts of the Japanese-American culture were lost.
In the informal social structuring of the camps, children played for hours unsupervised and often ate with their friends rather than their families. This directly undermined the traditional Japanese emphasis on close bonds and respect for elders. Also, as a Library of Congress article states, since jobs were only given to U.S. citizens, “The younger generation, as the breadwinners, soon began to take on leadership roles in the internee community, while the Issei, who had worked for decades to build up businesses and lead their families, found themselves sidelined.”
That was only one of the lasting impacts of the relocation. Despite the highly decorated, all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and their contribution to the war effort, Japanese-Americans were met with prejudice and hostility when they tried to return home after the war. Because of this, not only had they lost their property, but many were forced to permanently relocate from their towns of residence, and quite possibly from the West Coast altogether.
In 1988, Congress issued a formal apology and provided $20,000 to each surviving individual who had been interned. While it’s good that the harm the government caused was recognized and reparations were paid, the fact that it took 40 years for them to do so is infuriating, and perhaps as condemnable as the ordeal itself. After all, it’s one thing to wrong someone, and another completely to then refuse to acknowledge it or make amends.
The relocation of Japanese-Americans to internment camps during World War II was a continuous series of injustices, and though we have recovered as a nation, it stands as both a setback in the progression of American civil liberties, and a permanent blemish in our history.
