Japanese American internment, or incarceration, spanned four years. Over 120,000 Japanese Americans and nationals, half of them children, were made to leave their homes, schools, businesses and farms behind to live behind barbed wire and under armed guard. There was no due process of law, no reasonable suspicion keeping these individuals locked away. What does this injustice mean to our nation? To the inheritors of that trauma? Our guides to this troubling period of American history are Judge Wallace Tashima, Professor Lorraine Bannai and Karen Korematsu.
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Adia Samba-Quee:
Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Hannah McCarthy:
In the days after the United States entered World War Two, it became clear that the public needed to know more, more about why we were at war, who we were at war with, who our allies were, who our enemies were. So in the summer of 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the United States Office of War Information. It would create posters, magazine articles and films to show the American public what we were up to overseas.
Archival:
Believe me, today we've been through some of the real stuff. The fellows are asleep now. They're half dead with exhaustion. They're filthy with sweat and dirt. But take my word for it, Mom. They're grand soldiers. Every one of
Hannah McCarthy:
Them encouraged patriotism.
Archival:
Just what does Mrs. Exception mean when she tells you she had to give up a Red Cross work because it didn't leave her time enough to get her hair done each week
Hannah McCarthy:
And explain why we were removing over 120000 people from their homes and sending them to camps in desolate regions of rural America.
Archival:
All persons of Japanese descent were required to register. They gathered in their own churches and schools, and the Japanese themselves cheerfully handled the enormous paperwork involved in the migration.
Hannah McCarthy:
This is Civics 101, I'm Hannah McCarthy,
Nick Capodice:
I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy:
And today we are talking about the four year period during which American citizens were ordered to leave their homes, friends, schools and businesses behind to live under armed guard. We're talking about Japanese American confinement during World War two. And if you haven't heard it, this is something of a companion episode to Korematsu versus the United States, the case that unsuccessfully challenged what we'll be talking about today.
Judge Wallace Tashima:
Born in 1934, of course, you know, study a little bit of history. Just I think there's been a remarkable change in our country. You know, it's still ongoing. It's not complete, but there's been a change. I think my life is kind of an illustration of it.
Hannah McCarthy:
This is Judge Wallace Tashima. If you've heard our episode on the Supreme Court case, Korematsu versus the United States, then you already know his voice. Judge Tashima is a senior United States circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and currently lives in Los Angeles, California.
Judge Wallace Tashima:
I was born in Santa Maria, California. My father was an immigrant from Japan. My mother was also an immigrant from Japan. And my father was a graduate of the University of Utah. I was born in Santa Maria where he was the I guess the executive manager of the Farmers Co-op time, which is a big farming area.
Hannah McCarthy:
Judge Tashima's father passed away when he was about four and his mother moved the family to L.A. That is where they were on December 7th, 1941, when the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. Nearly 1400 people were killed, including some civilians. Now, up until this point, the United States had been officially neutral in the World War. That had been raging for nearly three years. And that was over now.
Archival:
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war. Has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.
Nick Capodice:
So Judge Tashima was pretty young when this happened.
Hannah McCarthy:
He was and he makes clear that his memories are that of a young boy. He doesn't remember everything. He didn't grasp everything that was going on at the time, but he still has many memories. It's just him, his sisters and his mom, a family of Japanese descent living in California in the wake of an attack by the Japanese empire
Judge Wallace Tashima:
In May of 1942. We were we were sent to this what they call the war relocation center, which was, you know, like an internment camp. It wasn't a German camp. The one we were sent to was called the Post and it was on the Arizona side of the Colorado River. And to show how many people were there, I think there are about fifteen thousand Japanese Americans in right away. It became the third largest, if you could call it a city, city in Arizona, because Arizona was you know not heavily populated.
Hannah McCarthy:
Poston was the largest of 10 internment camps scattered across the country where nearly one hundred and twenty thousand people of Japanese descent eventually landed following President Roosevelt's executive order 9066.
Nick Capodice:
Did that order specifically call for the removal and relocation of Japanese Americans?
Hannah McCarthy:
Actually, the order authorized the military to remove and relocate anybody from designated, quote, military areas. But the military targeted people of Japanese descent.
Lorraine Bannai:
Any understanding of the Japanese American population during World War Two has to start with an understanding of the history of anti-American sentiment in this country going all the way back to the immigration of Chinese, mainly Chinese, during the late eighteen hundreds.
Hannah McCarthy:
This is Professor Lorraine Bannai. She's the director of the Fred Korematsu Center for Law and Equality and a professor of lawyering skills at Seattle University School of Law.
Lorraine Bannai:
There were just a host of anti-Asian laws. Japanese Americans. Chinese Americans were prohibited from intermarrying with whites. Asian-Americans were prohibited from owning land. Asian-American children are placed in segregated school. We see many of the same types of racist laws directed against other immigrant communities and people of color in this country directed against Asian-Americans. So the bombing of Pearl Harbor took place against this atmosphere of racism and hate,
Archival:
As iron ore is melted in furnaces to remove impurities, so in Japan, humanitarian impurities are burned out of the child as the steel is shaped by beating and hammering. So is the boy hammered and beaten into the shape of the fanatic samurai.
Lorraine Bannai:
You know, in the days that followed, community leaders were picked up and there was a call from the popular press, the public newspapers, to get rid of Japanese Americans from the West Coast believing that they were a threat to the country.
Nick Capodice:
So this demand to remove and relocate anyone of Japanese descent, it's not simply a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor. It came after years and years of bigotry and mistrust and legislation passed against Asian immigrants and Asian-Americans.
Hannah McCarthy:
And it isn't just the press who calls for the removal of anyone who looks Japanese. It's economic and nativist lobbying groups who have long viewed Japanese people as a threat. It's also people from all levels of government. So President Roosevelt finally signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19th, 1942.
Karen Korematsu:
You can imagine or try to imagine that all of a sudden you are looked like as the enemy because you're you're of Japanese ancestry. Even though you're born in this country, you're look like the enemy.
Hannah McCarthy:
This is Karen Korematsu, daughter of Fred Korematsu, the man who challenged executive order 9066 by staying put. She now runs the Fred Korematsu Institute.
Karen Korematsu:
Not only were people's possessions and their livelihoods and their and their homes stripped from them, their dignity was stripped from them. And we all want to have our dignity, to be proud of ourselves. And when when people look at you like it's your fault of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, that it's your fault for for this war and You, you're powerless. And it's very, very scary because that weight is on your shoulders.
Nick Capodice:
Real quick, what were the military areas that people of Japanese descent were required to leave?
Hannah McCarthy:
All you need to know is that this includes all of California and Alaska and parts of Washington, Oregon and Arizona.
Nick Capodice:
So the entire west coast of the United States.
Hannah McCarthy:
The whole thing off limits to Japanese Americans and nationals. And that's regardless of age, health, occupation or even reasonable suspicion.
Lorraine Bannai:
There were no charges against them. They have no trials and there was no allegation that any had engaged specifically individually had engaged in acts of espionage or sabotage. Every person of Japanese ancestry was moved. There's some really famous footage of soldiers kind of between them carrying an elderly man, holding up an elderly woman between them who can barely walk. But people were moved regardless of age. My my grandmother was a blind mother of five children who had moved. Her son was a teenager at the time. The people were elderly and were ill and orphans and everyone was moved without exception.
Nick Capodice:
So I had a guest recently wrote in to ask us which branch of government and agency was in charge of this effort. Was it the executive branch? Did President Roosevelt have a major say in what went on?
Hannah McCarthy:
The thing about executive order 9066 is that it's simply a military authorization. So while Roosevelt focused on the war, the Army and specifically General John DeWitt, who was in charge of the Western Defense Command of the Army, targeted and removed people of Japanese descent from these, quote, military zones.
Archival:
No one knew what would happen among this concentrated population if Japanese forces should try to invade our shores. Military authorities therefore determined that all of them, citizens and aliens alike, would have to move.
Hannah McCarthy:
All of this fell under various arms of the executive branch. So step one is the army. After that, temporary wartime agencies took over. Step two is the removal of Japanese Americans and immigrants to temporary relocation centers. And step three is the transfer of these individuals to formal internment camps for the duration of the war. Places like Poston War Relocation Center, where Judge Tashima and his family ended up.
Judge Wallace Tashima:
I spent three years and three months there May 42 to August of 1945. So I completed the third, fourth and fifth grade in that internment camp.
Nick Capodice:
That's just so difficult for me to imagine, because when you're that young, just a year of school is a long time. But three years of school is a huge chunk of your entire life. And what were the living conditions like?
Judge Wallace Tashima:
We live in barracks. All internees were housed in these barracks. I would say my best estimate now, probably about the size of a two car garage, a room about that size. And we had five in our family. My mother was a widow and I had three sisters and myself -- four -- she had four kids. And so five of us living in the one room. So there was no privacy, so to speak.
Hannah McCarthy:
No privacy in a room the size of a garage is tough, to say the least, but the Tashimas and everyone else may do.
Judge Wallace Tashima:
So you put a rope and blankets and stuff like that. There was no plumbing, but there was electricity. Each block had a tank of fuel oil. So we had to go get our own fuel oil to fuel up our heater in the unit. They had like central restrooms, called latrines then. A women's latrine and a men's latrine. And also a central laundry room where they can go and do their laundry. And of course, there's no furniture. No one had any furniture. I think it was a bed and mattress.
Hannah McCarthy:
Judge Tashima went to school, made friends, played on the weekends. This is nearly four years of life for most of the people in these camps. So you had to find a way to go on.
Judge Wallace Tashima:
You know, there were no recreation facilities there, no playgrounds, nothing but people, you know, built basketball courts, baseball fields, stuff like that. There was a huge irrigation canal that ran right through the camp. So they make a big like a like a swimming pool. We swam in there and I learned to swim at quite a young age because there was about nothing else to do in the summertime.
Nick Capodice:
Speaking of getting on with your life, how did these individuals and families make their spaces comfortable where they allowed to bring stuff from their homes,?
Hannah McCarthy:
Only what you could carry. So Judge Tashima says people got pretty much everything else from the Sears Roebuck catalog.
Judge Wallace Tashima:
There are no stores, no grocery stores, drug stores, department stores, nothing. Everybody used to order their clothes from Sears Roebuck, I remember. Everybody had a Sears Roebuck catalog.
Nick Capodice:
But where did the money come from to do that, Hannah? Everyone was forced to leave their jobs. So how could they pay for anything from Sears Roebuck?
Hannah McCarthy:
Well, OK. For one, the government covered food and the meager housing and people did have access to their funds, with the exception of a few who had their bank accounts frozen. And there were jobs at the camps.
Judge Wallace Tashima:
A number of the internees were professional people, doctors and nurses, dentists, stuff like that. Those people got highly paid at something like twenty six dollars a month. And if you were if you were cooking in the mess hall you could make maybe 15 dollars a month. It was that kind of wage structure. There were a bunch of Caucasian workers there, some worked in the hospital. My third grade teacher there was a Caucasian woman and they lived in a separate, almost like separate little town.
Hannah McCarthy:
Judge Tashima told me, by the way, that these white workers were also paid significantly more than internees.
Nick Capodice:
That strikes me as just another small example of how the government was explicitly treating these internees as something closer to prisoners than to untried, unconvicted, innocent, loyal citizens. Which brings me to one point. I know we covered in a Korematsu v. US episode, but it's about the terminology here. We've been saying internment and internee because that's what the government called and calls it. And it's more likely what you'll read in a history textbook. But Karen and Lorraine call this incarceration.
Hannah McCarthy:
And that is the term advocated for by organizations who are trying to keep this history alive. And it's not the only government use term that's challenged.
Karen Korematsu:
People don't understand that. You know, the Japanese American incarceration rate, we were trying to bring attention to the euphemisms that were were used at that time to kind of soft pedal the governments, you know, outright really racist act against Japanese Americans. And so, you know, the like you used to refer to the term of evacuation, which I can tell you that even five year olds and six year olds understand evacuation. Yes. Whether you're living in California and you have earthquakes or you're in the middle of the country and you have tornadoes or you're in in Louisiana and in hurricanes. Right. It's it's to be removed for your own safety. Well, the Japanese Americans weren't removed for their own safety. They were forced from their homes. They lost their possessions just because all of them look like the enemy, quote, unquote.
Nick Capodice:
And what happened to the homes of these 120000 people? Did the government seize their property?
Hannah McCarthy:
No, but they might as well have. I mean, when the evacuation order came down, people had between a week and 10 days to either find someone to take and protect their property or to sell it off. You could either sell your home, find a renter, or just hope it wasn't damaged somehow. And renters regularly stole and destroyed property vandalism of Japanese property. It was very common. Across the West Coast, the property damages are estimated to be between one and three billion dollars, and that's not adjusted for inflation.
Judge Wallace Tashima:
A lot of people lost a lot of property and a lot of their savings. You know, my mother being a widow, we didn't have a lot of money. But, for instance, my my father in law, my wife's father was a very successful businessman in Ventura County. He ran several grocery stores, but they took him away. So he lost, I think, literally by today's delegation just millions of dollars.
Nick Capodice:
I know Judge Tashima was quite young at the time, but did Judge Tashima recognize at the time how unjust this was?
Hannah McCarthy:
He told me about movie nights when mothers of soldiers who had died overseas would be called to the front of the crowd and presented with a Medal of Valor, young men who died fighting for the country that incarcerated them.
Judge Wallace Tashima:
It struck me even as a fourth grader. That it was something was not right about that.
Nick Capodice:
Hang on, the Army drafted people from these camps, the same army that rounded them up and forced them to relocate.
Judge Wallace Tashima:
The boys turned 18. They were drafted into the army like all other young white Americans in World War Two. And they would go off to basic training. At that time they all got a 30 day home leave before they were shipped overseas. These boys were then, they finished their basic training and they come back to the camp to spend their last annual pre deployment leave in an internment camp before going off to fight. It just didn't seem right. You know, the only thing a 18, 19 year old can do if you get 30 days leave, where are you going to go? Are you going to go home? Right. And their home was in the internment camp.
Hannah McCarthy:
I also want to point out that not every internee was drafted. Many voluntarily joined the military during World War Two. Judge Tashima also told me that he would occasionally see wounded veterans, people on crutches or in wheelchairs, who, after surviving the war but not without injury, were sent back to Camp re-incarcerated. I feel like we really cannot overstate how frightening and confusing this period of time was for the people incarcerated in these camps. But we also need to emphasize how frustrating and unjust it must have felt. Fred Korematsu was one of many who understood that his rights as an American citizen were being violated, that his humanity was being stripped away.
Judge Wallace Tashima:
There were a number of people, young men, who refused to get drafted until their families were released from camp. And of course, government wouldn't accept a condition like that. So a number of people were tried in federal court throughout the West for violating the draft act. And the sentences range anywhere from some got probation, some as much as five years in prison.
Nick Capodice:
So the incarceration lasted until the end of the war. What was life like when it was all over?
Judge Wallace Tashima:
Well, when we first came back, we went to what they called it a hostel, it was run by a church. Almost like a like a bunch of motel, I guess, or even more budget than that. And we lived there for, I would say, almost a year, six months between six months in the year. And my mother owned the house. I could get the house to back and move back. So I know I spent my sixth grade in the hostel in Venice, California.
Hannah McCarthy:
There was no easy return to normal life after this period, with the exception perhaps of rampant racism being the norm, even for a remarkably successful person like Judge Tashima. He graduated Harvard Law School in 1961. He had decent grades and he was interviewed by some major firms. He says people were nice enough, but they just didn't seem anxious to hire him.
Judge Wallace Tashima:
One hiring partner whom I got to know better years later, from a big law firm in Los Angeles. And he said to me, you know, Wally, I'd like to hire you, but I just can't do it because our clients wouldn't stand for it. When he said that, it always occurred to me, well, that's why, you know, these people that I've interviewed with never even sent me a note saying thanks for interviewing.
Hannah McCarthy:
And it wasn't just exclusion from the job market. It was the housing market, too.
Judge Wallace Tashima:
My wife and I were looking for an apartment and certain landlord said, I'm sorry, we can't we can't rent to you. So it was quite open.
Hannah McCarthy:
So much of this is incredibly galling, both morally and constitutionally, but one detail that I find just incredibly sad is the shame that former internees felt four years following this period. It's like Karen said earlier, that weight of being blamed for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the psychological toll of your own government, presuming You guilty without the option of proving your innocence. Karen didn't even learn her father had been a part of a major Supreme Court case challenging Japanese American removal and relocation until she was in grade school. She heard it during a friend's oral report. And she wasn't the only one. Here's Lorraine again.
Lorraine Bannai:
My parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles were incarcerated during World War Two. And like many people who had been incarcerated, they never talked about it. And when we were growing up and so I knew I learned about my family's incarceration during ethnic studies, during Asian-American studies, which was really quite shocking and remarkable and horrible.
Nick Capodice:
Did the government ever do anything, admit that these actions were wrong or try to make up for it in some way?
Hannah McCarthy:
The government compensated for some, though not all, of the property and monetary losses to incarcerated people following the end of World War Two. But it wasn't until nineteen eighty eight through the combined efforts of a formerly interned California congressman and the Japanese American Citizens League that the Civil Liberties Act was passed and surviving internees were granted twenty thousand dollars apiece. The language of the act makes clear that the government actions were based on, quote, race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership, unquote, rather than national security concerns. But while we're on the subject of what the country did to address the race based force confinement of 120000 thousand Japanese American citizens and nationals. I feel like I can reasonably say not much.
Lorraine Bannai:
This isn't taught, it's not required, it's not taught, I'm on the West Coast, it happened here in Seattle and people don't know about it and there's no requirement that teachers teach it. And so teachers have to find their own way.
Hannah McCarthy:
Karen Korematsu, Judge Wallace Tashima and Lorraine Bannai all emphasize the need for education when it comes to what to do with our legacy of incarceration camps. And plenty of people can agree that education about our past is important if we don't want to repeat that past. But Lorraine made me think about it in a pretty specific way. So I want to end on this idea. What do we do with this horrible, uncomfortable, racist moment? We learn what was lost, what was not defended in that moment, because the moment that rights are denied to one person, they can be denied to anybody
Lorraine Bannai:
In a specific way is is really the and then they came for us kind of a thing. Right. That that that what we're talking about as far as racism and sexism and ableism and all of that in this country is that it all rises from the same roots. And that's the root of intolerance and ignorance. Right. And so. So. My sense is that it's so important that all of us be allies for each other, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it could be us next. And if we don't try to uphold dignity and humanity and the law for four other people, we're we're not holding it up for yourself.
Hannah McCarthy:
One last thing I want to say is that this episode is being released at a time when anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes are being covered widely in the press. This bigotry is known to be "up" right now, but was also probably underreported and insufficiently covered in the past. But to those who are surprised to learn about anti Asian hate in the U.S. or who think this is a sudden thing tied to hateful rhetoric connecting China to the covid-19 pandemic, I feel like this episode demonstrates that we don't have to look back very far to see broad, life altering anti Asian laws and actions and realize that precedent has long been set for anti Asian hate. But of course, that's all we can do, set precedent and the way that we use the past to inform that precedent, whether we choose to learn from our troubling history is kind of up to us.
This episode of Civics 101 was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Our staff includes Jackie Fulton and Mitch Scacchi. Erica Jannik is our executive producer. Music in this episode by Chris Zabriskie, Bio Unit and Zylo Ziko. You can find more resources on Japanese incarceration, the Supreme Court case, Korematsu vs. the United States and of course, everything else we've ever made at Civics101podcast.org. Our pursuit of what is going on and has gone on in this country is never ending. So there will be so much more where this came from. You can make sure you never miss an episode of Civics 101 by following us on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Civics 101 supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.
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