top of page

An examination as to whether incarceration of Japanese Americans during WW2 was an act of defence or a declaration of particular prejudice 

By Dylan Day, May. 2022

When World War Two broke out in 1939, America adopted an isolationist stance, promising to put ‘America First’ before the interests of their squabbling European allies – and this remained the case until 1941, when the devastation of Pearl Harbour concluded with a tsunami of nationalist resentment for Japan and anything Japanese. To quench this blood-thirst for what were seen as the culprits of Pearl Harbour, and to ensure that the West coast remained safe of sabotage, the US government decided to incarcerate Japanese Americans. 

 

Japanese American incarceration refers to the 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry who were arrested in 1942, seized of their property, segregated from their family, and thrown into camps without trial or explanation. Whilst it was a radical move, it could be seen, at first, as a pledge to protect those of Japanese ancestry from the hostility of the public, who cried for vengeance. The United States also condoned incarceration as a reflex to war, trying urgently to staunch matters before they got out of control. This is why – even after Japanese American incarceration was recognised as a miscarriage of justice in 1988, forty-six years after the first detainees – people, such as journalist Daniel Pipes, argue that ‘it was a good idea.’ (Pipes, 2015)

 

In what has been labelled ‘one of the most egregious civil rights violations in American history’ (Wilson. R, 2009), people still debate whether this was the case, using war as a get-out-of-jail-free card; an excuse for the mutilation of humanitarianism that took place. My investigation will show how America’s defence of their actions are hypocritical and erroneous, analysing the branches that stretch from the consequence of internment to its relevance on today. Patterns will arise from this investigation, for ‘returning to original sources can overturn common wisdoms, exposing the gaps between what we tell each other that history shows, and what it actually says.’ (Churchwell. S, 2018); therefore, overturning propaganda to reveal the true motivations for Japanese American incarceration.  

 

On 7th December 1941, a quiet Sunday morning, the imperial Japanese navy attacked the naval base of Pearl Harbour, destroying six battleships and killing and wounding thousands. The devastating consequences of the attack dragged the US into WW2. Pearl Harbour outraged the United States because it broke the Geneva Conventions’ rules of war by deliberately targeting an unaware and mostly civilian populous; however, from a military perspective, one could argue that in war, law and order flies out of the window –in fact, that argument has been made by Americans to defend Japanese American incarceration. This ‘war hysteria’, as Daniel Pipes (2015) puts it, is hypocritical, as it is conveniently used to condone Japanese American incarceration but not Pearl Harbour.  

 

‘War hysteria is a hysterical emotional reaction to the feeling of impending doom’ which ‘induces feelings of panic among the population’ (Ejim, 2021.) The mass fear that comes from ‘impending doom’ quickly becomes out of control, metamorphosising into impetuousness and resentment – as it did in the aftermath of Pearl Harbour. Like the Dolchstoss of post-war Germany, Americans were filled with sudden suspicion of their neighbours – in this case, that those of Japanese descendent could be a traitor. In retaliation, the 8th of December was marked by the arrests of 1500 high-ranking officers of Japanese ancestry. They had all their assets stripped without trial or evidence, like the treatment of the Jewish population in Nazi Germany. Those in dispute attribute these impetuous arrests to ‘war hysteria’, for people were afraid and no chances could be taken; however, as the Densho Organisation (1996) alleges, there was little evidence to suggest that the government’s fears would become a reality, so perhaps this decline of rationale came from the primordial instinct to put ‘America First’, creating a free-for-all that discriminated out of paranoia.

 

In testimony to this, ‘those apprehended were male immigrant community leaders who were suspect for the positions they held — heads of a Japanese Association branch or priests at Buddhist temples, for instance — rather than for anything they had specifically done.’ (Densho, 1996) As a result, for Japanese Americans living in the US, the aftermath of the Pearl Harbour attack was a double-edged dagger: they shared the resentment and pain of their home being attacked, whilst facing the horrors of being stared at like criminals in their own country. 

 

Roosevelt famously said in 1933 that America had ‘nothing to fear but fear itself’ (Churchill, 2018.) He may not have meant this intentionally, but ‘War hysteria’ was this fear that sparked impetuous decision making and resulted in mass incarceration. As a reoccurring argument in this investigation, it is worth noting the repetitive history surrounding ‘war hysteria.’ In the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929, mass hysteria needed a scapegoat to blame for the country’s failed capitalism; many blamed immigrants for tainting the American Dream. A similar proposal was made during the Cold War, when the McCarthy witch hunts, aided by the HUAC, arrested suspected communists without evidence or trial and deported them. It is a reoccurring theme that the United States finds itself in a crisis, ignores its constitutional liberty, and lynches people to relive the liberal agrarianism that Thomas Jefferson idyllically promoted; in fact, twelve people were lynched between 1942-45, all of whom were African Americans (Churchill, 2018.) This repetition forewarns that these events might recur, unless we recognise that it was wrong. Also, the patterns visible to us provide evidence that this was an act of discrimination, that it seems to be encoded in the DNA of the United States. 

 

Meanwhile, the aftermath of Pearl Harbour meant that the hunt for a scapegoat continued. As a result, Executive order 9066 was created. Signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19th, 1942, Executive order 9066 declared that any foreign ‘alien’ could be detained to protect the nation. This meant Japanese Americans. Not everyone believed that this plan of action was right or legal, most notably the attorney general Francis Biddle and secretary of war Henry Stimson (Kamp-Whittaker, 2020.) The doubts illustrated in the minds of these two high-ranking men convey that the course of action to incarcerate Japanese Americans was riddled with uncertainty and illegality. Nevertheless, the law was passed: Japanese Americans were stripped of their homes, their possessions, their jobs, and tossed into the back of a truck like sardines in a can; taken to internment camps aimed at decreasing dissent and keeping tabs on possible Japanese spies.  

 

‘The United States government employed a variety of euphemistic terms for this process to present it in a better light, referring to incarceration camps as relocation centres, and temporary detention facilities as assembly centres’ (Lau-Ozawa, 2018) Perhaps Roosevelt had taken tips from Joseph Goebbels on how to suppress a violation of the Geneva conventions, making Journalists at the time produce halcyon-spun images of the camps. ‘On the one hand, the photos provided a sanitised image of the camps, underlining the benevolence and justice of the Government’s actions through images of smiling Japanese Americans being transported to camp and displays of comfortable living quarters, rather than the reality of dust storms and sporadic violence against inmates.’ (University Press of Colorado, 2009) The evidence of propaganda to cloak the truth from the American public conveys just how wrong this dark part of American history was; for Roosevelt to find that he needed to lie illustrates the severity of this discrimination. 

 

President Roosevelt did not only ‘present it in a better light’ through propaganda, but his lies also spread to the highest ranks to cloak the violation that was occurring under his roof. The Densho Organisation (1996) alleges that ‘The federal government had consciously withheld information about the military necessity of mass removal from the Supreme Court in 1944.’ This case was known as Korematsu versus the United States, as Fred Korematsu defied Executive order 9066 by refraining from surrendering his home and relocating to a camp. Korematsu, on behalf of all Japanese Americans, fought the case to get executive order 9066 repealed as he believed it was a breaking of their constitutional rights. However, the court favoured with the government; mass incarceration was ruled to be within the remits of the constitution because of emergency circumstances; ‘war hysteria’.

 

This essay relights Korematsu’s argument, because the constitution was broken, and – whether in the tumultuous effects of war or not – the United States needed to remember what they were fighting against. In their actions, they were no better than the enemy. As has already been discussed, the United States does not accept that the attack on Pearl Harbour was within the unrestricted remits of war (categorised as ‘war hysteria’), so their currency of using this as an excuse is redundant; it seems to be one rule for them, another for everyone else.   

 

It is useful to foreground that the United States already had a track record of discrimination against Asians and Asian Americans, beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the 1907 Gentlemen’s agreement, which banned Chinese and Japanese immigration respectively. There were also the Californian Alien land laws of 1913 and 1920, which prohibited the owning of land by Japanese Americans; these people did not get the vote until 1952. Despite claims of staunching immigration (which were not reciprocated upon those arriving from Europe), there are no clear reasons for this imbalance in treatment, except ones of prejudice, leading belief that Japanese American incarceration was a similar discriminatory purge. Bert Miller, General of Idaho, led the consensus of the time in saying ‘“We want to keep this a white man’s country!”’ (Churchwell. S, 2018) Bert Miller’s view illustrates the mistranslation of America’s constitutional ideals, as Americanism was initially a different form to the Nativism he expressed; Nativism was based on ‘low and ungenerous prejudices –prejudices of birth, which we as a people, profess to discard’ (New York Evening Post, 1845) - yet these laws were passed with vehemency to impede immigrant Americans. 

 

This is an ironic outlook for the American government because they branded Japanese Americans as ‘aliens’, when, in fact, ‘two-thirds of the incarcerated Japanese Americans were U.S. citizens; thus, internment does not accurately describe their situation. While the remaining third were not U.S. citizens, they were at the time legally barred from naturalizing due to discriminatory laws.’ (Lau-Ozawa, 2018) Laws like the 1924 Japanese exclusion act that stopped those of Japanese ancestry, even Nisei (second generation Japanese Americans), from becoming American citizens. The fact that ‘two-thirds’ were American citizens illustrates that the incarceration was a miscarriage of justice, because these were innocent civilians being arrested without reasoning; other than they were not ‘white Americans’. 

 

Hypocrisy is tied up in the forgetfulness of Americans and their constitution, as the United States is a country that was born from immigration, with a constitution that recognises the liberty the vast continent offers for those looking to start a new life; nevertheless, these laws prove that Americans had lost sight of their identity during ‘war hysteria’. Jim Tanimoto, a survivor of the incarceration camps, was aware of this neglection of principles. Here, he recounts his arrival in an incarceration camp; ‘The first thing I thought when I stepped off the train was, “I don’t belong here.” I had just graduated from high school, where we had covered the Constitution and learned what it stood for, and what it was supposed to do for American citizens. Everything was ignored. The whole Constitution was ignored. The Constitution didn’t mean anything for people of Japanese ancestry in 1942’ (NBC, 2016.) The constitution was corrupted and forgotten; ‘war hysteria’ had made the US government impetuous enough to disregard their ideals, fighting for something that they did not understand. As Jim Tanimoto says, they were ‘American citizens’ who were educated on the constitution, grew up eating American food, sharing their culture, living on American soil and embracing themselves as Americans, yet they were told they were not American. Incarcerees seemed to have better awareness than their own government of what it meant to be a US citizen. Incarceration hurt more because these people viewed themselves as American; their identity came under attack. As Frank Tanabe, veteran of the all-Japanese American 100th battalion, protested; they were ‘not an alien enemy. We are true Americans’ (Densho, 1996.) Tanabe had fought for the USA in Japan, interrogating Japanese POWs; he did this as service to his country, whilst the underlying effect was to prove his Americanism, patriotism, and loyalty. 

 

Nevertheless, Japanese Americans were called ‘hyphenates’ by the hostile public, people whose shared ancestry with another nation meant divided loyalty to America. Woodrow Wilson in his ‘America First’ speech declared ‘that very large numbers of our fellow citizens born in other lands have not entertained with sufficient intensity and affectation the American ideal’ (Wilson, 1915); nonetheless, Jim Tanimoto’s comments on the constitution contradict this sweeping notion, and Frank Tanabe’s faith in being American – even throughout the horrors he, and others like him, experienced - is enough evidence to warrant that they ‘entertained […] the American ideal.’ Wilson’s comments were made during World War One; however, this misguided faith in ‘hyphenates [being] impure, alloyed, defiling true Americanism with their suspicious foreign ways’ (Churchwell, 2018) was also the scapegoat during World War Two. The repetition of events and behaviours conveys that nothing had been learnt, which is why this topic is relevant today – it could happen again. 

 

Many Americans feared this divided allegiance would result in Japanese Americans siding with the emperor of Japan, betraying the United States. A governmental report in January 1942 claimed, ‘that Japanese Americans had given vital information to the Japanese government ahead of the Pearl Harbor attack.’ (WW2 Museum, 2019.) However, the Densho organisation alleges that there was no evidence to support this accusation, saying that ‘[…] various federal agencies had been conducting surveillance in Japanese American communities in anticipation of a possible war with Japan. The general consensus of those agencies was that the Japanese American community as a whole posed little threat to the U.S. should war with Japan take place’ (Densho, 1996.) These people were arrested without sufficient judicium, as governmental reports suggested that they were harmless. Nevertheless, the government contradicted the advice of these agencies and reported that Japanese Americans could be traitors, based on the premeditated actions of Pearl Harbour. The United States’ argument to defend this would be that they were acting promptly and could not take any chances; however, when these were ‘American citizens’ and the evidence told them to do the opposite of what they did, it is hard to see why they would disregard all the facts without further motivations.  

 

Daniel Pipes highlights that ‘within hours of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, two American citizens of Japanese ancestry, with no prior history of anti-Americanism, shockingly collaborated with a Japanese soldier against their fellow Hawaiians’ (Pipes, 2015.) This statement condones Japanese American incarceration because it, apparently, offers a blueprint for further Japanese Americans to transform into traitors. Pipes condones the persecution of 120,000 people on the actions of two, when evidence suggested that Japanese Americans ‘as a whole posed little threat’. The actions of a minority decided the fate of a majority. Again, it can be argued that in war, no chances can be taken, as the US would have seen the acts of these two as a cataclysm for more to follow. Nevertheless, Pipes’ choice to brand their actions as ‘anti-Americanism’ is an interesting one, as it foregrounds nationalism. It has already been established that those incarcerated were ‘American citizens’, so Pipes’ decision to exclude them as ‘anti-American[s]’, admits racial pretence; he declines recognising them as Americans. It becomes clear that the United States chose to side with ‘war hysteria’ and deny the facts, because it was an easy way to cloak their discriminative motivations. 

 

Another clear example of prejudice is illustrated through the inconsistencies of those who were incarcerated. For example, Japanese Americans residing in Hawaii were not sent to incarceration camps (Densho, 1996) – meanwhile, Japanese Americans were being stripped of their property and incarcerated on mainland America. The discrimination here is that they were treated differently based on geography; these inconsistencies can be attributed to ‘war hysteria’, as incredulous and un-informed decisions were made. However, it somewhat exacerbates the injustice faced by Japanese Americans mainland, because they were being treated different in a country that trumpets equality and liberty. What is more ironic is that Pearl Harbour is in Hawaii; moreover, a large community of Japanese Americans inhabited the island of Hawaii, so from the perspective of the American government, it would have made sense to incarcerate these if they wanted revenge on Pearl Harbour. It is clear to see that the government did not know what they were doing, attributed to this ‘war hysteria’; however, the inconsistencies and contradictions in their decisions point to discrimination, especially when we consider the past prejudice laws. 

 

Secondly, this hypocrisy can be seen when we look at German Americans, who were also interned during World War Two. The population of German Americans, including second generations, in the US, was 11 million; of that number, only 11,000 were incarcerated in camps mostly in the Eastern states. Unequally, 120,000 Japanese Americans were arrested from a population of 126,948, three-quarters of which lived in California. More Japanese Americans were interned than German Americans, despite that there were considerably less of them. What made Japanese Americans more of a threat? There seems to be no logical explanation for these statistics except what Bert Miller said: German Americans were ‘white Americans’, linked to the United States through its European heritage; Japanese Americans were not ‘white Americans’. Clearly, discrimination between Europeans and Asians can be seen; it dates to ‘the Immigration Act of 1924 […] – a system that favoured immigrants from Western Europe and prohibited immigrants from Asia.’ (History, 2009). There is also unhinged irony and injustice when it came to light that 81 Jewish Germans were incarcerated: they had fled persecution in Nazi Germany, only to be detained in the self-proclaimed egalitarian United States. This provides the best comparison of conveying that America’s behaviour to incarcerated victims, especially those of Japanese ancestry, was no better than the enemy they were fighting; ‘such amoral rationalisations meant abandoning the ground upon which you can attack most of the evil in the world’ (Thompson. D, 1937.) The United States were hypocrites because they had lost sight of what they were fighting for by acting upon these prejudicial grounds. 

 

Pre-World War Two, the United States led the foundations for this persecution; a society dominated by Nazi rallies and supporters of Adolf Hitler, and by white supremacists, such as the Ku Klux Klan. Whilst these are synonymous with the persecution of African Americans, their contempt was equally conferred upon those of Asian ancestry. In 1927, approximately twenty thousand fascists and KKK members marched on New York to mob the Memorial Day parade. They were met with rapturous support from the public, who later defended the fascists to the police when an enquiry was made about fighting that had broken out between fascists and anti-fascists.

 

Although pre-war, the opinion of the public was nationalistic when war broke out, which is what kept America out of the war as they fuelled their own interests of peace and prosperity. However, the overwhelming support for these white supremacist groups nudges debate about Japanese American incarceration as discrimination, because this legacy of pro-Nazism was still prevalent. The United States might have used war as an excuse to quench their thirst for pretence, fuelling the nationalist rant for ‘America First’; hence, incarcerating Japanese Americans as a sick power exercise. This legacy is much like the supercilious whisperings that morph the American Dream and what it stands for; as Jim Tanimoto said, ‘the Constitution meant nothing to those of Japanese ancestry’ as, like the Korematsu versus the United States case, it was manipulated by the government to defend whatever they wanted it to. 

 

People like Westbrooke Pegler, a journalist for the Chicago Tribune, proved that the constitution was disregarded. In his ‘war hysteria’ exclamation, he declared that ‘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’ (Pegler, 1942.) Therefore, this investigation not only discusses defence versus acts of prejudice, but also cogitates the effect war had on decisions to incarcerate Japanese Americans; fear was so poignant that they would have done anything to – what they thought was – protect themselves. However, despite all that war throws at you, there must be recognition that you are fighting for a cause that makes you better than the enemy; therefore, there are the Geneva Conventions; this ‘habeas corpus’ that was discarded ‘to hell’ – the United States did not have this clear conscience when they acted; they had sunk as low as the enemy. Their use of Japanese Americans as a scapegoat to their problems was no different to how the Nazis blamed the Jewish population. The increasing number of parallels between the USA’s behaviour and the Nazis is an alarming one; one that offers the best evidence in exploiting the United States’ prejudice through ‘third-party interpellation’ (Barthes. R, 1977.) The similarities are not a good revelation but are a refreshing one from the sympathy built around the US’ so-called act of defence. 

 

The living conditions faced by incarcerees defiled the Geneva conventions. ‘One assembly centre established at Santa Anita Park, a racetrack in southern California, housed entire families in horse stalls with dirt floors.’ (WW2 Museum.) And this was not the worst camp, Tule Lake took this macabre title. ‘Squalid housing and sanitation, unsafe working conditions, and inadequate food and medical care’ (Densho, 1996) riddled Tule Lake segregation centre. One-in-ten deaths was caused by tuberculosis, whilst cholera and dysentery were also rife because of the poor sanitation facilities. ‘Families [were] assigned a single room with cots, a stove, and a light source. The cramped confines and shared communal facilities, like showers, public bathrooms, and mess halls, made privacy almost nonexistent.’ (Kamp-Whittaker, 2020.) Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, a former incarceree, also commented on the lack of privacy; ‘And just seeing the living arrangement was, it was a real bummer. Thinking that, wow, this room has one light bulb. And there were seven of us in one small room. It was not very comfortable for newlyweds, especially, or any family, to live that close, not have privacy. Which is the thing… I think liberty and privacy is what I missed the most’ (Kamp-Whittaker, 2020.) Liberty is foregrounded well to exploit the neglect of principles by the United States – land of Liberty and equality – because it was very clear that these people had no liberty; they were treated like animals.  

 

Nevertheless, some journalists believe that the conditions described by incarceree victims were exaggerated to increase sympathy. Daniel Pipes goes as far to say that ‘the relocation camps for Japanese were "spartan facilities that were for the most part administered humanely” As proof, she (Malkin) notes that over 200 individuals voluntarily chose to move into the camps’ (Pipes, 2015.)  Many families did indeed relocate voluntarily, though not for the ‘spartan facilities’ Malkin promotes. They traded the comfort of their homes for a dingy cell because many families were segregated; they volunteered to stay together. Moreover, many believed that the world was safer in the incarceration camps because of the vile resentment and racist abuse that they faced in society. It is also worth noting that Michelle Malkin, an ex-Fox News commentator, has performed little research on incarceration camps and is renowned for her right-wing views; so, her word is pitted against those that were there, like Jim Tanimoto and Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga. Malkin’s information has been sourced (if at all) from journalism and photographs; it has already been established in this essay that journalistic reports on the camps were biased, so Malkin’s hypothesis is unreliable.

 

Malkin’s sources lay at the heart of ‘Journalists […] disenchanted with how the government and military were treating incarcerees. However, they felt somewhat powerless in reporting the truth, sidestepped the issues, and instead reported how internees were acclimating to life in the camps and assured their readers that government and military authorities were not a threat.’ (Carlson-Goering, 2016) Therefore, any journalistic accounts external to the camps must be seen as unreliable and biased; thus, disproving Malkin’s comments that the conditions were ‘spartan facilities.’ The reality was that Japanese Americans were subjugated to abysmal conditions, underlining the ‘egregious civil rights violations’ that took place in the camps. Even if incarceration can be excused as an act of defence – as it was in the 1944 Supreme court case – the conditions were unnecessary breakings of the Geneva conventions that can have no other explanation except poignant hatred from the federal agencies in charge of incarcerating those American citizens; hatred attributed to xenophobia, marked by the fact that Italian and German POWs were treated better at Tule Lake than Japanese American incarcerees who were American citizens (Densho, 1996.) 

 

Internees, even those who were already American citizens and had sworn the naturalisation oath of allegiance to the United States, were made to answer a loyalty questionnaire. Introduced in 1943, the questionnaire aimed to see whether Japanese Americans were loyal to America over the Japanese Emperor; ‘There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100 per cent. Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else. We must have loyalty to only one flag, the American flag.’ (Roosevelt, 1918) It was an arbitrary process because these people were American, many having never stepped foot in Japan. It seemed merely a power exercise from the US government, as most were happy to say ‘yes’ and declare their loyalty; internees were bewildered as to why they were being treated this way.  

 

Two questions caused problems, however. Number twenty-seven: ‘Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?’, internees did not know whether saying ‘yes’ meant that they were volunteering for the army; number twenty-eight: ‘Will you swear allegiance to the US and defend the US from any foreign attack, and will you foreswear any allegiance to the emperor?’. ‘Yes’, could have implied that they were in league with the emperor before. On the questions, Hiroshi Kashiwagi said: ‘“Are you loyal to the United States, and would you withdraw your allegiance to other powers?” Ridiculous question, because obviously we were loyal. We had followed the order to leave our homes. We knew we had our rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and we had done nothing except that we looked like the enemy. We had a right to refuse, so I didn’t answer the questions, which put me in the “no-no” category’ (Densho, 1996.) However, Hiroshi Kashiwagi misread the situation, because anyone who dissented with a ‘no-no’ answer was sent to department of justice camps, separated from their families. The name, department of Justice, is reminiscent of Orwell’s ‘1984’, with irony in the ministry of Love meaning the antithesis of its name. It was not a ‘department of justice’ but ‘prejudice.’ Just as Jim Tanimoto said, the constitution meant nothing to them; they did not even have the right to say ‘no’. 

 

Jim Tanimoto recalls, ‘Our whole block was surrounded with soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets a few days after we didn’t turn in the papers. As we finished our dinner at the mess hall and came out, we were sorted, separated, and I was taken with half of the men out of the camp to a building. It wasn’t until I saw the bars that I realized I was being put in jail’ (Densho, 1996.) Many camps came under martial law during 1943, using abrasive force to iron out dissent. The scene that Jim Tanimoto describes mirrors what were common occurrences in Jewish concentration camps. The intervention by the military was another step towards Nazi mimickery, using displays of military might to scare people into submission. Jim Tanimoto was put in jail for speaking out against the miscarriage of justice he was a victim to.

 

The choice to assert loyalty questionnaires was a discriminative action, for German prisoners were not asked to participate; other American citizens were not asked either. The use of questionnaires is excused by the ‘war hysteria’ surrounding ‘hyphenates’; but our evidence suggests that their divided allegiance was being used as no more than a surge for white supremacy, as ‘only racial allegiance matter[ed], not political principles or democratic values’ (Churchill, 2018.) Those who passed the test were supposed to be allowed freedom from the camps, but in Tule Lake, the camp that faced the heaviest unrest, further prejudices kept loyal internees locked up until 1946. 

 

Legacy: 

A monetary sum and words alone cannot restore lost years or erase painful memories; neither can they fully convey our Nation’s resolve to rectify injustice and uphold the rights of individuals. We can never fully right the wrongs of the past. But we can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World War 2. In enacting a law calling for restitution and offering a sincere apology, your fellow Americans have, in a very literal sense, renewed their traditional commitment to the ideals of freedom, equality and justice. You and your family have our best wishes for the future. - Civil Liberties Act 1988. 1990 Presidential apology. George Bush, the same President to open Guantanamo Bay. 

 

In a country that dominates universal enterprise, trumpets its hegemonistic discharge of democracy, and serves a constitution that promotes the pursuit of happiness for all; should there be the need to ‘renew their traditional commitment to the ideals of freedom, equality and justice’? Simply, the answer is no. America should always stand for its ‘traditional commitment’ and should never have to ‘renew’ it. Frederick Douglas (1852) - talking about the 4th of July from the perspective of slavery - said ‘for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.’ Speaking ninety years before Japanese American incarceration, Douglas’ words are relevant. They showed that America had lost sight of its origins and all that it stood for, which, ironically, Bush’s apology admits in saying that these ideals had to be ‘renewed’. Moreover, Bush forgets this lesson and opens Guantanamo Bay prison in 2002, illustrating a perpetual loop of hypocrisy, as fear tangled principles and identity.  

 

For Japanese Americans, this blur of identity meant that they became victims to blindness and disorganised fear from the US government during World War Two. Blindness and fear that behaved no different than the enemies to the ‘free-world' across the Atlantic, as US soldier Robert E. Borchers (1943) said; ‘American citizens, those of Japanese ancestry, are being persecuted, yes, persecuted as though Adolf Hitler himself were in charge’. As this quote suggests, most citizens of the United States disagreed with the actions of their government, who dictatorially spread unnecessary fear and took matters into their own hands. Soldiers who were fighting for the constitutional liberty that the United States was founded on, recognised this injustice and began to question what they were fighting for. American values were redundant in hypocritically mirroring the enemy – these contradictions are where we can see that the United States’ actions to incarcerate Japanese Americans were ones of prejudice. 

 

Gerald Ford said of Japanese American incarceration ‘that this kind of action shall never again be repeated’; fast-forward twenty-six years and Guantanamo Bay camp was opened to house Muslim POWs captured in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Muslim citizens suspected of being terrorists –Japanese Americans were detained for this exact reason. ‘Guantanamo has become a symbol of US human rights abuses. Many detainees – mostly Muslim men – were tortured or held for years and even decades without charges, trials or basic legal rights.’ (BBC News, 2006.) The argument that any US federal agent would use begins with ‘war hysteria’; the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps it is coincidence that this structure mirrors the Pearl Harbour attack and the mass incarceration of innocent Japanese Americans. Alternatively, perhaps it isn’t: ‘it is clear that some in America still consider the incarceration to have been morally ambiguous and possibly even defensible’ (Pistol, 2020), therefore, if people see no wrong with it, this might happen again – as it has with Guantanamo Bay.  

 

This repetition of persecution and fear has become part of the structure and identity of the United States; the most modern example of this is conveyed through Donald Trump and his spawn of ‘America First’ tribulation. Pistol alleges that ‘Trump and his administration have used this history [of Japanese American incarceration] to justify racism’; ‘the travel bans for those travelling to the USA from Muslim majority countries was compared to Executive Order 9066’, as if condoning it in some sick heroism. Lau-Ozawa (2018) notes this too; ‘Activists invoke the incarceration as an affront to American values. As recently as 2017, politicians recall it as precedent for immigration bans and proposed legislation for the incarceration of minority groups.’ Japanese American incarceration is remembered for all the wrong reasons; if things continue this way, then further prejudice will follow other groups of people. 

 

Conclusion: 

In the turmoil of Pearl Harbour and World War Two, lines became blurred between a sane reality –symbolised by the constitution – and the hysteria of that devastating wound. The wound would become greater over time, needing any medication to be administered as immediately as possible. To defend themselves, the United States acted impulsively: anyone suspected of being in league with the enemy was arrested. Mass hysteria was brought to controllable levels now that those being targeted by paranoia were safely out of the equation. The United States could focus on fighting back, without the fear of having their nation implode with discontent and conspiracies of terrorism.  

 

This is how I perceive America’s argument condoning Japanese American incarceration: they did whatever they thought was necessary to protect their people – we would all do the same, to instinctively protect the ones we love.  

 

Nevertheless, through my investigation, I have proven that the government had sufficient evidence that disproved the necessity of incarceration, especially when these were innocent civilians protected by human rights laws; laws that the United States broke. Those interned were mostly American civilians, therefore, they should have been included in this protection racket, not treated like criminals for a phantom crime. In denying the evidence set before them, contradicting the constitution, the United States failed to retain any moral high ground that could set them aside from the enemy. They lost sight of their principles, residing on the racist ‘America First’ inclinations of the past.  

 

This investigation has foregrounded a pattern of pretense and ‘war hysteria’ stretching from the 1929 Wall Street crash to the modern day. As contemporary controversy surrounds us about civil rights, this repetition of the past can give us guidance – to ensure that we learn from our mistakes. We cannot become slaves to our past, but we can recognise that Japanese American incarceration was an ‘egregious civil rights violation’ caused by ‘particular prejudice.’  

 

​

 

Reference List: 

 

 

Bibliography: 

WW2 Museum New Orleans; ‘What We’re Fighting For: America’s Servicemen on Hypocrisy on the Home Front’; Available at: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/what-we-are-fighting-for-war-relocation-authority 

Email icon

Drop Me an Email

  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
letterboxd icon
Reedsy Discovery icon

Contact Me

bottom of page