Franklin Roosevelt and Japanese-American and Aleut Internment
* What: 110,000 Japanese Americans (one half of them children, two thirds of them US citizens), 2,200 Japanese-Peruvians, and 1,000 Aleuts in Alaska falsely imprisoned based on the claim they would be spies or saboteurs for the Japanese government.
* The Body Count: “Some” Japanese-American deaths from poor healthcare in the camps. Six Japanese-American inmates were killed by guards for allegedly trying to escape. (In at least one case the inmate had a history of mental illness and another was an elderly man hard of hearing.) Two inmates were killed by guards in a riot at Tule Lake camp. There were 57 Aleut deaths from disease in the camps.
* One study found the life expectancy of Japanese-American inmates may have been shortened on average from two to three years. For Aleuts we are uncertain. For Japanese-Peruvians we have virtually no information.
* Who Also Gets the Blame:
* Anglo-American racist farmers in California who wanted Japanese-American farmers' land to remove the economic competition.
* Scientific racists who thought the Aleuts racially similar to Japanese and imprisoned them for no other reason. Some also claimed the islanders were removed to protect them from a Japanese invasion force. But had that been true, the Aleuts would have been relocated but not imprisoned.
* The US Supreme Court who ruled 6-3 the camps were constitutional. In three separate cases, Yasui v. US v Korematsu v. US, and Hirabayashi v US, the Supreme Court ruled twice that curfew laws aimed at one race were legal and then that detention based on race was legal. In all three cases, the majority sidestepped the race issue and simply deferred to the president's authority in wartime. In the minority dissents in Korematsu, justices noted that the decision was purely racist and that Korematsu was not in any way a threat or disloyal.
* General John Dewitt, who ran the internment camps. It was Dewitt who first called on Roosevelt to issue orders locking up Japanese-Americans. Though there had been no sabotage, Dewitt was convinced there would be. Many of Dewitt's orders were very arbitrary.
* First Dewitt declared a curfew for Japanese-Americans on the west coast. Though Hawaii had the largest Japanese-American population in the country, they were left alone. Numbering almost 40%
of the population, locking them all up would be too disruptive to the economy. Travel to and from Alaska was banned without a permit. Italian-Americans and German-Americans, unlike in World War I, were not collectively targeted. Only a few fascist collaborators were detained.
* The bombing of Pearl Harbor led to a wave of racist hysteria in the US. Within only a few days, the declaration of war against Japan was followed by Germany declaring war on the US, and then the US declaring war on Germany also. But no similar wave of hysteria and persecution hit German-Americans. American wartime propaganda stressed racial solidarity, that racism was what the other side believed in, and was also wrong because it hurt the war effort.
* For in this total war that would commit the US public more than any other war had except the Civil War, every group was called upon to contribute, and many did so expecting a greater equality to follow. Women joined the workforce in much higher numbers. Asians, Blacks, Latinos, and American Indians joined in higher numbers in spite of discrimination, and returning veterans were central to the civil rights movement.
* But though racism was officially said to be unpatriotic, it seemed as if all that racism was instead focused on solely one ethnic group, Japanese-Americans, and another group perceived to be physically similar, Aleut Indians. One result of that intense hatred was the dropping of the A-bomb. Another was the targeting of Japanese civilians, though German civilians greatly suffered as well. (See Section Three.)
* All across the US a wave of hatred targeted Asians. Indeed, the biggest fear of many Chinese-Americans, Filipinos, and other Asians was to be mistaken for Japanese. Some actually posted signs on their businesses and even themselves, saying “I am Chinese,” “I am Filipino,” etc. Time magazine actually published an article, “How to Tell Your Friends From the Japs.” The article listed a series of stereotypes as supposed differences between Chinese and Japanese.
* Anti Japanese hatred was stirred by official US government propaganda depicting Japanese as apes, insects, literal monsters with fangs, bucked teeth, huge horn rimmed glasses, and exaggerated slanted eyes. Japanese in propaganda seemed always to be leering, shrieking, consumed with anger, in the midst of rape or murder. Official anti Japanese propaganda sometimes came from unlikely sources. Theodore Guisel, better known to the world as children's author Dr. Seuss, made a series of racist cartoons of Japanese during World War II.
* Average Americans responded in kind. One of the most common sights on the home front were home made “Jap hunting licenses” made of paper, or on medallions or buttons. Both Bugs Bunny and Superman beat on “Japs” on movie screens, comic books, and newspaper cartoons, and the epithet became common.
* Indeed, anti Asian hatred had gone on since the Gold Rush. Asians were driven out of the fields by a Foreign Miners Tax, restricted from immigration by racially based quotas, and banned from owning land in many states. To get around the latter laws, many turned to Anglo-American front men as silent partners, while the Japanese-American farmer continued to work some of the most productive and successful farms anywhere in the US.
* In California, Washington, and Oregon, many Anglo-Americans turned to outright violence in the 1920s and 30s. In Turlock, Delano, Porterville, Ester, Stockton, and Watsonville California, Anglo-Americans rioted against Asian-Americans. Similar violence hit Yakama, Washington and Toledo,
Oregon. Bombings even rocked Asian-American communities in Reedley and Imperial California. Thus when Dewitt began rounding up Japanese-Americans, few objected.
* Two thirds of all detainees were US citizens, many of them third or fourth generation. Few born in the US had ever been to Japan. Fully half of all those locked up were children. Virtually the only way to get out of the camps was to volunteer for the military. Several thousand young men from the camps made up large parts of the 100th and 442nd Regiments, the most highly decorated American units of the entire war. The units received over 18,000 awards, including 21 members awarded the Medal of Honor.
* Detainees were confined in over two dozen camps mostly in remote rural areas, especially Indian reservations. (Bureau of Indian Affairs head John Collier pushed for placement on tribal lands
in the hope of seeing government buildings and roads left behind for the tribes at war's end.) The camps were run by the Department of Justice, the War Relocation Authority, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the US Army.
* Conditions were livable but ran from basic to grim. Centers included migrant workers camps, racetrack stables, park campgrounds, and military prisons. Most centers, however, had no prior living quarters and new ones had to be built quickly. A typical new shelter was a tarpaper or aluminum roof topped military barracks, but with perhaps eight to ten families living in a large room intended for about 40 single military recruits.
* Some detainees were given less than an hours notice. Others received as much as two days warning. In either case, most property was lost, seized in their absence or sold for tiny amounts given the short notice. If the property was not lost it was often vandalized. Internment destroyed Japanese-American communities. Where most west coast cities have Chinatowns, those same cities no longer have Japantowns.
* A movement to redress Japanese-American losses was inspired by the civil rights movement. It took until 1988 before Congress finally voted for reparations. (An earlier bill in 1948 allowed for claims to be filed, but few Japanese-Americans had property records since internment had been so sudden.) Each individual received $20,000, far below the value of the property most had lost. Each also agreed that by accepting the funds, they could not sue in the future.
* Aleut internees faced even worse treatment. Their camps were abandoned mining camps and canneries, falling apart and often with contaminated water. Pneumonia and tuberculosis killed nearly five dozen, or about one in sixteen Aleuts. Like Japanese-Americans, one of the few ways to get out of the camp was to join the military, and 25 of them did, three of them taking part in driving the Japanese off of Attu Island.
* Since the Aleuts lived in small fishing villages, there was no economic pressure to intern them, just bizarre scientific racism. Their land was not seized, but most of the homes and churches were vandalized. Aleuts received reparations and an apology at the same time as Japanese-Americans, but reparations were limited to $12,000 each.
* Many Americans schools finally started to teach about Japanese-American internment after the apology and reparations. Few do the same about the Aleut. One positive effect is that knowledge of the internments likely helped head off any possible mass deportations or internment of Arabs or Muslims after 9-11. Possibly the strangest result of the episode is the rise of Michelle Malkin, a Filipina who is a white supremacist (seriously) starting her career defending targeting Asians in internment camps.
* Franklin Roosevelt's role in this episode has been one of the strongest blows to his image as a great president. There was no military justification for the removal, and in addition to killing dozens, uprooting over 100,000, and destroying neighborhoods, it was a huge waste of resources. The FBI, Naval Intelligence, and the Justice Department all opposed internment, as did some of Roosevelt's own staff. Though one of the most anti racist presidents America has ever had, Roosevelt let himself get pushed into using the federal government as the agent for bigots.