Transcript File

WWII Camps for Japanese
Americans
Background
• In the hours immediately following December
7, 1941, President Roosevelt signed
Presidential Proclamations 2525, 2526, and
2527 under the authority of the Alien Enemies
Act.
• http://www.internmentarchives.com/specialr
eports/smithsonian/smithsonian10.php
• The Alien Enemies Act declared that all German,
Italian, and Japanese aliens over age fourteen were
now defined as “enemy aliens.”
• They were required to register and carry certificates
of identification.
• Approximately 600,000 Italians, 300,000 Germans,
and 100,000 Japanese registered as enemy aliens
who were subject to removal from designated
prohibited or restricted areas. They also faced severe
restrictions on their freedom of movement and their
property rights.
• Thousands of German, Italian, and Japanese so-called
“dangerous enemy aliens” were arrested and detained under
the authority of the “Alien Enemies Act.”
• After their arrest and detention, the enemy aliens were given
brief hearings before an Alien Enemy Hearing Board. But the
enemy aliens could not have attorneys, they could not know
or see or challenge the evidence against them, they could not
call witnesses on their behalf, and there were no procedures
for appealing the government’s decision.
• Still, on the basis of the brief hearings, approximately half of
the enemy aliens who went before hearing boards were
sentenced to permanent internment.
• 31,275 enemy aliens were imprisoned in Justice
Department camps under the provisions of the Alien
Enemies Act during World War II—10,905 Germans,
16,845 Japanese, and 3,278 Italians.
• It is still very hard to find information about the
internment of Germans and Italians in the U.S. The
government has yet to apologize to Germans and
Italians or pay any reparations to them. Their story is
often left out of books and official historical accounts
are very limited.
Faces of internment--The
government took photographs of
each internee. At the Crystal City
family internment camp, family
photographs were taken.
Alien Enemy Registration identification
GERMAN AND ITALIAN MIGRANTS LEAVE PHILADELPHIA FOR MONTANA CAMP IN
BUTTE WHERE THEY WILL BE INTERNED FOR THE DURATION OF THE WAR IN EUROPE
Photo: AP
Italian American internees watching a soccer game in their camp in Missoula. Story on
Italians that where interned during world war II by Vince Maggiora Photo: VINCE
MAGGIORA
•
Japanese Americans
After the
declaration of war
against Japan, 2,000
people of Japanese
ancestry were
arrested. They were
thought to be
“suspicious.”
Japanese Americans
Executive Order 9066
• The Executive Order was signed by President
Roosevelt on February 19, 1942.
• This led to the deportation of all Japanese
people from the West Coast.
What did all of this mean?
• anyone of Japanese background could be
kicked out of their homes and businesses and
sent to a camp or center
• They could also be
separated from their family.
Japanese American family awaiting evacuation in Hayward, California in 1942 as
photographed by Dorothea Lange.
April, 1942. San Francisco residents of Japanese ancestry register for
evacuation and housing; from the Library of Congress
Japanese-Americans transferring from train to bus at Lone Pine,
California, bound for war relocation; from the Library of Congress
• Many Japanese Americans were then treated
badly throughout the United States.
• Throughout New Mexico, towns and cities
were able to decide if they were going to
intern their Japanese American residents. The
only town that decided to do this was Clovis.
They sent their Japanese American residents
to the Old Raton Ranch Camp.
Being Relocated
• The Wartime Civil Control Administration was
established. It was a new agency that was
established to implement the President’s decision
with Executive Order 9066.
• Japanese Americans had to report to the WCCA’s
centers. There were 16 total.
• They were only allowed to take what they could
carry, which was usually one suitcase.
Types of Camps
Assembly Center = Temporary facilities created to
assemble & organize the residents.
Relocation Camps = Housed families after they were
removed.
Internment Camps = High risk citizens, trouble-makers,
POWs.
Assembly Center in San Bruno, CA
Noon on a hot day at the Stockton Assembly Center, which is a converted fairgrounds. This group of people on the
race track are new arrivals who have been registered inspected, medically examined, and are now on their way to
their assigned places in the barracks. -- Photographer: Lange, Dorothea -- Stockton, California. 5/19/42
Relocation Camps
• President Roosevelt referred to them as
“concentration camps” several times.
• There were 10 relocation camps across the United
States.
Manzanar Relocation Camp
• Japanese residents of NM were not sent to
relocation camps.
• The 10 relocation
camps were located
in barren, isolated
areas.
Manzanar
Poston, AZ
The Santa Anita Park race track is converted into an internment camp for evacuated Japanese Americans who will
occupy the barracks erected in background in Arcadia, California. Photo taken on April 3, 1942. (AP Photo)
A typical interior scene in
one of the barrack
apartments at this center.
Note the cloth partition
which lends a small amount
of privacy. -- Photographer:
Lange, Dorothea -Manzanar, California.
6/30/42
A few pieces of scrap and
some additional mail
order lumber, and the
ingenuity of skilled
hands, have converted a
bare barracks room into a
home of some comfort.
Many residents, such as
the young Nisei family
shown, have through
their own ingenuity,
bettered their living
conditions within the
center. -- Photographer:
Parker, Tom -- Heart
Mountain, Wyoming.
1/7/43
Japanese Americans removed from their Los Angeles homes line up at Manzanar Relocation Center, in California, on
March 23, 1942, for their first meal after arrival at the camp. Rice, Beans, Prunes, and bread were included in the
menu.
• While in the camps, everyone over the age of 17 had to fill out
a questionnaire. Two important questions:
– #27. Are you willing to serve in the U.S. armed forces on
combat duty?
– #28. Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United
States of America, and faithfully defend it, and foreswear
any allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor?
• This was rewritten to say, “Will you swear to abide by
the laws of the United States and to take no other
action which would in any way interfere with the war
effort of the United States?
• Anyone that answered “no” to #28 was considered
disloyal and shipped to Tule Lake.
• 70,000 individuals filled out the questionnaire; 65,000
said “yes” to #28.
• Even though the government put Japanese
Americans into the camps, they wanted
Japanese American men to sign up for the
military to defend the United States.
• In all, 33,000 Japanese Americans served in
the U.S. Armed Forces during WWII. Many
wanted to prove their loyalty to the U.S.
Members of the 442nd Regimental Combac Team, the most decorated infantry army group
in U.S. history
2011 – Veterans of the 442 Regimental Combat Team at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.
Internment Camps
• There were several internment camps, which
were separate from the 10 relocation camps.
• Individuals in the internment camps were
considered high-risk (dangerous) by the
government.
Fort Missoula, Montana
• According to author Nancy Bartlit, the men
considered “dangerous” were often classified
as such on little more than a whim.
– A Japanese born man had been an expert in
kendo, an ancient kind of fencing with bamboo
sticks; unfortunately he had the bamboo poles in
his home when the FBI searched his residence.
– One internee sold rope in his small store in
Stockton, CA.
– The FBI found a carved ceremonial archer’s bow in
the home of one gentleman.
• There were 4 main Department of Justice
internment camps. Locations:
–Fort Missoula, Montana
– Fort Lincoln, North Dakota
– Santa Fe, New Mexico
– Crystal City, Texas.
• Break here to do assignment
• Santa Fe
– It was open from February 1942 to March 1946.
– The first group of men that arrived in 1942
consisted of 425 men from California.
– It was a camp for “dangerous” enemy aliens
– Only men were kept at this camp.
• Each of the internment camps was run like a
penitentiary. Each internee was
photographed, and I.D. numbers were
stenciled on the back of their shirts and
jackets.
• The camps were also equipped with
searchlights and guard dogs.
– The first group of internees arrived with an
average age of 53.
– Many of the men from the Tule Lake
relocation camp were transferred here due
to disciplinary problems.
– The Japanese called it San Ta He – Many
Mountains
• This camp was located on the site of an abandoned
CCC camp on the outskirts of the city.
• It consisted of 8 barracks and a mess hall. It had to
be expanded to fit up to 2,000 internees.
• There was a 12-foot high woven wire and barbed
wire fence surrounding the camp.
Location of the camp today
Agents from several Federal agencies escorting "suspected" Pro-Japan
instigators to the train that will take them to Santa Fe.
• Spotlights and guard towers were located every 100 yards and
on each corner of the barracks area.
• The camp also included a 20-acre vegetable garden, a chicken
house, baseball fields, and a theater.
• They organized baseball and softball leagues, the “Rising Sun”
and “Zero Fighters”, and even published their own newspaper.
• They operated their own poultry farm for fresh eggs and
chickens and grew vegetables in their garden to pass the time.
Their garden was so productive that they traded with the
Bruns General Hospital for fish, the NM State Penitentiary for
canned fruits and vegetables, and a local supermarket for
various items.
Poetry group in Santa Fe
• A total of 4,555 Japanese Americans passed
through this camp.
Matsujiro Otani and his son
S/Sgt. Akira Otani at Santa Fe
Internment Camp, Santa Fe,
N.M., November 1943. Photo
Courtesy of Akira Otani.
• * The inmates organized a string orchestra, built a Japanese theater, and a
five-hole golf course.
Cast and crew of a Japanese play, 1945, Santa Fe internment camp, New Mexico. Courtesy of Jack Y. Tasaka
• The Camp Today:
- Today there is a neighborhood on that
location and a historical marker.
Prisoners and Patriots
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW6hK94
R6_w
End of the War
• Japanese Americans were slowly released after
the war from 1945 to 1946.
• Civil Liberties Act of 1988
– There was a formal apology from the U.S. government
to Americans of Japanese descent.
– The Supreme Court declared the internment
unconstitutional, calling it “one of the worst violations
of civil liberties in American history.”
– $20,000 was paid to the survivors
– The first check went to a 107 year old man.
– The total compensation amounted to $1.65 billion.
– According to Nancy Bartlit, very few of the men who had
been in the Santa Fe Camp were no longer alive.
RIGHTING A WRONG — On Oct. 9, 1990, Hisano Fujimoto, 101, of Lombard, Ill., receives her
redress check from Attorney General Dick Thornburgh in Washington, D.C. Photo by Takeshi
Nakayama/Rafu Shimpo
Assistant Attorney General James Turner presents two Issei women a Presidential apology and
reparations of $20,000 for their wartime incarceration. Photo taken at the Little Tokyo Towers
in Los Angeles, 1990. Photo: Janice Iwanaga Yen/NCRR
Japanese American Memorial in Washington,
D.C. - The $10 million monument has two
cranes (one has its wings tied with barbed
wire). The monument has the names of 800
Japanese American soldiers who died in the
war and it also has the names of the ten
relocation camps.
Executive Order
9066 Traveling
Exhibit
•
Wendy Maryama - My
exhibition, Executive Order 9066 is
touring the US. It just closed at San
Francisco Museum of Craft and Design,
and the work takes a break here in San
Diego. The Tag Project will hit the road
again in June and will be shown at the
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in
Deer Isle Maine during the summer of
2015. –From
https://thetagproject.wordpress.com/
•
The Tag Project consists of 120,000 replicas of the paper identification tags that Japanese American
internees were forced to wear when they were being relocated. The tags are grouped into ten
sculptural bundles and suspended from the ceiling, each bundle represents one of the camps. They
evoke a powerful sense of the humiliation endured by the internees and the sheer numbers of those
displaced.
Executive Order 9066 involves a series of wall-mounted cabinets and sculptures referencing themes
common in the interment camps. Maruyama’s pieces integrate photo transfers based on the
documentary photographs of Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake in conjunction with materials such as
barbed wire, tarpaper and domestic objects.
Maruyama’s addition of actual objects owned or made by the internees brings an intensely personal
awareness to the impact of Executive Order 9066. Included objects range from actual suitcases used
by families during their relocation to an array of items made from available materials in the camps.
Significance
• This is the largest forced relocation in U.S.
history.
• Japanese American’s rights were violated.
– Ex: Article IV of Bill of Rights – unreasonable
searches and seizures
– Article V: No person shall be deprived of life,
liberty, or property.
Many Japanese families lost all they had and were
wiped out financially.
A Japanese family returns home to find their
garage vandalized with graffiti and broken
windows in Seattle, on May 10, 1945.
• 80% of the goods privately stored by the Japanese
were rifled, stolen, or sold during internment.
• The Japanese lost an estimated $400 million dollars in
property. That equals about $6 billion in current
dollars.
Vandalized
Japanese
American
property
• No person of Japanese descent was ever
charged or convicted of espionage.