Transcript Japanese-Americans

“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look
forward to a world founded upon four essential human
freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression-everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his
own way--everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want—which…means economic
understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy
peacetime life for its inhabitants--everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear—which…means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point …that no
nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical
aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.”
- FDR, State of the Union address (“Four Freedoms” speech), Jan. 1941
EQ: To what extent was the U.S.
fighting for the “freedom” of ALL
Americans during WWII?
Women’s contributions
• Jobs
– Heavy industry
– Women’s Land Army
• Military
– Cooks, nurses,
physicians (1943)
– WAC, WAVES, WASP
“Rosie the Riveter”
• J. Howard Miller
• Norman Rockwell
Difficulties
women
faced
• Lower wages
• Sexual
harassment
African Americans
Military involvement:
• 885,945 went into the
Army (10.9%)
• 153,224 into the Navy
(10%)
• 16,005 into the Marine
Corps (8.5%)
• 1,667 into the Coast
Guard (10.9%)
Tuskegee Airmen
African Americans
• Discrimination in military
– Segregated units
– Often menial jobs (cooks, laborers)
• Discrimination at home
– Segregation
– Violence
• Double V campaign 
• 1941 March on Washington
planned  creation of FEPC
Native Americans
• ~25,000 Native Americans served
• Navajo communication codes
Navajo code examples:
• Some terms resembled things
– Navajo word for tortoise "chay-da-gahi" meant
tank
– “dah-he-tih-hi” (hummingbird) = fighter plane
• Literal translations
– "besh-lo" (iron fish) = submarine
• Metaphorical
– "ne-he-mah" (our mother) = America
Native Americans
• Many moved off reservations into urban areas for
work
– median income $1,198 a year vs. $3,780 for white males
• Veterans denied GI benefits if returned to reservations
Mexican-Americans
• ~300,000 Mexicans/M-A
served
– Non-segregated and
segregated units
• Bracero program
– temp. contract laborers
Private Joe P. Martinez,
Medal of Honor
recipient
1st Lt. Oscar
Francis Perdomo
From a Letter by the Youth Committee for the
Defense of Mexican American Youth to Vice
President Henry A. Wallace
“…There is still a lot of discrimination in theaters and
swimming pools and the Police are always arresting us and
searching us by the hundreds when all we want to do is go
into a dance or go swimming or just stand around and not
bother anybody. They treat us like we are criminals just by
being Mexicans or of Mexican descent. The newspapers
have made us look like criminals too. They make fun of
zoot suits and use the word ‘Mexicans’ like it was a dirty
word…”
Zoot suit riots – LA 1943
Chinese-Americans
Captain Francis B.
Wai, awarded Medal
of Honor
The All-Chinese American 555th Air Service Squadron
members pose next to one of the P-40s belonging to
the Chinese American Composite Wing of the 14th Air
Force under Gen. Claire Chennault.
• 13,311 Chinese/C-A served (22%
of Chinese men in U.S.)
Dorothy Siu of the American
Women Volunteer Service
Chinese-Americans
• Attacks  “I am
Chinese” buttons
• Chinese Exclusion Act
not repealed until
1943
– Replaced with
Magnuson Act
• (only 105 Chinese
immigrants
allowed/yr)
Life magazine (December, 1941)
Italian-Americans and GermanAmericans
• Some discrimination
– But no anti-German hysteria (like WWI)
• Some evacuated to camps
Japanese-Americans
• 20,080 Japanese/J-A
served
• Volunteer units
– 442nd Infantry Combat
Team
• Jan. 1944 govt began
drafted men from
internment camps!
A member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team
squad leader looks for German movements in a French
valley (Nov. 1944)
Anti-Japanese govt propaganda
Discrimination against Japanese
Americans
Japanese-American internment
• Feb. 1942
– Executive Order 9066
• ~110,000 evacuated
• Forced to leave homes,
farms, businesses
• Hawaii – large pop. but
few evacuated
– Why?
• "There was no mass relocation and internment in Hawaii, where the
population was one-third Japanese American. It would have been
impossible to transport that many people to the mainland, and the
Hawaiian economy would have collapsed without Japanese American
workers.”
- Japanese American Internment Camps by Gail Sakurai, 2002
• "Ironically, the territory with the largest Japanese population saw the
least discrimination. More than one third of all residents of Hawaii had
some Japanese ancestry. Japanese labor was considered vital to the
civilian and military economics of the Hawaiian Islands. Besides, the
views of Delos Emmons, military commander of Hawaii, were the
opposite of those of General DeWitt.”
- Japanese-American Internment in American History, 1996.
Account of conditions within
internment camp
“We drove past a barbed wire fence, through a
gate and into an open space where trunks and
sacks and packages had been dumped from
the baggage trucks that drive ahead of us. I
could see a few tents set up, the first row of
black barracks, and beyond them, blurred by
sand, rows of barracks that seemed to spread
for miles…
. . . As the months at Manzanar turned to years,
it became a world unto itself with its own logic
and familiar ways. In time, staying there
seemed far simpler than moving once again to
another unknown place. It was as if the war
were forgotten, our reason for being there
forgotten…The fact that America had accused
us, or excluded us, or imprisoned us, or
whatever it might be called, did not change
the kind of world we wanted. Most of us were
born in this country; we had no other
models.”
- From Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
George Takei
Discussion questions:
• Was it justified to consider JapaneseAmericans a security threat?
• How should a country deal with an
alleged security threat? Today?
EQ: To what extent was the U.S.
fighting for the “freedom” of
ALL Americans during WWII?
“The world’s greatest democracy
fought the world’s greatest racist
with a segregated army.”
(Stephen Ambrose, Citizen Soldier)