=
I 3
125704
mis is the story oi the Japanese in America
from the time of the arrival in this country
of the first immigrants to the formation of the
Relocation Centers which were set up after Pearl
Harbor. It traces in documented detail how race
prejudice, not military security, caused American
citizens to be herded into concentration camps ;
it tells how, for the first time in our history,
American citizens were openly deprived of their
civilian rights by the Federal government be-
cause of their race.
But this tragic, un-American story has an im-
portance that far transcends the individual story
of the Japanese in America, for it shows, in all
its ugly and repulsive detail, how racism,
fascism's chief weapon, is born; how it grows
and is nurtured and by whom; how its subtle
poison can affect not only the locale of its origin
in this case chiefly California and the west
coast but can influence the welfare and se-
curity of the entire nation Mr. McWillianis
fearlessly demonstrates that America's future in
the whole Pacific Basin depends largely on the
success with which we solve with justice the
problems of the Japanese racial minority within
our borders. ^____
PREJUDICE
Japanese-Americans:
Symbol of Racial Intolerance
BOOKS BY
CAREY McWILLIAMS
Factories in the Field
111 Fares the Land
Brothers Under the Skin
Prejudice
Japanese-Americans: Symbol of Racial Intolerance
P R E J U
Japanese-Americans;
Symbol of Racial Intolerance
by
CAREY McWILLIAMS
Of all the vulgar modes of escaping from the
consideration of the effect of social and moral
influences on the human mind, the most vulgar
is that of attributing the diversities of conduct
and character to inherent natural differences.
j. s. MILL
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
1944
BOSTON
Acknowledgments
IN preparing this volume, I have become indebted to a number
of individuals for invaluable and generous assistance which they
have provided. I should like, first of all, to acknowledge my in-
debtedness to the staff of the War Relocation Authority, both in
the Washington office and in the various relocation centers. Like-
wise, I am deeply indebted to the Reverend Fred Fertig and to
Miss Emily Lehan, both of Los Angeles, for such generously of-
fered help and assistance. Dr. Jesse Steiner, Dr. Bruno Lasker, Dr.
Kenneth Scott Latourette, Dr. John Rademaker, Mr. John Collier,
and Mr. George LaFrabraque have also been most helpful. I am
greatly indebted to many Nisei friends who have sent me letters,
documents, and clippings. Since they number over a hundred
individuals, I find it impossible to list their names. Finally, as al-
ways, I owe a great debt to my friend Ross Wills for his brutal
comments, caustic observations, and vigorous criticism. Needless
to say, none of these individuals is in any manner responsible for
any statement of fact or opinion in this volume.
This study was prepared at the request of the American Coun-
cil of the Institute of Pacific Relations and was made possible by
grants from the Institute and a fellowship which I received from
the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Although this book is
issued under the auspices of the Institute, the author alone is re-
sponsible for statements of fact and opinion contained in it. A
short article entitled "The Nisei in Japan," taken from this book,
appeared in Far Eastern Survey for April 19, 1944.
I have not included a bibliography for the reason that adequate
bibliographies, both on the relocation program and on the West
Coast Japanese, have been prepared in mimeographed form by
the War Relocation Authority and can be obtained upon request.
G McW.
Contents
I Introduction 3
II The California-Japanese War (1900-1941) 14
III The West Coast Japanese 73
IV Exodus from the West Coast 106
V Relocation and Segregation 154
VI One Nation, Indivisible ... 191
VII The Manufacture of Prejudice 231
VIII Towards the Future 274
IX Epilogue 302
Indes 329
PREJUDICE
Japanese-Americans:
Symbol of Racial Intolerance
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
IN THE spring of 1942, the government of the United States placed
approximately 100,000 men, women, and children of Japanese
ancestry, residing on the West Coast, in protective custody. Two
thirds of these people were citizens of the United States. Within
three months after evacuation had been decreed, the entire group
had been lodged in assembly centers, under military guard, await-
ing removal from the area. In the excitement of these months,
the evacuation of the Japanese seemed merely a minor incident
of the war. But as we proceeded with their removal, and as we
got used to the idea of being at war, the nation began to focus
a measure of its attention upon this seemingly insignificant "epi-
sode." It was really after these people had been placed in pro-
tective custody that the nation began to be interested in them.
In part, the growing national interest in the problem itself is to be
accounted for in terms of a rather extraordinary occurrence, the
significance of which is not yet fully appreciated.
For after evacuation had been effected, the nation noted, rather
to its amazement, that agitation against persons of Japanese an-
cestry on the West Coast noticeably increased. Instead of total
mass evacuation resulting in a measure of greater calm and a more
vigorous concentration on the war, the opposite happened.VWhat
had been a small flame of race prejudice became a raging fire.
Agitation on the West Coast for the removal of the Japanese was
as nothing compared to the agitation that developed, after their
removal, to prevent their return! "As the danger of an invasion
of the West Coast receded, measures were taken against this
minority which no one had advocated prior to their removal.
Internment, for example, had not been originally contemplated
3
by the authorities; yet internment was ordered. Evacuation was
seized upon as ostensible justification for still more drastic meas-
ures, some of which were clearly acts of reprisal, savoring of
vengeance and vindictiveness. Already prejudiced persons con-
strued the government's action in ordering removal as an implied
endorsement of their views and as vindication of their suspicions.
As the government proceeded with the removal program, each
step began to involve increasingly important, and in some cases
perhaps irreversible, consequences consequences which were
never originally contemplated or anticipated.
Why were these people removed from the West Coast?
How does it happen that their removal has stimulated further
aggressions against them?
What effect has their removal had upon the racial mores of
the West Coast?
Just what is back of the current renewal of agitation against
this particular minority on the West Coast?
What has happened to these 100,000 men, women, and children?
Are the measures which have been taken against them actually
related to the reasons which were advanced for their removal?
Just what implications are involved in the mass evacuation of
this minority in response to West Coast pressure?
These questions raise basic and urgent issues of national im-
portance. The welfare of the evacuees themselves actually be-
comes of minor importance when measured against these larger
issues. A precedent of the gravest possible significance has been
established in ordering the removal and internment of this one
racial minority. This precedent has been established not by a
locality or state or region, but by the government of the United
States. That the federal government was pressured, or perhaps
more accurately "stampeded," into the adoption of this unfor-
tunate precedent by the noisy clamor of certain individuals,
groups, and organizations in the three West Coast states does not
minimize the seriousness of the precedent itself. For perhaps the
first time in our national history, the federal government has sin-
gled out for particularly harsh treatment a section of our popula-
tion and has based the discrimination solely on racial grounds
(more accurately, perhaps, on the grounds of ancestry). "It is
doubtful," writes Dr. Robert Redfield, "if any deprivation of civil
rights so sweeping and categoric as this has ever been performed
under the war powers and justified by our courts." The very core
of the problem, as he points out, "lies in the fact that the evac-
uation and confinement were done on a racial basis." War makes
for haxsh measures; but, unfortunately, we cannot justify the evac-
uation of the West Coast Japanese even as a war measure.
For we are at war with Germany and we were at war with
Italy. No such measure was taken against German or Italian
nationals, either on the West Coast or elsewhere. Citizens of Jap-
anese ancestry have been subjected to measures which were
deemed unnecessary even in the case of German and Italian
nationals; and these measures have been imposed without charges,
hearings, or due process of law. That German and Italian aliens
belong to the same racial stock as a majority of the people of this
country would merely indicate, on its face, that they occupied
a better position to commit acts of sabotage or espionage than
did either aliens or citizens of Japanese ancestry. The conse-
quences of this precedent are not merely national in scope, for
the real consequences, as Dr. Redfield has noted, "lie in the effects
of what we have done on the conduct of the war and on the mak-
ing of a world after the war." These consequences lie outside
the United States in Asia, in the Pacific, throughout the vast
area around the rim of the Pacific Basin where a new world is
emerging from this war.
Our relations with this small group of 70,000 American citizens
may well prove to be the key to the complex problem of our re-
lations with the peoples of a postwar Japan as well as with the
other peoples of the Far East. Most of the issues of the war, in
fact, are bound up in the ten relocation centers which we have
established from California to Arkansas, in which most of the
evacuees are to be found today. By the same token, the test of our
ability to cope with the whole complex of postwar problems in
the Far East vital problems of rehabilitation and reconstruction
is likewise involved in this seemingly insignificant domestic
"episode"fFor, as John Embree has said, "if administrative prob-
5
lems involving a hundred thousand people can not be intelligently
and democratically solved, how are we to solve the complex post-
war problems of, say, Southeast Ask with its mixed population
of a hundred million?" There is scarcely a single problem in-
volved in administering the affairs of an occupied area that is not
to be found in each of these ten relocation centers. 1
Actually what is involved in the relocation program is the
whole question of what has been happening around the rim of the
Pacific Basin for the last several decades and what is likely to
happen in the future. "What is taking place around the Pacific,"
wrote Dr. Robert E. Park in 1926, "is what took place some cen-
turies ago around the Atlantic. A new civilization is coming into
existence. The present ferment in Asia and the racial conflicts
on the Pacific Coast of America are but different manifestations
of what is, broadly speaking, a single process; a process which we
may expect to continue until some sort of permanent equilibrium
has been established between the races and peoples on both sides
of the Pacific." It is quite important that the nation realize that
our policy toward this process is being made today in the reloca-
tion centers and on the West Coast.
Just as we are in danger of altogether failing to recognize the
importance of what is involved in the relocation program, so, for
somewhat the same reasons, we failed to recognize, in the long
years of anti-Japanese agitation on the West Coast before the war,
the portent of things to come. We insisted on regarding this agi-
tation as a manifestation of provincial prejudice unrelated to what
was happening in the Far East and throughout the Pacific Basin.
We seemed incapable of visualizing this area as a world region
of which our West Coast was an integral part. Astute foreign ob-
servers were never under any illusion about the significance of
anti-Oriental agitation in the Pacific Coast states. In their eyes
this agitation involved far more than the question, for example,
of who was to operate strawberry farms in Sacramento County.
Some of these observers were quick to relate happenings on the
western rim of the Pacific to happenings throughout the entire
1 See comments of Lieutenant Alexander H. Leighton, Public Opinion
Quarterly, Winter, 1943, pp. 652-668.
6
area. They at least had the wit to see what the geographers had
long known namely, that California was a part of this emerg-
ing Pacific world. They recognized that the echo of racial and
cultural conflict which the nation heard from time to time in
California had to be related to similar echoes in New Zealand
and Australia, the China coast and Japan itself.
Failing to correlate the different aspects of what was essentially
a single process, we blindly ignored its varied manifestations. We
could see no connection between the development of "yellow
peril" agitations on the West Coast and the rise of C white peril"
movements in Japan; between our treatment of resident Chinese
and the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion; between the changes
taking place in the Japanese settlements on the Coast and the
changes taking place inside Japan; between the passage of the Im-
migration Act of 1924 and the ascendancy of the military in
Japan. We had, as Walter B. Pitkin once said, but three habits of
thinking about Japan: the missionary habit, the California habit,
and the foreign-trade habit. We marveled at the extraordinary
facility with which the Japanese people were adopting Western
industrial arts and techniques in Japan, yet, at the same time,
we strenuously insisted that the Japanese on the West Coast were
"incapable of assimilation."
When, as happened on occasion, the "Japanese problem in Cali-
fornia" was related to larger issues in the Pacific world, it was
usually done in a misleading and inaccurate manner. The charge
was frequently raised in California, for example, that Japan was
attempting a "bloodless conquest" of the West Coast and the ab-
sorption of Hawaii by "seepage." The evidence indicates, how-
ever, that the initial immigration of Japanese to Hawaii and the
West Coast was not planned or instigated by Japan. For it was
after and not before this movement had reached important pro-
portions that Japan began to use the issues involved to her own
advantage. It was our reaction to these immigrants that Japan
was exploiting, rather than the immigrants themselves. Had Japan
really intended the conquest of California by colonization, she
must have pursued altogether different tactics. She would, for
example, have sought to minimize friction in California. Actually
7
she always sought to exploit the question and never seemed gen-
uinely interested in a final solution.
It was after this immigration had reached sizable proportions
that Japan discovered that anti-Oriental agitation on the West
Coast could be used for a variety of purposes: as a smoke screen
for Japanese aggression in Asia; as a means of inflaming Japanese
public opinion against America; as the excuse for ever-increasing
military and naval appropriations; as an excellent issue to exploit
for domestic political purposes inside Japan; as a quid pro quo
in dealings with the United States; and as a means of diverting
widespread social discontent in Japan into chauvinistic channels.
These considerations were of far greater importance to ruling
factions in Japan than the issue of who was to operate straw-
berry farms in Florin, California; more important, by far, than
the well-being of 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in
America.
It is part of my purpose, in this volume, to show that military
cliques in Japan began, nearly fifty years ago, to lay the founda-
tion for the acceptance, by the Japanese people, of the idea of
an eventual war against the United States; that it was necessary
to build this campaign gradually, incident by incident, because of
the long-standing friendship that had prevailed and because of
the friendly manner in which the Japanese people were inclined
to regard this country. It will be shown that Japan was con-
sistently aided in this campaign by jingoists and racists in this
country and that many of these same individuals are still I am
sure unwittingly playing the Japanese game. It will be noted
that the moment we admitted a large number of Japanese immi-
grants as permanent residents, while refusing to make it possible
for them to become citizens, we had in effect created a situation
which Japan could exploit to great effect for the purposes indi-
cated. In exploiting the West Coast situation, Japan succeeded
in heightening racial consciousness throughout America which
she in turn exploited in the Orient. First a single state, then a
region, and finally the nation developed a racial ideology which
Japan discovered she could use to further her own dynastic am-
bitions. During all these years, the manipulators of this campaign
8
in Japan were not only poisoning the minds of the Japanese
people and delaying the initiation of long-needed social reforms
in Japan, but they were practising a kind of "psychological war-
fare," making use of such dynamic myths as "the yellow peril,"
and provoking racial antipathy. When these elements discovered
that, owing to peculiar historical, social, and economic circum-
stances, California was the "nerve center" of anti-Oriental feeling,
they became skilled in the art of baiting the Californians.
These same cliques in Japan were not interested in racial
equality: they were at all times interested in imperialistic ag-
grandizement. They used the issue on the West Coast to make
us appear, in the eyes of all Orientals, as race bigots and hypo-
crites. The impression of the United States that these elements
succeeded in creating, at least in the mind of their own people,
was essentially a false impression. Since our federal government
came to feel that it was virtually powerless to deal with the
conditioned reflexes that had developed in California, Japan was
able to spread the impression that the entire nation was victimized
by these same reflexes. Our government did not control the press
of the nation. It could not manipulate opinion as the Japanese
militarists were able to do in Japan. Actually Japan had no griev-
ance against the United States, for the federal government had
gone out of its way, over a long period of years, to adopt a
conciliatory policy toward Japan. That we did so, however, only
encouraged Japan to "work on" the situation in California with
renewed vigor whenever it suited her interests to do so. It will
also be shown that our other enemy, Germany, has made use of
these same conditioned reflexes in California, both during the
First World War and during the present war.
It would be highly misleading, however, to suggest that Japa-
nese military cliques created an issue when none existed in the
minds of the Japanese people. The fact that wide sections of the
Japanese public were fully aware of the discrimination being
practised on the West Coast, and that they deeply resented this
discrimination, gave the militarists an issue which they could
manipulate. In other words, they manipulated an already existing
issue; they did jnot create the issue itself. Their attitude toward
9
this issue and the uses they made of it were purely opportunistic.
This qualification must be kept in mind, therefore, in reviewing
the entire controversy; otherwise, the interpretation that I have
placed on certain aspects of the matter might well be charac-
terized as an oversimplification of a highly complex situation.
It is against this background and in relation to this frame of
reference that the story of what has happened to the Japanese
in the United States since December 7, 1941, must be told. It is
a story which must necessarily be related to their entire experi-
ence in America, for evacuation and relocation are merely the
latest the current chapter in the history of their troubled
residence in this country. While I have not sought to rewrite
this complex history in detail, I have sought to discuss its essen-
tials in realistic terms. It would be impossible to describe what
has happened on the West Coast since the removal of the Japa-
nese without going into this background. For "today is yester-
day's effect and tomorrow's cause, and not merely yesterday's
future and tomorrow's history."
In recounting the experience of the Japanese on the West
Coast, I have also sought to indicate how racial ideologies come
into existence. In the case of most racial ideologies, the factual
background is so complex as to make such a demonstration diffi-
cult if not impossible. In the case of the West Coast Japanese,
however, a number of peculiar factors make it possible to chart,
in broad outline at least, the evolution of a particular racial
ideology. For one thing, the problem of the West Coast Japa-
nese is of comparatively recent origin: it has a history of only
about forty years. It also happens to be isolated in space, for up
to December 7, 1941, the problem was essentially confined to the
three West Coast states and pretty largely restricted to California.
In a newly formed state such as California, the development of
a racial ideology can be traced and the various factors involved
can be isolated with a clarity that is not possible, for example,
in the case of the Negro in the Deep South. Unlike the Negroes
in the Deep South, the Japanese on the Coast were, from the
outset, not only represented by articulate spokesmen but they
were compactly organized, so that it becomes possible to follow
10
the polemics of the controversy from its inception. Since the
traditional culture of Japan contrasted so sharply with the culture
of Western America, it also becomes possible, in the case of the
West Coast Japanese, to show how cultural traits mistakenly
become identified as racial traits, and with what consequences.
It is, therefore, my hope that this study will throw some light
upon the whole problem of racial ideologies. Some of the conclu-
sions drawn are doubtless not applicable to other racial minority
problems; but some of them, I believe, do have a wide applica-
bility. A comparison of the racial creed of the West Coast on
the Japanese with the racial orthodoxy of the Deep South will
reveal the existence of the same fallacies, stereotypes, and myths.
It will show how what is called "the race question" can be ex-
ploited and manipulated. It will also show, I hope, how persistent
and vicious these myths and stereotypes can become once they
are implanted, through a process of conflict and controversy, in
the mores of a particular region.
I also propose to show the alarming extent to which the for-
eign policy of the government of the United States toward
"colored" races and nations has been determined by the pro-
vincial prejudices of a particular region; more precisely, of a
particular state. The extent to which local aspects of "die race
question" have influenced our foreign policy is a question which,
of necessity, will loom much larger in the future than it has in
the past. -As a nation, we shall discover that we are unable to
implement a sound postwar foreign policy until we formulate
and rigorously apply a comprehensive national policy on racial
minorities in our midst. In the absence of such a federal policy,
we shall be constantly embarrassed in the conduct of our foreign
affairs, if not completely frustrated, by the strident insistence of
some state or region that its official attitude toward a particular
race must, pey se, be the attitude of the United States. In default
of a national policy and program on racial minorities, local atti-
tudes are likely not only to prevail in particular situations, but to
become national attitudes.
A dramatic recognition of precisely this danger is found in a
recent editorial of the Washington Post in which it was sug-
ii
gested that South Carolina arrange now to send Senator Ellison
Smith as its delegate to the next peace conference. After con-
sidering a resolution of the South Carolina legislature reasserting
the antediluvian nonsense of "White Supremacy," the Post prop-
erly stated that, if this resolution really represented the thinking
of the people of South Carolina, then it was painfully apparent
that South Carolina did not share the stated war aims of the
federal government.^ long as we continued to pursue a policy
of isolationism in foreign affairs, we could, with a certain amount
of reason, say that it was no other nation's business how we
treated racial minorities in the United States. But the abandon-
ment of isolationism in the field of foreign policy necessarily
involves an abandonment of the same principle so far as our
domestic racial minorities are concerned. We have too long per-
mitted the Deep South to characterize the Negro problem as its
"peculiar problem"; the Southwest to deal with Mexicans as it
saw fit; and the West Coast to refer to Orientals as a "regional
problem." In the secular society of our times, as Dr. Robert Red-
field has so cogently observed, racial cleavages or differences
may well become more important as divisive factors than na-
tional, religious, or cultural differences have been in the past.
I also propose to show that the main reason the federal gov-
ernment permitted the West Coast to dictate important aspects
of our Far Eastern policy was that,* as a nation, we had not yet
concluded the unfinished business of the Civil War. Theodore
Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Calvin
Coolidge were all forced to recognize a connection between the
Oriental problem on the Pacific Coast and the Negro problem
in the Deep South. Since the federal government had capitulated
to the South on the Negro question, it found itself powerless to
cope with race bigotry on the Pacific Coast. Whenever the West
Coast racial creed was seriously challenged in Congress, or when
the spokesmen for this creed were proposing new aggressions,
representatives from the Deep South quickly rallied to their de-
fense. It may, at first blush, sound farfetched to contend that
we cannot formulate an intelligent Far Eastern policy until we
have recognized that the Negro problem is a responsibility of the
12
federal government and have undertaken to discharge this re-
sponsibility, but such, I believe, is the case. The relocation
program, therefore, directly and indirectly involves the whole
question of racial minorities in the United States.
Throughout the following pages, I am constantly compelled,
by the nature of the inquiry, to refer to racial attitudes on the
West Coast. I have sought throughout to preserve a distinction
between the people of the region and those individuals and or-
ganizations that have so consistently cultivated misunderstanding
and prejudice. It is quite likely that, in a few passages, I have
neglected to maintain, or have not sufficiently emphasized, this
distinction. It would hardly seem necessary for me to say that
the residents of the Pacific Coast are no more inclined to racial
bigotry than are the residents of other sections of the United
States. They represent, in fact, a good cross section of American
opinion since so many of them were either born in other states
or formerly resided in other sections. It is certainly not my in-
tention to indict a region, a state, or a locality; nor am I seeking
to castigate all of the members of the various organizations that
have so consistently manufactured prejudicial attitudes in Cali-
fornia. Members of an organization are not always aware of all of
its policies and practices. The people of a region often acquiesce,
or appear to acquiesce, in doctrines that have acquired, by what-
ever process, an official or semiofficial status for reasons that do
not necessarily imply an unqualified endorsement, such as uncer-
tainty, indifference, laziness, or timidity. In fact, it is a basic
contention of this book that prejudice is not an "instinctive"
expression of deep-seated aversion but is manufactured out of
conflicts, the real nature of which is frequently misunderstood.
CHAPTER 11
The California-Japanese War (1900-1941)
<c No QUESTION of our time," wrote Frederick McCormick in
1917 in The Menace of Jafan y "can vie in importance with that
of the contact of alien races and systems on the Pacific Slope. It
is, more than anything else, an indication of the swift develop-
ment of the Pacific." The principal area in which these alien
races and cultural systems came in contact was California. The
meeting that took place in mid-Pacific, in Hawaii, was of a dif-
ferent character. There people came together but systems did
not collide; races met but competition was minimized. The ten-
sions that developed in California, on the other hand, represented
sharp and basic conflicts: racial and cultural, economic and politi-
cal. What happened in California determined the course of events
in Oregon and Washington, in Alaska and Peru. It unquestion-
ably influenced the course of events between the United States
and Japan.
Anti-Oriental agitation in California, in addition to being one
of the most important, is also one of the most curious phenomena
of our time^Ia expressing their dislike of Japanese, West Coast
residents seldom stress a particular factor but are satisfied with
the repetition of a generalized statement /After a thorough investi-
gation of anti-Oriental feeling on the West Coast, Ruth Fowler
concluded that "group values and opinions are more influential
than direct personal experience based on primary contacts. Im-
mediate influences alone do not produce the opinions of the
moment, but rather all the accumulated influences both present
and past play a part in its creation. Thus changes in individual
opinion do not greatly change the total group reaction." * Para-
doxically, the Japanese were warmly regarded in California, on
1M Some Aspects of Public Opinion Concerning the Japanese in Santa
Clara County, unpublished dissertation, Stanford University, June, 1934,
an individual-to-individual basis, but personal friendship for a
particular Japanese seldom changed the attitude toward the group
as a whole. Leaders of the anti-Oriental agitation in California
will tell you that "some of my best friends" are Japanese.
The basis for this apparently inconsistent attitude is to be
found in the distinction which Dr. Robert E. Park has made
between public opinion and racial ideologies. "Public opinion,"
he states, "is the public mind in unstable equilibrium. It is con-
cerned with what is in process and therefore problematic and
debatable." Racial ideologies, on the other hand, "are rooted in
the memories, the tradition, and the mores of the particular com-
munity . . . they are not mere logical artifacts, formulas, or
general conceptions; they are rather the historical products of
long-continued conflict and controversy." 2 The historical prod-
uct of fifty years of conflict and controversy, anti-Oriental
feeling has become deeply imbedded in the mores of the West
Coast as a region. During brief intervals or "lulls," anti-Oriental
feeling has remained dormant; but, given a new stimulant or
crisis, it quickly reappears. To understand how this peculiar ideol-
ogy came into being, it is necessary to review the protracted
California-Japanese conflict as it developed over the years from
1900 to 1941.
For nearly fifty years prior to December 7, 1941, a state of
undeclared war existed between California and Japan. During
these years, as Dr. Thomas A. Bailey has noted, "the general
controversy lay not between the United States and Japan but
between Japan and California, with the federal government seek-
ing to secure justice for the aggrieved foreign power and at the
same time endeavoring to convince the state of its obligation to
the rest of the union." * "Every man, woman and child in Japan,"
wrote Louis Seibold, "knows a great deal more about California
than he does about the United States. . . . California is anathema
to the average Japanese, and when he talks of war against the
United States, he really means California." * On at least one occa-
2 American Society in Wartime, 1943, pp. 165-184.
8 Theodore Roosevelt and the Japanese-American Crisis, 1934.
4 Japan: Her Vast Undertakings and World Expansion, 1921.
IS
sion, Japan even threatened to take action against California "as
an independent nation." 5
L The Opening of Hostilities
Japanese immigrants had been arriving in California at the
rate of about 1000 a year from 1890 to 1900; but, following the
annexation of Hawaii, some 12,000 arrived in 1900. This sudden
increase in the number of immigrants occasioned an immediate
protest in California. As a result of a thirty-years' agitation
against the Chinese, Californians had been conditioned to re-
spond quickly and stormily whenever the "Oriental Question"
was raised. Although Chinese immigration had been suspended
since 1882, this earlier anti-Chinese feeling was very much alive
in 1900. While anti-Oriental agitation gradually became synony-
mous with anti-Japanese agitation, as the Chinese and Koreans
were tacitly excepted from the category, popular opposition in
1900 embraced aU Oriental groups.
The first overt act, so to speak, in the California-Japanese War
occurred in March, 1900, when Mayor James D. Phelan of San
Francisco, using some idle gossip about an alleged "bubonic
plague" as an excuse, quarantined both the Chinese and the Japa-
nese sections of the city. The local Japanese immediately pro-
tested, claiming that the order was motivated by political
considerations and that its effect was to put them out of busi-
ness. To protect their interests, they proceeded to form the
"Japanese Association of America." As a result of this flurry of
excitement, the first anti-Japanese mass meeting was called in
San Francisco on May 7, 1900. The meeting was sponsored by
the San Francisco Labor Council; the chief speaker was Dr.
Edward Alsworth Ross, professor of sociology at Stanford Uni-
versity. Repeating the stock arguments that had been developed
against the Chinese, Dr. Ross found the Japanese objectionable
on four counts:
5 See Japan Inside Outby S. Rhee.
16
1. They were unassimilable.
2. They worked for low wages and thereby undermined the
existing labor standards of American workmen.
3. Their standards of living were much lower than those
of American workmen.
4. They lacked a proper political feeling for American
democratic institutions.
In the San Francisco Call of May 8, 1900, Dr. Ross was quoted
as having said that "should the worst come to the worst it would
be better for us to turn our guns on evejry vessel bringing Japa-
nese to our shores rather than to permit them to land." From
these views, Dr. Ross never wholly departed. 8
At this mass meeting a resolution was passed urging the ex-
tension of the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Japanese. In the
same year, the State Labor Commissioner referred to the sudden
increase in Japanese laborers and Governor Henry T. Gage, in
a message to the legislature on January 8, 1901, called attention
to the existence of "a Japanese problem." Taking note of this
incipient agitation in California, the Japanese government in July,
1900, announced that no further passports would be issued to
contract laborers seeking to enter the United States (the first
Gentlemen's Agreement); and, as a result, the number of Japa-
nese arrivals declined 50 per cent in 1901.
This conciliatory action, however, failed to abate popular
feeling in California. At the 1901 convention of the Chinese
Exclusion League and at the 1904 convention of the American
Federation of Labor, resolutions were passed asking Congress
to exclude further Japanese immigration. At both of these con-
ventions, Japanese distributed leaflets asking that they be dis-
tinguished from the Chinese! During this early agitation, from
1900 to 1905, no mention was made of the menace of Japan as
a foreign power; and, at this time, the incidents occurring in
California occasioned no counter-demonstration in Japan.
The "golden age" of Japanese-American friendship still pre-
6 See, for example, his autobiography: Seventy Years of It.
vailed in 1900, although it was rapidly drawing to a close. After
1900 both Japan and America emerged as world powers and,
more particularly, as great powers in the Pacific. In 1894 Japan
had fought a victorious war against China. In 1898 we had
annexed the Hawaiian Islands, which were 40 per cent Japanese
in population, and had acquired the Philippines. Despite the fact
that Japan had noted its objection to our annexation of Hawaii,
these parallel developments momentarily served to draw the two
countries closer together. As late as 1900 it was generally felt
that the interests of Japan and America were not antagonistic,
but rather that they tended to be complementary. Tupper and
McReynolds, in their interesting volume Japan in American
Public Opinion (1937), quote an American naval officer who (in
1900) referred to the Japanese as a "kindly, generous, large-
hearted, good-mannered, honest and loyal people." 7
Even during the Russo-Japanese War, American public opin-
ion (including West Coast opinion) was strongly pro- Japanese.
Our preference was indicated not by a slight trend, but by the
great preponderance of opinion. In die West as in the East, each
Japanese victory was hailed with delight. As the war drew to a
close, however, West Coast opinion began to shift, and by the
time the delegates met for the peace conference in Portsmouth,
national opinion had likewise changed. As a nation we did not
turn from Japanophilism to Japanophobia overnight, but a grad-
ual change occurred, first in California, and later throughout the
nation. At the same time, notes Dr. Bailey, public opinion in
Japan "regarding the United States was undergoing a marked
change as a result of recent disturbances in California." 8 It was
this shift in public opinion toward Japan that set the stage for
the next outburst of anti-Japanese feeling in California.
The campaign was launched on February 23, 1905 just be-
fore the siege of Mukden by a series of sensational and highly
inflammatory articles in the San Francisco Chronicle. Some of
the captions on these articles were: CRIME AND POVERTY Go
HAND IN HAND WITH ASIATIC LABOR; BROWN MEN ARE AN EVIL
7 Page 5.
8 Ibid.) p* 21.
18
IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS; JAPANESE A MENACE TO AMERICAN
WOMEN; BROWN ASIATICS STEAL BRAINS OF WHITES. "Every one
of these immigrants," said the Chronicle, "so far as his service
is desired, is a Japanese spy." Just why the Chronicle should
have launched this attack has never been determined. But the
owner of the Chronicle, M. H. DeYoung, had been a candidate
for the United States Senate a few years previously and some
observers construed these vicious articles as a renewal of his
candidacy. The series ran throughout February and March, 1905,
and was most effective in whipping up popular feeling against
the resident Japanese. It should be noted, however, that this feel-
ing was not restricted to California. All America had suddenly
become apprehensive of Japan. The chairman of the House
Committee on Military Affairs had declared that if Japan won
the war with Russia, she would "fight a bloody war with the
United States over the Philippines"; and Senator Selvage had
discovered in Japan "a serious menace, not only to California,
but to the nation."
Following the appearance of the Chromcle articles, the Cali-
fornia legislature, on March i, 1905, by a vote of twenty-eight
to nothing in the Senate and seventy to nothing in the Assembly,
passed a resolution urging Congress to exclude the Japanese.
Two months later, the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League
was formed in San Francisco. Within a year, this organization
had a membership of 78,500 (three fourths of its membership
being located in the San Francisco Bay area). By 1905 the fight
had been narrowed down to the Japanese. "The Chinese," the
Chronicle observed, "are faithful laborers and do not buy land.
The Japanese are unfaithful laborers and do buy land." At this
time, however, California was, as David Starr Jordan pointed out,
"by no means a unit on the question of the immigration of Japa-
nese laborers. The fruit growers openly welcome it. Business
men generally, quietly, favor it; and, outside of San Francisco
and the labor unions, it is not clear that a majority of the people
are opposed to the free admission of Japanese laborers or even
of Chinese." 9 The southern part of the state and the rural areas
8 Out Wes^ March, 1907.
19
generally were not favorable to the agitation. Furthermore, the
whole movement received a definite setback in President Theo-
dore Roosevelt's message to Congress of December i, 1905, in
which he spoke out most emphatically in favor of a nondiscrim-
inatory policy.
2. The Irish and the Native Sons
From 1870 to 1920, anti-Oriental agitation in California was
fomented, directed, and financed by the powerful trade-union
movement that, from the earliest days, had centered in San Fran-
cisco. It is, indeed, remarkable that in a pioneer nonindustrial
state a labor movement of such strength had developed that by
1879 it was able, through the Workingmen's Party, to seize con-
trol of the state and enact a new, and in some respects quite
radical, constitution. The secret of the success of this early
movement lay in the fact that Irish immigrants constituted one
fourth of the large foreign-born element in the state. Further-
more, virtually all of the Irish were concentrated in San Fran-
cisco. "The Sons of Ireland," as Janzo Sasamori observed, "are
fond of politicianing." 10
Most of the leaders of the anti-Oriental movement, in its early
phases, were Irish and they were also the leaders of the San
Francisco labor movement. Dennis Kearney, Walter MacArthur,
P. H. McCarthy, and many other labor leaders fall within this
category. These leaders had been quick to realize the possibili-
ties of uniting their notoriously clannish fellow countrymen
around a negative issue, namely, "The Chinese Must Go!" It
was the political, rather than the economic aspects, of Oriental
immigration that interested these clever and resourceful leaders.
Scientific evidence has always been lacking to prove that Ori-
ental immigrants ever actually displaced American workmen in
California or that they ever constituted a permanent threat to
labor standards in the state. But, given the chaotic state of affairs
in California in the seventies, no shrewder slogan could have
been devised than "The Chinese Must Go!" At this time, more-
^ Facts About the Japanese in America.
20
over, Irish Immigrants were being assaulted and abused in Eastern
industrial areas. Their aggressions against Orientals on the West
Coast tended to compensate for these attacks. The fact that
Japan had an alliance with Great Britain merely gave them an addi-
tional reason for being opposed to Oriental immigration.
During the long depression years of the nineties, the Work-
ingmen's Party had disintegrated. But, with the turn of the
century, the annexation of Hawaii and the discovery of gold in
Alaska had brought boom times to California. With the forma-
tion of the State Federation of Labor in January, 1901, the San
Francisco labor movement began to revive. As an aftermath to
a great teamsters' strike in July, 1901, the Union Labor Party
succeeded in electing Eugene E. Schmitz as mayor of San Fran-
cisco. In campaigning against Mayor James D. Phelan, Schmitz
had forced such antilabor publications as the San Francisco
Chronical and Call to compete for the "anti-Oriental" vote. Thus
the violently prokbor and the -violently antilabor forces both
sought to exploit anti-Oriental sentiment. Formerly a bassoon
player in a San Francisco orchestra, Schmitz was the henchman
of Abe Ruef, an exceedingly able and notoriously corrupt poli-
tician. In the years following the victory of the Union Labor
Party, San Francisco wallowed in corruption. Raymond Leslie
Buell has said that, during these years, the political corruption
that existed in San Francisco would "make the blackest deeds of
Boss Tweed look as harmless as politics in a woman's club." u
The history of these lawless and tumultuous years in San Fran-
cisco has been carefully recorded (see, for example, Fremont
Older's autobiography My Ovvn Story, 1919; and Fjranklin
Hitchborn's interesting document, The System, 1915). Al-
though he had been re-elected as Mayor of San Francisco,
Schmitz was facing indictment in 1906 for his many crimes.
Hard-pressed for an effective diversionary issue, Schmitz and
Ruef saw an opportunity to save themselves by whipping up a
Japanese pogrom.
At about this time, other groups in California began to use
the tactics so successfully employed by the Irish labor leaders
11 Political Science Quarterly, December, 1922.
21
to develop a strong in-group feeling and to create solid political
organizations. Foremost among these organizations was the Na-
tive Sons of the Golden West. Created in 1875, this organization
had, prior to 1907, been primarily interested in collecting his-
torical materials, preserving historical landmarks, and otherwise
engaging in a number of harmless, and sometimes laudable, civic
purposes. After 1907, however, it became actively interested in the
anti-Oriental movement.
A glance at the list of prominent leaders of the anti-Oriental
agitation in California from 1907 to 1941 will show that most
of these men were members and in most cases officials of the
Native Sons of the Golden West. Hiram Johnson, James D.
Phelan, U. S. Webb, V. S. McClatchy (the doyen of all anti-
Oriental leaders in. California), J. M. Inman (State Senator and
President of the California Oriental Exclusion League), Mayor
Eugene E. Schmitz, Abe Ruef, Aaron Altman and James L.
Gallagher (members of the San Francisco Board of Education
in 1906), Anthony Caminetti (formerly a State Senator and
United States Commissioner-General of Immigration in 1913)
all of these leaders of the anti-Oriental agitation were members
and officials of the Native Sons. They were also active and suc-
cessful political figures in California. As a matter of fact, scores
of legislators, judges, state officials, Congressmen, and Senators
received their initial support and owed their election (or appoint-
ment) to public office in California in the years 1907-1924 to
the Native Sons of the Golden West. The organization, in turn,
acquired its great political potency by cleverly using anti-
Oriental feeling to solidify its own ranks and to build a compact
political organization.
While glorifying the state of California, its history and tradi-
tions, the Native Sons has always been a strictly "lily-white"
organization. Although making birth in California a condition
of membership, the organization always excepted Chinese, Jap-
anese, Negroes, and Mexicans (although a few elegant pseudo-
Mexicans of the "early" and therefore the "best" families were
admitted to membership). According to its philosophy, the State
of California should remain what "it has always been and God
22
Himself intended it shall always be the White Man's Paradise." M
It has always been committed to the interesting proposition that
the "3ist Star shall never become dim or yellow." For years it
maintained that citizenship should be restricted to "native-born
Californians of the white male race." In its official publication, the
Grizzly Bear, it has adhered to the practice of referring to Mexi-
cans as "cholos" and "greasers" and to Chinese as "chinks." In a
brief filed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals it recently re-
iterated its stand that the Constitution refers to "white people
only" and that the phrase "We, the people of the United States,"
means "we, the white people." 13 It has consistently maintained
that we made a "grave mistake" when we granted citizenship to
the Negroes after the Civil War. 14 While its membership has to-
day fallen to 25,000, it has been, in the past, an extremely power-
ful political organization.
To appreciate the importance of a "native" organization of
this kind in California, one must realize that the population of
the state has been doubling nearly every decade since 1849. Most
of this net growth in population has been due to migration: the
movement into California of persons born elsewhere. California,
as James Bryce observed, "grew like a gourd in the night." It
has not been peopled by settlers from some near-by state, as
people moved from Illinois to Minnesota, but by people from
all over the world. At the height of the anti-Japanese agitation
in California, there were in the state 90,000 people who had
been born in Illinois; while 80,000 had been born in New York;
68,000 in Missouri; 67,000 in New England; 51,000 in Pennsyl-
vania; 41,000 in Indiana; 35,000 in Wisconsin; 20,000 in Texas;
and 20,000 in Kentucky. There was no county in the state, in
1913, in which fewer than twenty states were represented. The
legislature that passed the first Alien Land Act consisted of
eighty members, equally divided between native-born Califor-
nians and those born in some other state. It is significant, as Dr.
12 Grizzly Bear, March, 1920.
15 See brief in the case of Reagan vs. King, No. 10,299, Appellant's Brief,
p. 47.
14 San Francisco Hearings, Tolan Committee, February 21, 1942, pp. 11085,
11074.
Eliot Grinnell Mears has pointed out, 16 that sentiment in Cali-
fornia is influenced to a major degree by persons who were not
born and brought up in their most impressionable years in the
state.
The real significance of this unique population is, however,
that in such a heterogeneously constituted state an in-group or-
ganization, with a substantial degree of internal cohesiveness, can
exercise a political influence out of all relation to its actual mem-
bership. For such an organization will represent one of the few
organized mass groups. Working in conjunction with the State
Federation of Labor, the California Grange, and the American
Legion, the Native Sons of the Golden West became a real power
in California politics. All of these organizations used anti-Oriental
feeling as a means of solidifying their membership; of uniting this
membership by posing the existence of a common enemy; and of
rallying their joint membership around a single issue. Not only
was the Native Sons a highly organized in-group in a state made
up largely of outsiders, but it had possession of all the symbols
of the homeland. It waved the flag of the Bear State Republic;
it identified itself with the heroic forty-niners; it paid annual
homage to the aging survivors of the Donner Party. Making
much of "traditions" in a state that was as new as a fresh nickel
from the mint, it easily bluffed the newcomers into thinking that
it knew something about a state of which they were admittedly
ignorant. Actually, as Ruth Fowler has pointed out, these organ-
izations created more anti-Oriental opinion than they reflected.
Discovering the political potency of anti-Oriental agitation,
the Native Sons permitted its attitude on this issue to color its
thinking about almost every other issue. It opposed the Child
Labor Amendment upon the extraordinary ground that the white
American farmer must be free to work his children in the field
in order to meet the competition of Japanese labor. It opposed
our entrance into the League of Nations out of a deep-seated
fear that Japan would bring the issue of racial equality before the
League. It has consistently opposed the admission of Hawaii as a
state, because of its large population of Oriental ancestry. In
preparing the history of its participation in the anti-Oriental move-
15 Resident Orientals on the American Pacific Coast y 1927.
ment, the organization points with pride to the fact that Eugene
Schmitz and Abe Ruef were members of Niantic Parlor and
Grand Trustees. So great is its pride in this fact that it neglects
to mention that these men were convicted of felonies and that they
were corrupt public officials. 16
Given this situation, it is not surprising that the "peak" years
of anti-Japanese agitation should have been years in which Presi-
dential elections were held: 1908, 1912, 1916, and 1920. Dozens
of California Congressmen were repeatedly re-elected to Con-
gress by their sponsorship of this agitation. Some of them Mr.
E. A. Hayes is a case in point made this issue the primary basis
of their re-election campaigns. The adroit manner in which he
manipulated this particular issue is a major explanation of the
remarkably successful political career of Hiram Johnson.
It should be noted that not all areas of the state have been
equally interested in anti-Japanese agitation. Prior to Pearl Har-
bor, there had never been much organized anti-Japanese senti-
ment in Southern California. Even the gradual concentration of
the Japanese in Los Angeles County which took place after 1908
failed to produce the same degree of agitational activity that
existed elsewhere. 17 At the outset, the "anti feeling" was largely
confined to San Francisco. Later the mountain-fruit section in
Placer County, the area around Sacramento, and the Stockton
delta region, became the hotbeds of organized activity. While
other factors would have to be appraised in accounting for this
variation of sentiment, it is worthy of mention that the per-
centage of native-born Californians is greater in the northern
than in the southern part of the state. It is also interesting that
there should be little correlation between the number of Japanese
in a particular area and the virulence of anti- Japanese sentiment.
3. The School-Board Affair
The people around the rim of the Pacific always seem to be
momentarily united whenever an earthquake occurs. The Japa-
16 See The History of California's Japanese Problem and the Part Played
by the Native Sons of the Golden West in Its Solution by Peter T. Conmy,
Grand Historian, July, 1942.
17 See Waving the Yellow Flag in California by John B. Wallace.
nese government contributed over $250,000 to the relief of San
Francisco after the earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906. For a
brief period after the fire, anti- Japanese agitation abated. But it
was not long until the wave of crime and violence which de-
veloped after the fire began to be directed against the resident
Japanese. With a construction boom developing in the city, the
Japanese community began to expand economically and geo-
graphically. The number of Japanese restaurants increased from
eight to thirty and a number of Japanese residents bought homes
outside the Little Tokyo settlement. Noting this development,
the Exclusion League called for a boycott of all Japanese estab-
lishments. At the same time, two distinguished Japanese visitors,i
Dr. F. Qmpri, of the Imperial University, Tokyo, and Dr. T.
Nakamura, were assaulted in San Francisco; and, on a subsequent
trip to Eureka, Dr. Omori met with similar treatment. The
San Francisco Chronicle promptly approved of these assaults.
The assaults upon these visiting scientists were, according to Ray-
mond Leslie Buell, "immediately and widely reported in Japan,
where they had a profoundly irritating effect." By this time, the
program of the Exclusion League had been endorsed by organiza-
tions composed of nearly four and a half million members; and
both political parties had, in 1906, declared themselves in favor of
excluding Japanese immigration.
On May 6, 1905, the school board had gone on record in favor
of segregating Oriental students in the San Francisco schools,
but, for lack of funds, the resolution had been tabled. Now, on
October u, 1906, on the eve of the indictment of Messrs.
Schmitz and Ruef for sundry felonies, the school board suddenly
decided to carry the resolution into effect: it ordered all Oriental
students to attend a segregated school in Chinatown. Not only
were the graft investigations pending at the time, but a state
election was scheduled for November. The conclusion is ines-
capable that the school board, which was completely dominated
by Ruef and Schmitz, acted at this time to divert public atten-
tion from the graft scandals. There were only ninety-three Japa-
nese students out of a total school population of 25,000. A
contemporary observer has stated that "no oral or written pro-
26
tests were ever made against the Japanese pupils by the parents
of white pupils"; and, furthermore, educators throughout the
state joined in voicing an emphatic protest.
"When word of this action reached Japan, there swept over
the country," writes Dr. Bailey, "a wave of resentment against
what was commonly spoken of as both a treaty violation and an
insult." That the action violated the treaty of 1894 with Japan,
there can be no doubt. Secretary of State Elihu Root admitted
as much when he cabled our ambassador in Tokyo that "the
United States will not for a moment entertain the idea of any
treatment of the Japanese people other than that accorded to
the people of the most friendly European nations." From this
time forward, America ceased to be 'Dcd On Jin, "the Great
Friendly People," in the eyes of the Japanese masses. So intense
was popular indignation in Japan that one newspaper, the
Mainichi Shimbun, exclaimed editorially: "Why do we not insist
on sending ships?" While it cannot be determined how much
of this resentment was spontaneous and how much was inspired,
it is apparent that the Japan government took advantage of the
incident to create a diversion at Washington and to create pop-
ular sentiment in Japan in favor of increased military and naval
appropriations. 18
When formal protests were filed in Washington, the Japanese
in San Francisco immediately called a mass meeting and began
to raise funds to fight the issue. In the meantime, Japanese parents
refused to send their children to the Segregated schoof. There is
good reason to believe that this action on the part of the resident
Japanese was in large part instigated by the Japanese consul in
San Francisco. The Japanese vernacular press in San Francisco
proceeded to publish, at this time, some extremely foolish and
highly inflammatory editorials. 1 * "When National dignity is
called to question," read one of these editorials, "the sword of
Masamune is unsheathed for action." For the next twenty-five
years these editorials were quoted in California as proof of the
18 See Japan and America by Carl Crow, 1916; and The Menace of Japan
by Frederick McCormick, 1917.
M See the Japanese-American of October 25, 1906, and the New World
of October 25.
menacing character of the resident Japanese. One can at least
draw an inference, however, that these editorials were inspired
by the consul, whose influence was admittedly great with the
editors of both publications. In retrospect, it seems altogether
unlikely that such provocative statements would have been made
without the approval of the consul.
Faced with this crisis, President Roosevelt promptly dispatched
Secretary of Commerce and Labor, V. H. Metcalf (a Calif ornian),
to the Coast to make a thorough investigation. Without waiting
for a report, however, he sent a message to Congress on Decem-
ber 3, 1906, in which he condemned the action of the San Fran-
cisco School Board as "a wicked absurdity." In this same message,
he urged Congress to make it possible for the Japanese to become
citizens and suggested that the President should be authorized to
protect the treaty rights of aliens.
The Metcalf Report (dated December 18, 1906) clearly estab-
lished that there was no factual justification for the action of the
school board. It also documented some nineteen cases involving
serious assaults against Japanese residents of San Francisco. The
action of the school board was, in fact, merely the first of a long
series of discriminatory measures adopted in California for the
purpose of forcing Congress to exclude Japanese immigration.
None of these acts was aimed at correcting a particular situation;
they were all deliberately provocative in character. "The school
question," said the Coast Seameris Journal, "is a mere incident
in our campaign for Japanese exclusion."
Coming soon after the Treaty of Portsmouth, the school-board
affair proved most embarrassing to the national government, and
it remained a source of embarrassment since no effective remedy
was available to the government. On January 17, 1907, the fed-
eral government filed two suits in California by which it sought
to enjoin the school board from carrying its order into effect.
Had these suits ever been pressed to trial (they were later dis-
missed), it is extremely doubtful whether the federal government
could have prevailed. For by 1907 the Supreme Court stood
firmly committed to the notion that segregation, on the basis
of race, is not unconstitutional, if equal and separate facilities are
28
provided. This strange constitutional doctrine had been devel-
oped as part of the campaign to emasculate the Fourteenth
Amendment in the years immediately subsequent to the Civil
War.
Discussion of the San Francisco School Board "incident" on
the floor of Congress showed clearly enough that the Japanese
question in California was intimately related to the Negro ques-
tion in the Deep South. "Because of their Negro problem, south-
erners were in sympathy with San Francisco's views; southern
congressmen as a whole were decidedly with California in her
race struggle." 20 Congressman Burnett of Alabama stated that "we
have suffered enough already from one race question" and similar
views were echoed by Senator Bacon of Georgia, Senator Tillman
of South Carolina, Senator Underwood of Alabama, Senator Bur-
gess of Texas, and Senator Williams of Mississippi. One Congress-
man from Mississippi stated:
"I stand with the State of California in opposition to mixed
schools. [Applause] I stand with Californians in favor of the
proposition that we want a homogeneous and assimilable
population of white people in the Republic." [Applause] 2L
While these gentlemen were Democrats and doubtless aware of
the fact that the Republican President faced re-election in 1908,
the real basis of their action was obviously the racial situation in
the South. In attempting to cope with California, President
Roosevelt suddenly discovered that he faced the opposition of
the Solid South.
In defying the President of the United States, California stood
on firm legal grounds. The San Francisco Argonaut, in a bitter
and mocking editorial of November 10, 1906, put the issue up
to the President in these words:
It was on December i8th, 1865, that the i3th Amend-
ment to the Constitution went into effect, abolishing slavery.
It was in July, 1868, that the i4th Amendment went into
effect, making the Negroes citizens, giving them civil rights,
20 See Tupper and McReynolds, p. 29.
21 Quoted by Bailey, p. 72.
29
and enumerating certain of their civil rights. This amend-
ment also cut down the representation in Congress of such
states as denied to Negroes the right to vote. But no South-
ern state as a result of this penalizing ever enfranchised the
Negro. It was on Feb. 26, 1869 that the ijth Amendment
was proposed to Congress. . . . Does President Roosevelt
think Negroes freely exercise the right to vote in Southern
states? We do not think so. It is thirty-eight years since the
i4h Amendment gave to Negroes civil rights. Does Presi-
dent Roosevelt think Negroes are granted equal rights in
theatres, hotels, railway trains, or street cars in all the
states, Southern or Northern? We do not think so. It may
be said that the Federal Court can coerce the states into giv-
ing "equal rights" to the Negroes. We do not think so. But
if there may be those who doubt the soundness of our judg-
ment, we may add that the U. S. Supreme Court in the cele-
brated Slaughterhouse Cases decided that the i4th Amend-
ment does not deprive the states of police powers; that court
upheld the right of states to regulate domestic affairs; it
decreed that there is a citizenship of the states as well as
of the United States; it decided that the states could vest
certain privileges and immunities upon their citizens. This
decision was opposed by many extremists, as the war feeling
still ran high. Congress thereupon passed a measure known
as the Civil Rights Bill, which was intended to extort from
the white citizens of the Southern states the recognition of
the Negroes' "equal rights." This law, when brought up be-
fore the Supreme Court, was declared to be unconstitutional.
Obviously this editorial was correct in stating that, if the federal
government could force California to abandon its policy of
segregation, it could force compliance with the same policy in
lie South.
At a large mass meeting called in San Francisco, just before
Hiristmas, Mayor Schmitz shouted defiance of the federal gov-
ernment; claimed that he was being unjustly prosecuted in the
:ourts; and contended that he had been indicted, not for his
:rimes (which were legion), but because of his anti- Japanese
dews. In the course of this speech, the Mayor stated that, if
30
necessary, he would lay down his life in battle with the Japanese.
The Los Angeles Times was prompted to remark that "it is a
notable fact that his Honor has never laid down anything of value.
His promise, however, would almost reconcile anyone to a war
with Japan." In the November elections of 1906, Calif ornia poli-
ticians were volunteering by the score to fight Japan. "If we are
to have war with Japan," advised Congressman E. A. Hayes, "let's
have it right away. We are ready and they are not." P. H. McCar-
thy believed that the "states west of the Rockies could whip
Japan at a moment's notice."
Suggesting that the ordinance be suspended, Mr. Roosevelt
invited the school board to Washington. It took Mayor Schmitz
a full week to decide whether he would permit the board to
accept the invitation. When he finally agreed, he decided to
accompany them himself. In February, 1907, the party left for
Washington amidst much excitement and fanfare. The Mayor's
followers, according to Franklin Hitchborn, "were frankly de-
lighted with the prospect of the indicted Mayor returning from
the national capitol covered with glory and acclaimed the savior
of the country from a war with Japan."
It would be difficult, indeed, to imagine a more ludicrous spec-
tacle. Heading the delegation was the Mayor, a bassoon player
by profession, under indictment for numerous crimes. He was
accompanied by the Superintendent of Schools, Roncovieri, a
trombone player, close personal friend of the Mayor, and by
Aaron Altman, President of the School Board, a brother-in-law
of Abe Ruef . Here were Altman, Schmitz, and Roncovieri all
descendants of recent immigrants to the United States, all mem-
bers in good standing of the Native Sons, one of them under
indictment going to "treat with" the President of the United
States as though they were the ministers of a sovereign political
power.
The New York World (February 14, 1907) found the situa-
tion rather amusing: "The Mayor and the Board of Education of
a single American city summoned to the White House, asked to
approve the forms of a settlement with Japan proposed by the
President and his Secretary of State, and allowed to make condi-
3*
tions and changes of international policy with the manner of an
independent power." Years previously, Lord Bryce had pointed
out that "California, more than any other part of the nation, is
a country by itself, and San Francisco a Capitol." The state had
acquired, he remarked, "a sort of consciousness of separate
existence."
In this instance, California was simply practising an old tech-
nique. With the aid of the Deep South, it had forced the federal
government to adopt the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. Since
the Supreme Court had held the Civil Rights Statute unconsti-
tutional, the federal government was powerless to prevent dis-
criminatory acts or to safeguard even the treaty rights of aliens.
It could no more protect the rights of Chinese and Japanese in
California than it could uphold the civil rights of Negroes in the
Deep South. The dilemma was directly related to the nation's
capitulation to the South on the Negro question in 1876. During
their terms of office, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley,
Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wil-
son all had occasion to lament this latent weakness in the federal
government.
As Mayor Schmitz and party neared Washington, the news-
papers carried sensational headlines about the "inevitable" conflict
with Japan. Throughout this period, Captain Richmond P. Hobson
was conducting an inflammatory anti- Japanese campaign, on the
lecture platform, in Congress (1907-1915), and in the press. "We
know," he wrote, "that the Japanese in California are soldiers
organized into companies, regiments, and brigades." 22 While the
Mayor was en route to Washington, the California legislature
convened and the usual spate of anti- Japanese legislation was
promptly introduced. By direct appeals to Governor Gillett,
President Roosevelt managed to have these bills tabled while he
was negotiating a settlement with California's ambassadors. The
agreement finally reached in Washington provided that the school
board would withdraw the offensive ordinance and that the Presi-
dent would negotiate with Japan for a suspension of further
immigration. On March 17, 1907, the ordinance was withdrawn;
* *N*u> York Heraldy February 3, 1907.
and shortly afterwards the President, by executive order, stopped
further Japanese immigration by way of Hawaii, Canada, or
Mexico. The moment this agreement was announce^, the anti-
Japanese forces in California attacked Mayor Schmitz as a traitor
-even the Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco felt that he
had been "betrayed."
No sooner had the delegation returned to San Francisco than
mobs began to assault the Japanese. Within two weeks after these
riots, newspapers in Japan were speaking openly of the possi-
bility of war with the United States, and France informally
offered its services as a mediator. This particular outburst in
Japan seems to have been inspired by internal political consid-
erations. 23 In June the Board of Police Commissioners in San
Francisco refused to issue licenses to Japanese establishments, but
this action provoked no outburst in Japan. The behavior of the
Japanese press, at this time, was extremely puzzling. One episode
in California would produce a flood of denunciation; and other
episodes would be greeted with complete silence.
The outburst in May, 1907, was provoked by an incident much
less serious than the school-board affair. Coining just as it did, at
a time when a settlement of the "Japanese question" had appar-
ently been reached, it provoked angry annoyance in this country.
The inference is, I believe, that Japan seized upon the riots of
May, 1907, to launch a new anti- American campaign in the press
so that the Japanese people would not conclude that a settlement
had been reached; in other words, they wanted to keep the issue
alive on both sides of the Pacific. All the evidence indicates that,
by 1907, the Japanese had become experts in manipulating the
situation in California to their advantage. While most of this
ranting in the Japanese press in 1907 was probably officially
inspired, nevertheless we were actually near war with Japan.
At a later date, Mr. lichiro Tokutomi stated that if Japan had
fully recovered from the war with Russia, she would never have
accepted the Gentlemen's Agreement. 24
28 See Bailey, p. 201; and summary of opinion in the Literary Digest,
June 22, 1907.
24 Japanese- American Relations, 1922, p. 76.
33
President Roosevelt thought that we were on the brink of war
with Japan. "I am concerned about the Japanese-California situ-
ation," he wrote Henry White on July 10, 1907, "and I see no
prospect of its growing better." In a letter of about the same
date to Henry Cabot Lodge, he said: "I do not believe we shall
have war; but it is no fault of the yellow press if we do not have
it. The Japanese seem to have about the same proportion of prize
jingo fools that we have." The "crisis" itself had the effect of
solidifying West Coast opinion. Only three West Coast news-
papersthe Seattle News, the Tacoma Daily News, and the
Las Angeles Times supported the President on this issue. 25 It
is amazing to note, in retrospect, that so few American news-
papers suspected that Japan might be deliberately fomenting the
situation on the West Coast and using it for its own advantage.
The San Francisco Call was one of the few newspapers that
suspected as much. "In the solemn game of diplomacy," to quote
from an editorial of November 13, 1906, "it is the ancient policy
to cultivate and even cherish open sores. Japan wants an offset to
our claim that American trade is not being fairly treated in
Manchuria. Further, the Japanese do not want extreme measures
taken against their sea poachers in the Aleutians."
4. The Episode of the Fleet
If Japan had taken the lead in instigating rumors of war in
1906, the initiative passed to this country in 1907. In May of
1907 the New York Times published a translation of a book
originally published in Germany, predicting war between the
United States and Japan. At the same time, Collier's carried a
piece by a French publicist predicting war in the near future.
Charlemagne Tower, our ambassador in Berlin, reported to the
President that "the California troubles were merely a symptom"
seized upon by Japan "for the purpose of inflaming public senti-
ment against America." Charles Denby, American consul in
Shanghai, reported that Japan might attack the United States
and that her position with respect to the disturbances in Cali-
25 See Literary Digest, January 12, 1907.
34
fornia was a mere pretext. 25 The German ambassador in Wash-
ington, Speck von Sternberg, repeatedly suggested to his good
friend, President Roosevelt, that Japan was instigating disturb-
ances in Mexico preparatory to an attack on the United States.
In a survey published in the Literary Digest (July 27, 1907) the
consensus seemed to be that war was inevitable.
Attention was momentarily diverted from the situation in
California when, on September 7, 1907, serious anti-Japanese
riots broke out in Vancouver; but on October 14 another riot
took place in San Francisco. The New York Times of September
29, 1907, carried a story about Japanese designs on the Philip-
pines; the New York Tribune published a serial story depicting
war between the United States and Japan, and the New York
Sun announced that war was "inevitable." 27 The campaign
reached such proportions that President Roosevelt publicly de-
nounced "the wanton levity, brutality and jingoism of certain
California mob leaders and certain yellow journals." Although
the stock market reacted most unfavorably to these rumors, Dr.
Bailey notes that, "strangely enough, the Japanese appear to have
made no diplomatic representations whatever." 28 This develop-
ing situation showed a curious counterpoint: in the fall of 1906
the Japanese press was furious over the school-board affair; in
February, 1907, the American press began to assume a belligerent
tone while the Japanese remained silent; in May and June, 1907,
the Japanese press was again on the rampage, but as the crisis
mounted its tone became extremely moderate.
While the financial crisis in October, 1907, momentarily di-
verted public attention from the "inevitable" war with Japan,
the war stories soon reappeared when, on December 16, the
American fleet departed on its famous cruise around the world.
At this juncture, Viscount Aoki, the Japanese ambassador, was
recalled. On his way home, he announced in San Francisco that
the Japanese government had undertaken to regulate immigra-
tion. This was the first public intimation of the Gentlemen's
Agreement which was confirmed on January 25, 1908. Even the
announcement that a "satisfactory agreement" had been con-
28 Bailey, p. 239, w lUd^ p. 256. M Page 255.
35
eluded failed to quiet the press, since, by that time, the fleet
was already on its way.
The departure of the fleet occasioned a great outburst of jingo-
ism. On the eve of its departure, "Fighting Bob" Evans had
said: "Whether it proves feast, a frolic, or a fight, we are pre-
pared." In January, 1908, Ambassador Tower relayed to the
President a message from the Kaiser to the effect that the
Japanese were drilling "thousands of soldiers in Mexico." Some
observers believed that Germany was trying to precipitate a war
between the United States and Japan as a means of forcing Great
Britain to repudiate the Anglo- Japanese Alliance. Despite these
rumors of war, the reception which the fleet received in New
Zealand and Australia, and its terrific reception in Yokohama,
tended to break the tension. The Root-Takahira notes were ex-
changed in November, 1908; and by February, 1909, the fleet
was back in Hampton Roads.
While the fleet was on its way to the Orient, the anti- Japanese
forces in California had been conducting a violent campaign
against the Gentlemen's Agreement. A boycott was declared
against all Japanese laundries, and billboards in San Francisco
carried the notice:
Foolish woman!
Spending your man's
Earnings on Japs.
Be Fair, patronize
Your Own.
We support you. 29
Then, as the fleet was nearing home waters in January, the legis-
lature convened in California. At this crucial juncture in relations
between the United States and Japan, the legislature proceeded
to nullify the good effect created by the fleet's cruise. Bills were
introduced to segregate the Japanese in the public schools; to
prevent them from owning land; to segregate them in certain
residential sections; to prevent them from serving as directors
of corporations. On January 16, 1909, the President, whose pa-
29 Budl,p. 59.
36
tience was nearly exhausted, wired Governor Gillett that there
was "no shadow of excuse" for this continued agitation. Then,
on January 30, 1909, a mob in Berkeley assaulted Japanese resi-
dents. As a consequence, it took some twelve wires and telegrams
from the President to Governor Gillett to force the withdrawal
of most of these measures. Throughout this particular crisis,
Southern Congressmen and the Southern press publicly "sympa-
thized" with California and consistently endorsed whatever racist
measures were sponsored on the West Coast. 80 After this experi-
ence, President Roosevelt became convinced that the agitation in
California was primarily racial in character and that it had little
relation to economic considerations.
During this flurry of excitement, the press of Japan, for the
most part, remained silent. "This somewhat unexpected absence
of resentment," notes Dr. Bailey, "cannot be definitely explained,
but it would seem as if the fleet demonstration and satisfaction
with the Root-Takahira agreement were not altogether disso-
ciated from the Japanese reaction." Here, again, is convincing
proof that the Japanese were manipulating the situation in Cali-
fornia, pressing the question when it suited their purposes and
remaining silent when nothing was to be gained. Usually the
Japanese became very excited about the "California situation" on
the eve of some new adventure in Korea or Manchuria; or on
the eve of elections in Japan. For example, there was a consider-
able outburst of anti- American sentiment in Japan in 1909, at
the time of the Manchurian railroad negotiations. "To a certain
extent," wrote Mr. A. M. Pooley, "the hostile sentiment aroused
in Japan and so vehemently expressed, was spontaneous, but to
a greater extent it was generated from official and semi-official
sources. It was then, and still is, used by the bureaucratic authori-
ties as the basis of constant and insistent demands for military
and naval expansion. The furnace of popular indignation was
deliberately fanned by the militarists for the rolling of armour-
plate and the drawing of heavy cannon." 81
As though to serve notice that it did not intend to be forever
80 See Tupper and McReynolds, p. 47.
81 Japan's Foreign Policies, 1920.
37
frustrated, the California legislature in 1909 appropriated funds
for a general investigation of the Japanese in agriculture. When
the report, prepared by the State Labor Commissioner, was sub-
mitted in May, 1910, the legislature was horrified to discover
that it was quite favorable to the Japanese. "The Japanese land
owners," read a portion of the report, "are of the best class.
They are steady and industrious, and from their earnings pur-
chase land of low value and poor quality. The care lavished upon
this land is remarkable, and frequently its acreage value has in-
creased several hundred per cent in a year's time. Most of the
proprietors indicate an intention to make the section in which they
have located a permanent home, and adopt American customs and
manners." Senator Caminetti (Commissioner General of Immi-
gration in the Wilson administration) immediately proposed the
following resolution which was quickly adopted:
Whereas, the State Labor Commissioner has in his report
concerning Japanese laborers, expressed his opinion of the
necessity of such laborers in this state, and thus without
authority misrepresented the wishes of the people of this
commonwealth, therefore, be it Resolved, that the opinion
of such Labor Commissioner is hereby disapproved by this
Senate.
Not only was the State Labor Commissioner publicly repri-
manded, but his report was never published and the full text
of the report is not, to this day, available. 82
Throughout 1910 and 1911, anti- Japanese agitation continued
unabated in California. When the treaty of 1911 between Japan
and the United States was under consideration, President Taft
had to intervene to prevent the passage of anti- Japanese legisla-
tion when its enactment might have had the most serious inter-
national implications. It so happened that San Francisco was
preparing for the Pan-Pacific Exposition; and the possibility that
Japan might not participate in the exposition served to muzzle
the anti-Japanese guns momentarily. Japan's annexation of Korea
in 1910 and its trial of the Korean nationalists in 1912 served,
82 See Vol. 54, La Follette Committee Reports, p. 19836.
38
however, to keep public feeling at the fever pitch in California.
The wildest rumors continued to circulate:
In 1911 it was widely reported in this country with thrill-
ing details, that Japan was taking steps to secure from Mex-
ico a naval base at Magdalena Bay, in Lower California.
This had followed a report in 1910 that the Japanese had
sunk our drydock Dewey in Manila Bay, after planting
mines which imperiled our navy at the station. They had
also secretly charted our California harbors. Then there were
numerous plottings with Mexico for a position from which
this country could be attacked. A combination with Ger-
many to destroy the Monroe Doctrine was the pabulum
served up to the American public in 1912. In the same year
Japan was forming an alliance with the West Coast Indians
to gain a military foothold in this country. In 1915 Japanese
spies were seen in the Panama fortifications and in the next
year Japan was found conspiring to get a foothold in Pan-
ama by getting control of tie San Bias Indian lands. Japan's
diplomats penned Carranza's protests against our invasion
of Mexico, after there had been landed in that country two
hundred thousand Japanese troops, who had already fired on
American troops at Mazadan. 35
Whether these rumors were true or untrue is beside the point.
The sensational manner in which each and all of them were
featured in the West Coast press served to keep the and- Japanese
issue very much alive. It is certainly not improbable that Japan
planted some of these rumors for the express purpose of nurtur-
ing this valuable diversionary issue. In connection with subse-
quent happenings in California, it is interesting to note that, in
the 1912 Presidential election, Woodrow Wilson, speaking in the
state, declared: "The whole question is one of assimilation of
diverse races. We cannot make a homogeneous population of a
people who do not blend with the Caucasian race." Over one
hundred thousand copies of this statement were distributed
throughout California by the Democratic Party.
88 From the Independent; quoted in Japan and America by Henry W.
Taft, 1932, p. m.
39
5. The Yellow Peril
"The conflict of classes, or of races," writes Dr. Robert E.
Park, "in becoming forensic and political, ceases to be a mere
clash of blind force and assumes a form and character that Herr
Hitler has described as 'spiritual,' that is, a kind of psychic war-
fare in which the weapons are words, slogans, so-called Vital lies'
and other forms of propaganda, not excluding the news and the
editors' and columnists' interpretation of it." Anti-Chinese agita-
tion in California represented the initial or "conflict" stage in the
development of a fixed racial ideology on the West Coast. The
characteristic view of the Chinese was that expressed by a famous
West Coast editor, Frank Pixley, in 1876, when he said: "The
Chinese are inferior to any race God ever made." The Chinese
were never feared in California: they were .despised. It was with
the appearance of the Japanese, and more particularly with the
appearance of "the yellow peril" propaganda, that racial conflict
on the West Coast entered the "forensic" stage and began to be
discussed in "spiritual" terms.
"The yellow peril" i$ one of the most influential "vital lies" of
our time. Like most lies, the origin of the phrase has been com-
pletely forgotten or historically misplaced. Turning to the
Dictionary of American History (Vol. V, 1940), one finds this
reference: "yellow peril . . . grew out of the ethnocentric,
hypernationalistic attitude of Americans toward Oriental immi-
grants * . . had its genesis in the early contacts between Ameri-
cans of European ancestry and Chinese immigrant laborers on
the Pacific Coast." Although the first use of die expression has
not been verified, it is quite clear that "the yellow peril" origi-
nated as a weapon in European power politics. Originally, it had
no relation to the immigrant situation on the West Coast.
Shortly after the Sino-Japanese War, the Kaiser sent his cousin
the Czar a cartoon entitled: "Peoples of Europe, Guard Your
Most Precious Possessions!" The cartoon depicted an ogre arising
in the Far East and stretching menacing hands toward the West.
The cartoon was the work of the Kaiser himself. By promising
40
to guard Russia's western front, he had already laid the founda-
tion for the Russo-Japanese War. Throughout the summer of
1900, the Kaiser orated, from time to time, about "the yellow
peril." Emil Ludwig notes that he was quick to realize that he
had invented an extremely effective lie. "So it works!" he wrote
in his diary; "that is very gratifying."
Sensing the likelihood of war with Japan, the Russians began
to make effective use of the same idea. As a matter of fact, Russia
and Germany (and later Japan itself!) planted learned essays,
from time to time, in the European press which elaborated upon
the newly invented peril. "No more popular theme," commented
a writer in the Living Age (February 8, 1904), had been con-
cocted in modern times. Seeking to capitalize upon its recently
acquired reputation as a "menace," Japan did nothing to dissipate,
but, on the contrary, had a hand in cultivating, the myth. In its
inception, therefore, the phrase had no relation to the situation
on die Pacific Coast. 34
At an earlier date, however, the ideological content, to invest
the phrase with meaning, had been formulated. The first formula-
tion of the doctrine itself was made in 1893 by C. H. Pearson in
a book entitled National Life and Character. After conjuring up
the horrible spectre of the yellow races sweeping over Europe,
Pearson concluded that "it is idle to say that, if all this should
come to pass, our pride of place will not be humiliated." Pearson's
formulation of this idea has been termed the "classic statement"
of the doctrine itself; 85 and he is credited with being the first
person to call attention to the "peril." ** However, it was a Cali-
fornian, Homer Lea, who first combined the phrase with the
doctrine and applied the argument specifically to the West Coast.
Lea was a Californian. He knew the "feel" of anti-Oriental
agitation. He was that rare bird among Calif ornians, namely, one
who knew something about the Orient at first hand. He had been
84 See The Kaiser's Memoirs, 1922, pp. 79-81; Review of Reviews, August,
1905, p. 218; Living Age, July 16, 1904; Wilhelm Hohenzollern by Emil
Ludwig, 1926, p. 252.
85 See Of Our Blood by Robert E. Speer, 1924.
8e See Japanese Expansion and American^ Policies by James Francis Abbot,
1916, p. 155.
4'
in China as a soldier and Sun Yat-sen had visited in his home in
Santa Monica. Prior to writing The Valor of Ignorance, he had
inspected the California coastline and studied its terrain with
great care. When the book was published in 1909, it was imme-
diately seized upon by the Hearst Press and utilized effectively
as a major prop in the developing anti-Oriental agitation. Lea
correlated the domestic "peril" and the overseas "peril": he made
them one. Some 18,000 copies of the book were sold in this
country, but in Japan it went through twenty-four editions
within one month of publication. Going out of print in this
country in 1920, it was revived in 1942 with an introduction by
Clare Boothe Luce.
Lea was not a Japanese-baiter. He set the tone for much of the
ensuing agitation by the respectful attitude which he showed
toward the Japanese people. He did not underestimate their ca-
pacities: he indulged in no name-calling. On the contrary, he
implied that it was precisely because of their better qualities that
the Japanese were to be feared. (Their virtues made them dan-
gerous.) It was this argument that V. S. McClatchy, and others,
were to use so effectively at a later date. At the same time, the
book was essentially racist in character. "A nation," Lea argued,
"may be kept intact only so long as its ruling element remains
homogeneous." Racial similarity was the cornerstone of national
security; a naturalized citizen was an anomaly. Assimilation was
out of the question, since "racially there existed no relationship
between the people of Japan and of the United States." This
argument was extensively used by anti-Oriental leaders in Cali-
fornia; 37 it formed the core of the racial views of Madison Grant
and Lothrop Stoddard; and, through the work of these men, it
again reverberated in California.
While Lea was a racist, he saw the essential vice in. our policy
toward Japanese immigration. By making the Japanese ineligible
to citizenship, we had created that anomalous condition "caste
in a republic." The secondary consequences were of even greater
importance. For "the creation of an inferior caste by political
87 See The Japanese Conquest of American Opinion by Montaville
Flowers, 1917.
4*
disfranchisement soon permeates every phase of daily existence.
Those who are disfranchised are treated by the populace, not alone
with social unconcern, but with indignities. Municipalities direct
restrictive ordinances against them so that they become the nat-
ural prey, not only of the lawless elements, but the police. Their
status being already fixed in public opinion, their voice in pro-
testations soon die away in hoarse and broken whispers. . . .
When a class or race finds itself in a republic without political
franchise, then as a race or class its rights are ground into broken
dust. To expect the Japanese," he warned, "to submit to indigni-
ties is to be pitifully incomprehensive of their- national character.
And the American people should realize that it is this cumulative
memoranda of wrongs that they must, on some certain som-
bre day, make answer to. . . ." He saw quite clearly that the mili-
tary in Japan were using the situation in California to lay the
foundation, among the people, for a future war against this
country.
No one had a better comprehension than Homer Lea of the
fact that little change could be expected in California's attitude
toward the Japanese. For Lea realized that the feeling against the
immigrants had become part of the traditions, the mores, of the
people. "Anti- Japanese sentiment," he noted, "may have been
dormant prior to the conclusion of the Russian War, but since
then it has openly manifested itself, and is not restricted, as may
be supposed, to union-labor or socialistic elements, but permeates
the entire social and political fabric of the West. [Italics mine.]
In the wild gorges of Siskiyou," he wrote, "on moss-grown
boulders, and half effaced by the lichens of two decades, can
even now be deciphered this legend: The Chinese Must Go,
Vote for O'DonnelL' We have seen it on the redwood shacks
of Mendocino; on the outhouses of cities and towns; on the board
fences in the Valley of the Santa Clara, and from there to the
Mojave Desert. Even by the borders of Death Valley, in the
dreariest of solitudes, the West stencilled the epitome of its racial
hatred, a hatred that was taken up and put into public ordinances
into the statute-books of the state, and finally, finding its way
to Washington, violated under political pressure such treaty stip-
43
illations as existed between the United States and China." 3S He
called attention to the fact that all political parties in California,
in 1908, were united in their opposition to further Japanese immi-
gration. He divided public opinion in California into four group-
ings: 8 per cent pro-Japanese; 22 per cent indifferent; 30 per cent
hostile; and 40 per cent belligerently hostile.
Not only had a firm ideological basis been laid for anti- Japanese
feeling by 1909, but malicious stereotypes were being created
which tended to solidify anti-Japanese sentiment. From the school-
board incident in San Francisco, Wallace Irwin received the in-
spiration for his popular fiction about the Japanese schoolboy,
Hashimura Togo. 39 First published in Collier's in 1907, these
letters long enjoyed considerable popularity on the West Coast.
In them the "Jap" stereotype was clearly outlined: the buck-
toothed, bespectacled, tricky, wordy, arrogant, dishonest figure
of the comic strips and pulp magazines. It was Mr. Irwin who
invented the stereotyped speech of the Japanese-American or
"Jap." It was Mr. Irwin who coined all the funny parodies on
the use of Japanese honorifics, such as "Honorable Sir," and the
"so sorry, please." Thereafter people saw, not the Japanese immi-
grants, but the stereotype "Jap."
So deep-seated had these group attitudes become by 1927 that
Ruth Fowler concluded: "For an interminable length of time
they will remain unfavorable to the Japanese as a people of a
different race who are physically different and culturally dif-
ferent. . . . The habit of the emotional reaction of fear," she
wrote, "will remain for many years." Minnie Inui, a Japanese
girl raised in a Caucasian West Coast home, once stated that
these attitudes were so pervasive that, by the time she reached
maturity, she was definitely anti-Japanese. Writing of her ex-
perience as a girl in California during the First World War,
Helen Sloan Stetson has said:
This was the time it was going to happen: while we were
busy fighting in Europe. This was when it was going to hap-
88 The Valor of Ignorance by Homer Lea, Harper's, 1909, quoted by per-
mission of the publishers,
99 See Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy, 1909.
44
pen the Japs were going to take over California. Because
we feared greatly, we began to hate greatly. We hated the
vegetable and fruit-stand men. We hated the laborers in our
groves. We hated because we feared and we feared because
we had seen them in the groves, moving and working and
living like mechanical men without heart or mind or soul.
Because they were machines, and we were only human, and
easy going, and wasteful. It didn't happen that first war.
But it is happening now: the Japs are coming to take Cali-
fornia away just as I knew they would when I was little. 40
6. The 1913 War Scare
One of the first measures proposed in the January, 1913, ses-
sion of the California legislature was the so-called Webb-Heney
Bill or Alien Land Act. Previously all such proposals had been
aimed at aliens in general; but these earlier proposals had en-
countered the strong opposition of important landowning cor-
porations controlled by British capital. This particular measure,
however, was ingeniously drafted: it was aimed not at aliens
generally, but at "aliens ineligible to citizenship." Since the exist-
ing treaty with Japan did not refer to agricultural lands, it could
be argued that the act was not in violation of the treaty. President
Wilson sought to prevent passage of the bill. He sent William
Jennings Bryan to Sacramento to plead with the legislature and
with Governor Hiram Johnson. Unlike the situation on prior
occasions, however, the federation administration was now Dem-
ocratic and the Governor was a Progressive-Republican with
Presidential aspirations. The bill promptly passed both houses
(35 to 2 In the Senate, 72 to 3 in the Assembly) and was signed
by the Governor. The importance of this bill is that it repre-
sented the first official act of discrimination aimed at the Japa-
nese. The sponsors of the bill freely admitted that it was aimed,
not at preventing further Japanese expansion in agriculture, but
at driving the Japanese from the state; as a step in the campaign
for exclusion.
40 "Us and the Japs'* in Woman's Day, August, 1942; see also "I Can TelF
by Joan Fontaine, Liberty, April n, 1942.
45
The land act could not have been passed at a more inopportune
time. Shortly prior to its adoption, this country had aroused con-
siderable resentment in Japan by its recognition of the newly
established Chinese Republic. Charles W. Eliot reported that,
"with a single exception," the American naval officers he had
met in the Orient in 1912 "expected war between the United
States and Japan within a few months; and most of them thought
it was high time." * Furthermore the land act was passed, as Mr.
A. M. Pooley has pointed out, "shortly after the Tokio mob had
succeeded in shattering the third Katsura Ministry." Passage of
the bill occasioned violent resentment in Japan. "Revelling in the
recent discovery of its power," writes Mr. Pooley, "the mob,
inflamed by the opposition, endeavored to use the same methods
to force a settlement of the California question on the govern-
ment" that it had used in ousting the Katsura Ministry. Through-
out April and May, 1913, the Japanese press adopted a most
threatening and truculent tone. California newspapers on April
18, 1913, carried a dispatch from Tokyo to the effect that "a
demand that Japan resort to arms was hysterically cheered at a
mass meeting here tonight to protest against the alien land bill
now pending before the California legislature. Twenty thousand
persons assembled."
"More unfortunate still," observed Mr. Pooley, "the wave of
excitement grew under the stimulus of anti-American societies
formed by men in responsible positions. The agitation of April
and May, 1913, became a national movement and of such volume
that the Government had to pay respect to it. The anti- American
movement spread, associations sprang up like mushrooms to deal
with the matter. Commercial circles agitated for a boycott of the
Panama Exposition, and the Department of Agriculture and Com-
merce unofficially expressed its approval. National demonstrations
were held in the principal cities to protest and to threaten. The
leaders of the mobocracy boasted of their late victory over the
clans, and asserted that the time had come to settle once and for
all the question of racial prejudice. Members of Parliament in-
voked the old jio (anti-foreign spirit), advocated a policy of
^Friendship Between the United States and Japan.
46
yakiuchi (incendiarism), and invited the people to burn the
American embassy. Insulting placards were posted on its walls
and a police guard without." Political spokesmen advocated
"sledge-hammer" blows against America; and the Marquis Okuma
demanded the expulsion of American missionaries. "The mis-
sionaries," adds Mr. Pooley, "as usual, blew the Japanese trumpet,
conferred together and with the authorities, and enriched the
cable companies by innumerable telegrams to the States de-
nouncing their own countrymen and eulogizing the Japanese."
The Panama Canal had not been completed and Japan was sorely
tempted to declare war. Mr. Pooley states that the Japanese gov-
ernment put out feelers, to see if a foreign loan might be raised
to finance a war against America; it was in large part because the
funds were not forthcoming (Europe was preparing for war at
the time) that Japan did not declare war.
Later in 1913 the Japanese government sent a mission to this
country to "allay the bitter feelings of the Japanese in Cali-
fornia." 42 Mr. J. Soyeda, a member of this commission, subse-
quently published a report entitled Survey of the Japanese Ques-
tion in California, In this report he took occasion to urge the
Japanese in California to assimilate. He urged them to abandon
those customs and habits which set them apart from other resi-
dents and to act the part of good citizens, even though they were
ineligible to citizenship. The reception accorded this courteous
and tactful pamphlet in the California press is indicative of the
attitudes which then prevailed. "Honorable Pamphlet," stated the
San Francisco Examiner on October 2, 1913, "informs us that
Honorable Japanese is truly morally superior to unfortunate
American inhabitableness,- being truth, firmness, uprightness and
faithfulness in gentlemen's agreement, therefore is perfectly agree-
able to naturalization and intermarriage, which afford happy so-
lution to Honorable Immigration Question not yet impacted
upon yellow American press."
The ingenious feature of the Webb-Heney Act of 1913 was
that the prohibition ran against "aliens ineligible to citizenship."
Although some lower federal courts had ruled that Japanese
42 See The Japanese Crisis by James A. B. Scherer, 1916.
47
were eligible to citizenship, it was generally assumed in 1913
that they were ineligible. The Supreme Court had not, as yet,
decided the question. Just how had it come about that Japanese
and Chinese were "ineligible to citizenship"? Since 1790 our
naturalization laws had defined aliens eligible to citizenship as
"free white persons." In a memorable speech in the United
States Senate, Charles Sumner had moved to strike out the word
"white" which he denounced as a "requirement disgraceful to
this country and to this age. I propose to bring our system into
harmony with the Declaration of Independence and the Consti-
tution of the United States." Neither the Constitution nor the
Declaration of Independence, he noted, uses the word "white."
During this famous debate on the naturalization laws in 1870,
Congress made aliens of African nativity and persons of African
descent eligible to citizenship. But Congress went further and,
on Sumner's suggestion, actually struck out the word "white."
The word was restored, however, in 1875, largely because of
anti-Chinese agitation in California. It has since remained in the
statute. Even after 1875 codifiers felt that the word no longer
belonged in the statute since it was distinctly out of harmtiny
with, if not actually violative of, the sweeping declarations of
the Fourteenth Amendment.
It is extremely significant, as Mr. Max J. Kohler has pointed
out in his Immigration and Aliens in the United States (1936),
that the phrase "free white persons," although on the statute
books since 1790, was not construed by the courts until 1878.
In a case involving a Chinese, Judge Sawyer, of the federal dis-
trict court in California, held in that year that the word "white"
referred to a person of the Caucasian race. This decision, as all
subsequent decisions, completely ignored the circumstances exist-
ing when the phrase was adopted. Actually the phrase "free white
persons" was designed to exclude "slaves," whether they were
red, white, black, or brown, and it was intended to exclude
Indians living in tribal' organizations. It will be noted that not
all white persons are eligible; but only free white persons. Thus
the phrase, as originally used, was utterly devoid of racist impli-
cations. It was not races, as such, that were excluded; but rather all
48
persons who were not free. In an article written in 1894, Professor
John H. Wigmore had argued that the word "white" was utterly
meaningless if it was construed as importing the idea of "race." He
had contended that the Japanese were, in fact, eligible for citi-
zenship. Thus a century after the phrase was first used, it was
given, by construction, an intention completely at variance with
its original significance. Once established in law, this meaning
was extended and broadened by the alien land acts and it led
eventually and directly to the passage of the exclusionary Immi-
gration Act of 1924. It should be noted, also, that the prohibition
affected many other groups beside the Japanese. It applied equally
to Chinese, Filipinos, native Hawaiians, and Hindus. "The impli-
cation of inferiority, based upon the alien-ineligible-to-citizenship
status," wrote Dr. Meajrs, "is the greatest grievance which the
peoples of Eastern Asia have against this country."
By way of an aside, it might be mentioned tKat the Webb-
Heney Act was actually meaningless. It merely prevented the
acquisition of property in the future. It divested no Japanese
holdings. It permitted the Japanese to lease agricultural lands,
in unlimited amounts, for a period of three years. There was
nothing in the act to prevent the indefinite renewal of leases.
It had no effect whatever upon the land situation in California.
The men who drafted the act conceded that it was intended as
"an irritant" a warning to the Japanese, a step in the campaign
for exclusion. However the bill was very effective political
material for there did exist in California a real land problem.
Visiting California in the eighties, Lord Bryce had been im-
pressed with the extremes of wealth and poverty. He believed
that the ostentatious display of wealth by the newly created, and
socially irresponsible, millionaires of San Francisco had contrib-
uted to the social unrest of the time. Speculation in Spanish land
grants was widespread. Great landed estates had come into exist-
ence in California and the land was being steadily monopolized.
"Latifundia perdunt Californian," was the way he summarized
his impressions.
Anti-Japanese agitation in California had the effect of focusing
public attention upon what was in reality a minor aspect of the
4?
land problem; and, on the other hand, it diverted attention from
the problem of large-scale land ownership and operation. When
Walter B. Pitkin visited the state in 1920 to report on the Japa-
nese problem, he observed that many of "these royal estates and
a hundred others of princely extent and richness" still existed in
California. The holders of these vast estates, he noted, continued
to behave, despite changed conditions, with a reckless disregard
of social responsibility. During the debate on the 1920 Alien Land
Act, for example, the Los Angeles Times had suggested that the
problem might be solved by the importation of 1,000,000 Chinese
coolies! ** The small farmer sensed that the employment of cheap
Oriental labor on these large estates constituted, insofar as he
was concerned, a type of unfair competition. To some extent,
therefore, his anti-Japanese views were an expression of a mis-
placed social or class consciousness.
Also these California Jtmkers had long displayed such a
princely contempt for farm laborers that as late as 1920 "no self-
respecting man who could have earned a living at any other
form of work would have followed the California ranches."
California, Mr. Pitkin observed, was "made up of large ranch
holdings and small fruit-ranches. During the harvest season men
are employed for only a short period at one place, and then
move on to another job. On die large grain-ranches and fruit-
farms the hands are usually paid a certain amount a day and
board. Until the State Commission of Immigration and Housing
took the matter in charge, the men slept almost anywhere. . . .
Men slept in barns, on haystacks, or out of doors. All men car-
ried their own blankets. . . . They ate in the cook house sur-
rounded by thousands of flies from scattered manure piles."
Conditions were so miserable, in fact, that about the only white
men the farmers could attract to the fields were chronic drunks
and bindlestiffs who had been following the "dirty-plate route"
for years.
Given this state of affairs, it required only a minimum amount
of agitation to arouse these men against the Japanese. Their
vehemence on the subject, like that of the small farmer, was a
**See editorial quoted in Must We Fight Japan?, p. 245.
50
form of unrecognized class hatred diverted from its real object
the Junkers of the San Joaquin Valley toward a scapegoat,
the Japanese. Certain of these large concerns such as the Cali-
fornia and Delta Farms with 50,000 acres in the heart of the
delta region and the Rindge Land and Navigation Company
were among the largest employers of Japanese farm labor. There
can be little doubt that it was "these great land monopolists and
land speculators," as Mr. Jabez T. Sunderland noted, who were
"California's real foes these and not the small farmers, the
hard-working market gardeners and the skillful orchardists who,
though born in Japan, are loyal to California, and are doing so
much to make her waste places to bud and blossom as the rose*" **
Despite this aspect of the matter, however, even such outstand-
ing advocates of land reform as Elwood Mead joined forces with
the anti-Japanese movement, thereby investing the movement
with something of the aura of a liberal, progressive, and reform-
ist crusade. In fact, most of the progressive political leaders in
California were identified with the movement.
7. The Lord of San Simeon
With the entrance of Japan on the side of the Allies in the
First World War, anti- Japanese agitation momentarily subsided
in California. The war greatly increased the demand for food
and not too much emphasis was placed on enforcement of the
newly enacted Alien Land Act. It was not long, however, be-
fore various interests began to fish in the troubled waters of the
time.
The Hearst newspapers had, of course, always been anti-
Oriental. The senior Hearst had not hesitated to use anti-Chinese
politics as one means of acquiring a seat in the United States
Senate. His son had long shown promise as an amateur anti-
Japanese agitator; but, with the First World War, he began to
show professional talent. At the outset of the war, Hearst was
pro-German, and violently anti-Japanese and anti-Mexican. It
has been suggested that his ownership of the Cerro de Paseo
^Rising Japan: Is She a Menace?, 1918.
51
mining property in Mexico which could only be profitably
operated in the event of war in the Pacific had something to
do with his attitude.
During the early stages of the war, two German agents con-
tributed regular features to the Hearst newspapers. One of these
agents, Edward Lyell Fox, wrote a letter to the infamous Nazi
intriguer, Franz von Papen, in which he pointed out that the
United States had been close to war with Japan in 1913. "The
source of that situation," he wrote, "was California. Cleverly
handled, California can be used to create the seme situation today.
. . . The public mind must be diverted from Europe to the
Orient. Pro-German publicity is futile. The Hearst papers will
lead in the attack on the Japs." ** Incidentally, it is interesting to
note that this is precisely the line used today by the Fight Japan
First elements. If a first-class war scare could be promoted, Fox
advised, it would tend to interrupt the flow of American muni-
tions to Europe. Mr. Hearst soon provided the "scare." *
The attack was launched by an elaborate piece which appeared
in the New York American, and other Hearst newspapers, on Sep-
tember 28, 1915, entitled: "Japan Plans to Invade and Conquer
the United States Revealed by Its Own Bernhardi." The article
purported to be a translation of a book published in Japan by
"the Japanese Military Association." It was illustrated by pictures
purporting to show Japanese troops practising landing operations
preparatory to an assault on the California coast. Investigation
revealed that: (a) the purported translators could not be located
or identified; (b) the pictures were retouched illustrations used
during the Sino-Japanese War of 1895; (c) the original story
published in Japan had been a "dream story" of the pulp
magazine variety which had sold about 3000 copies instead
of the 500,000 copies represented; and (d) that the text had been
distorted in translation. 47
^Quoted in Imperial Hearst by Ferdinand Lundberg, 1936, p. 239;
italics mine.
46 Note that anti-Japanese propaganda during the First World War was
financed by German money. See Annals, American Academy of Political
and Social Science, January, 1921, p. 73 and 116.
47 See Hearst, the Lord of San Simeon by Oliver Carlson and Ernest Suth-
erland Bates, 1936, p. 179.
52
Throughout 1915 and 1916, sensational anti-Japanese stories
continued to appear in the Hearst press. 48 The New York Ameri-
can of July 23, 1916, carried a "Hymn of Hate," one stanza of
which read:
They've battleships, they say,
On Magdalena Bay!
Uncle Sam, won't you listen when we warn you?
They meet us with a smile
But they're working all the while,
And they're waiting just to steal our California!
So just keep your eyes on Togo,
With his pockets full of maps,
For we've found out we can't trust the Japs!
As part of this campaign, interests which Mr. Hearst controlled
in the motion-picture industry made a serial film entitled "Patria,"
starring Mrs. Vernon Castle. After he had seen a section of it
in Washington, President Wilson wrote the producers. He com-
plained that the picture was "extremely unfair"; that it was
"calculated to stir up a great deal of hostility." He asked that it
be withdrawn.
At a later date, Walter B. Pitkin stated that he had examined
hundreds of items which appeared in the Hearst press during
this period and had found the allegations "so ridiculous that only
children and morons could take them seriously." Precisely the
same statement, of course, might have been made about sections
of the Japanese press for the same period. In any case, it was this
contemptible race-mongering of die Hearst press in 1915 and
1916 that set the stage for the next outbreak of anti-Japanese
feeling in California.
8. The Protagonists
At this time, V. S. McClatchy was editor and publisher of the
powerful Sacramento Bee. The McClatchys were a pioneer Irish-
Catholic family related by majrriage to the tightly knit "first
48 See Los Angeles Examiner for the month of October, 1915.
53
families" who, for so many years, have dominated Sacramento.
The McClatchy newspapers the Sacramento Bee, the Fresno
Bee, and the Modesto Bee have always exerted exceptional po-
litical influence in the San Joaquin Valley. There is no doubt
that, on the whole, this influence has been exercised in the in-
terest of the people. The McClatchy newspapers have fought for
public ownership; for good government; for many liberal and
progressive measures. Just because of this fact, however, they
were extremely influential when they began to support anti-
Japanese agitation.
Eight miles from Sacramento was the town of Florin, one
of the few communities in the state completely dominated
by the Japanese. Near by were important Japanese settlements
at Walnut Grove and Mayhew. As a boy, V. S. McClatchy
had driven through these districts in horse and buggy, delivering
copies of the Sacramento Bee to a typically American farm com-
munity. While he always insisted that economic interest had little
to do with anti-Japanese feeling, it is interesting to note that, in
one of his numerous pamphlets, Mr. McClatchy complained that
"no American newspaper" was being distributed in the Florin
section in 1919. It is altogether possible that he was not even
aware of the fact that his hatred of the Japanese might be re-
lated to the decline of the Sacramento Bee's circulation in
Florin. In any case, Mr. McClatchy was an honest, sincere,
courageous man.
In 1919 this provincial-minded gentleman made his first trip
to the Orient. He happened to be in Seoul when the independ-
ence demonstration occurred; in fact, he returned with one of
the first copies of the Korean Independence Manifesto. As an
experienced newspaperman, Mr. McClatchy was deeply im-
pressed with the tight censorship that the Japanese exercised over
virtually all news reaching the West Coast papers. He arrived
back in California determined to lead a holy crusade against the
resident Japanese. In September, 1919, he formed the California
Joint Immigration Committee (sponsored by the Native Sons
of the Golden West, the Grange, the State Federation of Labor,
and the newly formed American Legion); withdrew from his
54
business, and devoted the balance of his life to anti-Japanese prop-
aganda. In effect, he 'was the California Joint Immigration Com-
mittee. He financed its operations; he directed its activities. As
a publicist, he was shrewd, resourceful, and thoroughly plausible.
His hatred of the Japanese was of the sublimated variety: he never
engaged in name-calling and he consistently paid tribute to the
"better qualities" of the people themselves. 49 In later years, he
often exchanged friendly letters with some of the Nisei leaders
in California, 50 and on occasion invited them to his San Francisco
apartment.
His principal opponent in a decade-long debate on the Japanese
question in California was the Reverend Sidney Gulick. Born in
Japan of missionary parents, Gulick had resided in the Orient
for over thirty years. Prior to his return to America in 1913, he
had lived all of his life in the Far East and most of the time in
Japan, where he had lectured at Doshisha University and the Im-
perial University at Kyoto. Not only was he hopelessly out of
touch with the current of events in America, but he was decidedly
pro- Japanese in his views. His arguments were frequently un-
scientific and his thinking was generally illogical and fuzzy. He
defended Japanese policy in Korea and publicly supported Japan
at the time the famous Twenty-one Demands were served on
China. 51 Much the same position, incidentally, was taken by the
Reverend Frank Heron Smith, another "missionary spokesman"
for the Japanese in California. 62
Around 1914 the Federal Council of Churches, working in
collaboration with the Japan Society (which had been formed
in 1907), set up a special committee to deal with the Japanese
question in California. It was said at the time that approximately
one fifth of the council's revenues was set aside for the work of
this Committee on Relations with Japan. In setting up the com-
mittee and financing its activities, the Federal Council was pri-
49 See, for example, his pamphlet, The Germany of Asia, based on a
series of articles which appeared in the Bee, March, 1919, after his return
from the Orient.
50 See letters to Saburo Kido dated July 5, 1935, and May 23, 1933.
51 See Tupper and McReynolds, pp. 97, 115.
62 See The Other Side of the Korean Question, published in Seoul, May,
1920.
55
marily acting in response to pleas from missionary groups in
Japan, who complained that and- Japanese agitation in California
was prejudicing their work.
The Reverend Sidney Gulick was selected, in 1914, to direct
the work of this committee. Not only were ample funds available,
but the committee had open sesame to the pages of the Outlook
and Independent (controlled by Mr. Hamilton Holt, one of the
organizers of the Japan Society). As a consequence, the Japanese
question in California became inseparably linked with a strong
pro-Japanese policy in the Orient; in other words, Japan was
defended as well as the Japanese immigrants in California. Such
a policy played directly into the hands of the anti- Japanese
forces in California. The side of the Japanese immigrants in Cali-
fornia needed fair presentation to the public; but this type of
presentation was worse than none. Dr. Gulick consistently tried
to prove too much and thereby incurred additional antagonism.
Throughout the long controversy that ensued after 1914, he
worked in the closest possible collaboration with K. K. Kawakami,
whose subsequent career leaves no doubt that he was an official
apologist for the Japanese government 58 Books, pamphlets, and ar-
ticles flowed from the pens of Messrs. Gulick and Kawakami. They
were assisted by another Japanese agent, Dr. T. lyenaga, who
was on the payroll of the Japan Society. 54 Such an alignment
confirmed the worst suspicions that Mr. McClatchy ever enter-
tained about the resident Japanese. He saw through the flimsy
arguments advanced by the missionaries; and he knew perfectly
well that Kawakami was running more than "a bureau of literary
service" in San Francisco.
It should be noted, for the record, that it was these pro-
Japanese forces who laid the foundation for the passage of the
Immigration Act of 1924. Dr. Gulick thought it would be good
strategy to secure the passage of a quota immigration measure
before the anti-Japanese forces in California could secure the
passage of an exclusion bill. The anti- Japanese forces promptly
denounced the strategy as an attempt to nullify the Gentlemen's
68 See The Menace of Japan by T. O'Conroy, 1934, pp. 99-100.
54 See Pooley, p. 54; Flowers; and Crow, p. 197.
Agreement and began to clamor for exclusion. Ignoring the un-
mistakably aggressive direction of Japanese policy in the Far
East and talking about peace in abstract terms, Dr. Gulick, and
the groups he represented, gave the race bigots a polemical ad-
vantage which they were quick to utilize. Commenting upon the
proposal for a quota immigration system, Max J. Kohler writes:
It is not without interest that this national quota scheme
was first suggested by the Rev. S. L. Gulick, a missionary
who had resided in Japan for a long time, and who evoked
this scheme in order to avoid friction with the Orient. I
had occasion to warn him about fifteen years ago, that it
would not solve the Japanese question, but it would cause
untold mischief for other race groups as well, and would
also do serious injury to our country at large. 56
9. The Postwar Campaign
During the 1915 and 1917 sessions of the California legislature
attempts had been made to pass additional anti-Japanese meas-
ures; but these proposals were held in abeyance and later tabled
when we found ourselves in the war as an ally of Japan. But
on April i, 1919, while the Peace Conference was in session in
Paris, two California Senators sought to introduce a number of
anti-Japanese bills. A cablegram was sent to the Secretary of
State in Paris, asking his views on the advisability of pressing such
legislation at the time. Mr. Lansing immediately replied that it
would be particularly unfortunate to have the bills introduced
and requested that they be withdrawn. But the moment the
Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, a wave of anti-
Japanese agitation swept California. 06
This renewed agitation differed, in important respects, from
earlier movements. To an extent that had not previously been
true, this agitation was anti- Japan rather than anti-Japanese.
Elements that had never been previously interested now became
violent partisans of the "anti" movement. This shift in opinion
55 Op. clt^ p. 161.
56 See Japanese Immigration by Raymond Leslie Buell, 1924,
57
was largely due to Japanese action in Korea, Siberia, China, and
Shantung. The publication of a number of books about the
Korean situation contributed to the shift. 51 Also various govern-
ment reports dealing with Hawaii served to arouse general
apprehension.
Organized labor, which had taken a leading part in all previ-
ous agitations, now began to dissociate itself from the anti-
Japanese movement. After 1910 the Japanese had been driven
from the cities toward the land. Now it looked as though they
were going to be driven from the land back to the cities, and
labor did not relish this possibility. The Federated Trades Council
of Sacramento, on September 10, 1920, passed a resolution con-
demning anti- Japanese "propaganda now being spread by de-
signing parties to the detriment of labor." In 1916 the American
Federation of Labor failed, for the first time in years, to pass
an anti-Oriental resolution. Speaking in California, Hugo Ernst,
a leader of the San Francisco labor movement, had said: "This
sort of resolution gets us nowhere. Why can't we face the ques-
tion more squarely and organize the Japanese workers in our
midst, which is the only solution to the question?" Walter
MacArthur, another influential labor leader, condemned the idea
of "racial inferiority." "You can't charge the Japs with un-
assimilability," said Richard Caverly of the Boilermakers Union;
"the same charge used to be directed against the lousy Irish."
Despite labor's growing disaffection, however, the postwar anti-
Japanese agitation was founded upon a broader popular base than
at any previous period.
"The origin of the agitation which developed in 1919," write
Tupper and McReynolds, "was a purely political move with an
eye on the 1920 election." 58 United States Senator James D.
Phelan, a Democrat seeking re-election when every sign pointed
to a Republican landslide, premised his entire campaign upon
the issue of White Supremacy. Writing in the Grizzly Bear for
February, 1920, he said: "Imagine a Japanese seeking the hand
67 See The Case of Korea by Henry Chung, 1920; The Rebirth of Korea
by H. H. Cynn, 1920; and Korea's Fight for Freedom by F. A. McKenzie,
1920.
Qp.*fc
58
of an American woman in marriage! ... If you knew," he said
in the same article, "how these people raise their garden truck,
you would never let a bite of it pass your lips." To aid the sorely
pressed Senator, his colleagues arranged for the Committee on
Immigration and Naturalization to hold hearings in California
during the summer of 1920. The hearings were opened in San
Francisco on July 12, 1920, by Senator Phelan himself. He testi-
fied that the "Japanese are an immoral people"; proceeded to
confuse Buddhism and Shintoism; charged that California was
headed toward "mongrelization and degeneracy"; claimed that
mysterious threats had been made upon his life; and urged that
the Japanese be ousted to save the state from the threat of
Bolshevism! A man of great wealth, Senator Phelan financed the
Anti-Asiatic League and the Oriental Exclusion League, both of
which organizations were integral parts of his political machine.
After the Treaty of Versailles had been signed, the California
legislators began to clamor for a special session so that they
might pass the bills which had been tabled at the request of Mr.
Lansing. Governor William D. Stephens refused to call a special
session. The Native Sons immediately demanded his removal from
office; denounced the opposition as "Jap-lovers," and rallied their
forces to save "Calif ornia the White Man's Paradise." In an
effort to sidetrack this agitation, Governor Stephens caused a
special report to be prepared on the Japanese question. When
this report (California and the Oriental) appeared in June, 1920,
it was found to be a characteristically rabid document. It also
appeared that the Governor himself had finally decided to mount
the anti- Japanese bandwagon. Seeking to punish him, however,
for his failure to call a special session of the legislature, the "ami"
forces immediately placed two initiative measures on the Novem-
ber ballot: an alien poll-tax bill and a new Alien Land Act. Both
measures were approved by decisive majorities: the Alien Land
Act by a vote of 668,483 to 222,086.
The agitation accompanying the 1920 election and the cam-
paign over these measures occasioned widespread resentment in
Japan. In the autumn of 1920, the Marquis Okuma called a meet-
ing in Tokyo to organize a publicity campaign against "the
59
unlawful attitude of the California-Americans." Viscount Taka-
hira Kato had said of the 1920 Alien Land Act: "We can never
overlook this act." Students in Tokyo began to debate the ques- -
tion "Shall We Declare War against the United States?" and in
this country Walter B. Pitkin raised the question: "Must We
Fight Japan?" This 1920 agitation rapidly assumed national
proportions. "The spread of the agitation throughout the coun-
try," observe Tupper and McReynolds, "encouraged the anti-
Japanese agitators to renew their movement against the Japanese
immigrant, and the old issues were once again brought to the
front pages of the press." 69 The California Oriental Exclusion
League began to send speakers throughout the East and Middle
West, and to cover the nation with its pamphlets and leaflets.
Coming as it did, when the ink was scarcely dry on the Treaty
of Versailles, this agitation did incalculable harm. It brought us,
as a matter of fact, to the brink of war with Japan. 60
In point of virulence, the 1920 agitation far exceeded any
similar demonstration in California. In support of the initiative
measures, the American Legion exhibited a motion picture
throughout the state entitled "Shadows of the West." All the
charges ever made against the Japanese were enacted in this film.
The film showed a mysterious room fitted with wireless appara-
tus by which "a head Japanese ticked out prices which controlled
a state-wide vegetable market"; spies darted in and out of the
scenes*; Japanese were shown dumping vegetables into the harbor
to maintain high prices; two white girls were abducted by a
group of Japanese men only to be rescued, at the last moment,
by a squad of American Legionnaires. When meetings were called
to protest the exhibition of this scurrilous film, the meetings were
broken up. 61
Two influential novels appeared which were planned as part
of the campaign: Seed of the Sun (1921) by Wallace Irwin and
The Pride of Palomar (1921) by Peter B. Kyne. 62 The Irwin
novel, I am informed, was prepared at the instigation of V. S.
59 Op. cit., p. 177.
60 See Japan in Recent Times by A. Morgan Young, 1929, p. 221,
61 See Buell, p. 71.
62 See also The Interlopers by Griffing Bancroft, 1917.
60
McClatchy, Both novels had appeared as serials in national pub-
lications of large circulation in 1920: the Irwin novel in the
Saturday Evening Post and the Kyne novel in the Cosmopolitan.
Both novels, according to Ruth Fowler, were long in active de-
mand in the California public libraries. Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt,
Jr., sent copies of the Kyne novel to a list of important Americans
and requested their comments. These were published in a pam-
phlet entitled The Verdict of Public Opinion on the Japanese-
American Question. The Kyne novel was largely based upon Mr.
Montaville Flowers' The Japanese Conquest of American Opinion
(1917), and was dedicated to Mr. Flowers.
Here are some of the charges made against the Japanese in
Mr. Kyne's novel: their manners are abominable; they are greedy,
selfish, calculating, quarrelsome, suspicious, crafty, irritable, and
unreliable; they have no sense of sportsmanship, no affection for
their wives, and they have never 'shown the slightest nobility or
generosity of spirit. 63 These remarks were directed, of course, at
immigrants living in America. "When a member of the great
Nordic race," observes the hero of the novel, "fuses with a
member of a pigmented race, both parties to the union violate
a natural law." This hero, a Native Son, angrily argues with
another character that "we ought to have Jim Crow cars for
these cock-sure sons of Nippon." The book is one long paean
of praise for the Anglo-Saxon copied almost verbatim from
Homer Lea and Montaville Flowers. Amusingly enough, how-
ever, it is an Anglo-Saxon character who, in conspiracy with
a Japanese, attempts to defraud the hero (who is part Mexican,
but a "high-class" Mexican). "How about John Chinaman?" one
character asks the hero. To this query he gives the stock Cali-
fornia answer: "Oh, a Chinaman is different. He's a regular
fellow he appreciates the sanity of our position." When the
Declaration of Independence is mentioned, the hero counters
with the charge that that document was written by "sublimated
jackasses."
Josiah Royce once observed, apropos of anti-Oriental agitation
in his native state of California, that "trained hatreds are par-
68 Pp. 124-125.
61
ticularly pathetic and peculiarly deceitful." By 1920 the people
of California had been thoroughly trained to hate the Japanese
and other Oriental people. Charges advanced against the Chinese
in 1876 when the first Congressional committee inquired into
the Oriental problem on the Coast had been repeated, with
scarcely a single modification, in every subsequent hearing or in-
vestigation. The people of California had listened to these charges;
had heard them repeated by responsible public officials; had seen
them in the newspapers and on the billboards; and had become
familiar with them in every political campaign. For seventy-five
years, writes Dr. Charles N. Reynolds, the people of California
had "lived in an atmosphere of racial consciousness." ** Surveying
the files of one small-town newspaper, Dr. Reynolds found 2877
news item about the Japanese, totaling 20,453 inches of space.
The general attitude reflected in these items was that of "irrita-
tion verging on hostility." He also found that there were "peaks"
and "depressions" in the amount of space devoted to the Japanese
(which he was able to correlate with election years and periods
of economic depression). "The almost complete disappearance
of unfavorable news in the breaks between high levels," he wrote,
"is eloquent proof of the fictitious character of the anti- Japanese
movement."
The 1920 agitation in California was so violent that it over-
flowed, so to speak, and began to affect other groups. In the
summer of 1920, roadside signs appeared in Fresno stating: "No
Armenians Wanted"; and at the same time petitions were circu-
lated, around Lodi, against the Armenians, Turks, Greeks, and
Hindus, as well as against the Japanese. 65 On the night of July
1 8, 1921, a band of several hundred white men, with the "appar-
ent connivance of the police," ** rounded up fifty-eight Japanese
laborers in Turlock, "placed them on board a train, and warned
them never to return." The repercussions in Tokyo were instan-
taneous. "No recent development," wrote Louis Seibold, "has
ever caused more excitement among the Japanese than the recent
04 "Oriental-White Relations in Santa Clara County," unpublished disser-
tation, Stanford University, 1927.
6S San Francisco Examiner: June 20, 1920.
^Buell, Japanese iTnmigration.
62
driving out of 700 Japs from the fruit section around Turlock,
California. The leading newspapers of Tokio, Osaka, Kobe and
Nagasaki seized upon the incident to demand from the United
States an indemnity for the damage done to the feelings of the
former subjects of the Mikado by the citizens of California." 67
The Turlock "incident," notes Mr. Buell, was "a direct result of
the campaigns of incitement against the Japanese which have
featured in many California elections. The incident shows that
the means employed by the Pacific Coast to 'solve' its Japanese
problem merely increase the ill-feeling between the Oriental and
the whites, and still further alienate the Japanese from American
life." Later Japanese were driven out of the Merced area M and
still later from Hopland and other parts of the state. 69
These "incidents" in California in 1920 and 1921 had interna-
tional significance. The Washington Naval Conference convened
on November 12, 1921, and was in session through February,
1922. Prior agitation in California threatened to interfere with the
plans for the conference. The people of Japan were certainly
not in a position, in these years, to follow the devious diplomatic
moves of their rulers; but as Mr. Buell has pointed out, the agita-
tion in California "was perfectly comprehensible to the people of
Tokyo." 70 Surveying the work of the conference itself, Mr.
Buell said: "As long as we continue this pin-pricking policy
toward Japanese legally resident in this country, the Japanese in
Japan will naturally be led to believe that the anti- Japanese agita-
tion in the United States is wholly illegitimate and caused by
racial prejudice alone. More important still, they will be led to
believe by the military party in Japan, that America's protests
against Japanese imperialism in Asia are a mere mask behind
which are hidden the 'real' designs of the United States in the
Far East." 71 The main reason for popular Japanese suspicion of
American policy consisted in "our domestic policy toward the
Japanese." w
67 Op. ch.
68 San Francisco Examiner, July 15, 1921.
69 Ibid., July 29, 1924.
70 The Washington Conference, 1922, p. 365.
71 Page 364, 72 Page 362.
63
10. Another Pyrrhic Victory
The Alien Land Act, passed as an initiative measure in 1920,
was represented as the "final solution" to the Japanese problem;
as designed to eliminate every "loophole" in the 1913 statute.
Following its adoption in California, much the same statute was
adopted in Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware,
Nebraska, Texas, Idaho, and New Mexico. As soon as the act
went into effect in California, an appeal was immediately taken
to the United States Supreme Court. Pending an outcome of
the appeal, its enforcement was stayed. It was not until De-
cember, 1923, that the Supreme Court handed down its decision
upholding the constitutionality of the act. The decision created
great consternation in California, for most of the large land-
holding companies had been advised that the act was unconsti-
tutional. Newspapers carried sensational headlines about 30,000
Japanese preparing to abandon 500,000 acres of valuable farm
lands. 73 At long last, the Japanese were going to be "ousted" from
the fields.
Actually the Japanese continued to dominate the production
of small-fruit and vegetable crops. A comparison of the percen-
tage of the crops controlled by Japanese in 1920 with the same
figures for 1940 shows that, in the twenty-year period, the Jap-
anese had lost control of certain crops (lettuce) and gained in
others. In general, the Japanese occupied much the same position
in California agriculture in 1940 that they had in 1920. The aver-
age acreage of Japanese farms in California was reduced from
80.1 acres in 1920 to 44 in 1940; from a total of 361,276 acres in
1920 to 226,094 k J 94' The total value of their production, how-
ever, had increased from 1920 to 1940. The number of Japanese
employed in agriculture declined somewhat after 1920 and a
drift back toward the cities developed. But it was soon dis-
covered that non- Japanese farmers could not, on a competitive
basis, farm these lands successfully; and gradually the Japanese
T3 See Literary Digest, January 12, 1924, and "California Uproots the
Japanese" by Robert Welles Ritchie, Country Gewlemen, December, 1923.
<5 4
moved back into substantially the same position which they had
occupied in 1920.
Enforcement of the Alien Land Act of 1920 was vested in local
law-enforcement officials. When a "white person" in one of these
counties wanted to lease land to a Japanese, he usually had no dif-
ficulty in doing so. Local district attorneys enforced the act when
they wanted to enforce it; and they obligingly ignored evasions of
the act when it suited their interests to do so. The act was easily
evaded: title to farm land was placed in the names of Hawaiian
or American-born Japanese; verbal agreements were entered
into "gentlemen's agreements" that ran counter to the terms
of written documents; Japanese were employed as "managers"
instead of as "tenants." By these and other devices, and with the
connivance of law-enforcement officials, the act was blithely ig-
nored. The amount of land escheated to the state under this statute
is wholly negligible. With the large-scale importation of Filipino
workers after 1924, production was steadily increased the
Filipinos becoming farm laborers and the Japanese being pro-
moted to managerial positions.
It would be extremely difficult to determine precisely what
groups profited by the passage of this act, the agitation for which
had jarred two continents and nearly precipitated a war. Land-
owners certainly did not profit, for they were forced (at least
momentarily) to accept lower rentals. Agricultural workers did
not profit, for their wages declined to an all-time low by 1933.
In the long run, the non- Japanese produce growers did not profit,
since, after 1920, production became increasingly organized on a
nation-wide basis. California growers were, therefore, competing
with Italian vegetable growers in New Jersey and Mexican work-
ers in Texas. The competitive position of the California fanner
was not improved. The general public did not benefit; on the
contrary, it paid the bill. Prior to the passage of this act, Japanese
growers had forced the cost of vegetables to the consumers in
West Coast cities to decline from 10 to 50 per cent (in some
crops) at a time when food prices generally were rising. "With
the exception of a few groups," writes Dr. John Rademaker, "the
struggle was academic to all factions supporting the acts. The
benefits these groups derived from the acts were not dependent
upon the actual presence or absence of the Japanese farmers, but
rather upon the process of opposing them." 7 * (Italics mine.) That
is, the business of opposing the Japanese had political value to the
organizations involved.
11. Exclusion
Although it was generally assumed that Japanese were "in-
eligible to citizenship," a test case did not arise until after the
passage of the Alien Land Act of 1920. The Japanese consuls
seemed reluctant to obtain a decision on the question, apparently
preferring to keep the issue alive for propaganda purposes. After
the passage of the Alien Land Act, they concluded that a test
could no longer be avoided. The test case itself, the Ozawa case,
was decided by the Supreme Court on November 13, 1922. In
this case, the Court held that Takao Ozawa, graduate of Berke-
ley High School, three years a student at the University of Cal-
ifornia, was not a "free white person" and was therefore in-
eligible to citizenship. The case was one of great importance,
since it had a bearing on the decision in the Alien Land Act case
and opened the door, so to speak, for the passage of the Immi-
gration Act of 1924.
The decision provoked wild resentment in Japan. In comment-
ing upon the decision, the Osaka Mdnichi said that "Americans
are as spiteful as snakes and vipers we do not hesitate to call
that government a studied deceiver." The Tokyo Jiji published a
cartoon with the caption: "The Broken Promise" referring to
the promise of citizenship made those aliens who served in the
First World War. 7 * The adverse effect of this decision was some-
what mitigated by the quick and generous fashion in which
California contributed to the relief of the Japanese at the time
the great earthquake and fire of September i, 1923, devasted
Tokyo. But a still greater explosion was about to burst.
74 "The Ecological Position of the Japanese Farmers in the State of
Washington," unpublished dissertation, University of Washington, 1939.
75 See, generally, Oriental Exclusion by R. D. McKenzie, 1927.
66
When the so-called "quota immigration act of 1924" was in-
troduced in Congress, Senator Samuel Shortridge, from Cali-
fornia, moved an amendment to exclude "all aliens ineligible
to citizenship." The amendment was based upon the decision in
the Ozawa case. While the bill as a whole was pending before
Congress, Ambassador Hanihara wrote a letter to Secretary of
State Hughes in which he mentioned that "grave consequences"
might follow if the bill, with the Shortridge amendment, was
enacted. The letter touched off a blast of rhetorical fireworks led
by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and, on March 15, 1924, the bill
was adopted by a decisive vote. Mr. Hughes had stated that pas-
sage of the bill would be likely to nullify the work of the Wash-
ington Conference and President CooUdge signed the measure
with, as he expressed it, "stated reluctance." While California
was responsible for the inclusion of the "ineligible-to-citizen-
ship" provision in the act, the vote on the bill represented an af-
firmative national, not sectional, vote. The race riots of 1919-
1921 had, in the opinion of Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, "a consider-
able effect" in securing passage of the bill; for they had made
the entire nation extremely race-conscious. It is also a matter of
record that the racist views of Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard,
and Henry Fairfield Osborn were influential in securing passage
of the act. Ta
"By a curious coincidence," wrote Yusuke Tsurumi in Con-
temporary Japan (1927), "the Immigration Act broke in upon
the meditations of the Japanese people at a moment when the
nation was bleeding from the wounds inflicted by the greatest
calamity ever visited upon mankind by earthquake and fire. . . ,
A tremendous amount of the national capitol lay in utter ruins,
more than two hundred thousand people had been killed by
falling buildings or burnt to death in a raging whirlwind of fire,
industries were prostrate, vast regions devastated, and national
economy subjected to awful strains at every point. In the midst
of our afflictions, the nation that had literally shaken open our
gates waived aside a long standing agreement with us and
76 See Japan and America by Henry W. Taft, 1932; and Congressional
Record, March 20, 1924, p. 4573.
slammed its own gates shut in our face." To the Japanese, passage
of the act was as "unexpected as it was incomprehensible."
The consequences, in Japan, were momentous. "The news of
the enactment aroused the nation for several weeks to a dangerous
pitch of excitement," writes Professor Toynbee. "On the 3ist of
May and the 4th of June two persons committed suicide as a
protest against the passage of the Act, and on the zoth of June the
funeral of one of them was the occasion of a great popular demon-
stration. On the 5th June, Mr. Woods (our Ambassador) sailed
for the United States. In Tokyo, on the yth June, a dance at the
Imperial Hotel, at which Japanese as well as westerners were
present, was interrupted by a party of men, several of them
dressed in Samurai costume, who protested to their fellow coun-
trymen against dancing and dressing like Americans and keeping
western company. On the ist July, an unknown Japanese entered
the precincts of the American Embassy, lowered the American
flag, cut it in two, and escaped without being arrested." 77 "The
signing of the Immigration Bill," writes Harry Emerson Wildes
in Japan in Crisis (1934), "coincided with the 1924 elections to
the Diet. Revengeful anti-foreign candidates, pledged to enact
retaliatory laws, were swept overwhelmingly into office." It is
important to remember that the Immigration Act represented the
first -federal action of discriminatory character aimed at the Jap-
anese. "Whatever may have been the attitude, of individual Cali-
fornians," observes Robert Aura Smith, "the government of the
United States repeatedly committed itself to the position that it
was the desire of the United States to secure and preserve a
strong, independent, and friendly Japan." 7S It is impossible to
escape the conclusion noted by Mr. Smith, "that the American
attitude toward Japanese immigration has had a major influence
on everything that has taken place in the relationship of the two
countries since that time." Whatever liberal potential existed in
Japan expired with the passage of this act. 79
77 Quoted by Taft, op. cit.
78 Our Future in Asia, 1940, p. 201.
79 See Fire in the Pacific by Simon Harcourt-Smith, 1942, p. 77; Behind
the Face of Japan by Upton dose, 1942, pp. 318 and 299; The Menace of
Japan by T. O'Conroy, 1934, pp. 43-44; Eyes on Japan by Victor Yakhontoff,
68
Toward the end of September, 1924, Japan reopened the im-
migration question at Geneva for much the same reasons that
she had sought to raise the issue of racial equality at the Ver-
sailles Conference namely, as a bargaining point in her di-
plomacy. 80 Passage of the Immigration Act set off a series of minor
explosions on the West Coast. In 1925, a mob of American citi-
zens forcefully deported a small group of Japanese workers from
their homes in Toledo, Oregon. Suits were promptly filed against
those responsible and damages were ultimately collected. Here,
again, our position was equivocal. "The nation," wrote one ob-
server, "continues to make treaties which the states or their citi-
zens are to violate and the best the Secretary of State can do
is to explain our Constitution and ask Congress to vote compen-
sation to the injured aliens and their families." (It should be
observed, by way of final comment, that passage of the Immi-
gration Act provoked widespread opposition in this country.
Some of the editorial comment is contained in the volume by
Henry W. Taft previously cited.)
Shortly after the passage of the act, the Pacific Coast Cham-
bers of Commerce began to look with favor upon some modifi-
cation of its exclusionary features. But early in 1929 both houses
of the California legislature passed a joint resolution "against any
character of action designed to modify the present immigration
laws relating to the exclusion of Asiatic laborers." Despite this re-
buff, the California Council on Oriental Relations was formed in
1931 in an effort to bring about some change of attitude in Cali-
fornia. With the Mukden incident of September 18, 1931, and
the attack on Shanghai on January 27, 1932, it became apparent
that nothing could be accomplished and, late in 1934, the coun-
cil was disbanded. Passage of the act, which had been the real
goal of the anti- Japanese forces for a quarter of a century, did
bring about a stabilization of relations in California. During the
depression years after 1929, virtually no agitation developed.
1936; Japan and America by Henry W. Taft, 1932, p. 192; Japanese 1m-
mgration by Raymond Leslie Buell, 1924, pp. 3x^-315; Literary Digest, July
12, 1924.
80 See Young, p. 160.
6 9
Anti-Japanese feeling became dormant, but, as subsequent events
demonstrated, afcy change in the existing relationships promptly
revived the tense attitudes of the earlier period.
With the appearance of the Japanese as real competitors on the
world markets and with the crisis in Far Eastern affairs which
developed after 1931, the status quo in California was immedi-
ately threatened. In 1935, 1937, and 1939, various anti-Japanese
measures were introduced in the California legislature; in 1934
mobs assaulted the Japanese in Arizona; and in the spring of 1935
the Hearst press began to inveigh against "inequitable Oriental
competition sapping the economic life of America and retard-
ing recovery." 81 At the same time, a mysterious Committee of
One Thousand was formed in Southern California. It began to
repeat in its publication, the American Defender, the familiar
calumnies: Japanese truck-gardeners were spraying their vege-
tables with arsenic; using human excrement as fertilizer, thereby
creating epidemics of "bacillary dysentery"; they were training
an army in Peru, and so forth. Typical of its utterances was this
passage from the issue of April 27, 1935:
Wherever the Japanese have settled, their nests pollute
the communities like the running sores of leprosy. They
exist like the yellowed, smoldering discarded butts in an
over-full ashtray, vilifying the air with their loathsome
smells, filling all who have misfortune to look upon them
with a wholesome disgust and a desire to wash.
On April 9, 1935, West Coast newspapers blazed with headlines
when a mess boy on the army transport Chaumont was found
to be an alien Japanese. On April 29, a Santa Barbara company
announced that it had applied for permission to manufacture gas
masks: <r We believe that the time is now here when we should
be as prepared as the Japanese." Incidents of this kind continued
to be reported in the press throughout the period 1935 to 1939,
but they did not disturb relationships within the state between
Japanese residents and non-Japanese residents.
In reviewing the California-Japanese war, it is important to
81 See my article in the Nation, June 26, 1935.
70
remember that, as the tension mounted over the years, anti-
Japanese agitation developed an opposition. Issues were joined,
after a fashion, and the controversy was hotly debated for years.
This ideological warfare was conducted in the local, state, and
national press; on the lecture platforms; from the pulpits; it
echoed in legislative forums; it was discussed at international
conferences; it found reflection in a series of books, pro- Japanese
being countered by and- Japanese, favorable with unfavorable
views. At the same time, various ostrich-like groups, both in this
country and in Japan, were maintaining a ridiculous fiction 'that
the two nations were devoted to each other and that no point
of real controversy existed to mar their traditional friendship.
Japan sent a continuous parade of good-will missions, visiting
"interpreters," and miscellaneous cultivators of amicable rela-
tions; we, in turn, sent several important missions of this char-
acter to Japan. America published a volume of tributes to Japan
in the form of a "Message" from America to Japan; the Japanese
immediately countered with an elaborate "Message" from Japan
to America. Viewing this rashly optimistic spate of books and
"tributes," one is inclined to agree with Hashimura Togo, the
Japanese schoolboy in Wallace Irwin's book, when he ob-
serves:
"Some frequent Professors are asking the question now:
Will White Man and Yellow Man ever Mix? Yes because I
have knowledge of the affair. They mix once in San Fran-
cisco; they mix once in Vancouver. But such mixing is not
good-healthy for the human race because it make broken-
glass, pistol-shot, outcry, militia and many other disagreeable
noises. Japanese gentlemen mixes race with Jiu Jitsu, Irish
gentlemen with gas-pipe."
At the very moment that Japanese good-will missions arrived
in this country uttering protestations of enduring friendship, the
Japanese press would be denouncing Americans as bullies, hypo-
crites, thieves, cowards, double-faced, arrogant, designing, and
unscrupulous. American missions no sooner docked in Yoko-
hama than the California press would unleash another venomous
7 1
assault upon the resident Japanese. When Americans returned
from the Orient with realistic accounts of what was happening
in Japan, they were promptly attacked as war-mongers or as
disgruntled correspondents with axes to grind. Nearly every
book by an informed correspondent was immediately countered
with a volume by the Reverend Sidney Gulick or Mr. K. K.
Kawakami. The Japanese propaganda machine in this country,
with Chugo Chira operating the "East and West News Bureau"
in New York and K. K. Kawakami conducting a "bureau of
literary service" in San Francisco, was quick to intervene in all
these journalistic controversies. Later the Japanese government
added a few California journalists to its payrolls. 82 For years the
fires of controversy were kept burning. Thus, as Ruth Fowler
observed, "California residents gradually found opposition to the
Japanese an ever-present issue, being applied to almost all their
political, social, and economic problems. ... It colored every
direct and indirect contact that they had with the Japanese."
Caught in the continuous crossfire of this California-Japanese
war were the resident Japanese. Always the victims of this weird
transpacific struggle, they were the first casualties on the main-
land after December 7, 1941, when the real war began.
82 See With J apart s Leaders, by Frederic Moore, 1942, p. 64.
7 2
CHAPTER 111
The West Coast Japanese
WHILE years of agitation served to lay the foundation for a fixed
racial ideology on the West Coast, the character of the Japanese
immigrants and the circumstances of their settlement gave a
color of justification to the agitation. The typical point of view
of the Californians toward the Japanese was summarized by Dr.
Edward Alsworth Ross at the first anti- Japanese mass meeting
in the state. Dr. Ross was neither a professional agitator nor a
politician: he was a professor of sociology who then, and later,
enjoyed a national reputation. If such a man, a social scientist,
could place his approval upon the age-old charges leveled against
Oriental labor, then it may well be argued that there must have
been some substance to these charges.
There was some substance to the charges; but the substance was
of a quite different character from what it was represented to
be. Basic cultural differences were mistakenly and habitually
labeled as racial differences. Noting the somewhat slower rate
of assimilation of Japanese immigrants by comparison with some
(but by no means all) other immigrant groups, the conclusion
was hastily drawn that the Japanese were "incapable of assimila-
tion." Actually, assimilation is a second-generation process. It is
seldom that a first-generation foreign-born group has become
thoroughly assimilated, particularly where sharp cultural, lin-
guistic, and racial differences are involved. The West Coast made
the mistake of not recognizing that the first generation was, after
all, an immigrant generation. Because of their racial difference,
the Japanese were never regarded as immigrants, but always as
interlopers. Not only were the Issei immigrants; they were late
immigrants, In California they were branded as "unassimilable"
73
before they had resided in this country for a decade. Further-
more, the West Coast failed to recognize, in its polemics, that
there was a second generation. This oversight is not surprising,
because the second generation made its appearance at a com-
paratively late date (long after the charges summarized by Dr.
Ross had become part of the orthodox racial creed of the area).
The second generation was just reaching maturity in 1941.
Had war been delayed for another decade, it is altogether prob-
able that evacuation might have been avoided. For by that time
most of the Issei generation would have passed away and only
the second and third generation would have remained. The tragic
aspect of the evacuation program is that the attack on Pearl Har-
bor occurred just when new elements were beginning to emerge
from the old; when America had begun to speak through its new
sons, the Nisei. To appreciate this situation, it is necessary to find
out something about the Japanese immigrants. Who were they?
What were they like? What brought them to America?
1. The Immigrants
From 1900 to 1910, about nine tenths of the immigrants were
males. Most of them were under thirty years of age. They came
to this country for purely economic reasons and not as refugees
in quest of religious or political freedom. Japan had undergone a
period of economic and psychological expansion after the Sino-
Japanese War of 1895. New vistas had suddenly opened up
before the eyes of the people. In semi-feudal Japan, however,
these newly stirred ambitions could not be realized except by
a small section of the population. The immigrants who came to
Hawaii and the West Coast were "birds of passage": not one in a
thousand intended to remain. They planned on returning to
Japan as soon as they had accumulated a nest egg. This was the
explanation for their driving intensity, their passionate addiction
to hard manual labor. The motive back of emigration was "to
make money and nothing more." *
1 Immigration: Cultural Conflicts and Social Adjustment by Lawrence
Guy Brown, 1933, Chapter XV.
74
While various trades were represented among the immigrants,
nearly two thirds were farmers or farm laborers (who had con-
sidered themselves lucky to make sixteen cents a day in Japan).
They were by no means illiterate. Most of them had the equiva-
lent of an eighth-grade education. They came from the lower
economic and social groupings in Japan, not a few belonging to
the so-called "outlaw" or Eta class. Those who came by way of
the Hawaiian Islands had, in many cases, been dulled and broken
by years of unspeakable drudgery. As a group, they were excep-
tionally hard workers, habituated by experience to the most
strenuous physical labor.
As in all migration movements, a selective factor was involved.
The youngest and the most energetic were the first to leave.
Word-of-mouth rumor, reports from relatives, and the general
reputation of America as the land of plenty, were the chief stim-
ulants to migration. Immigrants from the same prefectures in
Japan tended to settle in the same areas in America. Twenty-eight
per cent of the Japanese around Palo Alto, for example, were from
Hiroshima. While certain prefectures in Japan were heavily rep-
resented, they were not, in most cases, those in which the pressure
of population upon resources was greatest.
Since few women were involved in the initial immigration,
most Japanese men married late in life and an estimated 20 per
cent never married. Feeling that their stay in America was tem-
porary, they gave little thought at the outset to establishing
homes. Even after they acquired families, they drove their wives
and children with the same intensity that they drove themselves.
More than a third of the marriages were of the picture-bride
variety. Most of the picture brides, in fact most of the women
immigrants, arrived in the period from 1910 to 1921 (in 1921
Japan voluntarily stopped die issuance of further passports to
women the so-called Ladies' Agreement). Arriving in San Fran-
cisco by the boatload, dressed in native costumes, their faces
powdered to a deathly pallor, their hair done up in huge pompa-
dours, the picture brides provided the newspapers with material
for endless feature stories. Most of the women came from sub-
stantially the same social classes and from the same prefectures
75
as the men. Arriving in this country nearly a decade later than
her husband, the wife was retarded in her assimilation from the
outset. Through closer contact with the children, however, she
was later able to make perhaps a better adjustment than her
husband. 2
Three distinct phases of settlement were involved: "the pio-
neer" phase; the "settling down" phase; and the "second genera-
tion" phase. While 20 per cent of the male immigrants went di-
rectly into agriculture, most of them worked as general migratory
laborers for a period of from five to eight years. As they arrived,
they were routed by their countrymen from the steamship to the
Japanese boarding house to the labor contractor or "gang-boss."
Fitting the needs of the West Coast economy, the gang-labor
system solved the language problem and provided immediate em-
ployment.
Working first in sugar beets and grapes, Japanese immigrants
soon found general employment in agriculture: by 1909 they
constituted 41.9 per cent of the agricultural labor supply in Cal-
ifornia. The large farms in California not only showed a lively
interest in Japanese workers: they "welcomed them." 3 As late
as 1907, these interests were quite favorable to the Japanese. For
the purpose of urging Congress to permit further immigration,
they founded the International Equality League and conducted an
active lobby in Washington. Aside from agriculture, Japanese
immigrants were to be found, from Vancouver to San Diego, in
three basic industries: fishing and canning; mining; railroad con-
struction and maintenance.
As immigration increased, opportunities were created for serv-
ice centers in the ports of entry such as Seattle and San Francisco.
With savings accumulated from gang-labor employment, the
earlier immigrants began to open small shops, boarding houses,
and hotels, and a few began to enter the trades. These service
centers (which later became the Little Tokyos) were usually lo-
cated near an already existing Chinatown, whjch, in turn, was
2 On the women immigrants generally, see My Lantern by Michi Kawai,
Tokyo, 1936, Chapter XII.
B See Dr. Varden Fuller's paper, Vol. 54 LaFoUette Committee Reports,
located in the "skid-row" section of the particular city. In the
early years of the century, there existed on the West Coast a
definite demand for cheap boarding houses, hotels, barbershops,
and restaurants that could cater to the needs of a large floating
population of single men as well as to the immigrants them-
selves.
After 1908 these nascent service centers were hard hit by
the restriction on immigration and the various boycott move-
ments organized by the unions. Many immigrants became dis-
couraged and returned to Japan; others would have done so
had they possessed the means. Meeting with considerable success
in agriculture, many immigrants decided to get married and to
make their home in America. As a consequence, a marked move-
ment from urban to rural areas occurred after 1908. With this
shift to agriculture, "the settling down" phase really began.
During the boom which developed on the West Coast after
1914, both urban and rural groups made rapid headway. Some of
the earlier pressures and prejudices began to abate. This short-
lived phase ended with the rising hostility of the postwar years,
the passage of the Alien Land Acts, and the enactment of the
Immigration Act of 1924 developments which prompted many
immigrants to give up the idea of settlement and to return to
Japan. Gradually abandoning all thought of returning to Japan,
those who remained after 1924 became increasingly preoccupied
with the future of their children. The "second-generation" phase
dates from around this period.*
2. Cultural Luggage
The Japanese immigrants who came to America had only a few
dollars sewed in their clothing and a handful of personal be-
longings in a dilapidated suitcase. But they did bring some highly
important, if invisible, luggage the culture of their homeland.
Just what were some of the more important items making up this
invisible luggage?
4 See Social Solidarity Among the Japanese in Seattle by Frank Miyamoto,
December, 1939.
77
Like most insular peoples, the Japanese, as John Embree has
pfSinted out, 8 regard themselves as a race apart, unique in origin
and achievement. There was a definite "pride of race" in these
immigrants which proved intolerably offensive to the white resi-
dents of the West Coast/There was, also, as Frank Miyamoto has
said, "a proud heritage of homogeneous culture" with a strong
emphasis upon traditional social values. As a group they were
held together, not only by their pride of race, but by the fact
that their culture was "integrated like a mosaic."
Group relationships had great meaning to them. They thought
of the family and of the group as realities more concrete than the
individual. Their enlarged family system, supported by strong
traditional ties, was quite unlike the family system they en-
countered in California. Numerous social forms, such as the ken
organizations, and such customs as the tanomoshi (a kind of self-
help mutual financing arrangement), served also to hold them to-
gether as a group. All of these and other factors tended to make
for a remarkable internal solidarity which as much, perhaps, as
external pressures set them apart from other groups. What the
Californian inconsistently denounced as "clannishness" (incon-
sistent because he refused to accept the Japanese as an individual)
was really the product of these cultural factors.
Japanese immigrants to America came from a society only
recently and partially released from the rigid class demar-
cations of a feudal society. As Dr. John Rademaker has ob-
served, this factor naturally placed a premium upon success in
the struggle for position and status. Observers have noted the
same trait in Japan. "It is as though," writes Helen Mears, "while
living in Japan, repressed in their small islands, crowded for
space, fed on a limited diet, breathing a thick steamy vapor, they
have become closed in on themselves like a bulb, the life-germ
dormant, so that when they are freed from the special and pe-
culiar conditions of their own land, taken out into full sun and
crisp air, given proper nourishment, they develop with astonish-
ing swiftness." So quickly were these latent potentialities released
in America that, within a few years after their arrival, most of
*The Japanese, Smithsonian Institute, January 23, 1943.
78
the immigrants began to make remarkable progress under the
most severe handicaps of prejudice and hostility.
Numerous factors assisted in furthering their rapid economic
expansion. Their arrival on the West Coast coincided with a pe-
riod of spectacular economic development. The emphasis that
existed in Japan on small-scale individual enterprise served them
well in a region which was, at the time, replete with opportuni-
ties. The antagonistic attitudes of the dominant group, however,
intensified in relation to the success that they achieved. The re-
markable progress which they had made was denounced as "ag-
gressiveness," which, when coupled with the aggressiveness that
Japan was showing in the Orient, began to assume a menacing
aspect. In Japan it was customary for husband and wife, the fam-
ily as a unit, to work together in field and shop. When immigrants
pursued this custom in California, they were accused of operat-
ing "sweatshops," engaging in unfair competition, and mistreating
their women. Even the Japanese "pride of race" was resented.
Since Japanese showed virtually no tendency toward intermar-
riage with other groups, they were accused of regarding them-
selves as "superior," although intermarriage had been prohibited
by law as early as 1905. Since these traits and customs-were uni-
formly regarded as racial and not cultural in origin, it was as-
sumed that they were inherent and unchangeable. Whatever was
odd or different about the Japanese immigrant was attributed
to his slant eyes, black hair, and brown skin.
The immigrants also brought with them a knowledge of in-
tensive cultivation that was new to the West. They possessed a
remarkable knowledge of soils and of how to treat soils for the
production of certain crops; an expert knowledge of the use of
fertilizers and of fertilizing methods; a great skill in land reclama-
tion, irrigation, and drainage; and a willingness to put in the
enormous amount of labor required in intensive farming opera-
tions. They pioneered in the production of many crops. They
reclaimed vast areas of the West, including the cut-over timber
lands of the Northwest and the valuable delta lands in Califor-
nia. Even the San Francisco Chronicle readily conceded that "the
most striking feature of Japanese farming in California has been
79
the development of successful orchards, vineyards, or gardens
on land that was either completely out of use or employed for
far less profitable enterprises."
It was George Shima, an immigrant, who taught the Califor-
nians how to develop a good potato seed. It was Japanese farmers
who developed berry production in the West by increasing the
yield four and five times over what it had been (planting straw-
berries and grapevines at the same time so that when the straw-
berries were replanted three years later a profitable vineyard
would be in production). It was the Japanese who took over
the semi-abandoned community of Livingston and made it a
profitable farming area, and who succeeded in the mountain-
fruit section in Placer County after other groups had failed. "In
the Imperial Valley and the Delta country," observed Robert
Welles Ritchie, "the Japanese never displaced white men, for
white men would not work there; and in the mountain fruit dis-
trict, the Chinese and after them the Japanese came in, after
nearly every white man had quit, and made a go of a crippled
industry." 6 In later years the Californians contended that the Jap-
anese were monopolizing the best lands; but candor should have
compelled the admission that most of these lands were originally
marginal in character.
Entering the fishing industry around 1897 an industry that
has always been an immigrant industry on the West Coast
they revolutionized methods of production. Many of them were
born fishermen. They ventured into deeper waters far off shore;
they used gasoline-driven vessels; developed new types of nets,
sails, baits, and hooks, and enormously increased the average
haul. 7 Their most important contribution to the economy of the
West, however, was the manner in which they organized produce
production on a year-round basis so as to provide a steady flow
of produce to the markets.
e Country Gentleman, December, 1923.
7 See Facts About the Japanese in America by Janzo Sasamori, 1921.
80
3. The Californians
No sharper contrast could be imagined than that between the
traditional culture of these Japanese immigrants and the culture
they discovered in California. The two cultures were "sensation-
ally contrarious." The homogeneous, highly integrated culture
of the Japanese (the end product of centuries of isolation and a
scarcity of resources) was confronted in California with a highly
heterogeneous and oddly assorted culture based on ample re-
sources, unlimited space, and an ever-expanding economy. Cali-
fornia was as large as the total land area of the Japanese islands.
Immigrants on arriving in America were actually frightened by
the size of the country. They were terrified by "the large build-
ings, big trees, tall people, vast plains, and material plenty of
North America." 6 Nearly everything they saw seemed weirdly
out of scale.
In 1900 California was an expanding frontier region. It had
been settled, as Lord Bryce observed, by "a mixed multitude"
which had brought with it "a variety of manners, customs, and
ideas," resulting in a society "more mobile and unstable, less
governed by fixed beliefs and principles" than any area in Amer-
ica. The tightly knit social organization of the Japanese stood
out in bold relief against the loosely constituted, and highly un-
organized, character of social forms in California. The deeply
traditional aspect of Japanese culture was sharply at variance with
the practices of a community too new to have acquired many
traditions, much less a respect for tradition. The Japanese re-
spect for authority was incongruous in a state where, as Lord
Bryce noted, "a great population had gathered before there was
any regular government to keep it in order, much less any edu-
cation or social culture to refine it. The wildness of that time
passed into the soul of the people, and has left them the more tol-
erant of violent deeds, more prone to interferences with, or super-
cessions of, regular law, than are the people of most parts of the
Union."
8 My Narrow hie by Sumie Seo Mishima, 1941, p. 153,
81
Where the Japanese were thrifty, the Calif ornians were care-
less; where the Japanese specialized in intensive, the Californians
specialized in extensive, farming. California had grown rapidly
in semi-isolation. For years it had been remote from what Lord
Bryce called "the steadying influence of eastern states." More
than any other state it possessed, in his judgment, "the character
of a great country, capable of standing alone in the world. What
America is to Europe, what Western America is to Eastern,
that California is to the other Western States. California is the
last place to the west before you come to Japan."
In part, the character that the Japanese settlements assumed
in California must be explained in terms of the unintegrated, un-
stable, mobile, and loosely organized character of the state itself.
There was really no force in the state capable of molding, trans-
forming, or integrating these immigrants. There was nothing to
integrate them to, since California itself had not achieved inte-
gration. Migration, as Dr. Robert E. Park has observed, has "had
a marked effect upon the social structure of California society.
For one thing, it has dotted the Pacific Coast with Chinatowns
and Little Tokyos, not to mention the large Mexican colony in
Los Angeles and the transient fruit camps all up and down the
valley. Here a large part of California's population, which comes
from such diverse and distant places, lives in more or less closed
communities, in intimate economic dependence, but in more or
less complete cultural independence of the world about them."
Elsewhere in this illuminating article, Dr. Park speaks of Cali-
fornia as "a congeries of culturally insulated communities." No
better characterization of the state has ever been made.
For this characterization can be applied not merely to the
foreign settlements, but to other communities as well. Chinatown
and Little Tokyo were culturally insulated communities; but
so, in a sense, are Pasadena and Santa Barbara. In such a hetero-
geneous and unrelated society, crises precipitate violent "anti"
movements. For there is lacking a general sense of community
purpose and responsibility. During the depression years, "Old
Stock" that is, white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon Americans from
9 American Journal of Sociology, May, 1934.
82
Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas were roundly denounced in
California as "interlopers." The same charges were made against
them that were made against the Japanese: they were "dirty";
they had "enormous families"; they engaged in unfair competi-
tion; they threatened to "invade" the state and to "undermine"
its institutions. During these turgid years (1930-1938) California
attempted to exclude, by various extralegal devices, these yeoman
farmers just as it had excluded the Chinese and the Japanese.
"Okies" were "inferior" and "immoral." There was much family
discord when Okie gkl met California boy, and vice versa. In
attempting to get a foothold in California, Okies and Arkies acted
much as the Chinese and the Japanese had done: they established
"Little Oklahomas" and "Little Arkansases" on the periphery of
established rural communities. At the outset, they, too, were com-
pelled to take marginal positions and to underbid established wage
rates. The prejudice against the Okies was obviously not "race"
prejudice; yet it functioned in much the same manner.
4. Areas of Settlement
One remarkable aspect of Japanese immigration (which had a
decided influence upon the accumulation of prejudice) was the
tendency toward geographical concentration. In 1940 there were
126,947 Japanese in this country of whom 112,533 resided in the
three West Coast states (nearly 80 per cent in California and
most of these in Los Angeles County). Unlike other immigrant
groups, the Japanese showed no tendency toward dispersal; on
the contrary, they were more densely concentrated on December
7, 1941, than they had been twenty years previously. In 1910,
57.3 per cent of all the Japanese in this country resided in Cali-
fornia; in 1920, 64.8 per cent; in 1930, 70.2 per cent; in 1940, 73.8
per cent. They tended to concentrate not merely in California,
but in a limited number of areas within the state.
When pressures began to develop against them, the Japanese
did show some tendency to disperse. The number of Japanese in
the inter-mountain states increased to 20 per cent of the total
in the United States and then declined to 8.22 per cent in 1930.
It is extremely important to note, here, that the Japanese consuls
deliberately discouraged the idea of dispersal, giving as their
reason a desire to localize areas of competition and of friction. 10
The consuls persisted in this policy even after further immigra-
tion had been suspended. It is perfectly obvious, however, that
the concentration of the Japanese in California had a tendency
to magnify, rather than to minimize, whatever potential friction
existed. I find it exceedingly difficult to believe that the consuls
were merely mistaken about the effects of dispersal. To be sure,
the tide of migration has always been westward in America so
that, even if the Japanese had been more inclined to disperse,
they would have been moving upstream. Nevertheless the fact
that they were, for a period, attempting to resettle over a wider
area, and that they were discouraged from doing so by the con-
suls, leads me to the conclusion that the consuls wanted to keep
the "J a panese question" alive in California.
This tendency toward concentration also prevailed in Canada,
where the consuls pursued a similar policy. Most of the Japanese
in Canada three fourths of them in fact resided within a
radius of from fifty to seventy-five miles of Vancouver. This
concentration of immigrants created an illusion of greater num-
bers than the facts warranted. It also created an impression that
settlement was being "ordered and controlled as though from
some central source." u Naturally this impression did not make
for improved relations. Both in the cities and in rural areas, the
Japanese were conspicuously located. Much of their garden farm-
ing was around the peripheries of cities, along main highways,
near packing plants and railroad sidings. They were more con-
spicuous than the Chinese huddled together in their Chinatown
settlements. In residential areas, they were hedged in by racial
restrictions. Since only certain soils were suitable for intensive
farming and since it was necessary to locate as near the large
urban markets as possible, the Japanese were also concentrated in
rural areas. Thus, as Dr. John Rademaker has observed, their
10 The Japanese Invasion by Dr. Jesse Steiner, 1917, pp. 85-86.
11 The Japcmese-Camdians by Charles Y. Young and Helen R. Y. Reid,
1938.
84
ecological position influenced their social position. Concentration
and visibility increased the prejudice against them and this preju-
dice, in turn, increased the degree of concentration.
Furthermore, the Japanese population in California tended to
increase relatively faster than other so-called "colored groups."
The Chinese and Indian groups decreased in relation to total
population between 1900 and 1920. The Negro group showed
only a slight increase (from .07 per cent of the total to i.i per
cent). But the Japanese increased from .07 per cent of the total
in 1900 to 2.1 per cent in 1920. While there was a 54 per cent
increase in the number of all Japanese in the United States be-
tween 1910 and 1920, there was a 300 per cent increase in the
number of women during the same period (for picture brides
were not excluded under the Gentlemen's Agreement). In their
first years of settlement, Japanese immigrants showed a high
birth rate (such as other immigrant groups have shown and for
the same reasons). The increasing concentration of Japanese in
particular areas in a single state, coupled with what appeared to
be the alarming possibilities of future increase, greatly disturbed
white residents in California. The increase in the number of Japa-
nese, however, was at all times insignificant when compared with
the general increase in population. In any case, it was always this
possibility of future competition, of -future conflict, rather than
the existing situation, which made for mounting race tension in
California.
Geographical concentration tended to accentuate those aspects
of Japanese culture which made for group solidarity. It tended
to preserve the Japanese family system. It made possible the con-
tinuance of a highly organized group life (there were 350 Japa-
nese organizations in Los Angeles; 230 in Vancouver). Segrega-
tion was, in part, responsible for the "intense gregariousness"
which characterized the West Coast Japanese. The fact that,
unlike some immigrant groups, the Japanese had a homogeneous
and self-satisfying culture tended to make them more content
with the restricted world in which they lived. Their highly cen-
tralized organizations not only aided them in creating a socially
satisfactory world, but also permitted them to compete effec-
85
tively as a group. Group competition was, however, immediately
denounced as sinister and conspiratorial. Since their group life
was so highly organized, they could appeal to the consuls for
assistance; and every intervention by the consuls further aggra-
vated the prejudice against them. The patterns thus established
tended to persist since they created at least a tolerable world
within which the immigrants could exist. While Little Tokyo
was a ghetto, still it was the best ghetto in California. Its residents
were obviously the most prosperous colored minority in the state.
The minorities in California have always tended to arrange them-
selves in a hierarchical order: Indians, Mexicans, Filipinos, Ne-
groes, Chinese, and Japanese (in ascending scale). By 1920 the
Japanese had become the bourgeoisie of the minority groups.
Special concentration was matched by occupational concentra-
tion. Some 43 per cent of the gainfully employed Japanese on
the West Coast in 1940 were to be found in agriculture, more
particularly in the production of vegetables, small fruits, and
greenhouse products. This concentration resulted from a trial-
and-error experimentation with other types of agriculture. Over
the years, the number of Japanese-operated farms devoted to the
production of berries and vegetables sharply increased. By 1930,
they had abandoned almost every other type of agriculture.
Experience had shown that they could not compete successfully
in other types of farming. It is this admitted fact, moreover, which
disposes of the contention that Japanese competition was unfair
or that it was based on a lower standard of living. If it had been
true that their standard of living was so much lower as to consti-
tute a real factor in competition, then they should have been able
to succeed in other types of farming. It is obvious, I think, that
the advantage which they enjoyed in the types of fanning in
which they did succeed was primarily a cultural advantage, and
one which redounded to the benefit of virtually every other
group in the community.
The concentration upon agriculture was even greater than I
have indicated. In addition to the 22,027 employed in agriculture
in 1940, there were some 11,472 (26 per cent of those gainfully
employed) engaged in wholesale and retail trade which, for the
86
most part, was largely confined to the distribution of Japanese-
grown produce. About 17 per cent of the gainfully employed
were to be found in the service industries and trades domestic
service, cleaning and dyeing, barbershops, restaurants, rooming
houses, and hotels. Here, again, many of these people were de-
pendent upon agriculture since they catered primarily to the
Japanese community. Few Japanese were to be found in manu-
facturing or in the construction industries. Those in the profes-
sions were also dependent upon the patronage of the Japanese
community.
Within this narrow orbit, the Japanese had been highly suc-
cessful. In 1940 there were 5135 Japanese-operated farms in
California, embracing about 226,094 acres, which, including
buildings, were valued at $65,781,000. While most of these farms
were small, Japanese production, because of its intensive char-
acter, represented a substantial proportion of total production.
In 1941 the Japanese controlled 42 per cent of the commercial
truck crops in California, their production being valued at $35,-
000,000. Although they operated only 3.9 per cent of the land
in farms and harvested only 2.7 per cent of all crop land har-
vested, they produced from 50 to 90 per cent of such crops as
celery, peppers, strawberries, cucumbers, artichokes, cauliflower,
spinach, and tomatoes. By and large, the Japanese had acquired
a near-monopoly on the production of fresh vegetables on a
small-acreage basis for the large urban markets on the West Coast.
They figured only to a minor extent in the production of staple
crops on a large-acreage basis by mechanized methods; and, ex-
cept in Oregon and Washington, they figured only slightly in
the large-scale production of produce crops for out-of-state
shipment.
This monopoly on the fresh-vegetable market was strengthened
by the fact that the Japanese had organized wholesale and retail
outlets for Japanese-grown produce. Thus in 1941 there were
some 1000 Japanese-operated fruit and vegetable stores in Los
Angeles employing around 5000 people (mostly all Japanese),
and doing a business of $25,000,000 a year. The industry had
been thoroughly organized and integrated from the fields to the
87
wholesale markets to the retail outlets. The timing and planning
of year-round production to meet the needs of these markets
had been carefully worked out. The Little Tokyos were pri-
marily service centers for people who were engaged in, directly
or indirectly, or were dependent upon, this single industry.
By 1941 the Japanese population had outgrown this narrow
economic base. There were too many Japanese service trades and
retail stores, and too many Japanese in the professions, to be sup-
ported by the income available in the Japanese community. Many
of the retail stores had been able to survive because they catered
to the peculiar tastes and buying habits of the older or Issei
generation. As this generation began to die off (their median age
was 50.1 years), stores were faced with the necessity of changing
the character of their merchandise in order to hold the patronage
of the second generation. When, therefore, these stores began
to cater to the Americanized tastes of the second generation, they
came into direct competition with large chain-store organizations.
For years prior to 1941, observers had noted the high incidence
of business failures and bankruptcies in Little Tokyo. "The Japa-
nese business shops have a good front," one merchant told Frank
Miyamoto, "but when you get inside, you find out how bad the
whole thing is." Many of these businesses were behind the times,
offered inferior merchandise, and were badly managed. Of 138,-
834 Japanese in the United States in 1930, 50.2 per cent were
foreign-born; but of 126,947 Japanese in 1940 only 37.3 per cent
were foreign-born. Thus without its being generally realized, a
death sentence had been imposed on Little Tokyo prior to
December 7, 1941.
As the Nisei reached maturity, there was a significant trend
away from Little Tokyo. In 1928 one observer reported that, in
Los Angeles, there were 203 Japanese-operated fruit stands, 292
grocery stores, 74 florist shops, 69 nurseries, 108 restaurants, and
68 dry-cleaning establishments which had most of their dealings
with non-Japanese customers. Over a period of years there was
unquestionably a slow but steady expansion out of Little Tokyo,
a gradual reorientation of the Japanese-operated business toward
the Caucasian public.
88
This trend was apparent throughout the Pacific Coast. In Van-
couver, according to Young and Reid, the economic activity of
the Japanese had become by 1938 "dispersed and scattered
throughout the city. The Japanese are found in commercial en-
terprises in significant numbers not only in their own areas of
settlement, where, incidentally, they cater to Whites as well as
to Japanese, but also to a remarkable extent all over the city
where their only customers are Whites," Seven out of twelve
drygoods stores in Vancouver were Japanese-operated. A study
of Japanese vegetable markets throughout the West Coast cities
in 1941 would clearly have shown that most of these markets
were catering exclusively to a "white" clientele. The owners and
employees of these markets continued to live in Little Tokyo,
but they were working outside the area.
It was also apparent that the Nisei did not necessarily follow
in the footsteps of their parents. They showed little interest in
becoming nurserymen, hotelkeepers, and gardeners* Anxious to
obtain white-collar jobs that conferred status, they sought em-
ployment as salesmen, clerks, and managers in Japanese-operated
markets. Since they spoke excellent English, were well-educated,
and had many friends in the Caucasian world, they were grad-
ually displacing the Issei in all positions that involved direct deal-
ings with the public. They had also begun to take over many
Japanese-operated businesses. In the wholesale produce markets
in Los Angeles, there were 50 per cent more Nisei in 1934 than
in 1928; in the retail vegetable markets there were three times
as many Nisei in 1934 as in 1928.
As a matter of fact, they had begun to push the Issei out of
nearly every characteristically Japanese enterprise with the ex-
ception of the wholesale florist shops, the importing and export-
ing concerns, and the art shops. Knowledge of the Japanese
language continued to give the Issei an advantage in these lines.
This general development away from self-sufficiency and toward
a broader economic base, and from Issei to Nisei direction, be-
came pronounced after the group began to shift from rural to
urban areas. As late as 1927, the Japanese had been described as
the least urbanized immigrant group in America; but by 1941
89
50 per cent of the West Coast Japanese lived in urban areas.
The trend was not only toward the cities, but toward Los Ange-
les in particular. After 1930 some 3000 Japanese moved from
Seattle to Los Angeles.
It was this trend which, if it had continued, would sooner or
later have eliminated the group competition of the Japanese and
thereby, perhaps, reduced the prejudice against them.^For as
Young and Reid point out, "the more rapid the economic ex-
pansion of an immigrant group, the more quickly it is likely to
be assimilat^ The speed of assimilation in the case of the Japa-
nese, however, is offset to a certain extent by the fact that the
discrimination which results from their economic expansion tends
to drive them in upon themselves for protection and postpones
their ultimate attachment to the community. Paradoxical as it
may seem, the more rapidly the Japanese are assimilated, the
sooner will they be unable to outstrip the native population in
economic competition." For as they became better assimilated,
they tended more and more to adopt the living standards and
customs of the dominant group.
Actually what had happened over a period of forty years'
residence on the West Coast can be summarized, in the words
of Dr. John Rademaker, as follows: at the outset of settlement
"the extraordinarily great differences between the languages of
the Japanese and of the white population, the distinguishing
racial characteristics, the divergences between the ceremonial
customs and etiquette of the two peoples, the diversity in family
relationships, especially in regard to the number of relatives in-
cluded within die intimate group and the division of labor within
the family, contrasts in food habits and differences in cultural
values, all contributed to the crystallization of a feeling of differ-
ence which both peoples have felt toward each other." u
Over a period of years, however, these very cultural differences
tended to create a complementary division of labor characterized
by a measure of good will and understanding, integrating "Japa-
nese and whites in a single, well-articulated economic organiza-
tion." The competition which at first existed, between Japanese
12 American Journal of Sociology, November, 1934.
90
farmers and non-Japanese farmers, between Japanese laborers and
non- Japanese laborers, had made the distinguishing racial charac-
teristics useful to both groups in identifying competitors. The
competitive feeling was noticeably increased during periods of
economic depression, such as 1907 and 1920, and was kept alive
by recurrent political agitation. This initial competition had re-
sulted in a "turning in upon itself of the Japanese group, and the
erection of a barrier by the white population against the threats,
imagined or real, of the Japanese against white economic and
social status."
The complementary division of labor based on cultural differ-
ences had resulted in die Japanese residents' becoming an "integral
part of the economic organization," but "in practically all other
aspects of social organization, with the exception of public school
education," remaining a discrete element. While the Japanese
unit in the society was "well integrated internally," it existed
mainly as "a separate system unincorporated in the organization
of the dominant white population for political, religious, recrea-
tive, kinship, and fraternal functions."
Subsequent to 1924, however, these barriers were being quietly
and gradually lowered, despite a tendency for the habits and
institutions, which had been developed during the earlier period
of isolation, to persist. The rapid growth and maturity of the
Nisei, or second generation, was bridging this gap. Paradoxically
the cultural differences which had originally separated the two
groups had made for social acceptance since they tended to mini-
mize direct competition. Full integration was, therefore, at least
foreseeable in 1941.
"At the present time," observed Dr. Chitoshi Yanaga (1939),
"social contacts are limited largely to the schools, but social dis-
tance is growing less and less. In five or six years, there will be
rather free social intercourse." The conflict between the two
groups was, in the last analysis, primarily cultural. As Dr. Rade-
maker has said, "there is no evidence that racial characteristics
in themselves are responsible for prejudicial attitudes. When
these racial characteristics occur in combination with other fac-
tors, such as economic and social competition, they serve as
9 1
distinguishing marks which identify Japanese and whites and
permit each to develop distinctive responses to the other."
5. What the Trade-Unions Forgot
During the nineties, when times were hard, "white" labor had
indulged in open violence against the employment of Orientals
in agriculture. In 1893 and 1894, mobs assaulted the Chinese in
many rural areas; and a so-called "Industrial Army," as part of
these disturbances, had driven Japanese farm laborers from the
Vaca Valley. 18 But, at a very early date, the Japanese themselves
began to strike for higher wages. Strikes were reported at Hay-
ward, 14 and in Sutter County they struck for an increase from
$1.25 to $1.40 a day. 15
On one occasion, more than a thousand Mexicans and Japanese
struck in the sugar-beet fields in Ventura County. In connection
with this strike, the Los Angeles Labor Council passed a resolu-
tion favoring the organization of Oriental labor of all types. The
secretary of the council stated at the time that "this is one of the
most important resolutions ever brought to the attention of the
council. It virtually breaks the ice on the question of forming
the Orientals into unions, and so keeping them from scabbing
on the white people." 16 By the end of die 1903 season, employers
were grumbling about "the saucy, debonair Jap, who would like
to do all his work in a white starched shirt with cuffs and collar
accompaniments." In 1906, H. Shera of Upland, California, wrote
to the Chicago Federation of Labor suggesting that it boycott
shipments of lemons and oranges harvested by nonunion labor. 17
At the samfe time, the Japanese struck in the walnut industry. 18
"The Japanese," complained the Pacific Rural Press on June u,
1910, "have no scruples in striking for higher wages." Their
18 See Sacramento Record-Union, May 18 and 24, 1894.
14 See Oakland Tribune, August 4, 1902.
15 Pacific Rural Press, August 15, 1903.
16 Oakland Tribune, April i, 1903.
17 California Fruit Grower, March 3, 1906.
18 Pacific Rural Press, October 13, 1906.
92
own countryman, the famous George Shima, observed that "it's
discouraging all the time they strike." 19
In an early report of the Industrial Commission 20 it is stated
that "the Japanese although unorganized in the sense in which
the word is used today, act in complete agreement among them-
selves." A subsequent report 21 stated: "They have reduced the
workday from 12 to 1 1 hours and by means of strikes have raised
the wages of all races. At a later date, Japanese farm laborers in
San Jose were clamoring for the trade-unions to organize them. 22
From 1930 to 1935, a handful of Japanese were active in form-
ing the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union.
One T. Hariuchi, a charter member of this union, was deported
because of his organizational activities in Imperial Valley. 23 This
long record of incipient trade-union activity certainly shows
that the Japanese were not "coolie laborers"; and that they sought
to improve working conditions rather than to destroy existing
labor standards. As a matter of fact, they might easily have been
integrated into the trade-union movement but for two considera-
tions: the movement was concentrated in San Francisco; and its
leaders were deeply involved in the politics of anti-Oriental
agitation.
6. The Issei
No immigrant group ever made a more determined effort to
succeed in America than did the Japanese^; The reports of the
Immigration Commission consistently paid tribute to their eager-
ness to adjust themselves to their new environment. The progress
of the Japanese, reads one report, "is due to their greater eager-
ness to learn, which has overcome more obstacles than have been
encountered by most other races, obstacles of prejudice, of
segregation, and wide differences in language." At the outset,
they showed a remarkable willingness to adopt American folk-
19 Ibid., September 16, 1911.
20 Vol. 25, Pt. IV.
21 Vol. 25, Pt. II, p. 25.
22 San Jose Mercury -Her aid, May 13, 1917.
28 Daily Worker, February 4, 1930.
93
ways; to adopt American clothes, habits, furnishings, and even
religious practices. They conducted themselves with admirable
fortitude in the face of a bigoted opposition. There was no
crime problem among them (a remarkable fact for an immigrant
group); they paid their debts; they supported their own in-
digents. They conducted good-citizenship campaigns; they or-
ganized special campaigns against prostitution and gambling.
When objections were made to the type of homes in which
they lived, they organized Better Homes and Gardens campaigns.
When objections were raised to the language schools, they took
the initiative in suggesting that these schools be regulated or
that the Japanese language be taught in the public schools. When
objection was raised on the issue of dual citizenship, they asked
the Japanese government to liberalize its expatriation laws.
They were, as one witness testified, "the great approachers
they are more ardent students of our economy than any other
class; they are better students of our history than any other
immigrants." They sought to co-operate, in an organized way,
to achieve better race relations. "Japanese who have lived abroad,"
writes Helen Mears, "seem to become curiously indistinguishable
from the natives of their adopted country." "Precisely because
of their historical traits of allegiance and organization," writes
Dr. Robert E. Park, "the Japanese are capable of transforming
their lives and practices more rapidly than any other group . . .
they are inclined to make more far-going concessions than any
other group in order to overcome American prejudice and to
secure status here . . . whether we like them or not, no other
foreign-language group is so completely and intelligently or-
ganized to control its members, and no other group has at all
equalled them in the work of accommodating themselves to alien
conditions."
But it is also true that they showed a deep-seated reluctance
to divest themselves of the entirety of their cultural heritage.
It was not so much a question of their desire to divest themselves
of one heritage and to assume another as it was of their ability
to do so. The old ties were too strong and too meaningful. But
even so, there was a time, as Frank Miyamoto has suggested,
94
when they might have broken completely away from these ties.
That moment occurred during the First World War when it
seemed as though some of the pressures against them might abate.
Encouraged by this momentary lull in hostilities, they sent for
wives and began to establish homes. But by 1924 the Issei had
become convinced that they would never win final acceptance.
Writing in 1933, Saikichi Chijiwa concluded that the immigrant
"never will be accepted since his race and physical features will
always set him apart."
It was the decision of the Supreme Court in 1923 holding that
Japanese were "ineligible to citizenship" that forced the Issei to
abandon all hope of acceptance. Not only was this an insur-
mountable barrier, but it meant that agitation against them would
continue. For, as David Starr Jordan once observed, "a perma-
nently alien non-voting population makes for social and political
disorders." 24 "So long as these people are foreign citizens," he
wrote in another connection, 25 "they must be controlled from
home by consular agents. Any act concerning them, if affecting
their accepted rights, is international in character. The inter-
national interests of the United States cannot be safely left at
the mercy of haphazard local referendum. That all races resident
in our country should have means of becoming citizens is vital
to the integrity of the nation. We should condemn no race of
men to permanent outlawry, a line of policy disastrous wherever
it has been tried."
All first-generation immigrant groups in America are inclined
to be nationalistic. Until 1924, the Issei were probably no more
inclined in this direction than any other immigrant group; but
afterwards they did develop, in some cases, what has been termed
a "suppressed nationality psychosis." Nationalistic tendencies in-
creased. They fought to retain the language schools despite the
fact that the schools themselves were an admitted failure. They
thought that the schools would be one means of instilling in their
children a sense of pride in their background. They thought they
might assist in bridging the chasm that had begun to separate the
24 Out West, March, 1907.
25 New Republic, May 14, 1924,
95
two generations. Their children, they said, were in danger of
developing an inferiority complex and of sinking "to the level of
Indians." They heard themselves and their children described by
a California legislator as "bandy-legged bugaboos, miserable
craven, simian, degenerated, rotten little devils." The sting of
discrimination must have cut these proud people very deeply.
Yoshio Markino, the artist, told in his book, When I Was a Child,
of being stoned in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco in 1893
by a mob that shouted "Jap!" and "Sukebei!" Such experiences
are not easily forgotten.
The hardest and heaviest blow for the Issei, however, was the
realization that their children were turning away from them.
They had pinned all their hopes on these children; it was for the
Nisei that they "sweated and slaved without thought of personal
betterment, of good clothes, homes, cars; they lived in the hopes
of their children." 26 The rebuffs they had experienced in Cali-
fornia, even the final blow of evacuation, were minor tragedies
when compared with the growing realization that they lived in
one world and their children in another.
7. Issei vs. Nisei
The professional California patriots who are forever talking
about the "unassimilable character" of the Japanese usually refer
to the Issei or immigrant generation, although they are never at
pains to make this point clear. In fairness to this widely prevalent
notion, it should be conceded that there were, among the Issei,
many immigrants who showed few marks of assimilation. Their
English was poor; they lived restricted, narrow lives; they were
in touch with no vital currents of thought either in this country
or in Japan. Some of them were sentimentally attached to Japan,
but to a Japan that, in most cases, they had not seen for many
years. It was with reference to such individuals and to the Issei
generation as such that the legend of the "unassimilable character
of the Japanese" arose.
28 "These Are Our Parents" by George Morimitsu, Asia and the Americas,
October, 1934.
9 (5
The Reverend Paul B. Waterhouse was the first Californian to
examine the facts upon which this legend was predicated. In the
early twenties he was commissioned by Mr. Morris, our ambassa-
dor in Tokyo, to make a study of some 1500 Nisei in California
under fifteen years of age to determine if they were being assimi-
lated. Waterhouse discovered that over two thirds of these
youngsters were enrolled in Protestant Sunday schools. He found
that they were associating with other children in the schools
"with practically no consciousness of race distinctions." Despite
the fact that it was traditional for the Japanese child to follow
in the trade of his father, Dr. Waterhouse discovered that the
majority of these children "did not wish to follow their father's
occupation, no matter what it was." Nisei girls, he found, would
not work in the fields. "The evidence," he wrote, "is overwhelm-
ingly conclusive that the second generation of Japanese not only
can but actually are assimilating American ideals and customs
and standards of living. All the facts go to show that these chil-
dren, no matter how backward their parents may be, are most
rapidly assimilating American life and are being assimilated
by us." 27
The proof of assimilation existed in the enormous gap that
separated the two generations. The abnormal age gap that sep-
arated the Issei from the Nisei (due to late marriages) merely
served to emphasize the cultural cleavage. Culturally the Nisei
were much closer to the dominant groups than they were to
their own parents. This cleavage was not only apparent: it was
notorious. For years the vernacular newspapers had featured the
split between the two generations; 28 for years Litde Tokyo had
echoed with family discord and bickering. The Nisei were cus-
tomarily denounced by the Issei as upstarts, smart alecks, manner-
less, disrespectful, and worthless. 29 To one excited elder, the
Nisei appeared as nitwits, immoral ("committing sexual liberties
with sublime faith in the science of drug store preventives"),
dance-mad, extravagant, hopelessly addicted to American clothes,
27 The Future of Japan- American Relations in California, 1922.
* B New World Sun, January i, 1933.
29 The Great Northern Daily Nevus, January 1,^1940.
97
beauty parlors, and movies. It is amusing to note that while Cali-
fornians reiterated the slogan "Once a Jap, Always a Jap," and
persisted in the belief that the Japanese were the most clannish
people on earth, the Japanese communities were echoing with
internal dissension. All manner of differences in belief and opinion
existed and Japanese families were, in many cases, hopelessly
divided by these differences.
The rift was widened by the fact that the parents had been so
intensely preoccupied with their stores and shops that they had
neglected the children. In the eyes of these children, the Japanese
home was not an overly attractive institution. They tended to
shift for themselves; to live outside the world in which they slept.
Lack of understanding was a constant irritant. "You wouldn't
understand, skip it," was a familiar Nisei rejoinder. Almost every-
thing their parents did or said irritated the Nisei and served to
turn them, not only against their parents, but against all things
Japanese. It was in an effort to preserve some semblance of con-
trol over the Nisei that the parents clung so tenaciously to their
culture. Small wonder, then, that one Issei should have observed:
"There is little harmony in many families because of the gap be-
tween the two generations. There is no understanding, no sym-
pathy, each of them walking his own way." M "The community
elders voice no optimism," he witote, "in the future of the Nisei
in the United States. They hold to the belief that a dark, forbid-
ding end awaits them."
In some cases, the Japanese father had sent the wife and chil-
dren back to Japan; or, in other cases, the child had been sent
to Japan to live with relatives at an early age. When these
children subsequently returned to America, their parents were
complete strangers; there was not even the bond of affection.
Nisei raised and educated in Japan as Japanese found the culture
of America "unreal and terrifying"; they were particularly thin-
skinned and sensitive to discrimination. In still other cases, the
wife and children were permanently separated from the father
by the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924. The children
(usually American-born) continued to reside with the alien
80 Nisei Tragedy by Kanichi Niisato, Tokyo, 1936.
mother in Japan; less frequently, with the father ih America.
The usual Japanese-American home was itself a hybrid insti-
tution. "The culture of my parents' homeland," writes George
Morimitsu, "ended with the songs we heard and the foods we
ate and the holidays my parents observed. We never engaged in
long talks as other families do, because we never understood each
other well." One Nisei, Aiji Tashio, has given a vivid impression
of the mixed character of such households. "I sat down," he
wrote, "to American breakfasts and Japanese lunches. My palate
developed a fondness for rice along with corned beef and cab-
bage. I became equally adept with knife and fork and with
chopsticks. I said grace at meal times in Japanese, and recited
the Lord's prayer at night in English. I hung my stocking over
the fireplace at Christmas and toasted c mochT at Japanese New
Year. The stories of the 'Tongue-cut Sparrow' and 'Momo-taro'
were as well known to me as those of Red Riding Hood and
Cinderella. As I look back upon it now, I see that my parents
indulged in this oriental side of the family life with a certain
amusement and tolerance. I rather think that they were good
showmen and had no serious idea of making Japanese citizens
of their children. On some nights I was told bedtime stories of
how Admiral Togo sent a great Russian fleet down to destruc-
tion. Other nights I heard of King Arthur or from Gulliver's
Travels and Tom Sawyer. I was spoken to by both parents in
Japanese and English. I answered in whichever was convenient
or in a curious mixture of both." 31
The Japanese-American communities on the West Coast were
as curiously mixed as the homes. "The Japanese immigrant,"
write Young and Reid, "is a citizen of two worlds; the one
which he shares with his fellow immigrants, and the one which
he and they have in common with the remaining groups in the
Canadian community. The first of these worlds is more intimately
associated with the affairs of the immigrants because it is so defi-
nitely linked with their past in Japan. While its origins derive
from Japan, its present setting is Canadian and its essential char-
acteristics are consequently modified. It is really, indeed, neither
81 New Outlook, September, 1934, p. 37.
99
Japanese nor Canadian. It is a marginal world or society between
the two civilizations, with customs and institutions peculiar to
itself and an atmosphere all its own. The most appropriate name
for this society is Japanese-Canadian, for while its roots are in
the soil of Japan, its structure and content are increasingly al-
tered by unceasing adaptation to the environment of the New
World." * 2
Even such institutions as the Buddhist Church were pr6-
foundly modified in the process of transplantation. The Rever-
end J. Mizuno has described Buddhism in America as "a mixed
religion," increasingly assuming the forms and adopting the
practices of a Christian church. The Buddhist churches had
Sunday schools, regular Sunday services, and societies paralleling
those to be found in the Christian churches. In these Buddhist
churches, people sang Christian hymns with a few words changed,
such as, "Buddha loves me, this I know." Many of the immigrants
and most of the Nisei were Christians. Owing to the initial lan-
guage problem, however, the Japanese-Christian, or segregated
church, had developed. By 1940 there was considerable agitation
in favor of dissolving these churches, the racial character of
which had come to be regarded as an influence retarding assimi-
lation.
Biological adaptation paralleled social adaptation. It has been
repeatedly demonstrated (by Dr. H. L. Shapiro, Dr. Inui, Dr.
Ichihashi, and others) that the children of Japanese immigrants
differ from their parents physically as well as culturally. They
are taller, larger, and heavier than children born and reared in
Japan. As a result of better dental care, the shape of their mouths
is different. Once the absence of important vitamins from the
native diet is rectified, they respond with astonishing rapidity.
Dr. P. M. Suski and Dr. Paul Frampton of Los Angeles measured,
weighed, and examined hundreds of American-born Japanese and
found many physical points of difference from children born
in Japan.
The second generation on the West Coast grew to maturity
under fairly favorable circumstances, as anti- Japanese agitation
100
began to wane somewhat after 1924. There were only a few
segregated schpols on the Coast and these were the result of
the geographical concentration of Japanese in certain rural areas,
as around Florin and Walnut Grove. In most of the schools,
Japanese youngsters passed through the secondary grades with
little friction and, in many cases, with practically no conscious-
ness of racial differences. They were everywhere highly regarded
by their teachers and extolled for their excellent application and
not infrequent brilliance. Through high school and into college
and university, they mingled freely with other groups (they
were never ostracized as were the Negroes); formed enduring
friendships (usually, however, of boy for boy, girl for girl);
took an active part in athletics and other school activities; and
were frequently elected to class offices. As one high school
graduate said: "In all my school days when I have mixed and
intermixed with my American schoolmates and teachers, I have
found no differences. Our similarities of interest were so in-
numerable that they overshadowed and even hid my inheritance."
A consciousness of difference usually developed only after
graduation from high school or in the first years at college or
university. In the high schools, the Nisei belonged to all the
athletic and social and scholastic organizations; but in college a
measure of social segregation existed. Since they usually applied
for employment with Japanese-operated firms, they were not
made to feel conscious of discrimination after graduation. The
fact that they experienced so little discrimination, in fact, was
a circumstance that tended to widen the breach between them
and their parents.
There were, of course, some instances of prejudice. Jofm Aiso,
a brilliant Nisei, was elected president of the student body of
a Los Angeles Junior High in 1922 by a vote of three to one.
Egged on by indignant parents, some Caucasian students insti-
tuted a recall election which was sponsored by several local
newspapers. The incident did not appear to bother Aiso for he
went on to Brown University, where he graduated with high
honors. Such cases were, however, extremely rare. The principal
of one rural high school in California, where the student body
101
was nearly one-thkd Japanese, told me that in the twelve years
that he was there he never had occasion to reprimand a student
for racial prejudice or intolerance.
Nisei college and university graduates found it increasingly
difficult after 1930 to find positions for which they were trained.
And as they sought employment outside the Japanese community,
they did encounter discrimination. By 1941 they had begun to
talk about a "return to the land" as a solution of their problem;
and both the Nisei and their Caucasian advisers had come to
recognize that dispersal over a wider area was essential. 33 "For
the majority of the Nisei the range of opportunity is definitely
limited," said the New Canadian; "the local Japanese community
cannot continue to absorb all the Nisei entering the labor market
as the saturation point has been reached. It is becoming increas-
ingly apparent that the Nisei will have to expand outside the
community for their livelihood."
By no means all the difficulties faced by the Nisei could be
traced to external pressures and discriminations. One of the prin-
cipal influences retarding acceptance was the character of the
Little Tokyo community itself. The Japanese-American com-
munities on the West Coast were, perhaps, the most gossip-ridden
communities in America. Mr. William Himmel was quite correct
when he wrote, in an unpublished manuscript, that "the greatest
aid to assimilation that the Nisei could adopt would be to liqui-
date gossips and gossiping and to break loose from the strangle-
holds of home and community." **
The Japanese immigrant had discovered that assimilation was
not essential to economic existence. He was inclined, therefore,
to adopt a "modified position" toward America and to induce
his children to do likewise. The Issei were able to bring consid-
erable influence to bear upon the Nisei because they held the
economic purse-strings. As a consequence^ there was sometimes
an appearance of incongruity and compromise in the attitude of
the Nisei for which they were not directly responsible. In high
school orations, they spoke in glowing terms of American citizen-
ship (but frequently as something external to themselves). Then
** Japanese- American Times, May 6, 1941; New Canadian, May 9, 1941.
3 *See New World Sun, January i, 1933, where the same point is discussed.
their proud parents would proceed to have the orations published
in book form and to request the local Japanese consul to write
the introduction! Without always being aware of the fact, the
Issei in many cases sought to bring their children up as compro-
mise Americans; capable of living in either of two worlds. To
the extent that they succeeded which in my opinion was negli-
giblethey did limit the opportunities for assimilation which
existed.
Like other immigrants, the Issei had sought patrons in the
Caucasian world. They had attempted to identify themselves
with the particular social groupings that seemed to have the
greatest prestige and influence. They curried favor with the
Daughters of the American Revolution, the Chambers of Com-
merce, and the American Legion and fondly imagined that these
groups, which invariably participated in all their ceremonial
celebrations, would rally to their defense in a crisis. It was only
natural that the Nisei should seek advice and guidance from
these same groups. Also the political beliefs of the Issei tended
to influence the Nisei. In Los Angeles, the Japanese business
world was intimately linked with the most reactionary sections
of the American business world. Its leaders were strongly anti-
labor, joined the Merchants and Manufacturers Association in
promoting "red" scares, and were consistently conservative on
all social and political issues. A poll taken in Imperial Valley in
1936 showed that 90 per cent of the Japanese-Americans favored
Alf Landon for President.
It is interesting to note that local officials in California worked
hand-in-glove with the Japanese consuls in an effort to ferret
out the anti-fascists among the Nisei. Captain William F. Hynes
of the "Red Squad" of the Los Angeles Police Department re-
ceived funds, at one time, from the Japanese consul for this pur-
pose. 85 Under these circumstances, only a few Nisei dared to
speak out against Japanese aggression in China or to sponsor
liberal movements. It is to their great credit that many of them
did participate in campaigns to boycott the shipment of scrap
metals to Japan. A conspicuous feature of all formal Japanese
meetings and banquets in California was the presence, in the
85 Los Angeles Daily News, June 14, 1939.
places of honor, of the most reactionary citizens and officials
of the community. These individuals joined with the leaders of
the Japanese community in opposing boycotts and sanctions
against Japan and looked upon Japanese aggression in China with
far less concern than did the Nisei. One could make a fat volume
of the effusive tributes paid to the leaders of the Japanese com-
munities by public officials of the State of California in the years
from 1930 to 1941. These same individuals were the first to advo-
cate the evacuation of the Japanese.
Not only were the Japanese communities closely knit worlds
in which everyone tried to know everyone else's business, and
usually did, but they were essentially petit bourgeois communi-
ties. There was only a small capitalist class and a negligible upper-
middle class; and" a relatively small working class. The fact that
there was really only a single class interest represented in the
community made, as Mr. Miyamoto has suggested, for internal
solidarity. But it also tended to keep broad currents of ideas and
interests out. Little Tokyo was not only a small world: it was
essentially a petty world.
It was a world that made fot frustration. " Tve walked up and
down this damn street,' " observes a character in a short story
by G. T. Watanabe, 36 " 'for twenty years and I'm sick and tired
of it!' And, as he stood there cussing the street you could sense
his distaste for his surroundings. He stood there cussing, but he
could not break away. He was a part and yet not a part, of this
street where sensibilities were slowly being killed, where mal-
adjusted and disillusioned Nisei sought to forget their unhappi-
ness in the din of raucous laughter and blatant noise, where
restless and gaudily-dressed Pinoys sat sipping their coffee . . .
he stood there cussing the street, this shoddy street of dirty
gutters filled with lottery tickets; of shops, some old and faded
and dusty, and others new and modern and shining; of grocery
stores with their peculiar Oriental smell; of pool halls with the
sound of balls clicking and with their dimly-lit interiors and
faces turned away from the sun; of the cafes with their brightly-
glowing neon lights, filling the night air with a hazy blue and red
86 New Canadian^ June 5, 1941.
104
and green, and canned music from the jute boxes; and the speaks
with their hot Dixieland bands, their wailing jungle rhythms."
The favorite character in the Nisei short story, in pre-evacua-
tion days, was a Byronic figure, full of frustration and despair;
a sensitive, rebellious introvert. There was scarcely an issue of
the vernacular press that did not carry a symposium on "The
Nisei Problem." The Nisei themselves conducted endless surveys
to discover what was the source of their trouble. Their self-
criticism ranged over a wide field: they were lacking in assur-
ance; they were too clannish; they were defeatist; they were
consumed with a sense of futility, and so forth, and so forth. In
many respects, the Nisei were a perplexed and unhappy lot,
despite the reputation they had, among the Issei, of being
pleasure-mad extroverts engaged in a constant round of social
activities. Without quite realizing why, the Nisei were seeking
a larger world; they were suffocating in Little Tokyo.
By 1940 the Nisei had begun to emerge from this fog of un-
certainty and doubt. A new note had begun to echo in their
publications. "So long as the Nisei insists," wrote Kenny Murase,
"as he has so doggedly done, upon clinging to the myopic view-
point, of working only among his own group and ignoring the
Italians, Poles, Jews, Chinese, Negroes, and other minorities, his
will be a lonely and futile cry in the vast wilderness of apathy
and scorn. As long as he does not discard his shell of imposed
self-sufficiency and identify himself as a positive and aggressive
racial element, he cannot expect acceptance by other elements
which have already proved their mettle as dynamic forces in the
shaping of American destiny." 87 By 1941 the Nisei were just
beginning to make their presence felt on the West Coast. As
the war clouds deepened, a glaring spotlight was focused on
these bewildered youngsters. All of America suddenly seemed
to be staring at them; a great voice seemed to be shouting in
their ears: "Will you be loyal? Are you a spy? What will you
do if war should come?" They were really not prepared to meet
this frightful experience. It came almost a decade too soon. And
then on December 7, 1941, their whole world fell apart.
** Japemese-American News, January i,
105
CHAPTER IV
Exodus from the West Coast
THERE existed on the West Coast on December 7, 1941, a deep
fault in the social structure of the area. This fault or fissure
separated the small Japanese minority from the rest of the popu-
lation. Like the earthquake faults that run along the coastal area,
this particular fault was deeper in some places than in others;
it had been dormant for years, but, in the language of the seis-
mologists, it was still potentially active. While the fracture had
begun to heal, the fitting-together process was incomplete. Past
history had shown that almost any jar would disturb this fault.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was more than a jar: it was a thun-
derous blow, an earthquake, that sent tremors throughout the
entire Pacific area. The resident Japanese were the victims of
this social earthquake. This is the root fact, the basic social fact,
which precipitated the mass evacuation of the West Coast Japa-
nese "the largest single forced migration in Americ'an history/'
in the words of Dr. Paul S. Taylor.
Since this fault lay beneath the surface and had not been
active for some years, it had been generally ignored. The military,
for example, had never contemplated mass evacuation in the
event of war. Only one group in the population was fully aware
of the existence of this social fault namely, the anti-Oriental
diehards. Knowing of the existence of the fault, they not only
anticipated an earthquake, but had laid the foundation, in fear
and in fantasy, to capitalize upon the shock when it came. They
had kept the old lies circulating; they had revived, from time
to time, the old hatreds and the old fears. In March of 1935
a California Congressman had told his colleagues that there were
25,000 armed Japanese on the West Coast ready to take to the
1 06
field in case of war. The San Francisco Chronicle, at the same
time, quoted a state official to the effect that the "Japanese in
California are training for war." In May, 1936, Bernarr Macf ad-
den published an open letter in Liberty addressed to the President
in which he increased the number of Japanese "soldiers" in Cali-
fornia to 250,000. Throughout these years, the "scare" stories
continued to appear. 1
On February 21, 1940, William Randolph Hearst had written
an editorial in the Los Angeles Examiner in which he had said:
Colonel Knox should come out to California and see the
myriads of little Japs peacefully raising fruits and flowers and
vegetables on California sunshine, and saying hopefully and
wistfully: "Some day I come with Japanese army and take
all this. Yes, sir, thank you." Then the Colonel should see
the fleets of peaceful little Japanese fishing boats, plying up
and down the California coast, catching fish and taking
photographs.
The interests who inspired these and other stories knew what
they would do the moment the earthquake struck: as eaxly as
1939, Mr. Lail Kane, chairman of the National Defense Com-
mittee of American Legion Post No. 278, had stated, "In case
of war, the first thing I would do would be to intern every one
of them." 2
Evacuation is over; it is past. No purpose would be served
in discussing the matter at this time were it not for the fact
that this social fault still exists on the West Coast. Formerly
a local, it now threatens to become a nation-wide phenomenon.
Evacuation, moreover, is now being cited on the Coast as proof
of the disloyal and untrustworthy character of this entire minor-
ity. It is a cloud that follows the evacuees wherever they go. For
these reasons, it requires reconsideration, not for the purpose of
reopening the issue itself, but of lifting, if possible, this cloud of
suspicion. Just why was evacuation ordered and by whom? But,
Focus for July, 1938; Friday, May 9, 1941; Life for October 14, 1940
"Calif ornians cast an anxious eye upon the Japanese-Americans in their
midst"; and Click, February, 1941, "Japan Attacks the U. S. in 1941."
2 Saturday Evening Post, September 30, 1939.
107
first, a brief statement of how it was effected in order to clarify
certain points in the explanation itself.
1. Evacuation
On December n, 1941, the Western Defense Command was
established, the West Coast was declared a theater of war, and
General J. L. De Witt was designated as commander of the area.
On December 7 and 8, the Department of Justice arrested, on
Presidential warrants, all known "dangerous enemy aliens." Sub-
sequently, by a series of orders the first of which was issued
on January 29, 1941, the Department ordered the removal of
all "enemy aliens" from certain designated zones or so-called
"spot" strategic installations, such as harbors, airports, and power
lines.
Following the appearance of the Roberts Report on Pearl
Harbor, January 25, "the public temper on the west coast
changed noticeably" s and "by the end of January, a considerable
press demand appeared for the evacuation of all aliens, and espe-
cially of the Japanese from the west coast." The moment this
press campaign was launched, a highly significant meeting of the
entire West Coast Congressional delegation took place in Wash-
ington under the chairmanship of Senator Hiram Johnson (a
leader of the old anti-Oriental forces in California). On Febru-
ary 13, 1942, this delegation submitted a letter to the President
recommending "the immediate evacuation of all persons of Japa-
nese Vme&ge" and suggesting that this might be accomplished
without a declaration of martial law (martial law had been pro-
claimed in Hawaii on December 7). On February 14, 1942, General
De Witt submitted a memorandum to the War Department, in
which he recommended mass evacuation of the Japanese. 4 On
February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order
No. 9066, authorizing the War Department to prescribe military
areas and to exclude any or all persons from these areas. The
next day Mr. Stimson delegated this responsibility to General
3 Preliminary report, Tolan Committee, March 19, 1942.
4 Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1943, p. 33.
108
De Witt, who, on March 2, 1942, issued Proclamation No. i,
setting up certain military areas.
Subsequently the General on March 27 prohibited all persons
of Japanese ancestry from leaving these military areas, and by
1 08 separate orders, the first of which was issued on March 24,
ordered all such persons to move from Military Areas No. i and
2 (embracing the states of Washington, Oregon, California, and
a portion of Arizona). Congress, in effect, ratified this action on
March 21, 1942, by the passage of Public Law No. 503, making
it a criminal offense for a person or persons excluded from mili-
tary areas to refuse to move. By June 5, 1942, all persons of
Japanese ancestry had been removed from Military Area No. i;
by August 7, Military Area No. 2 had been cleared. This is a
brief log of events in the evacuation procedure the how of
evacuation.
It can be seen from this brief chronology that it was General
De Witt who made the decision in favor of mass evacuation,
and who, along with the West Coast Congressional delegation,
had recommended it. The President and the Secretary of War
were naturally preoccupied with more important matters at the
time, and relied upon the General's appraisal of the situation. In
the last analysis, it was his responsibility; he had to make the
decision. Now why did he order mass evacuation?
The explanation given at the time was "military necessity."
The military necessity itself was not defined. But with the issu-
ance of the General's final report on evacuation, dated July 19,
1943, but not released until January, 1944, it now becomes pos-
sible to review the reasons prompting mass evacuation. The
report clearly establishes the existence after December 7, 1941,
of a grave and serious risk of an invasion of the West Coast.
Guam was captured on December 13; Hong Kong fell on De-
cember 24; Manila on January 2; Singapore in February. Our
fleet had been badly crippled at Pearl Harbor; for a time the
disposition of the enemy's fleet was not known. On February
23, 1942, a Japanese submarine had shelled the California coast
near Santa Barbara. The risk of imminent invasion was obvious
and real, but it was as grave in Hawaii as on the mainland.
109
General De Witt's responsibility was of the most serious char-
acter. He was a military commander and military commanders
have to make quick decisions; they have to act on the basis of
possibilities as well as probabilities; they cannot weigh consider-
ations with the nicety of a scientist working in a laboratory.
The General must, also, have been haunted by the specters of
Admiral Kimmel and General Short, who had been charged with
dereliction of duty in Hawaii. Clearly, a serious military hazard
existed on the West Coast; but what made the General relate
the presence of the West Coast Japanese to this hazard?
In his report, two considerations, not strictly military in char-
acter perhaps, but certainly related to military security, are
stressed: the danger of sabotage and the risk of espionage. The
General knew, however, by February 14, that no acts of sabotage
had occurred in Hawaii. If the Japanese population contained
actual saboteurs, it is inconceivable that they would not have
made their appearance during the attack on Pearl Harbor, which
the Japanese government obviously intended to be a smashing,
crippling blow. What is more disconcerting, however, is the fact
that General De Witt cites the absence of sabotage as "a disturb-
ing and confirming indication that such action will be taken." 5
In other words, the absence of proof (and no Japanese on the
West Coast or in Hawaii have been convicted of sabotage) is
taken as evidence of a fact. It is also disturbing to note that the
GeneraPs suspicions were riveted on one minority and that he
minimized the likelihood of sabotage on the part of German and
Italian nationals who were possibly in a better position to com-
mit such acts by reason of the fact that their race did not identify
them as enemy nationals.
There was strong evidence that espionage was being practised
on the West Coast. But the General notes that raids on Japanese
communities failed to stop, for example, off-coast signaling. Who
was engaged in this espionage? No answer is to be found in the
report; but evidence of another character exists which throws
some light on the problem. Prior to Pearl Harbor, two native-
born white Americans had been convicted of being espionage
5 Page 34.
no
agents for the Japanese government: John Farnsworth, a former
naval officer, and Harry Thomas Thompson, a former seaman.
Later, after the outbreak of war, an indictment was filed against
Frederick Vincent Williams and David Warren Ryder charging
them with having been unregistered agents of the Japanese gov-
ernment. They were both convicted. David Warren Ryder had,
for many years, been a well-known Pacific Coast journalist.
Arthur Clifford Reed, another native-born white American, was
indicted as an unregistered agent of Japan (he had been a cor-
poral in the Army). 6 Heizer Wright, indicted for being an un-
registered agent of Japan for ten years prior to Pearl Harbor,
was a member of the editorial staff of the New York Daily
News? On June 14, 1943, the OWI revealed that the persons
who did the actual signaling at Pearl Harbor, on the eve of the
Japanese attack, were Nazi agents (not local resident Japanese).
Joseph Hilton Smyth, purchaser of the Living Age, was cer-
tainly not a Japanese-American, any more than were his asso-
ciates in this camouflaged Japanese propaganda scheme. Ralph
Townsend, sentenced to jail for being an unregistered agent of
Japan, was a leader in the America First movement. For some
years prior to Pearl Harbor, a Los Angeles police captain had
received money, from time to time, from the local Japanese
consul, for the ostensible purpose of spying on resident citizens
of Japanese descent. 8 It has been pointed out that, after the
attack on Pearl Harbor, Tokyo relied almost entirely on non-
Japanese agents and for obvious reasons. 9 This evidence is, of
course, by no means conclusive, but it does indicate that the real
betrayal was not "from the east," as suggested by Mr. Alan
Hynd, but from sources much closer home. No resident Japanese-
American, either in Hawaii or on the mainland, has been con-
victed of being an unregistered agent or of having engaged in
espionage activities. To focus attention on local residents of
Japanese descent, actually diverted attention from those who
were busily engaged in espionage activity.
6 See Los Angeles Times, January 7, 1944.
7 PM, July 9, 1943-
* Los Angeles Daily News, June 14, 1939.
8 See Sabotage! by Sayers and Kahn, p. 193.
in
General De Witt also states that the resident Japanese were
in danger of mob violence and that he acted, in part, to protect
them. He notes, however, that most of the reports of attacks
against them were, upon investigation, "either unverified or were
found to be cumulative." 10 What are the facts? With the war
clouds becoming increasingly darker throughout 1941, public
opinion on the West Coast remained surprisingly sympathetic
toward the resident Japanese, 31 Even the shock of the attack on
Pearl Harbor failed to produce popular hysteria; and public
opinion remained quite unbiased. 12 "Every Japanese," wrote Ches-
ter Rowell, "good or bad, is visibly a Japanese; and if there comes
a wave of hysteria, caused by the conduct of some Japanese,
there are precedents in every country for the psychology that
would visit anger on them all. I am glad to report that, so far,
there has been no evidence of any such -feeling" u "Despite the
nature of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor," wrote Dr, Eric Bell-
quist of the University of California, "there was no immediate
widespread reaction of suspicion of aliens and second-generation
Japanese." 14> Dr. Bellquist notes that it was not until after the
"commentators, and columnists, 'professional patriots/ witch-
hunters, alien-baiters, and varied groups and persons with aims
of their own" began inflaming public opinion in January, 1942,
that hysteria began to develop. It was then, in his phrase, that
"patterned patriotism on the loose" became apparent and the
"clamor for un-American restrictive measures became rife."
There were no disturbances in the Northwest, reports Selden
Menefee, 16 "no disorders of any sort," but, on the contrary, "ex-
pressions of sympathy" toward the resident Japanese. (As to the
remarkable calmness which prevailed throughout the Pacific
Coast on December 7, 1941, see the hour-by-hour report pre-
pared by the correspondents of Time, Life, and Fortune, entitled
10 Report, page 9.
11 Pacific Citizen, September, 1941; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 23,
1941; and series of articles in the Los Angeles Daily News, August 21, 22, and
23, 1941.
^Portland Oregonian, for example, editorial of December 16, 1941.
13 Survey, January, 1942.
14 California Alumni Monthly, April, 1942.
15 Assignment: U. S. A., 1943, p. 67.
112
The First Thirty Hours.) I know of only two reported instances
of violence in California: on December 27, 1941, a fight occurred
between Filipinos and local Japanese in Stockton; 16 and on Jan-
uary i, 1942, unknown persons fired at the home of a resident
Japanese in Gilroy, California. 17 And if there was a danger
which the facts do not show then it becomes pertinent to in-
quire, Why did the authorities fail to take proper measures to
allay possible hysteria (as they did, for example, in Hawaii);
and why were no authoritative statements issued to negate the
widespread and continuous rumors of sabotage in Hawaii?
It develops, also, that a number of nonmilitary considerations
entered into General De Witt's meditations. He began to engage
in psychological speculation: Were these people loyal? How
would they act? "While it was believed that some were loyal,
it was known that many were not." 18 He was not of the opinion,
except hypothetically, that any were loyal. While much circum-
stantial proof is cited in support of this hypothesis, the report
contains not one word of reference to the manner in which these
people had tried to demonstrate their loyalty long before Pearl
Harbor. Since it is an official report, this omission serves to fix
a cloud of suspicion upon the entire group.
In the files of the Congressional Record, throughout 1940 and
1941, may be found numerous memorials and petitions from the
West Coast Japanese attesting their undivided allegiance to the
United States. On October 21, 1940, the entire Japanese popu-
lation of Imperial Valley, Nisei and Issei alike, assembled on the
courthouse steps in El Centro and reaffirmed their loyalty to this
country. On March 9, 1941, the Japanese-American Citizens
League met with the Los Angeles City Council, pledged their
fullest support, and asked to be given a chance to demonstrate,
in any manner suggested, their loyalty. A similar meeting was
held on March 21, 1941, with officials of the Army and Navy
Intelligence Services, at which plans were adopted to put all of
the facilities of the J.A.C.L. at the disposal of die authorities and
16 Sacramento Bee, December 27, 1941.
1T Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1943.
18 Report, p. 9; italics mine.
"3
at which the Nisei were complimented upon their patriotic action.
These were merely sample demonstrations.
A local resident Japanese, Shuji Fujii, a Kibei, editor of the
militant anti-fascist publication Doho, consistently denounced the
fascist elements among the West Coast Japanese, and frequently
by name. 18 The editor of the English section of Rafu Shimpo (a
Japanese-American daily published in Los Angeles) protested
against the drive for contributions for the relief of soldiers
wounded in the Sino- Japanese War. Lieutenant Commander
Ringle, of Naval Intelligence, has written *** that many Nisei co-
operated with him in his work as an intelligence officer and that,
in his opinion, 85 per cent of the entire resident Japanese popu-
lation was unquestionably loyal. None of this evidence is men-
tioned in General De Witt's report. Today these prewar acts of
loyalty are actually referred to, by such persons as Mayor Fletcher
Bowron of Los Angeles, as suspicious circumstances.
Undeniably there were dangerous individuals among the West
Coast Japanese; undeniably there was a strong current of national-
istic feeling among certain Issei leaders. But the point is that
these elements were well known to the authorities. They were
promptly arrested on December 7 and 8, both on the mainland
and in Hawaii. Writing in Collier's, in October, 1941, Jim Mar-
shall observed that "for five years or more there has been a con-
stant check on both Issei and Nisei the consensus among intelli-
gent people is that an overwhelming majority is loyal. The few
who are suspect are carefully watched. In event of war, they
would be behind bars at once. In case of war, there would be
some demand in California for concentration camps into which
Japanese and Japanese-Americans would be herded for the dura-
tion. Army, Navy or FBI never have suggested officially that
such a step would be necessary. . . . Their opinion, based on
intensive and continuous investigation, is that the situation is not
dangerous and that, whatever happens, there is not likely to be
any trouble with this opinion west coast newspapermen, in
touch with the problem for years, agree most unanimously.'*
Lieutenant Commander Ringle, who was as closely in touch with
Doha, April i, 1940. 20 Harper's, October, 1942.
114
the entire problem as any official, did not think mass evacuatiofi
was necessary. That the authorities had never contemplated evac-
uation indicates that they had never regarded such a measure
as being a matter of "military necessity."
It also develops that "military necessity" involved a judgment,
by an army official, on purely sociological problems. "The con-
tinued presence of a large, unassimilated, tightly knit racial group,
bound to an enemy nation by strong ties of race, culture,
custom, and religion," states General De Witt, "constituted a
menace which had to be dealt with." a Obviously there was a
problem involved on this score; but it is interesting to note that
West Coast sociologists who had studied the problem for years
did not draw the same conclusion as the General and, needless to
say, they were not consulted by him. No consideration whatever
was given to the possibility of launching a special morale pro-
gram or a campaign of so-called "preventive politics" in order to
cope with the problem. No comparison was drawn between the
manner in which these communities were organized and the
manner in which German and Italian consuls had, in the most
notorious fashion, conducted subversive activities on the West
Coast. The problem of weighing these so-called "ethnic affilia-
tions" was hardly one that, as a matter of proper function, should
have been assigned to a military commander. Granted a special
problem was involved, it by no means follows that mass evacua-
tion was the only method of coping with it.
And it further develops that racial considerations were also
regarded as part of the "military necessity." "The Japanese race,"
states the General, "is an enemy race and while many second and
third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed
of United States citizenship, have become 'Americanized,' the
racial strains are undiluted. ... It therefore follows that along
the vital Pacific Coast over 1 12,000 potential enemies, of Japanese
extraction, are at large today." * (This was part of the General's
initial report.) I can draw but one inference from such a state-
ment, namely, that the General regarded the entire group as
potential enemies because they were racially related to the en-
21 Report, page vii. M Page 34.
emy. I do not understand, furthermore, why General De Witt
felt compelled, in this instance, to put the word Americanized
in quotation marks. Unfortunately, the General has since con-
victed himself of being deeply prejudiced on the score of race.
Testifying on April 13, 1943, in San Francisco before the House
Naval Affairs Subcommittee, he volunteered this statement:
A Jap's a Jap. They are a dangerous element, whether
loyal or not. There is no way to determine their loyalty. . . .
It makes no difference whether he is an American; theoreti-
cally he is still a Japanese and you can't change him. . . .
You can't change him by giving him a piece of paper.
This cynical appraisal of citizenship as "a piece of paper" and its
brusque disregard of the factor of citizenship in general is rather
disconcerting. It certainly demonstrates that it was the racial
factor which, rather than the so-called "ethnic affiliations," really
bothered the General.
Lastly, it now develops that political pressure was exerted on
General De Witt. This pressure was (a) exerted directly on him;
and (b) indirectly brought to bear upon him through the tech-
nique of an organized campaign. Testifying before the Dies
Committee in Los Angeles, Mayor Fletcher Bowron made this
interesting comment:
"I may say that I was quite active in getting the Japanese
out of Los Angeles and its environs. I held various confer-
ences with Tom Clark, now Assistant United States Attorney
General, who was designated in charge of enemy alien activi-
ties on the Pacific Coast, and together with him and the then
Attorney General, now Governor Warren, we held a long
conference with General De Witt vrelative to the situation,
and I hope we were somewhat helpful in General De Witt
making his decision"**
After the Pacific Coast Congressional delegation had recom-
mended mass evacuation on February 13, and before the President
had issued Executive Order No. 9066, the delegation dispatched
the Tolan Committee to the West Coast "so that local
28 Vol. 54, p. 9207. Italics mine.
116
ties could voice their attitude toward the developing program"
The committee came to the West Coast immediately (before the
order was signed) and held hearings (February 21 to March 2,
1942). If this were a matter of "military necessity" it is a little
difficult to understand why it was necessary to take "the pulse of
opinion" on the West Coast. It also develops that, at the time,
the Attorney General of the United States was opposed to mass
evacuation, particularly in the absence of a declaration of martial
law, and that members of the West Coast delegation threatened
to lead an attack against the appropriation for the Department of
Justice unless some satisfactory solution could be reached.
Unlike their confreres in Hawaii, the dominant business inter-
ests on the West Coast did not want to see martial law pro-
claimed. 24 These interests felt that, if some means could be de-
vised to get the Japanese excluded from the West Coast without
a declaration of martial law, then such a declaration might be
altogether avoided. The action of the West Coast delegation in
dispatching the Tolan Committee to the Coast before the Presi-
dent had acted on their demand indicates an intention to exert
public pressure on the administration. This was precisely what
the Tolan hearings did. For, as so often happens, the "pro"
groups, those favoring evacuation, were prepared for the occa-
sion and dominated the hearings. Virtually no Issei testified; and
the Nisei were appearing under a severe handicap for they were
forced, in effect, to agree in advance to whatever was proposed
as a solution, since they were asked to do so "as proof of their
loyalty." Although it was claimed that possible Filipino-Japanese
strife might be a factor in the developing situation, no Filipinos
were called to testify. In general, no minority groups were called.
The German and Italian groups, including die Jewish refugee
groups, were at great pains to distinguish their case from that of
the resident Japanese, including the Nisei.
Through these hearings, definite pressure for evacuation was
carefully organized (not because the committee itself was un-
fair it was eminently fair but because the "pro" groups took
24 See testimony of Mr. Paul Shoup, President Los Angeles Merchants
and Manufacturers Assn., before the Tolan Committee, p. 11866.
117
possession of the hearings). Pressure for mass evacuation came
from several different sources: from politicians and political units
(all seeking to pass the buck to the government); from groups
that had an obvious and readily acknowledged economic inter-
est in evacuation; and from the traditionally anti-Oriental organ-
izations, such as the American Legion, the California Joint Immi-
gration Committee, and similar organizations. The mayors of
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle all favored
mass evacuation; various grand juries and city councils and
boards of supervisors presented similar demands; and law-enforce-
ment officials, in general, spoke in favor of the proposal. Few
rank-and-file citizen groups appeared. The parade of witnesses
in favor of evacuation certainly had the appearance of organiza-
tion. Although the press had been conducting a steady campaign
for evacuation since the latter part of January, there was little
public interest, as such, in the problem. The hearings in Los An-
geles were attended by a handful of witnesses and perhaps a
dozen spectators.
In reviewing the testimony of these "pro" witnesses, two con-
siderations become of paramount importance. In the first place,
there was an almost unanimous assumption that Japanese should
be placed in a separate category from German and Italian na-
tionals; and, second, everyone assumed that sabotage had been
practised by resident Japanese in Hawaii. The Attorney General
of California (now Governor Warren) was, perhaps, the most
forceful advocate of mass evacuation. "We believe," he testified,
"that when we are dealing with the Caucasian race we have meth-
ods that will test the loyalty of them." 26 He professed to believe,
as though to emphasize the racial factor, that the Nisei constituted
a more likely danger than the Issei. Not only did most of the
witnesses assume that acts of sabotage had been committed in
Hawaii, but the chairman of the committee consistently ques-
tioned witnesses on the assumption that such acts had been es-
tablished.ntos also worthy of note that virtually all of these wit-
nesses testified that evacuation was required for the safety and
protection of the Japanese themselves; that it was primarily for
25 P. 11015; italics mine.
118
their protection. These same individuals are now strenuously
contending that no Japanese should be permitted to return to
the West Coast even in the postwar period ![ Since witnesses were
encouraged to believe that sabotage had occurred in Hawaii,
considerable credence was given to Mr. Warren's theory that the
West Coast faced "an invisible deadline of sabotage." Thus old
dormant fears were revived; old suspicions were renewed; and
the same cliches that had been echoing on the Coast for fifty years
or more were repeated although awkwardly and in a manner
that indicated lack of recent practice.
The point of which so much was made at the hearing by
the introduction of fancy maps that it was "more than mere
coincidence" that so many Japanese were located near "vital in-
stallations" requires a special word of comment. There could
be no question, for example, that the Japanese fishing colony on
Terminal Island, in the center of Los Angeles Harbor, did con-
stitute a potential hazard. But how did the colony happen to be
there? It had been established thirty years prior to the attack on
Pearl Harbor and by American canning interests, not by the
Japanese. Since fishing boats arrive at all hours of the day and
night, it is essential, and has always been essential, that cannery
workers live near the canneries. They traditionally report for
work when the whistle blows at the cannery, announcing the
arrival of the boats. The canneries compelled these workers to
live in close proximity to the plants. Early in 1941, the colony
had been attacked as a likely center of espionage activities and
the community itself had requested a full investigation. Such an
investigation was actually conducted by the FBI, and Naval In-
telligence, but no arrests were made. It is certainly a safe assump-
tion that Naval Intelligence officers knew all about the back-
ground and activities of every resident of the island, since the
island residents had been under surveillance for years.
All of the Japanese fishermen were members of the Seine and
Line Fisherman's Union and, long prior to December 7, they had
repeatedly made declarations of their loyalty and support in case
of war. The devotion of these fishermen to their homes, their
children, and to the schoolteachers who taught at the all-Japanese
119
school, had been a favorite topic of local newspaper columnists
for years. 26 Yet overnight this colony of fishermen, tied to their
island community by the dictates of the canning industry, became
sinister proof of the disloyal attitude of the resident Japanese. 27
Mr. Warren, ruler in hand, also pointed to small Japanese truck
gardens shown, by the map, to be located near factories, power
lines, and refineries. The Japanese, as previously shown, special-
ized in the production of fresh vegetables for the urban West
Coast markets. By reason of freight and transportation costs, these
gardening units had to be placed near the markets themselves.
Located around the periphery of the city, they were naturally
intermeshed with sites used for industrial purposes. Only the
Japanese could farm these small plots successfully since they alone,
by their intensive cultivation methods, could pay the high rental
demanded for land which was essentially industrial, and not agri-
cultural, in character. Most of this land lay between Los Angeles
and the San Pedro-Long Beach harbor area. Inevitably the Jap-
anese farmed, therefore, near oil refineries; near factories; near
important strategic installations.
But some of these units were located beneath high-tension
power lines, and certainly this was a suspicious circumstance.
The answer was revealed by inadvertence at a subsequent hear-
ing. When the power lines were built, the companies had to pur-
chase a thousand-foot right-of-way or easement through the cen-
ter of which ran the line. The property within the path of the
power line could not be rented fox residential purposes; nor was
it desirable for industrial or commercial use. Concerns such as
the Southern California Edison Company found that they could
rent this easement land to Japanese at fifteen or twenty dollars
an acre. That is how the Japanese happened to be beneath the
power lines.
But some of them farmed on the heights at Palos Verdes from
which they could overlook Los Angeles Harbor and "flash sig-
nals" to boats at sea; they could even see, in the famous Los An-
26 See Los Angeles: City of Dreams by Harry Carr, 1935, pp. 329-330.
27 On the colony, generally, see "Friends or Spies on Terminal Island?"
by Margaret Fowle Rogers, InternotioTial Baptist Magazttie, May, 1941.
1 20
geles phrase, "Catalina Island on a clear day." Certainly this loca-
tion was most suspicious. Later it developed that the reason the
Japanese farmed on the Palos Verdes hills was because the land
was high and free from frost; and because they needed one area
near Los Angeles for dry-land farming so that early tomatoes
and beans and peas might be placed on the tables of Los Angeles
consumers. The Los Angeles County Farm Advisor later testi-
fied that there was no other area available which met these re-
quirements. And that is why the Japanese happened to be where
they "might see Catalina on a clear day." Italian "enemy alien"
truck farmers and Italian "enemy alien" fishermen could have
been indicted as suspicious characters by a similar unscrupulous
use of circumstantial evidence by prejudiced observers. But no
such indictment was made; and its omission is the best proof of
the racial bias of the ruler pointers who appeared before the Tolan
Committee and had its members gasping and panting over the
menace of an "invisible deadline for sabotage."
2. Ethnic Ties
While insisting that mass evacuation was primarily essential to
protect the resident Japanese against mob violence an argument
that sounds strange indeed when advanced by high-ranking law-
enforcement officials witnesses before the Tolan Committee
advanced the usual stock arguments against the Japanese which
had been repeated during all the previous agitations. Particular
emphasis was placed on the language schools, the charge of dual
citizenship, and the influence of Buddhism and Shintoism upon
the resident Japanese.
A sense of ordinary common fairness should long ago have
dictated a recognition of the peculiar language problem faced
by Japanese residents on the West Coast. Immigrant parents felt
the necessity of having their children instructed in the Japanese
language in order to preserve family ties and to maintain some
basis of communication with children who were speaking Eng-
lish in the schools, on the playgrounds, and in their everyday life.
But from the outset there was a difficulty involved in securing
121
competent instructors. The language school, supported by pri-
vate funds, was devised to meet this clearly recognized need.
Knowledge of their language was not only important from their
parents' point of view, it was also important to those Nisei who,
in later life, might seek employment in Japanese firms or in the
export-import business.
It is indeed difficult to read anything subversive into the frankly
expressed wish of Japanese parents that their children should
know something about the history and culture of Japan. It is
probably true, however, that some of these schools used text ma-
terial that was objectionable. In Hawaii, the Japanese themselves
sponsored legislation to bring the vernacular schools under state
regulation. And many people have forgotten that in December,
1920, the Japanese Association of America suggested that Cali-
fornia should enact similar legislation. In fact, such a bill was
enacted in California only to be ruled unconstitutional in 192*7.
One of the reasons it was held unconstitutional was that the
Catholic Church felt that such legislation might be extended to
their parochial schools. And what has also been forgotten is
that, in Oregon, the Japanese were finally successful in getting
one public school to form a Japanese language class. Over a period
of years, the vernacular schools were discussed at length in the
Japanese-American press on the West Coast and many proposals
were made, in the States and in Canada, to integrate these language
schools with the public school system. That this step was never
taken is to be attributed not to the Japanese, but to our own fail-
ure to recognize the existence of a definite educational problem.
As to the schools themselves, Mr. Vierling Kersey, Superintendent
of Schools in Los Angeles, once said: "We have absolutely no
objection to these schools." *
The fact of the matter is that these schools were never success-
ful. As one observer has so well said, the Japanese youngster spent
a "precious hour and one-half tossing spit balls at his classmates
and calling his teacher names in American slang which she pre-
tended not to understand. Physically he was in school; mentally
he was making a run around left end for another touchdown.
28 Los Angeles Daily News, August 21, 1941.
122
He was restless. He counted the minutes. At the gong, he dashed
to freedom." Based on three years' experience as an instructor in
one of these schools, Saikichi Chijiwa predicted in 1927 that they
would soon pass out of existence. That they failed even in their
primary purpose of language instruction is shown by the fact
that the Army, scouring the relocation centers for Nisei who
knew the language, found that only 15 per cent of the Nisei
could speak Japanese and that only about 5 per cent could read
or write Japanese. Furthermore, parochial schools have taught
foreign languages to immigrant children in America for genera-
tions; and no serious complaint has ever been filed against them.
} Prior to December 7, 1941, the Italian consulates had distributed
fascist-inspired textbooks and other materials to Italian language
schools in California. But, at the Tolan Committee hearings, only
the Japanese language schools were deemed subversive or other-
wise suspect/Later a California legislative committee found that
Italians hacl sponsored similar language schools in which official
fascist propaganda was taught and texts were used that were sup-
plied by the Italian consuls. 29
The "dual citizenship" charge was similarly unrealistic and un-
fair. The Japanese Nationality Code has always been predicated
upon the doctrine of jits sanguims namely, that a child is Jap-
anese if its father is a Japanese national at the time of its birth.
Under the Fourteenth Amendment, we have always followed
the doctrine of jus soli except in the case of our own nationals
abroad that persons bom in this country are citizens of the
United States. That there are two such conflicting doctrines of
nationality may be readily explained: countries having a heavy
out-migration the population exporting countries almost uni-
formly follow the doctrine of jus sanguiriis; while countries of
heavy in-migration the population receiving countries follow
the doctrine of jus soli. There is nothing peculiar, therefore, about
the rule followed by Japan (it has been the rule of many Euro-
pean nations).
What we have forgotten is that the Japanese on the West Coast
themselves petitioned Japan in 1914 to modify its law. The kw
29 UnAmerican Activities in California, 1943, pp. 316-319.
123
was, in fact, modified in March, 1916, and again in December,
1925, so as to make it possible for Japanese born in this country
to renounce any claim of dual citizenship. It is a little difficult to
see how such a claim could arise in actual practice, since we have
never recognized the principle of dual citizenship. In any case,
after 1925 many Nisei did renounce Japanese citizenship (the
Japanese-American Gtizens League carried on a ceaseless agita-
tion to this end), and those born after December i, 1925, were
automatically released from such a claim. It is, however, true that
many Nisei, largely through ignorance, or indifference, neglected
to renounce the claim. While stressing this matter of dual citizen-
ship, the anti- Japanese forces have always failed to note the sharp
and obvious cleavage between the first and second generation
a fact of far greater significance.
Not being a theologian, I hesitate to discuss Buddhism or
Shintoism as possible factors making for strong currents of na-
tionalism among the resident Japanese population. But it is diffi-
cult to believe that Buddhism, as practised in America, is quite
the same faith as Buddhism practised in Japan. The testimony
of all observers is to the contrary. They point out that, as an im-
ported cultural institution, Buddhism has undergone definite
modifications and that the Buddhist churches have tended to
parallel the Christian churches, adopting the same institutional
paraphernalia, such as kindergarten schools, Sunday schools,
some of the same hymns, and most of the same societies. Adher-
ents of Buddhism have pointed out that an appreciation of its
rites is largely dependent upon some knowledge of Japanese; and
that with the decline of a knowledge of the language there de-
veloped a loss of interest in the faith. They also complained that
children became involved in Christian practices merely as an in-
cidence of their daily life. Generally speaking, Buddhism seemed
to have stronger roots in rural than in urban communities. It had
little interest for the Nisei. To them it was "odd" and "diffi-
cult" and the very appearance of a ramshackle Buddhist temple
was as incongruous to them as it was to most other Americans.
I have examined any number of the proceedings of the Young
Buddhist Leagues the so-called Bussei groups. They read al-
124
most exactly like the proceedings of a typical conference of
young go-getting Methodists. There is certainly nothing esoteric
about the proceedings: government officials appeared and dis-
cussed soil problems; social workers orated about the problems
of the second generation; and civic leaders exhorted the faithful
to take a more responsible part in the affairs of their communi-
ties. If there was a tendency, on the part of these churches, to
undermine faith in American democracy, it is certainly not re-
flected in the proceedings themselves. It is, however, probably
true that after 1937 some effort was made by Japan to use the
vernacular schools and the Buddhist churches for propaganda
purposes, both here and in Hawaii. For example, the Literary
Digest of February 13, 1937, reported that some "forty young
missionaries from the Buddhist University in Kyoto, Japan," had
recently arrived in the United States. But to make religious faith
a test of loyalty or to consider it as evidence affecting the ques-
tion of loyalty was as unfair as to imply that race could be made
a test of loyalty.
More serious than this age-old native-son gossip about lan-
guage schools, dual citizenship, and Buddhism, was the fact that
the Japanese did have a tightly knit pattern of social organization
and that most group activity was co-ordinated by the local Jap-
anese Association which, in turn, had close ties with the various
consulates. The same type of co-ordination existed in the con-
trol which certain Japanese firms exercised over both Issei and
Nisei and the relationship which existed between these firms and
the consulates. What made this pattern particularly troublesome
was the fact that in 1941 the leadership was still vested in the
Issei. It is important to note, however, that the war had broken
this pattern of relationships. The vernacular schools were closed;
the consulates were closed; all aliens had been registered in 1940;
the assets of the Japanese firms had been frozen in midsummer,
1941; and, immediately after December 7, the leaders of the
various associations were in jail. Precisely the same relationship
patterns existed in Hawaii. If anything the various Japanese or-
ganizations were more closely knit in Hawaii than on the main-
land.
"5
There is still another factor involved which has never been
discussed in relation to the evacuation problem. The Japanese
and the Japanese-Americans had a big economic stake in the se-
curity of the West Coast. Their holdings have been estimated
as being in excess of $200,000,000. From a strictly economic point
of view, what could they possibly hope to gain from a Japanese
victory? Even the few deluded individuals who might have be-
lieved in the possibility of a Japanese victory must have realized,
as did the Japanese war lords, that the most Japan could hope to
achieve was a stalemate in the Pacific with Japan retaining a
portion of its Far Eastern loot. How could even such a hypo-
thetical victory improve the lot of the West Coast Japanese?
Bad as their position was after the attack on Pearl Harbor, it
would have become intolerable had Japan, let us say, achieved a
stalemate in the Pacific. In such an eventuality, remote as it must
have seemed, they could only have expected economic and physi-
cal annihilation on the West Coast. Most of the Issei had lived
in this country from thirty to fifty years; they had, in a ma-
jority of cases, American-born children. Several thousand of these
Nisei were serving in the United States Army on December 7,
1941. Assuming that there were strong currents of nationalism
among some of the Issei leaders, it should not be forgotten that
72 per cent of the Nisei have never been in Japan. The most pow-
erful economic, family, and personal considerations dictated the
necessity of continued allegiance to the United States.
3. Economic Pressures
While the position taken by the various groups before the
Tolan Committee cannot be said to follow a clear line of economic
interest, it is certainly true that special-interest groups were active
in exerting pressure for mass evacuation. The shipper-grower in-
terests in Washington were opposed to mass evacuation, while the
Washington Commonwealth Federation, an tdtraliberal group,
favored it. But the California shipper-grower interests were defi-
nitely in favor of mass evacuation and for admittedly selfish
reasons. Shortly after December 7, the Shipper-Girower Associa-
126
tion of Salinas sent Mr. Austin E. Anson to Washington to lobby
for mass evacuation. "We're charged with wanting to get rid
-of the Japs for selfish reasons," said Mr. Anson. "We might as
well be honest. We do. It's a question of whether the white man
lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown men. They came into this
valley to work, and they stayed to take over." * Similarly, so-
called "white interests" in the nursery and florist businesses were
actively seeking mass evacuation as a means of eliminating un-
wanted competition.
To appreciate the position that these special-interest economic
groups took, however, it is necessary to explain the situation as
they saw it. By December 7, 1941, the Japanese had achieved a
tolerated position in the industries in which they were concen-
trated, such as the produce industry, the floral industry, the
nursery industry. They were tolerated because of an unofficial
truce that had been declared: this far they might go but no
farther. But with prices rising after December 7, produce inter-
ests saw an opportunity to take over the Japanese holdings. For
they foresaw that prices would continue to rise (particularly if
the Japanese were ousted), thereby creating an opportunity for
them to take over and operate successfully types of business
which, in "normal" times or in a period of declining prices, they
could not possibly hope to operate at a profit. They also realized
that, once the Nisei came into possession and ownership of these
businesses, they might expand out of the tolerated zone. For the
Nisei were American citizens; they were exceptionally well-
educated; and they could not, therefore, be expected to stay
within the confines into which their parents had been driven.
To get all Japanese out of the state would eliminate, so they
thought, this potential -future competition.
These same special-interest groups have, moreover, continued
to be most active in urging the permanent exclusion of the Japa-
nese from the West Coast. High stakes are involved: the Japanese
produce production in California had an estimated annual value
of $35,000,000; their share of the florist business in Los Angeles
alone was valued at around $4,000,000 annually. In Washington,
30 Saturday Evenmg P0#, May 9, 1942.
127
as I have indicated, the situation was somewhat different, because
there the Japanese figured more prominently in the production
of produce for interstate shipment, whereas in California they
were largely confined to the production of fresh vegetables for
the local markets. $Vhile there was this split in the ranks of the
economic pressure groups not all of whom favored mass evacu*
ation it is nevertheless incontestably true that certain groups
stood to profit (momentarily at least) by the elimination of the
Japanese; and that they played a very important behind-the-
scenes role in securing mass evacuation^ ?
4. The Earthquake Strikes
By the time the Tolan Committee arrived in California, in Febru-
ary, 1942, the social fault that I have mentioned had begun to jar
the Japanese communities loose from their moorings. On July 26,
1941, the assets of Japanese nationals had been "frozen." The re-
strictions imposed on enemy aliens on December 7 and 8 had be-
gun to hamper the Issei in their business activities and a serious eco-
nomic crisis had developed. The uncertainty of the situation had
created a type of economic paralysis: business transactions were
suspended, crops were not being planted, many activities were
being held in status quo. Landlords had begun to evict Japanese
tenants; insurance policies were being canceled; social-security
payments could not be released to Japanese nationals. Japanese
firms were slowly losing patronage. No new employment fields
were opening. The families of those individuals arrested on Presi-
dential warrants were in dire distress. Nisei were being dis-
charged from their positions (they were summarily ousted from
city, county, and state civil-service positions without hearings
and with no charges being preferred against them). On January
17, 1942, it was reported that most of the Japanese firms in San
Francisco would have "to close within a few months." This
distress was apparent as early as August, 1941; by January, 1942,
it had become acute.
The committee arrived in Los Angeles just in time to observe
the disastrous effects of the summary ouster of the Japanese fish-
128
ing colony five hundred f amilies rom Tejrminal Island. On
February 15, these families were told that they were expected
to move within thirty days; later, they were given twenty-four
hours in which to vacate. The utmost confusion prevailed, as
families sought to find places into which they might move, and
tried frantically to dispose of their effects. Most of these families
were without resources. These two developments, the paralysis
creeping over the Japanese communities and the ouster of fami-
lies from spot strategic areas, merely indicated that an earthquake
had struck along the fault.
There is one further aspect of the matter, however, that war-
rants consideration: between February 19 and March 27, 1942,
the Japanese were at liberty to depart voluntarily from Military
Ajrea No. i. The failure of voluntary evacuation to effect the
desired removal of all Japanese from the area was largely re-
sponsible for the subsequent orders for evacuation. During the
period mentioned, it is estimated that some 10,231 Japanese volun-
tarily departed from Military Area No. i, but, of this number,
some 4825 merely moved into Military Area No. 2. In some
cases, this involved simply moving a few miles. It also had the
effect of concentrating evacuees in certain rural areas in central
California where, by their presence, they aroused suspicion and
tended to aggravate an already tense situation.
In the nature of things, voluntary evacuation could hardly have
been successful, since few resident Japanese had friends or rela-
tives in the Middle West or East and did not know where to go.
Many of them lacked the necessary funds to finance a long-
distance trip; and, besides, they were uncertain about the kind
of reception they might meet. It was a question of fleeing from
a known to an unknown evil. Of those who did voluntarily
depart, some 5396 went to areas outside both Military Areas Nos.
i and 2, principally to Colorado and Utah. Of those who did
move, during the period of voluntary evacuation, it is estimated
that 1200 shortly returned to Military Area No. i, thereby fur-
ther complicating an already complicated situation.
In attempting to remove themselves beyond Military Areas
Nos. i and 2, evacuees either ha4 to cross through the inter-
129
mountain states or to locate in this region. In February, Con-
gressman Tokn had wired the governors of these (and other)
states, inquiring about the possibilities of relocating the Japanese.
With the exception of Governor Carr of Colorado (who was
subsequently defeated in a political campaign), all replied un-
favorably. Typical of the replies received was the comment of
Governor Homer M. Adkins of Arkansas: "Our people are not
familiar with the customs or peculiarities of the Japanese. We
are always anxious to co-operate in any way we can, but our
people, being more than 95 per cent native born, are in no man-
ner familiar with their customs and ways and have never had
any of them within our borders, and I doubt the wisdom of
placing any in Arkansas." I know of one family that had been
located in New Mexico for almost thirty years prior to Pearl
Harbor. Yet it is interesting to note that the pressures became
so great in New Mexico (so many of whose soldiers were in-
volved at Bataan) that this family voluntarily moved into a re-
location center to secure protection. That this could happen in
New Mexico is some indication of what might have happened
in California if evacuation had not been ordered, once the flood
of agitation had started.
Sentiment in these intermountain states not only was opposed
to relocation, but was of such a character as to indicate the kind
of reception that evacuees might face if they moved farther east-
ward. For example, Governor Payne Ratner of Kansas stated that
"Japs are not wanted and not welcome in Kansas" and directed
the state highway patrol to turn back any Japanese trying to
enter the state. 81 One Japanese group, consisting of seven adults
and a baby, was stopped at nearly every Colorado town in
attempting to cross the state. On March 7, 1942, the press re-
ported that Japanese, attempting to cross through Arizona, were
stopped by state highway patrolmen. Similar incidents were re-
ported throughout the area. Typical of the general reaction was
the statement of the Nevada Bar Association: "We feel that if
Japs are dangerous in Berkeley, California, they are likewise dan-
gerous to the State of Nevada." The State-Tribune of Wyoming
81 Reported in the Las Vegas Daily Optic, April i, 1942.
130
Stated in an editorial of March 8, 1942: "It is utterly unequitable
and unfair to subject Wyoming to the bureaucratic dictum that
it shall support and find employment for Japanese brought here
from Pacific Coast defense zones." In its issues of March 2 and
9, 1942, the Denver Post carried similar editorial statements. The
mere fact that the governors of these states had been queried on
the possibility of relocation brought down upon them an ava-
lanche of mail from irate constituents.
As they retreated eastward evacuees met with unpleasant inci-
dents at many points and were constantly subjected to humili-
ating experiences. Signs posted in shops read: "This restaurant
poisons both rats and Japs"; barbershops carried signs reading
"Japs Shaved: Not Responsible for Accidents"; cards were placed
in automobile windshields reading "Open Season for Japs"; stores,
filling stations, restaurants, refused to serve evacuees. 82 The vig-
orous expression of such attitudes and the recurrence of such
incidents clearly indicated, early in March, 1942, that voluntary
evacuation would not be successful. The same evidence indicated
that evacuation would have to be federally supervised, that mini-
mum measures of protection would have to be taken, and that
further voluntary evacuation would have to be curtailed. As a
consequence the first "freezing" order was issued on March 27,
1942."
5. "E Day" Arrives
Just as the federal authorities were pushed into the program
of evacuation, so they were compelled to improvise extraordinary
devices and expedients to cope with the problem which they had
inherited overnight. Not only were there no precedents to follow
no guideposts along the way but the time element precluded
the possibility of a studied consideration of various possibilities
and alternatives. Having permitted themselves to be convinced
that these people were a menace, it necessarily followed that
82 See the Christian Advocate, October 15, 1942.
83 See also "The Problem People" by Jim Marshall, Collier's, August 15,
1942.
prompt action was required. There is no evidence that the mili-
tary had ever contemplated, in the event of war, such a measure;
certainly they had no concealed Plan X to pull from their files.
The whole program was evolved in response to external pres-
sures and developments. It evolved dialectically: by internal and
external compulsions.
It is important to remember, as Mr. Dillon Myer has pointed
out, that "internment camps were never intended in relation to
this program." All that was originally contemplated was an order
excluding persons of Japanese descent from the area. When it
became apparent that these persons were slow to move, that they
needed assistance; and when it gradually dawned on the authori-
ties that they did not even know where to move, then and only
then were plans prepared which contemplated assistance, super-
vision, and control of the movement. Voluntary evacuation was
then "frozen" and the Wartime Gvil Control Administration
was created as a branch of the Western Defense Command to
supervise the removal of the evacuees. It was essentially WCCA's
function to direct the removal not the relocation of these
people. To this end it was deemed necessary to prevent further
voluntary removals; to assemble all evacuees for removal; and
to establish temporary reception or assembly centers.
Evacuation proceeded on a regular army timetable. Since re-
moval was ordered on an area-by-area basis, as reception facilities
were established, it did not occur simultaneously throughout the
West Coast. Civil control stations were established in each area
having a minimum of 1000 persons to be evacuated. Evacuees
were registered at these stations and to these stations they re-
ported on "E Day," the Army's designation of the date fixed
for their removal. E Day will not soon be forgotten by the resi-
dent Japanese. The final decision in favor of total mass evacua-
tion occurred only after weeks of uncertainty, debate, agitation,
rumor, and conflicting reports. The decision itself came to most
Japanese as almost as great a shock as Pearl Harbor. Until the
very last moment there was always the hope of a respite or
reprieve, or the possibility that some alternative plan might be
adopted, or that only certain groups, such as the aliens, would
132
be evacuated. To be forewarned of a disaster is not to be pre-
pared for the disaster itself. As a group, the Japanese were
stunned by the final decision; and to most of them it was a
major disaster. It was as though they had been engulfed in a
natural calamity, such as flood, or fire, or earthquake.
One Nisei underwent plastic surgery in an effort to have his
features changed: "I was so ashamed," he said, "of my racial
identity." Dreading to meet his Caucasian friends, Koji Ku-
rokawa hid in the basement of his employer's home for twenty-
three days. On a Fourth of July prior to evacuation, Hideo
Murata, a veteran of the First World War, had been presented
by the board of supervisors of Monterey County with a "Cer-
tificate of Honorary Citizenship" which read:
Monterey County presents this testimony of heartfelt
gratitude, of honor and respect for your loyal and splendid
service to the country in die Great World War. Our flag
was assaulted, and you gallantly took up its defense.
When E Day was announced in Monterey County, Murata went
to see his friend the sheriff, and asked if it wasn't all a mistake,
or perhaps just a practical joke. Finding that the order meant
what it said, he went to a local hotel, paid for his room, and
committed suicide. The sheriff found the certificate of honorary
citizenship clutched in his hand. Not every Japanese, needless
to say, felt this keenly about the matter. Most of them tried to
accept the bitter intelligence itself in good spirit. Some volun-
teered to assist in the process; others attempted a show of high
spirits about the entire procedure; all of them co-operated in the
movement itself.
A curious aspect of E Day in California, as elsewhere on the
West Coast, was the kindly complacence shown by the Cauca-
sian residents of the area. While there had been weeks of agita-
tion for the removal of the Japanese, this agitation had been
conducted at a relatively high level. Uniformly the stress had
been placed on considerations of national security, military ne-
cessity, and the well-being of these admirable people, the West
Coast Japanese. The friendliest spirit prevailed in virtually every
'33
area. In more than one area this spirit verged on tenderness and
remorse. Editorials appeared in which the evacuees were wished
bon voyage; complimented on their excellent behavior; assured
of a warm welcome upon their return; sentimental "sayonaras"
echoed throughout the area. There were no harsh or strident or
bitter denunciations. In areas which have since become hotbeds
of anti- Japanese agitation, the departure of the Japanese was the
occasion for the expression of heartfelt sentiments. There was
virtually no realization, among the generality of citizens, that
they were witnessing a unique departure from American tra-
dition* *
For those long proclamations ordering removal which ap-
peared in the newspapers, were announced over the radio, and
were tacked to telegraph poles and posted on bulletin boards,
referred to "all persons of Japanese ancestry." No exceptions
were specified; no provision was made for cases involving mixed
marriages; and one drop of Japanese blood brought a person
within the category defined. Here a group was being singled out
for discriminatory treatment solely upon the basis of race or
ancestry. In Germany, as Dr. Morris Opler has pointed out, the
Nazis merely pretended to discriminate against persons on the
score of race or ancestry. They were well aware of the fact,
as were the German people, that the Jews are not a race. But
we premised the discrimination explicitly and solely upon the
fact of race or ancestry; more particularly of "ancestry" since
the Koreans and the Chinese belong to the same "race" as the
Japanese. No phase of our tradition, particularly of our Western
tradition, has been more firmly accepted than the proposition
that a man is not responsible for his ancestors. Even to inquire
about a person's ancestry, in the early days of the West, was to
violate an unwritten prohibition firmly implanted in the mores
of the people. The acquiescence of the Japanese in this singular
procedure was wholly admirable; but the indifference to, the
calm acceptance of, the same procedure by their fellow citizens
presents a somewhat different problem. It is, perhaps, only to be
accounted for in terms of the fact that the Japanese, as such,
had never been really accepted as a part of the community.
134
Their removal was, therefore, accomplished with much the same
smoothness that an easily detachable part is removed from a
machine.
From the control stations, the evacuees were escorted to a
series of hastily improvised assembly centers. In selecting sites
for assembly centers, WCCA showed great ingenuity. Use was
made of fairgrounds, parks, race tracks, and pavilions. In Cali-
fornia, assembly centers were established at Marysville, Sacra-
mento, Tanforan, Stockton, Merced, Turlock, Salinas, Fresno,
Pinedale, Tulare, Santa Anita, Pomona, and Manzanar (the only
assembly center that was constructed as a relocation project).
In the Northwest, assembly centers were established in Portland
and at Puyallup; and in Arizona at Cavecreek and Mayer Camp.^
On arriving at the assembly centers, the evacuees went through
a process of induction (registration, baggage inspection, medical
checkup) and were assigned to quarters. Before they really knew
what had happened, they were inside the centers, die gates were
locked, and the sentries had established their patrols.
In a period of 28 days, army engineers had constructed shelters
in assembly centers for 100,000 people, and in a period of 137
days the same number of people had been moved into these
centers. By June 8, 1942, the entire movement from points of
residence in Military Area No. i to assembly centers had been
effected; and shortly afterwards those remaining in Military Area
No. 2 had likewise been removed. By that date, virtually every
Japanese, citizen and alien alike, in the three West Coast states
and portions of Arizona was in an assembly center. The only
exceptions were Japanese confined to institutions, such as hospi-
tals, prisons, insane asylums, and orphanages. The rapidity and
efficiency with which this movement was accomplished repre-
sents a major achievement for the Army. Colonel Karl Bendetsen
was well within the facts when he said that the entire movement
had been effected "without mischance, with minimum hardship,
and almost without incident." All observers are in agreement on
the proposition that the Army executed the assignment with tact,
good judgment, and remarkable efficiency. On June 8, 1942, the
assembly-center population totaled 99,700 Japanese.
'35
The efficiency of the Army, however, was matched by the
excellent co-operation of the evacuees. No incidents were re-
ported in which the Japanese failed to co-operate; on the con-
trary, all the evidence points to the fact that they are justly
entitled to a major share of the credit for the achievement itself.
It requires some measure of discipline, fortitude, and patience,
on such short notice, to close out businesses, to wind up affairs,
to dispose of homes and furnishings, to take care of the countless
details which any move involves, and to report, with a handful
of possessions, on time for removal to an unknown destination..
Nor did the co-operation of the Japanese end with their arrival
in the centers. Many of these centers were not completed when
the evacuees began to arrive. The evacuees helped to build them;
assisted in making them livable; and quickly assumed major re-
sponsibilities in their administration. The construction problem
itself was of minor significance when compared with the imme-
diate problem of administration. Some of these assembly centers
were good-sized cities (there were 18,000 evacuees in the Santa
Anita center). The whole apparatus of municipal facilities
water system, sewer system, hospital, schools, police, post office,
stores, recreation, not to mention the detail of feeding 18,000
people three times a day had to be improvised overnight.
Faced with a problem of this magnitude, the administration
would have been completely paralyzed had it not been for the
manner in which the evacuees co-operated in the entire under-
taking. Imagine moving and relocating 100,000 rank-and-file
American citizens of all classes, ages, and occupations under
similar circumstances! It would have required several army divi-
sions to have accomplished such an assignment and these divisions
would probably have had to cope with a new rebellion every
fifteen minutes. With no other group of similar size in our
population could such a feat have been possible. It is also impor-
tant to remember that these people were living under great
emotional stress: they were fearful, bewildered, distraught. The
utmost confusion prevailed. While WCCA had attempted to
move entire families and entire communities intact to the same
assembly center, it was not possible to do so in all cases. Many
136
of the evacuees were completely alone among total strangers in
the strangest world they had ever known. The irritations and
inconveniences, major and minor, were legion. In Puyallup, there
was one washroom for a hundred families; in Tanforan and Santa
Anita thousands of people were housed in stable stalls recently
occupied by horses; in Yakima, evacuees were "housed" in an
abandoned hop yard. The annoyances of the moment were
dwarfed in significance by mounting anxiety and by a growing
concern about the future. It is against this general background
that the behavior and conduct of the Japanese must be appraised.
That they behaved as they did is a remarkable demonstration,
in itself, of their loyalty. Mr. Stimson has himself pointed out
that "great credit is due our Japanese population for the manner
in which they responded to and complied with the orders of
exclusion."
6. Economic Consequences
For a variety of reasons, it has been and will continue to be
difficult to appraise the economic effect of the removal of the
Japanese from the West Coast. The rather boastful statements
of California shipper growers to the effect that the removal of
the Japanese occasioned no loss in farm production are exceed-
ingly misleading. The figures cited in substantiation of this and
similar statements usually have reference to total acreages and
not to the volume of production of a particular crop. They also
relate to current abnormal price structures which have made
possible a temporary shift in acreage from Japanese-controlled
to non-Japanese-controlled operations. Asked if the Japanese
were necessary factors in agricultural production in California,
Mr. Harold Ryan, Agricultural Commissioner of Los Angeles
County, recently testified: "Not unless we insist upon having
cheap vegetables grown in great quantities on small acreage of
land." The qualifications noted in this statement are most sig-
nificant. Later Mr. Ryan said that "it remains to be seen whether
the non- Japanese farmer can continue successfully in the growing
of miscellaneous vegetables on small acreages."
137
It can be definitely stated, however, that the removal of the
Japanese has had a most unfortunate effect on production insofar
as consumers are concerned. In its annual report for 1942, the
Federal-State Market News service stated that Southern Califor-
nia consumers alone paid $10,000,000 more for 10,000 truckloads
less of perishable vegetables in 1942, by comparison with 1941:"
Removal of the Japanese has created a chaotic situation in the
wholesale produce markets in Los Angeles. Buyers complain that
it is currently either "a feast or a famine"; tomatoes flood the
market for a week and the next week cannot be obtained. The
deterioration of quality is a self-evident fact to any Southern
Calif ornia consumer. In a report released on January 3, 1944, the
State Director of Agriculture accused retailers of fresh fruits and
vegetables in the state of charging prices ranging from "higher
than necessary" to "wholly unwarranted and exorbitant." In
some cases retailers, according to this report, have realized mar-
gins of from 50 to 450 per cent above wholesale costs. Inde-
pendent buyers of produce throughout the state complain that
the removal of the Japanese has increased prices unnecessarily
and has resulted in a definite consolidation of economic controls
and a further extension in the direction of monopolistic price
structures. It should be remembered that the removal of the
Japanese occurred at a time when prices had begun to rise and
when the population of the state was increasing in a most spec-
tacular fashion.
That the Japanese sustained enormous economic losses as a
result of evacuation cannot be denied. The whole evacuation
program, as it developed, was so uncertain at the outset, and so
summary in conclusion, that Japanese did not have time to dis-
pose of their holdings. Their losses must be reckoned in the
millions of dollars. Even after evacuation was a foregone con-
clusion, the federal government failed to set up any satisfactory
system of property custodianship. The government agencies that
were delegated responsibility in the matter, in most cases, either
tried to evade this responsibility or joined in pressuring the Japa-
nese to dispose of their holdings quickly and in a haphazard
9 *0j Angeles Qqily Newt) February 17, 1943.
fashion. The grossest imposition was practised upon the Japanese,
ranging from petty chiseling to large-scale fraud.
Any number of suits are pending in the California courts today
in which local interests are charged with the most serious fraud
and, in some cases, with the most flagrant abuse of trust rela-
tionships. Considering that some of the individual Japanese hold-
ings were quite large, it is possible to gain some idea of the
amount of the stakes that are involved. Naturally the interests
charged with fraud are among those most anxious to keep the
Japanese from returning to the state. It is quite obvious that if a
federal investigation is ever made of the manipulation that has
already occurred^ it will have the proportions of a national scan-
dal. 35 In Santa Maria in Santa Barbara County local interests
have been charged with bilking the Japanese out of holdings val-
ued at $5oo,ooo. 86 In this instance, the Treasury Department was
finally forced to intervene to protect the Japanese against a total
dissipation of their holdings; but, as a result of extraordinary pres-
sures brought to bear, the freezing order of the Treasury Depart-
ment was subsequently lifted.
The creator of the fortune involved in this particular case,
H. Y. Minami, Sr., came to California in 1905, to work for the
Southern Pacific railroad as a day laborer. He laid the founda-
tion for his considerable fortune by inducing the railroad to lease
to him small acreages then wholly unproductive along its
right-of-way. This is but one of many similar cases. It is out of
such a murky background that much of the pressure for the
permanent exclusion of the Japanese from the state stems at the
present time. Gradually most of the Japanese holdings urban and
rural are being liquidated. A recent report of their estimated
holdings of $5,000,000 in the city of Los Angeles indicates that
virtually all of it will have been sold in another year. "It is ex-
pected that ultimately there won't be a parcel of Jap-owned real
estate in Los Angeles." ST It should also be remembered that those
Japanese still remaining in relocation centers are being steadily
85 See, for example, the complaint in the matter of Hiramatsu vs. L. JR.
Phillips et al. pending in the Superior Court of Santa Barbara County.
36 See Santa Barbara News-Press, October 27, 1943, p. A-2.
S7 Los Angeles Times, December 5, 1943.
pauperized. The small amounts that they earn are not sufficient
to pay obligations of a fixed character, such as premiums on life-
insurance policies and other commitments. As a consequence, it
is estimated that the residents of the two centers in Arizona alone
are being pauperized at the rate of about $500,000 a year.
The removal of the Japanese has had other 2nd, in some re-
spects, rather amusing aspects. While the race purists of the
state have been gloating over the removal of aa "unassimilable"
minority of around 90,000, the vacuum in the labor market occa-
sioned by the removal of the Japanese is in part responsible for
the current influx of Negroes from the Deep South. Approxi-
mately 90,000 Japanese have been removed from the state and
approximately 150,000 Negroes have been attracted into it. By
and large, the Negroes have flooded into the Little Tokyo areas
which were left vacant when the Japanese were removed. Little
Tokyo in Los Angeles has recently been rechristened as Bronze-
ville. The influx of Negroes has created special problems of
housing, education, and recreation and, at the same time, has con-
tributed to the steadily mounting racial tensions. 88 As a matter of
fact, the removal of the Japanese, coming as it did when defense
production was increasing by leaps and bounds, artificially stim-
ulated the already extended demand for manpower. What was
accomplished, in terms of the war effort, by the removal of the
Japanese was the elimination of a wholly theoretical hazard to
the detriment of nearly every other aspect of the war.
As long as the Japanese remained on the West Coast, they
could only be attacked in rather general terms. For, after all,
they were customers; they bought and sold; they paid rent and
interest; they were good tenants. During the Tolan Committee
hearings, many of their competitors remained silent; and most
of the witnesses who did appear against them had occasion to
pay them compliments of one sort or another. But once they
were removed, the tenor of the criticism changed: it became
vicious, vitriolic, savage. Their former partners, associates, and
88 See tiie report of the San Francisco Grand Jury on conditions in its
former Litde Tokyo section as reported in the San Francisco Examiner of
June 15, 18, and 19, 1943.
140
business colleagues then came forward and began to advance all
manner of chaiges and to urge, in the most strenuous fashion,
that the doors Should be closed behind them. 89
7. Hawaii
The "social earthquake" that evacuation precipitated on the
West Coast was felt along the entire western rim of the Pacific,*
from Alaska to Peru, and it had important repercussions in
Hawaii.
There were in Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, 159,534 persons
of Japanese ancestry, constituting 34.2 per cent of the total popu-
lation of the islands. Of this group, 35,183 (22 per cent of the
total) were aliens with an average period of residence in the
islands of something like thirty-five years. Over a period of years,
the Japanese had tended to move from the plantations to the
cities; from agricultural labor to skilled and semiskilled occupa-
tions. At the outset (around 1907), this movement had occasioned
some and- Japanese agitation. But the agitation never reached
serious proportions primarily because the economic oligarchy
that rules Hawaii did not look with favor upon such a movement
(although the same interests actually subsidized anti-Japanese
agitation on the Pacific Coast). There is no doubt, as Dr. Andrew
W. Lind has observed, that the Japanese in Hawaii clearly sur-
passed "their cousins in continental United States in the struggle
for occupational preferment." They were, by 1941, established
in all the major professions; and 15 per cent of the gainfully em-
ployed Japanese, in 1940, were employed in preferred profes-
sional and proprietary and managerial occupations.
Despite the fact that race relations were much better in Hawaii
than on the mainland, the Japanese nevertheless showed much
the same tendency there, as on the West Coast, toward internal
89 On the effect of evacuation in particular areas, see Pacific Citizen,
April 4, 1943, p. 7; June 3, 1943, p. 6; July 10, 1943, p. 3. As to the extent of
their present interests, WRA is currently custodian of 102 markets, 700
hotels and apartments, 32 drygoods stores, 6 newspapers, 56 restaurants, 19
garages, 33 churches, 206 cleaning establishments, 21 floral shops, 230
nurseries, and 75 laundries. Their total holdings were valued, on the West
Coast, at around $200,000,000.
solidarity. The Japanese intermarriage rate on tfy? mainland was
only 2.3 per cent; in Hawaii it was 4.5 per cent A Japanese was
the "second language" of the islands. As late as ,1940 some por-
tion of each school day in the lives of 80 per cent of the Japanese
children of school age was spent in the 171 Japanese-language
^schools in the islands. There were twelve newspapers and five
magazines published in the Japanese language. Every radio sta-
tion in the islands carried a regular "Japanese hoar." There were
two motion-picture theaters which showed Japanese films exclu-
sively. 41 There were the usual number of Shinto shrines and
Buddhist temples. Many observers had been impressed, according
to Dr. Lind, "by the apparent slowness with which the Ameri-
canization of the Japanese community in Hawaii had proceeded."
I mention these considerations for two reasons: first, as evidence
that external pressures alone do not account for the internal
solidarity of Japanese settlements (which must be accounted for
largely in terms of the Japanese cultural pattern itself); and,
second, to show that if the character of Japanese settlements on
the West Coast was a reason for their removal (and it has been
cited as such by the Supreme Court), then the same considera-
tion applied with perhaps greater force in Hawaii
Yet what measures were taken for the protection -of this all-
important strategic outpost in the Pacific? In the first place,
martial law was immediately proclaimed. Some minor regulations
were imposed upon the alien Japanese, Several hundred of them
were taken into immediate custody and subsequently removed to
the mainland for internment; at a later date, additional Japanese
were removed from the islands and distributed in relocation
centers on the mainland. 42 Those who were taken into custody
immediately subsequent to Pearl Harbor fell within one or an-
other of the following categories: Shinto and Buddhist priests;
teachers in the language schools; consular agents; Kibei; or-
ganizational leaders having close ties with Japan. There has been
no mass evacuation or internment of the Japanese in Hawaii.
40 See American Sociological Review, October, 1943, article by Dr.
Leonard Bloom, p. 555.
41 See "Japan-in-Hawaii" by Ben Henderson, Survey Graphic, July, 1942.
^Pacific Citizen, December 17, 1942.
142
There are, of course, certain obvious differences between the
situation in Hawaii and that which prevailed on the West Coast.
In the first place, it would have been practically impossible to
have found shipping space to move 160,000 people across 2000
miles of ocean to the mainland. To have done so, if the shipping
had been available, would have caused immeasurable damage to
the internal economy of the islands. The manpower problem
was acute and the Japanese could not be spared. Furthermore,
in the islands they have had the "powerful and determined sup-
port of the highly centralized business interests of Hawaii." 48
In Hawaii they were supported by the dominant economic in-
terests; on the mainland these interests wanted them evacuated.
But a more powerful reason why evacuation was not ordered
consists in the fact, pointed out by Dr. Romanzo Adams, that
"the race mores of Hawaii are or tend to be the mores of race
equality." Effective interracial solidarity had been established in
Hawaii before the war; it had not been established on the main-
land. It is not without significance that the one area on the west-
ern side of the Pacific where the Japanese were permitted to
remain undisturbed was the one area where anti-Japanese agita-
tion had never taken root.
To be sure, there was some agitation for their removal from
Hawaii. A prominent businessman, Mr. J. A. Balch, published
a pamphlet in which he advocated their removal (Shall the Japa-
nese Be Allowed to Dominate Hawaii?) and testified before the
Dies Committee in favor of their removal. Although he is an
official of the Mutual Telephone Company of Hawaii, Mr. Balch
does not represent the thinking of the dominant business interests
of the islands.
^There is still another (and an amusing) reason why the Japa-
nese were not removed from Hawaii: California interests were
opposed to their removal! Mr. H. J. McQatchy and Mr. Charles
M. Goethe, both officials of the powerful California Joint Immi-
gration Committee, in discussions with Mr. Balch, indicated that
they were "unalterably opposed?' to the removal of any Japanese
48 In other words, The Big Five see article of Charles S. Bouslog, Asia
and the Americas, February, 1943.
143
from Hawaii either to the West Coast or to other portions of
the mainland. While insisting upon the removal of every man,
woman, and child of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast
in the name of national security and because of the "strategic
importance" of the area these selfsame individuals were opposed
to the removal of any Japanese from the far more important
strategic area of Hawaii. I know of no more fitting commentary
on the motives and objectives of the anti-Japanese forces of
Caliform^J
It should be pointed out, however, that Hawaii had a very
sensible and levelheaded commander in the person of General
Delos Emmons. After he had succeeded General Short, General
Emmons acted decisively and firmly to prevent the rise of hys-
teria. He publicly warned that there "must not be indiscriminate
displacement of labor"; and stressed that "we must not know-
ingly and deliberately deny any loyal citizen the opportunity
to exercise or demonstrate his loyalty in a concrete way." Hawaii,
of course, seethed with rumors of Japanese sabotage after the
attack on Pearl Harbor. These rumors were systematically inves-
tigated and publicly/xposed as unfounded. For the uncontra-
dicted facts are th&qnp sabotage occurred in Hawaii on Decem-
ber 7, 1941. This statement can be made today in reliance upon
emphatic assurances to this effect issued by the Secretary of War,
the Secretary of the Navy, the Honolulu Police Department, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the various intelligence
services involved.
While General Emmons was careful to inform the people in
Hawaii that these rumors were unfounded, no similar precau-
tion was taken by General De Witt on the mainland. General
Emmons acted to allay unfounded suspicion and to restore con-
fidence; General De Witt failed to take similar action. On the
contrary, it was assumed on the mainland that sabotage had
occurred in Hawaii and this assumption still prevails. In a Town
Meeting of the Air broadcast from Santa Barbara, on July 15,
1943, my references to undenied proof of the lack of sabotage
in Hawaii were greeted, by a reasonably tolerant California audi-
ence, with hoots, catcalls, and boos. Long after the facts were
144
known, Warner Brothers made and distributed the box-office
success, "Air Force," which depicted Japanese committing acts
of sabotage in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. No denial was issued
by the Western Defense Command or, so far as I know, by the
Office of War Information. 4 *
I do not mean, by these comments, to imply that a policy sim-
ilar to that in Hawaii could have been applied on the mainland.
For in the islands, the established mores of the community made
such a policy feasible; on the mainland the established mores
were such that people automatically assumed that all Japanese
would be evacuated. In Hawaii, the dominant economic interests
supported the policy pursued by General Emmons (and encour-
aged him to extend this policy) ; furthermore, he was supported
by the press, by local officials, and by most of the stable island
institutions. The groundwork had been laid in Hawaii for such
a program; it had not been laid on the mainland.
In Hawaii, as on the mainland, the war "brought to a climax
stresses and strains" which had long existed in the Japanese com-
munities. The language schools were closed; all but two of the
Japanese publications were suspended for the duration (and these
two were subject to close censorship). "A* house-cleaning of
affiliations with Japan has been prosecuted fearlessly and thor-
oughly, leaving not a disgruntled Japanese population, but a
people shocked into appreciation of the land of their adoption
or birth and of their rightful position in it** ** Leadership has
tended to pass from the Issei to the Nisei. Despite the presence
of large numbers of Filipinos in Hawaii (the likelihood of
Filipino- Japanese strife was urged in California as a reason for
mass evacuation), no violence has occurred.
The presence of skilled and semiskilled Japanese workmen in
Hawaii has made possible the great expansion of our military
establishment in the islands. No charges of sabotage have been
filed against them; no incidents have occurred to mar their
record. In Hawaii, however, the Japanese have been strongly inte-
**On the effect of "rumors'* in fomenting racial discord and strife, see
Race and Rumors of Race by Howard W. Odum, 1943.
46 Article by Scella M. Jones in Asia and the Americas^ February, 1943,
grated into the trade-union movement. 48 More Japanese civilians
were killed by the bombs which fell on and around Honolulu on
December 7 than civilians of other ancestry. In Hawaii, Japanese-
Americans manned machine guns to fight the Japanese attacking
Pearl Harbor; Japanese-American doctors and nurses worked
tirelessly to save American lives. They have responded to every
appeal; they have contributed generously to every war campaign.
When it became possible for them to volunteer for the combat
team, the response in Hawaii was overwhelming. They have been
repeatedly praised for their conduct by the peoples of the island 4T
and have brilliantly justified General Emmons' policy. As a matter
of fact, the policy of reopening the armed services to Japanese-
Americans for voluntary enlistment was initiated by the Ha-
waiian-born Nisei. 48
The war has unquestionably accelerated the process of assimi-
lation in Hawaii insofar as the Japanese are concerned. It has
afforded them a chance to demonstrate their loyalty. The extent
to which they have gone to sever whatever cultural or other
bonds to Japan may have existed is quite amazing. Since Pearl
Harbor, over 2400 petitions for change of name have been filed
by Japanese-Americans in Hawaii. 49 They are attempting either
to Anglicize their names or to adopt short, easily pronounceable
names. In most cases, however, they have deemed it sufficient to
change their given name. Yoshie becomes Elena; Masao becomes
Paul; Toshiyuki becomes Henry; and Chuichi becomes Michael. 60
There is no doubt that the long program of community co-
operation and tolerance of cultural differences has stood Hawaii
in good stead in this emergency. 51
One additional comment should be made on the situation in
Hawaii. There martial law was immediately proclaimed on De-
cember 7, 1941, for the same reason that evacuation was ordered
46 Pacific Citizen, August 28, 1943; see also the interesting series of articles
by William Norwood in the Christian Science Monitor.
47 See Honolulu Star-Bulletin, May 16, 1943.
48 See the interesting article by Ctecil H. Coggins, Harper's, June, 1943.
& Pacific Citizen, March u, 1943.
*See Honolulu Star-Bulletin, November 6, 1942. This issue contained
ten such petitions*
^On the Hawaiian situation see also Collier's, December ir, 1943,
146
on the West Coast namely, as a matter of "military necessity."
What the military then proceeded to do in Hawaii has been
graphically related in two articles written by the Attorney Gen-
eral of Hawaii, Mr. Garner Anthony. 52 A military dictatorship
was promptly imposed upon the people of Hawaii of the most
exacting, complete, and minute character. The military sought
to retain this control long after the danger of "imminent inva-
sion" had passed in the islands. It was only after a headlong
collision had occurred betwen the civil authorities and the mili-
tary that a measure of control was returned to the duly consti-
tuted authorities. This phase of the Hawaiian experience alone
serves to point out the dangers involved in permitting the mili-
tary to make their own determination of what constitutes "mili-
tary necessity."
8. In Alaska
Following the issuance of the general evacuation order on the
West Coast, the Japanese were removed from Alaska. About 134
were moved to the Minidoka relocation center in Idaho. Of this
group, 45 were of mixed ancestry. In Alaska they lived in native
Indian villages, hunted whale and seal. Speaking a jargon of Eng-
lish, Eskimo, Indian, and Japanese, most of these evacuees had
never associated with Japanese people in their lives.
9. In South America
From the tip of South America to Alaska, the peoples on the
West Coast have usually taken their cue on "the Japanese prob-
lem" from the behavior of the Native Sons in California. Cana-
dian groups were affiliated with the Anti- Asiatic League and the
residents of British Columbia formed an organization known as
the Native Sons of Canada. The identical arguments so carefully
developed by V. S. McClatchy in California were echoed in the
pamphlets of the Canadian, Tom Maclnnes, and in the articles
of Salinas Cossio, the South American publicist. Anti-Japanese
52 See California Law Review, Vol. 30, 1942, p. 371; and December, 1943.
'47
legislation, spawned in California, was copied in Canada and in
Peru. Riots in California were re-enacted in Vancouver (in Sep-
tember, 1907) and in Peru (May 13, 1940).
Today there are approximately 200,000 Japanese in South
America, 53 with important colonies in Peru and Brazil. The
stream of Japanese immigration was deflected toward South
America after the Gentlemen's Agreement and noticeably after
the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act in this country. In Peru,
the pattern of settlement and the nature of the colonies follow,
in most particulars, the pattern of settlement throughout the
West Coast. Brazil presents a somewhat different pattern. The
colonies in Brazil represent carefully planned settlement pro-
grams, with every detail of colonization being supervised and
controlled, firsjt, by so-called colonization companies, and later
by the Japanese government itself. The Brazilian pattern of settle-
ment, unlike that on the West Coast, does indicate a deliberate
intention of planting "islands of Japan" in the Western Hemi-
sphere, and the location of these colonies would also indicate
that they had been selected, in part, with strategic considerations
in mind.
From the available evidence, it would seem that the Japanese
settlements in South America are even more closely knit than
were those on the West Coast. In part, no doubt, this is to be
explained by the fact that the South American settlements are
more recent in point of time. With the appearance of a large
second generation there, the internal solidarity of these settle-
ments will doubtless show signs of disintegration. According to
Hubert Herring, there has been little or no assimilation in Argen-
tina, where there is a small colony. 5 * Normano and Gerbi make
the same observation in reference to the much larger settlements
in Brazil and Peru. While there has been a large measure of toler-
ance shown to the Japanese in South America they were ini-
tially welcomed in Brazil and Peru anti-Japanese agitation,
using the same arguments, the same clich6s, the same slogans,
58 See The Japanese in South America by J. F. Normano and Antonello
Gerbi, 1943.
54 Good Neighbors, 1941, p. 79.
148
began to get under way throughout South America after the
outbreak of the Sino- Japanese War in 1937. In Brazil a "Yellow
Peril" society was formed; anti- Japanese agitation grew by leaps
and bounds; and in November, 1937, limitations were placed on
further immigration and concessions previously granted on more
than 6,000,000 acres of land were canceled. After evacuation
from the West Coast had been ordered, Brazil began to take
similar action. Dangerous Japanese were interned for the duration
and a modified evacuation program was instituted. 55 After the
anti- Japanese riots in Peru, in May, 1940, similar action was taken
there. The government ordered all Japanese to liquidate their
holdings by January i, I944- 56
In some of the Central American republics, where there were
small settlements, all Japanese residents were arrested subsequent
to Pearl Harbor. Apparently many, if not all, of those arrested
in these countries have been sent to the United States for intern-
ment. 57 To a very considerable extent, the policy of the Ameri-
can government toward the resident Japanese will doubtless
determine the character of the policies to be adopted in South
America and Canada. What happens here will most likely deter-
mine what happens there.
10. In Canada
The general policy pursued by the Canadian government
toward the .resident Japanese has been strongly influenced by
the policy of the United States. Following the precedent estab-
lished by our Alien Registration Act of 1940, the Prime Minister
appointed a Special Committee on Orientals in British Columbia
in October of that year. While the committee found that no
evidence of subversive activities existed, it nevertheless recom-
65 See "Japanese Pincers in Brazil" by John W. White, Saturday Evening
Post, June 27, 1942.
66 See "The Japanese Are Still in Peru" by Manuel Seoane, Asia and
the Americas, December, 1943.
OT See New York Times, February 15, 1943, on the situation in Costa Rica;
and a story in Pacific Citizen, November 6, 1943, in which it is stated that
1450 Japanese nationals from Latin-America are interned in this country.
149
mended that a special registration of aliens be conducted "to help
appease the white population." 58 Immediately subsequent to
Pearl Harbor, the Royal Mounted Police arrested about 178
"dangerous aliens" and interned them for the duration. Special
regulations were invoked; fishing licenses were canceled; curfews
were imposed. Following the pattern established on the West
Coast, the Japanese-language schools were closed by voluntary
agreement with the Japanese; and the press was suspended. At
the time of the attack on Pearl Hajrbor, there were 23,428 Japa-
nese in British Columbia (85 per cent of all in the Dominion).
While ineligible to vote in local or provincial elections, they
were eligible for Canadian citizenship. Special restrictive legis-
lation had long been in force against them, insofar as certain
vocations were concerned; and immigration had been restricted
along the lines of our Gentlemen's Agreement.
At a conference called in Ottawa on January 8 and 9, 1942,
a proposal for mass evacuation had been rejected as being "not
only unnecessary in the interests of national security but highly
inadvisable in view of possible retaliation by the Japanese Gov-
ernment on the two thousand Canadian prisoners of war." B9 But
the fall of Hong Kong on December 25, 1941, and of Singapore
on February 15, and the wild rumors of sabotage in Hawaii,
coupled with news of the agitation developing in California,
created an alarmist state of mind in British Columbia. Evacuation
was finally decided upon on February 21, 1942, "after the British
Columbia members of Parliament arrived in Ottawa toward the
end of January" and after the demand for the removal of all
Japanese aliens and persons of Japanese descent had begun to
reach serious proportions in British Columbia.
In Canada, as in the United States, the national capitol was
inundated with wires, resolutions, and memorials from the West
Coast province of British Columbia, and it was this agitation
which, as in the United States, forced the federal government
to decide upon a policy that, a short time previously, it had
rejected as unnecessary and inadvisable. In Canada as in the
58 See article by Forrest E. LaVioIette, Far Eastern Survey, July 27, 1942.
09 See Minorities of Oriental Race in Canada, Toronto, 1942, p. 23.
150
United States, it was more a matter of "political" than of "mili-
tary" necessity. On March 4, 1942, the British Columbia Security
Commission was established to supervise the evacuation of virtu-
ally all Japanese from the protected area (defined as British
Columbia west of the Cascade Mountains); and a property cus-
todian was appointed. By November, 1942, some 19,867 Japanese
had been evacuated from the one-hundred-mile coastal area, and
distributed as follows: 11,965 in interior housing projects; 3988
in sugar-beet camps in the interior; 1161 in self-supporting proj-
ects in the interior; 1337 released for approved employment; 986
assigned to road camps; and 431 released to certain types of
industrial employment. 60
The temper of the agitation in British Columbia closely paral-
lels that in California. While at least two British Columbia
publicists in Vancouver have spoken out consistently for fair
treatment Mr. Elmore Philpot and Mr. Alan Morley the gen-
eral tone of the press has been strongly anti-Japanese. Consider-
able agitation has developed in favor of mass deportation at the
end of the war; and the government has apparently been toying
with the idea of taking over all Japanese holdings. At the outset,
the interior provinces showed the same reluctance to accept
Japanese relocatees that interior states had shown in this country.
Signs were displayed, for example, in Edmonton, reading: "Keep
the Japs Out!" This phase of the matter has considerable im-
portance in Canada since the Japanese could only be relocated
in the interior provinces with the consent of these provinces. In
most cases, the interior provinces insisted on a guarantee that
the relocatees would be returned to British Columbia at the end
of the war. They have shown the same reluctance to have British
Columbia's "problem people shoved off on them" that other
states have shown toward acquiescing in California's deter-
mination to oust the Japanese from that state. In general, the
relocation program in Canada has followed pretty closely the
development of our own program and has been strongly influ-
enced by it. There has been the same clamor in the British
Columbia press against "coddling" and "pampering" the Japa-
60 Pacific Citizen, December 24, 1942.
nese that has appeared in the West Coast press in general, and
the Canadian government has given serious attention to pro-
posals for mass deportation at the end of the war.
As the program has evolved in Canada, the Nisei there, as here,
have come to see that, in the long run, relocation might accelerate
assimilation. "The inescapable fact of the matter is," to quote
from a recent editorial in the New Canadian (published at Kaslo,
B. C), "that prejudice has been crystallized into a tradition in
the emotions of many British Columbians. The alternative (to
return) is that widely supported by our thinking friends, namely,
a widespread dispersion throughout the west of Canada." While
admitting that this alternative has its risks and presents its own
problems, nevertheless the Canadian Nisei feel that it offers the
best hope for the future. Some British Columbia Nisei have re-
located as far east as Montreal and have found opportunities
there that had long been denied them in British Columbia. 61
"For the major portion of the Japanese," as Dr. LaViolette has
observed, "this is their first trip outside of British Columbia.
They are beginning to see Canada, and Nisei already report losing
their feelings of oppression. If the war continues for several years,
they will become rooted into the new communities. Early reports
suggest that they are getting along well in their new neighbor-
hoods. Assimilation may in the long run be accelerated by this
process, and the Japanese may not want to return to British
Columbia." Property losses have been very heavy in Canada as
in the United States; and the Japanese-operated produce lands
in the areas around Vancouver have, for the most part, gone out
of production. These economic losses of the Japanese have been
particularly severe because of the marginal position which, in
general, they occupied in British Columbia.
The status of the British Columbia Japanese closely approxi-
mates that of the Japanese on the West Coast of the United
States. While their status had noticeably improved during the last
thirty years, still they had never been really absorbed into the
community. The social relation between the Japanese and the
ic whites" has been described by Dr. LaViolette as "a liberalized
81 See Pacific Citizen, March 29, 1943.
152
quasi-caste system based upon racial differences." These sockl
attitudes, he noted, were the result of fifty years' conflict over
immigration and related matters. Like California, British Co-
lumbia had evolved, out of conflict, a well-established and deeply
rooted racial ideology. For many British Columbians the evac-
uation order was "a realization of a half-century-old desire."
It is interesting to note that, in British Columbia as in California,
people seemed to assume that evacuation would be ordered and
were furious when the national government hesitated. 62
62 NOTE: Since the above was written, it has been reported that the
Dominion government has purchased all Japanese-owned land in the Fraser
Valley. See Time, February 21, 1944, p. 23.
CHAPTER V
Relocation and Segregation
REALIZING that some agency would have to be created to cope
with the resettlement program, President Roosevelt, on March 18,
1942, issued Executive Order No. 9102, creating the War Relo-
cation Authority. Broad in scope, the order gave the authority-
power to formulate and carry into effect a program for the
"relocation, maintenance, and supervision" of persons excluded
from military areas, and to provide "in so far as feasible and
desirable for the employment of such persons at useful work in
industry, commerce, agriculture, or public projects, prescribe the
terms and conditions of such public employment, and safeguard
the public interest in the private employment of such persons."
The principal aim behind the creation of the new agency
was, in the President's own words, "to relieve the military of
the complicated and burdensome job of maintaining and re-
establishing a dislocated people." Executive Order No. 9102 did
not define a policy it created an agency authorized, in effect,
to work out a policy. *
Policy, nevertheless, had to be established within certain obvi-
ous limitations. It had to be made in light of the authorizations
set forth in Executive Order No. 9102. It had to be made with
reference to the war plans of the government. These plans have
influenced policy in several respects; they determine, for example,
the type of work projects. Also, policy had to be determined
within the limitations of the Geneva Convention which, provides
that enemy aliens cannot be employed on war work. Finally,
policy had to be made in collaboration with the War Depart-
ment and the Department of Justice, each of which retained a
measure of jurisdiction over special phases of the program.
Within these limitations, WRA proceeded to improvise a policy
and to devise techniques for coping with one of the toughest
administrative problems of the war.
On April 7, 1942, the first director of WRA, Mr. Milton
Eisenhower, met with a group of Western governors in a con-
ference in Salt Lake City. At the meeting, WRA presented a
relocation plan which consisted of three basic points:
(a) establishment of Government-operated centers where
some of the evacuees could be quartered and could con-
tribute through work on government projects, to their
own support;
(b) re-employment of evacuees in private industry or in
agriculture outside the evacuated areas;
(c) governmental assistance for small groups of evacuees
desiring to establish self-supporting colonies of an agri-
cultural character.
The reaction of the assembled governors was "unmistakable."
They expressed strong opposition to any type of unsupervised
relocation. Following this meeting, WRA was compelled to
abandon, momentarily at least, alternatives (b) and (tf), and to
concentrate all its efforts upon alternative (a). To accomplish
this end, WRA worked out a co-operative or joint agreement
with the War Department (it is quoted in full in Senate Docu-
ment No. 96, ySth Congress, ist Session) whereby, in effect, the
War Department agreed to construct the necessary facilities in
the centers and WRA assumed full administrative responsibility.
The selection of sites was not an easy problem. All centers had
to be located on public land; at a safe distance from strategic
areas; capable of providing adequate work opportunities through-
out the year; and of such size that a minimum of 5000 evacuees
could be assembled in the particular project. Over 300 possible
sites were examined and surveyed. In selecting sites, WRA was
assisted by the two federal agencies with most experience in the
field, namely, the Reclamation Service and the Indian Service.
Since most of the development projects contemplated by these
two agencies were located in the inter-mountain region, it natu-
rally followed that most of the sites finally selected were in this
'55
area. In general, WRA tended to move "in the direction of the
^wilderness' areas among others, to the desert-type terrain of
western Arizona, to the inter-mountain country of Wyoming,
and to the delta section of Arkansas only recently reclaimed from
periodic floods." 1 By June 5, 1942, sites for ten relocation cen-
ters had been selected and construction work at four of them
was well under way. By the first of November, 1942, the entire
evacuee population had been transferred from assembly centers,
or, in some cases, directly from their homes, into relocation
centers. The centers and their population as of July 10, 1943,
were as follows:
Topaz, Utah 7,287
Poston, Arizona J 5i53
Rivers, Arizona I2 *355
Amache, Colorado ^170
Heart Mountain, Wyoming 9^292
Denson, Arkansas 7*767
Manzanar, California 8,7 16
Hunt, Idaho 7,548
Relocation, Arkansas 7,616
Newell, California (Tule Lake) 13,422
Total 9573
Into these centers were also moved a small group of Japanese
from Alaska; approximately 1073 Japanese from Hawaii; 1300
Japanese paroled from the internment camps; and a small number
of Japanese who, although living outside the Western Defense
Command, voluntarily moved into the centers for protection.
1. The Relocation Centers
The WRA centers are, in essence, ten government-sponsored
Litde Tokyos located in isolated regions of the inter-mountain
West. The projects, as such, were designed by the army engi-
neers. Only in the imagination of an investigator for the Dies
Committee could they be described as "adequate housing." The
1 Release of WRA, September, 1942.
156
barracks themselves are merely temporary shelters, hastily con-
structed, inadequately planned. In the original plan, one room
was provided for each family; but this standard has been more
honored in the breach than in the observance. Given the monot-
onous character of the construction itself and the desolate char-
acter of the environment, it is not surprising that the centers are
such dreary establishments. They are surrounded by barbed-wire
fences, with watchtowers and armed guards, and searchlights
play upon the area at night. Community washrooms and toilets
are established for each block within the area* In huge mess halls
within each block the evacuees are fed at a cost to the govern-
ment of between 34 and 42 cents per person per day. No one
has starved in these centers and no one has frozen to death;
everyone has shelter and sustenance. But this is about as much
as can be said in defense of the centers as housing projects.
During the first weeks and months after its establishment,
WRA was primarily concerned with getting the centers ready
for occupancy, recruiting personnel, and establishing certain ad-
ministrative policies. Recruiting a staff for such a unique agency
as WRA was a difficult assignment. There were few persons in
the field of government service who had had any experience in
dealing with the Japanese or who had any knowledge of Japa-
nese culture or language. The distant location of the centers and
their isolation were major obstacles in securing personnel. For-
tunately, the Indian Service could be tapped, as it was, for a
nucleus of experienced administrators around whom a staff was
built. By and large, the staff has been, in the words of Dr. Rob-
ert Redfield, more than "ordinarily high," including "men and
women with devotion to liberal and humanitarian principles."
It is to the lasting credit of the administration that men such as
Milton Eisenhower and Dillon Myer were selected to head the
authority. It is also to the credit of the administration that politi-
cal considerations have played virtually no part in the selection
of the staff. With the exception of a few clerical employees in
the Washington office and in the various relocation employment
offices, the entire staff is Caucasian. No Japanese or Japanese-
Americans occupy posts in the administrative staff as such.
157
''Nothing quite like these relocation centers," observes Dr.
Redfield, "has ever appeared before in the history of America."
They resemble army camps; they are like Indian reservations;
they resemble the FSA resettlement projects, and they are some-
what like the internment camps for dangerous enemy aliens. To
call them "concentration camps" after the pattern of Dachau and
Oranienburg would be a gross exaggeration. A degree of self-
government is permitted in the camps, and, so far as possible,
the constitutional rights of the evacuees have been respected.
Complete freedom of religious worship has been safeguarded;
every variety of church service may be found. There is no cen-
sorship of mail. Open meetings may be held with the approval
of the project director as to time and place, and both English
and Japanese may be spoken. Newspapers are published in most
of the centers and are certainly outspoken, as an examination
of the files will readily show. Obviously, it would be an exagger-
ation to say that the rights of free speech and of a free press
are exercised in the centers with the same freedom from restraint
that exists outside. But the point is that these rights have not been
wholly suppressed nor altogether restrained.
Through their co-operative organizations, evacuees carry on
many important community enterprises in the centers, includ-
ing such personal services as shoe-repair shops, mending and
pressing shops, beauty parlors and barbershops, and the sale of such
goods as clothing, confections, toilet goods, stationery, and books
and magazines. These enterprises pay WRA a minimum rental for
the space they occupy. They have been financed by the evacuees;
they are operated by the evacuees; and they are all co-operative
nonprofit enterprises. Certain of these co-operatives have ac-
cumulated substantial assets.
Evacuees in the relocation centers are governed by three cate-
gories of law and regulations: (i) the general law of the United
States and the state in which the center is situated; (2) the reg-
ulations of the WRA and the project director; and (3) regula-
tions made by the community council under the authority of
the project director and with his approval. The maintenance of
internal security is a function of WRA; external security is an
158
army function discharged by small detachments of military
police. To assist in maintaining law and order within the cen-
ters, WRA has established a special detention center in Leupp,
Arizona, to which "incorrigibles" chronic violators of center
regulations are sent on the authority of the project directors
(there are about seventy evacuees in the Leupp center).
Approximately 90 per cent of the employable residents of
the centers are employed by WRA in all manner of administra-
tive and work projects, in the offices of mess halls, hospitals,
farms, work projects, and so on. These evacuees receive cash
allowances of twelve, sixteen, or nineteen dollars a month,
according to the nature of their duties. No one seems to know
how these rates were determined, except that they were supposed
to bear some relation to basic army pay which, at the time the
centers were opened, was twenty-one dollars a month. Medical
care and hospitalization are furnished without charge; and, to date,
health conditions in the centers have been remarkably good.
No charge is made for room and board.
Initially, WRA toyed with the idea of creating genuine resettle-
ment projects; but this policy was virtually abandoned by the
autumn of 1942. In fact, the idea was abandoned before even the
basic policies for the proposed projects could be formulated.
Three factors were responsible for this basic shift in policy: (a)
the surprising success of the seasonal leave program; () strenu-
ous public opposition to competing commercial projects in the
centers; and (c) the ever-increasing manpower shortage outside
the centers. At the present time, only a restricted works pro-
gram is carried on in the centers. There are a few small-scale
industrial projects, such as the manufacture of camouflage nets
for the Army, silk screen posters for the Navy, ship models for
the Navy's construction program, and similar projects.
Tha farming operations are conducted solely for the purpose
of supplying the center residents with a portion of the food they
consume. Vegetable production, in all the centers, for the year
1943, was valued at $2,750,000. "We are not planning to produce
crops for the market at these centers," to quote from Mr. Myer's
testimony before the Dies Committee. Since most of the land
'59
was raw, undeveloped land, requiring drainage, irrigation, and
the construction of extensive canals and laterals, it would have
taken an estimated five years to bring 20,000 acres under culti-
vation. In its current efforts to avoid the "institutionalization" of
the evacuees, WRA has deliberately sought to minimize its agri-
cultural and industrial projects.
There are nearly 30,000 Japanese-American youngsters of
school age in the centers. Due to the abnormal population pyra-
mid, there is a higher percentage of school-age children among
the evacuees than among the total population, and a striking
concentration in the number of students of high-school age. Es-
tablishing complete school systems in each of the ten centers has
been, in itself, a major undertaking. Local school authorities have
not been uniformly co-operative. Proposals that evacuee students
be admitted to the state colleges and universities in Arkansas
(where two of the centers are located) met with emphatic op-
position. Requests from the WRA to the University of Arizona
for extension courses, library books, and faculty lectures for
the evacuees in that state have been consistently denied. In the
words of President Alfred Atkinson: "We are at war and these
people are our enemies." Even the request of WRA to have
twelve or fifteen Japanese children admitted to the Oregon School
for the Deaf was curtly denied by the local authorities. "This is
no time," to quote from their refusal, "to admit Japanese chil-
dren to the Oregon deaf school, particularly in view of the war."
Despite all of these handicaps, including a serious shortage
of teachers, WRA has improvised a makeshift school system.
Some centers have much better schools than others. The schools
at the Granada (Colorado) Relocation Center are the best that
I have seen. In some of the centers, evacuee personnel has been
drafted to meet the demand for teachers; thereby creating a seri-
ous rift in the teaching staff between the regularly paid Cau-
casian personnel and the evacuee personnel paid nineteen dollars
a month for precisely the same service. The whole atmosphere
of the centers is so abnormal that it is debatable whether, given
the best in personnel and equipment, much could be done in
creating an adequate educational program. Fortunately it has
i<5o
been possible to relocate a good many college and university
students in Eastern and Middle Western institutions (largely
through the assistance of private organizations).
In some of the centers, excellent adult educational programs
have been conducted. At Topaz, for example, 3250 adults are en-
rolled in 165 different classes: democracy in action, auto mechan-
ics, cabinetmaking, carpentry, co-operatives, radio repairing,
American history, American foreign affairs, current events, psy-
chology, English, German, shorthand, public administration,
practical electricity, first aid, and so on. Both Issei and Nisei are
enrolled in these courses; and, from my own observation, I should
say that the Issei evince a greater interest than the Nisei. For the
centers as a whole, over 25 per cent of the adult population is
currently enrolled in such courses and the two most popular sub-
jects are English and American history. It is unquestionably true
that, for some of the Issei, relocation has afforded an opportunity
for study and self-improvement previously denied them. Even
in the assembly centers, where the circumstances were most un-
favorable, a real and active interest was shown in these courses.
By and large, there has been only a slight impairment of
the rights of the Nisei as American citizens. On January 28, 1943,
they were declared eligible for enlistment in the combat team;
still more recently they have been removed from the 4-F classi-
fication, for selective service, into which they had been put after
Pearl Harbor. Today they are at liberty to leave the centers when-
ever they wish (subject only to the liberal clearance rules of
WRA) and to go wherever they wish, with the exception of those
portions of the Western Defense Command (the coastal areas)
from which they were excluded. While citizens in the relocation
centers cannot qualify as voters in the areas to which they have
been removed, since they lack technical "residence" within the
meaning of state statutes, nevertheless they may continue to vote
by absentee ballot in the communities in which they formerly re-
sided and in which they still retain residence.
Generally speaking, "evacuees preserve all their rights and
obligations as citizens of the state where they reside, as well as
the United States, except only those rights and obligations which
161
military necessity temporarily requires to be curtailed.'* 2 The
Native Sons of the Golden West sought, in the case of Regan vs.
King, to strike the Nisei from the voting lists in California. Their
application was curtly denied by the Ninth Circuit Court of Ap-
peals by a decision from the bench without submission and
the United States Supreme Court has refused to review the de-
cision. Nisei soldiers are permitted to return to the West Coast on
furlough, and since August 6, 1942, "mixed marriage families com-
posed of Caucasian husbands, who are citizens of the United
States, Japanese wives and their mixed blood children" are eli-
gible for release and residence within the Western Defense Com-
mand area. Certain Nisei, at the time of evacuation, were arbi-
trarily removed from civil service positions in California: city,
county, and state. The State Personnel Board in California and the
California legislature have sought, by various expedients, to make
it impossible for these employees to obtain redress for their il-
legal removal. But the whole question, at the present time, is held
more or less in status quo, because of strong representations that
have been made to the California authorities by the State De-
partment.
On June 21, 1943, the Supreme Court handed down its de-
cision in the case of Gordon Hirabayashi vs. United States.
Hirabayashi had been convicted of violating both the curfew and
the evacuation orders. While the court held that the curfew
regulation was a valid exercise of the war power, it pointedly
refused to pass on the question of the constitutionality of the
evacuation order. From language contained in the various opin-
ions filed in the matter, it is quite apparent that the Supreme
Court entertains the gravest doubts as to the constitutionality of
evacuation insofar as the Nisei are concerned. Mr. Justice
Murphy, for example, said that the curfew order "goes to the
very brink of constitutional power"; and Mr. Justice Douglas, in
a significant concurring opinion, said: "Detention for reasonable
cause is one thing, detention on account of ancestry is another."
The Chief Justice, in the majority opinion, was careful to point
out that the Court was limiting its decision to the curfew orders
2 From an opinion of the solicitor for WRA
162
and was not considering the evacuation orders or confinement in
a relocation center.
There is, however, some language in the majority opinion that
should be of grave concern to all Americans interested in civil
liberties. "We cannot close our eyes to the fact," states the Court,
"demonstrated by experience, that in time of war residents hav-
ing ethnic affiliations with an invading enemy may be a greater
source of danger than those of a different ancestry" (Italics
mine.) Again, the Court said that the notion that a group of one
national extraction might be more dangerous than another "is
not to be condemned merely because in other and in most cir-
cumstances racial distinctions are irrelevant."
In a later case, Korematsu vs. United States^ decided by the
Ninth Circuit Court on December 2, 1943, the evacuation order
was upheld as constitutional. But, in this case, Mr. Justice Den-
man filed a vigorous and courageous opinion, concurring in the
result but dissenting from the grounds of the majority opinion.
His opinion is of exceptional interest because of the thoughtful
manner in which he reviews the whole background of anti-
Oriental discrimination on the West Coast. The decision in the
Hirabayashi case has unquestionably had the effect of accelerating
the WRA relocation program. For it would seem that the Su-
preme Court will probably hold that, while the government had
the authority to remove the Japanese from the West Coast, it has
no right to detain an American citizen who has been removed and
against whom no charges have been filed
2. The Leave Program
Not only had the governors of the Western states (with the ex-
ception of Governor Ralph Carr of Colorado) expressed the most
vigorous opposition to the resettlement of the evacuees, but some
of them had gone further and had refused to accept responsibility
for the maintenance of law and order if individual evacuees were
released from the centers. {Sgeaking on May 22, 1942, Governor,
Chase Clark of Idaho, for example, had said: "The Japs live like
163
rats, breed like rats, and act like rats. I don't want them coming
into Idaho, and I don't want them taking seats in our university^
r*'*'^""*S
So strong was this attitude that the Office of Government Reports
stated, in May, 1942, that "there exists definite suspicion and an-
tagonism towards Japanese in Arizona, California, Colorado,
Kansas, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota,
Utah, and Washington."
But, beginning in May, 1942, the manpower shortage in agri-
culture became so acute that counter-pressures were exerted on
WRA to release evacuees for farm work, particularly in sugar-
beet areas. By August, 1942, the pressure for the release of evac-
uee farm labor had become, in Mr. Dillon Myer's expression,
"terrific." Once the sugar-beet interests got to work, it was amaz-
ing to see how quickly the politicians evinced a change of heart
toward evacuee labor and how the local press changed its tone.
So swiftly did official attitudes change that, by May 15, 1942,
WRA was able to conclude an agreement with Governor Sprague
of Oregon (who had violently opposed the use of Japanese labor
a month or so previously) for the release of evacuees to work in
the sugar-beet areas around Malheur. At first WRA proceeded
with great caution in releasing evacuees for seasonal work: spe-
cial safeguards and restrictions were imposed, special regulations
invoked. But as the pressures increased, the regulations were grad-
ually relaxed and, on September 29, 1942, WRA announced a
liberalized release program.
By die end of 1942, some 9000 evacuees were working in agri-
cultural areas throughout the West and were being enthusiasti-
cally praised as model workmen. There is no doubt that they
saved the sugar-beet crop in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Mon-
tana. "To many responsible farmers," notes Mr. Frank A. Cleland,
manager of the American Crystal Sugar Company in Montana,
"Japanese labor is a plain means of crop salvage." "If it had not
been for Japanese labor," states the Deseret News of September 2,
1942, "much of the best crop in Utah and Idaho would have
had to be plowed up." In 1942, the evacuees harvested 915,000
tons of sugar beets, enough to produce 265,000,000 pounds of
sugar.
164
California, faced with the same acute farm labor shortage, res-
olutely refused to accept evacuee labor. But agricultural inter-
ests in California succeeded in pressuring the federal government
to import, at an enormous expense, 30,000 Mexican nationals for
employment in the state. Although the agricultural interests will
not admit that the importation of Mexican labor was made nec-
essary by the removal of the Japanese, such is the case. Testifying
before a Congressional committee on November 18, 1944, Colonel
Burton, of the Office of Labor, War Food Administration, said:
"On the West Coast there is a very great need for out-of-state
workers which is related to the evacuation of the Japanese, who,
in normal times, are used to a large extent in agriculture." Thus,
to the staggering cost of the relocation program itself, and to the
loss of manpower which it occasioned, must be added, also, a sub-
stantial portion of the cost involved in the importation of Mexican
labor.
So successful was the seasonal leave program that, in October,
1942, Mr. Myer announced that henceforth relocation outside the
centers would be the major goal of WRA policy. As a conse-
quence, agricultural and industrial projects within the centers
were sharply curtailed and the entire program was geared toward
rapid individual relocation in private employment. Thus, within
the space of six months, the emphasis shifted from resettlement
in centers to relocation outside the centers; from planned colo-
nization to individual dispersal over a wide area. Early in 1943
employment offices were opened throughout the Middle West
and East; the clearance of leave applications was expedited; and
every inducement was offered evacuees to leave the centers and
to relocate before the war was over. The relocation centers were
envisioned thereafter as merely way stations on the route "back
to America." Within less than a year, the evacuation program
had come to a full circle: evacuation, temporary resettlement,
transfer to relocation centers, seasonal leaves, permanent reloca-
tion on indefinite leaves. Now that segregation has been com-
pleted, all the evacuees, Issei and Nisei alike, are eligible for un-
conditional release from the centers. Some 19,000 were released,
in this fashion, in 1943, 85 per cent of whom were Nisei. In fact,
165
about 50 per cent of the eligible, employable Nisei in the centers
have already been released.
This shift in policy has had important consequences. It has
meant, in effect, that the centers cannot be made too attractive,
since WRA is now exerting great pressure on the evacuees to
leave. Improvements that might otherwise have been made in
living and working conditions in the centers have been aban-
doned as part of the all-out effort to relocate the evacuees before
the war is over. The same shift in policy has buoyed up the hopes
of the Nisei and given them a renewed faith in American de-
mocracy. At the same time and by the same token it has alarmed
and disconcerted the already troubled Issei, who, by the end of
1942, had just begun to feel somewhat "settled" in the relocation
centers. When the program was first announced, they feared that
the WRA centers would be suddenly closed and that once again
they were likely to find themselves abruptly dislocated. But these
fears are gradually subsiding and, to a considerable extent, the
pressures against relocation have begun to abate.
The problem today is to iTiduce the evacuees to leave the cen-
ters. It is not a question of finding jobs. A recent issue of the
Grtmada Pioneer contained two long columns listing work op-
portunities in the Chicago area alone; and these offerings were,
by no means, all of menial or marginal positions. One current list-
ing in the Granada center contained offers, at good wages, for
the following positions: bookkeeper, laboratory technician, ste-
nographer, domestic, beauty operator, assistant shipping clerk,
warehouseman, accountant, chemical process machine operator,
basketmaking, and technical assistant in anatomy at the University
of Nebraska.
There are, of course, real obstacles to relocation in some cases:
lack of skills, family complications, the language problem (for the
Issei), lack of financial resources, the housing problem, and many
similar considerations. The problem of finding housing is most
acute: recently the Chicago Sun carried a story about, Mrs.
Haruye Masacka who, with five sons in the United States Army,
could not find housing accommodations in Chicago. WRA is try-
ing valiantly to solve these problems. It has arranged with private
166
agencies to establish hostels for the immediate reception of evac-
uees upon their release; it provides transportation and a grant of
fifty dollars in cash to those released; it assists them in finding
housing; and it is toying with the idea of assisting small groups
of families to relocate in agricultural areas. Despite all these ef-
forts, however, numerous "resistance pressures" are still noted.
Evacuees with whom I have discussed the problem in the cen-
ters show a tendency to rationalize their reluctance to leave. In
some cases, they invent reasons or alibis why they feel that they
should remain in the centers. It is amazing to note how quickly
large numbers of people can become adjusted to a pattern of
institutionalization and how quickly the "reservation mentality"
can develop under these circumstances. The whole problem,
however, is closely related to the social and psychological con-
sequences of the relocation program itself.
3. Outside the Centers
By and large, the evacuees who have left the centers for out-
side employment have been well treated. I have before me a
stack of letters from evacuees who have left the Granada Relo-
cation Center, written from such communities as Dayton, Ohio;
New York; Milwaukee; Baldwin, Kansas; Kansas City; Chicago;
Syracuse; North Judson, Indiana; Lincoln, Nebraska; Cincinnati;
Lakewood, Ohio; Ann Arbor; Philadelphia; and Rockford, Il-
linois. With scarcely a single exception, the letters describe the
treatment received by the evacuees as being satisfactory. The
major difficulty, in most cases, seems to be housing. There have,
of course, been a number of unpleasant "incidents" at Raton,
New Mexico; at Marengo, Illinois; at Goshen, Indiana. At Larch-
mont, New York (June 18, 1943), irate neighbors destroyed the
victory garden of a local Japanese-American resident; some evac-
uees were assaulted by Filipinos in Chicago (July 17, 1943); in
Provo, Utah, some young hoodlums fired on evacuee workers.
But the general reception accorded evacuees has been, on the
whole, surprisingly good. In communities where the press has
167
been fair-minded, little trouble has developed. In Chicago, for
example, both the Tribune and the Sun have been uniformly tol-
erant, which is one of the reasons why the area around Chicago
has become a favorite relocation area for the evacuees. In states
where local officials have spoken out in defense of the evacuees,
virtually no trouble has been experienced. Governor Dwight
Griswold of Nebraska and Governor Herbert Maw of Utah
deserve great credit for the splendid attitude they have shown.
It is undeniable that relocation has opened up new opportuni-
ties for many of the Nisei. While some of the positions they
have obtained are marginal in character, nevertheless, in many
cases, Nisei have obtained a wider variety of employment than
would have been possible had they remained on the West Coast.
Of major importance is the fact that WRA can impose checks
and controls on relocation. If community pressures begin to mount
in a city, WRA can stop the flow of evacuees to that particular
area. If WRA feels that a particular community has reached the
"saturation point," it can divert evacuees to other areas. In other
words, dispersion is being carefully planned and directed. The
experience itself may be of great value. It might afford, for ex-
ample, a key to the problem of securing a more typical geographi-
cal distribution of other racial minorities.
There is a tendency on the part of both WRA and the evacuees
themselves to overstress the importance of dispersal. The theory
is that, in the process of relocation, evacuees should be spread
out like a small piece of butter on a very large slice of bread
as thinly as possible. To some extent, the theory is mere ration-
alization, being premised, as it is, on the assumption that race
prejudice can be avoided by isolating a few evacuees in a large
Caucasian community. Incidents may be avoided and new em-
ployment opportunities created by pursuing this policy. But, car-
ried to extremes, the policy may result in the creation of mar-
ginal individuals. Toleration is not acceptance. Communities may
tolerate a few evacuees in marginal positions (very much as the
lone Negro family is tolerated in many Western communities),
but they may still refuse social acceptance.
The evacuees themselves are obsessed with the idea that they
168
must make themselves "inconspicuous." "We must avoid forming
small cliques," states an editorial in the Topaz Times for May 29,
1943; "we are disgustingly conspicuous." I know several evacuees
who are attempting, in the most desperate manner, to commit
"racial suicide." They will scarcely be seen talking to another
Nisei. There is, also, a slight tendency in the contrary direction
namely, for the Little-Tokyo pattern to be repeated on a small
scale. But where this tendency has developed it is largely because
of the fact that, given the present housing shortage, evacuees have
been forced to obtain housing in the same neighborhoods. In
some cities, therefore, they are likely to be "bunched" in a par-
ticular section, but in such small numbers that there* is little likeli-
hood of an economically self-sufficient mono-racial community
developing.
The community or colony in New York is, perhaps, indicative
of the type of settlement that is arising by reason of relocation.
A small colony of Japanese has existed in New York since the
turn of the century, but it has never possessed the internal soli-
darity of the West Coast settlements; in fact, it has been referred
to as a community which exists "merely on paper." s Many o:
these New York Japanese originally lived on the West Coast r
in Hawaii and gradually migrated eastward. At the present tine,
the settlement is quite small: 1750 people 650 Nisei, noo
Prior to the freezing of Japanese assets, quite a number of
to-do "treaty merchants" and "traders" lived in New York. /lost
of these individuals, however, have been either repatriated <r in-
terned.
The New York community is interesting in that aboutji per
cent of the marriages of Issei males have been with Caucasian
females. There is a good-sized Eurasian population. Vith the
marriage of these Eurasians to Caucasians, virtually all smblance
of Japanese influence has disappeared. The Eurasian are re-
ported to be more thoroughly integrated with the American
community than the Nisei. 4 In New York, also, the Nisei seem
8 Article by Turu Matsumoto, Japanese- American New, noaryi, 1941.
* See A Social Study of the Japanese Population in the Greater N& York
Area.
169
to have acquired a more typical occupational distribution. In ad-
dition to commercial activities, they are found in the professions
(engineers, teachers, lawyers, dentists) and in numerous trades
(machinists, laboratory technicians). The majority are perma-
nently employed by non- Japanese firms. There is no ethnic
community in the sense of an economic self-sufficient unit. 5
4. The Center Experience
Generalization about the social and psychological consequences
of relocation, in terms of the evacuees as a group, is an exceed-
ingly precarious undertaking. Almost any general statement that
one might make would be subject to important qualifications;
and the reverse of the particular proposition might be argued
with considerable force. The fact is that evacuation and reloca-
tion have not had the same effects or consequences on all evac-
uees. Not only is this true of the evacuees as a group, but it also
is true of special categories of evacuees, such as Issei, Nisei, and
Kibei; male and female; rural and urban; old and young. The
evacuees are individuals of diverse background, training, experi-
ence, and outlook; and while they have all undergone a common
experience, they have reacted variously and differently. Further-
more, relocation has been a dynamic process and the attitudes of
the evacuees have changed as the program itself has changed. No
tw*t of the centers are exactly alike: in personnel, program, center
population, or administration. What one might say about center
attittdes in Topaz, in November, 1942, might not be true of
center attitudes in Minidoka for the same period or for Topaz
in November, 1943. Even in a particular center, program changes,
persornel changes, evacuees come and go. All that is said in this
section m the subject must, therefore, be taken as purely tenta-
tive.
To begn with, the centers are not normal communities; they
5 NOTE: There are several other such pre-Pearl-Harbor "colonies" in
areas cutside the West Coast, for there were 20,000 persons of Japanese
descent who resided outside the Western Defense Command and were never
involwd in the evacuation and relocation program.
170
are institutions, of a sort, and they breed a type of "prison com-
plex." The evacuees who were suddenly moved by the thousands
into these large, ghetto-like, segregated, geographically isolated
Little Tokyos were not in a normal state of mind on their arrival.
They had but recently undergone a profoundly disconcerting
experience. For to the vast majority of the evacuees evacuation
was interpreted as "a wholesale rejection by other Americans." 8
"The indiscriminate inclusion of American citizens and the mass
nature of the evacuation left them suspicious of the motives
prompting the measure. They were quick to equate this with
earlier attacks against them as a racial group." They felt, too, that
the breach which evacuation had caused might be widened still
further. By the time they arrived in the centers, they were filled
with feelings of insecurity and their apprehensions multiplied as
they heard of renewed attacks against them in the West Coast
press.
A study made in the Tule Lake center, in 1942, listed certain
apprehensions that prevailed in the center. The dominant fear of
the people, the one which most strongly influenced their be-
havior, was "the concern about their livelihood in the postwar
period." There was also the fear of financial dependency; of
unfavorable postwar treatment outside the center; of immediate
needs, such as fear of food shortages, clothing shortages, winter
shelter and fuel; fear of fire, of violence, of disease; parental fears
relating to the education, manners, morals, and conduct of chil-
dren; personal fears, such as fear of immobilization ("God, I'm
getting tired of this place"); fear of the consequences of reloca-
tion, of stagnation, of further relocation, of strangers, of sec-
tional feeling; and a general fear of the outside. In some cases,
center residents were fearful of other evacuees. "The fears cata-
logued," states the report, "are by no means all the fears that exist
in the community or will exist." The general feeling of insecur-
ity unquestionably accounts for the extraordinary manner in
which rumors sweep through centers like wildfire. This tendency
is related, in turn, to the manner in which wild rumors about
6 See Armals, American Academy of Political and Social Science, Septem-
ber, 1943, p. 151.
171
the centers sweep through the communities in the areas in which
the centers are located. Wholly irresponsible stories circulate in
these communities about the "luxurious ease" enjoyed by the
center residents. Outside communities give credence to such
stories as that the shortage of milk (an assumed fact) or of meat
is occasioned by the demand for milk and meat in the centers;
that WRA is grabbing all the available teachers, and so forth.
There were important social cleavages in the Little Tokyo
communities prior to evacuation; and, in general, evacuation and
relocation have deepened some of these cleavages and created
still new ones. The gap between first and second generation was,
in most cases, widened. Disagreement and strife, over all manner
of issues, split the evacuees into factions and tended to bring
about a disintegration of the tightly knit Japanese family. The
Nisei blamed the Issei; the Issei blamed the Nisei. Factional strug-
gles which had existed in pre-evacuation days were renewed and
intensified in the centers. "Mutual suspicion became a destructive
force and there were widespread rumors that every community
had Japanese informers who turned in lists of innocent names
in order to make money and ingratiate themselves with the au-
thorities." 7 Old feuds and grudges came to life again. Evacuees
who were suspected or accused of having imposed on other evac-
uees, such as, for example, trafficking in property transactions
during the troubled period preceding evacuation, were hunted
out for punishment and retaliation. **Resentment against Nisei
Uncle Toms," writes Eddie Shimano, "flared up again in the
centers with an over-intensification of racial hyper-sensitivity." 8
Evacuees were divided into pro-administration and anti-admin-
istration groups and this division was, by no means, identical wth
the pro-Japan and anti-Japan grouping. At the outset, WRA ag-
gravated this internal strife by its failure to encourage the young
pro-American Nisei leadership. These elements, as a consequence,
felt badly let down, deflated, discouraged. Outside agencies, such
as the church groups, sometimes stimulated the divisive tenden-
cies by their "Oh-the-poor-Japanese" missionary approach. The
7 The Amah, p. 154.
8 C&mmon Ground, Summer, 1943, p. 83.
172
frustration which confinement in relocation centers necessarily
engendered found outlet, not infrequently, in race baiting on the
part of the evacuees themselves. A situation where, as John Em-
bree has pointed out, one racial group does the administrating
and another is administered "leads inevitably to a caste distinc-
tion." 9 The fact that the Caucasian personnel in the centers have
better housing and living accommodations, that they are sharply
set apart from the evacuees themselves, creates a basic cleavage.
It results, also, in an irrational tendency on the part of the evacu-
ees to blame all of the annoyances and irritations which they ex-
perience all of their problems in fact upon the administration.
Each and all of these tendencies have been aggravated by the
housing situation: the overcrowding, the enforced intimacy, the
lack of privacy, the community toilets, the mess halls. "The
whole housing situation," as John Embree notes, "has had a de-
moralizing effect on family standards of living and on family
controls over children's behavior." Because of the housing situa-
tion, the disorganizing effect of evacuation, and the heterogene-
ous mixture of elements in the centers (rural and urban, simple
and sophisticated, poet and farmer all thrown together), the
usual community and family controls on behavior have tended
to break down. The usual incentives are lacking. Juvenile delin-
quency has tended to increase; gang behavior develops; "hooli-
ganism" and "hoodlumism" are reported. 10 Pre-existing parental
and cultural conflicts become more pronounced. The longer the
evacuees stay in the centers, the more their meager assets ajre
dissipated, the greater the degree of dependency. On the eve of
the evacuation, family ties seemed momentarily to be strength-
ened; the number of marriages, for example, showed a sharp
increase just prior to evacuation. But most observers agree that,
in the centers, the family structure itself has tended to disinte-
grate. A striking fact about the evacuees in the centers is the
manner in which they magnify minor issues and see only what
is close at hand. To some extent, this was true of the Nisei prior
9 Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, August 15, 1943, p. 241;
see also article by Dr. Robert Redfield, American Society in Wartime, 1943,
P- 155-
10 See Mcmsamar Free Press, August 12, 1942.
to evacuation, for Little Tokyo was itself a small world. The
relocation centers, however, are still smaller. As their assets dwin-
dle, the wardship or reservation complex becomes more pro-
nounced; they become increasingly dependent upon WRA, elab-
orate their grievances, and daydream about their postwar claims
against the government*
The geographical isolation of the centers and the loss of con-
tact with majority groups have tended to reduce contacts with
American culture, and to slow down, if not altogether to retard,
the process of assimilation. The Japanese were somewhat isolated
and segregated prior to evacuation, but the relocation process
served to make total what had previously been partial. If their
opportunities for acculturation were limited prior to evacuation,
they have been almost wholly restricted since relocation. "Each
center," writes John Embree, "houses 6,000 to 17,000 people, all
of Japanese ancestry. In fact, this ancestry is the only thing
common to the whole group. . . . One of the effects of this
situation was the increase in the use of Japanese language and
also an increase of the influence of older Japanese. In California,
before the war, young Americans, 1 8 to 20 years old, were grad-
ually becoming independent of their parents and following Amer-
ican patterns of life. In the relocation centers the only older
people to guide them were the Japanese, and because of the
breakdown of various social and community organizations, the
average person was thrown back to a greater dependency on his
family as the only stable group left."
These observations, however, cannot be taken as true of the
entire group or as true for the entire period of relocation. Influ-
ences have waxed and waned in the centers; and have produced,
in many cases, diametrically opposite tendencies. For example, I
think it is extremely doubtful that the long-range effect of evac-
uation has been to retard assimilation. Doubtless assimilation was
momentarily retarded; but in the long run the experience has
probably accelerated the process for many individuals* It has cre-
ated, at least potentially, better opportunities for assimilation and
acculturation, by loosening certain ties and removing certain
restrictions. The general effect, despite the existence of a con-
174
trary tendency with some groups, has been to weaken the Japa-
nese family structure. Those who feel that this particular type of
family system was a potent force for the creation of good citizens
and the development of valuable personality types 11 naturally
deplore the consequences of relocation. But it is my personal be-
lief that this particular family system was, on the whole, a re-
actionary, retarding influence and that its modification is not
necessarily a disastrous consequence.
Similarly, observers have said that the relocation program has
resulted in disillusioning the Nisei, in weakening if not destroying
their faith in American democracy. It is probably true that evac-
uation and relocation have orientated several thousand Nisei
toward Japan; that they have become bitterly anti-American;
and that they will carry with them, when they go to Japan,
a hatred of all things American. This would be true of some
a few of the Nisei in the Tule Lake center. On the other hand,
I believe that the entire experience has actually strengthened
the faith of a majority of die Nisei in American democracy.
From passive deference to democratic ideals they have moved to
militant advocacy, as it has become appareitt to them that de-
mocracy corrects its mistakes and that they stand a chance to
win final acceptance as full-fledged American citizens.
While the indirect and unintentional consequences of evacua-
tion and relocation may, as I have tried to suggest, contain an
important democratic potential, nevertheless nothing can be said
in defense of the continuance of the WRA centers themselves*
As long 2s they exist, we, as a nation, will be in an equivocal
and, in some respects, paradoxical position: attempting to instill
a respect for democracy behind barbed-wire fences; advocating
principles that we fear to trust in action; endeavoring to admin-
ister democratically a program that produces, in the centers
themselves, anti-democratic crosscurrents and tendencies. The at-
mosphere, in some of the centers, is indeed very bad. One Nisei
girl, who recently "escaped" from the Jerome center, writes:
"The place has a foreboding air. There's a constant tension of
imminent horrors to happen. It made me cringe I could not feel
11 See Aimals, p. 156.
175
relaxed and at peace for a single moment. Everybody with any
courage or undistorted vision is attempting to get out. The ones
that will be left are those without any guts or with a twisted
sense of values or those unable to leave because they can't get
leave clearance through suspected loyalty. Then there's that other
large group unable to leave because they aren't employable
the old and infirm and the children."
5. The Manzanar and Poston Incidents
Two incidents which occurred in the fall of 1942 have had a
far-reaching influence upon WRA policy and upon West Coast
and national public opinion toward the evacuees. These inci-
dents one at Poston, the other at Manzanar were a natural
and, in a sense, inevitable consequence of the center experience
itself. The year 1942 was so taken up with the whole relocation
effort that little opportunity was afforded, until late in the year,
for these accumulating tensions to find expression. Once these
"explosions" or "blowoffs" had occurred, an opportunity was
provided the West Coast die-hards to resume the agitation which
evacuation had momentarily curtailed.
Preoccupied with a host of problems of the most complex and
urgent variety, WRA had neglected the problem of internal
policy within the centers. As a matter of fact, WRA did not ac-
quire jurisdiction of the entire center population until mid-
August, 1942. It really had not had time to formulate definite
policies before the Poston. and Manzanar incidents occurred.
InitiaDy WRA made the mistake of ignoring the fact that we are
in the midst of a world-wide revolution a revolution which
rages inside relocation centers as well as throughout the world.
WRA adopted what might be described as a "hands-off" attitude
insofar as social and political differences were concerned. It
sought to treat all center residents alike and to minimi^ wherever
possible, both actual and latent cleavages. Such a policy of "non-
intervention," here as elsewhere, actually aided the fascist ele-
ments. The pro-American Nisei elements felt let-down and de-
feated by their own government. On the other hand, the Issei
176
felt disgruntled because they were excluded from the elective
positions on the center councils. While two thirds of the popu-
lation belonged to the Nisei or citizen category, many of them
were minors and the others were immature and inexperienced.
The dearth of people in the age category from thirty to forty
had created a leadership vacuum. Furthermore, the active and
more energetic Nisei began to leave the centers in the fall of
1942 on seasonal work-permits, thereby accentuating the prob-
lem of leadership.
The population within the centers constituted, at best, merely
the raw material out of which communities might have been
created. But a community is not created by suddenly dumping
10,000 people (the average center population) together. While
these residents are racially homogeneous, they are certainly not
culturally homogeneous. While they may look alike to the un-
informed, they are torn apart by various social, economic, cul-
tural, and political differences. The 1378 high-school students at
Manzanar came from 205 different schools, all the way from
Seattle to San Diego. Center residents are from rural and urban
communities; from backward and progressive environments; and
from every variety of economic grouping. These varied groups
were, moreover, drawn together under highly exceptional cir-
cumstances, under great emotional stress. In the centers, they
were compelled to live in semi-communal fashion under the most
exasperating conditions. Facilities were primitive; overcrowding
was common; and the enforced intimacy created literally limitless
possibilities for friction and irritation.
Neither Poston, on the Colorado River, nor Manzanar, in the
Owens Valley, is located in a particularly congenial environment.
In the summer and early fall, the temperature at Poston rises to
120 degrees nearly every day, and in the winter the nights are
bitterly cold. Somewhat similar conditions prevail at Manzanar.
Neither center was completely constructed when the evacuees
began to arrive by the thousand. Dust clouds billowed about the
centers; it was hot; the confusion was intense. Good drinking
water was not available. People were crowded into small apart-
ments with several families living in the same unit without par-
177
titions, and all of the residents of each block eating in one mess
hall. Manzanar was the only relocation center which had been
constructed and used as an assembly center. Mistakes were made
there which were avoided in some of the other centers. In Man-
zanar were the families from Terminal Island who had been
evacuated under extremely harsh circumstances and whose re-
sentments were still raw and acute.
Not only were both centers made up largely of California evac-
uees, but one was located in California and the other near the
California-Arizona border. It has been noted that evacuees from
California "seem to be peculiarly inclined to settle accounts
through violent means; evacuees from other sections of the Pa-
cific Coast are not so bellicose." u In the Manzanar, Poston, and
Tule Lake centers (Tule Lake is also in California), most of the
evacuees read the Pacific Coast newspapers, particularly the Los
Angeles Examiner and the Los Angeles Times?* The residents of
these three centers were quite well aware of the fact that, by the
fall of 1942, an agitation had developed in California, sponsored
by many public officials, and supported by the press, for their
eventual deportation to Japan. Under these circumstances, the
most normal individuals can develop "relocation fever." Slight
injustices are magnified into outlandish wrongs; minor inconven-
iences assume major proportions.
The future, as one observer noted, "appears to them as a dark
cloud of uncertain but threatening possibilities, and on all sides
they perceive that others in America look on them as dangerous
enemies exactly as if they were all nationals of Japan and had
started the war. . . . The stigma most of our Japanese feel over
their evacuation from the Pacific Coast, their bitterness over loss
of property, of lifetime savings, of income; their fear over the
swift, sudden, silent FBI raids and roundups following Pearl
Harbor; the continual emotional and cultural conflicts between
Issei parents and Nisei children," all tend to be disturbing fac-
tors. The red tape is vexatious; the regulations are annoying; the
surveillance hard to bear (Manzanar, for example, was more
12 Pacific Citizeny January 7, 1943,
May 13, 1943, and August 21, 1943.
heavily guarded than the other centers). Residents become dis-
appointed and disillusioned when promised improvements are not
forthcoming on schedule. The very isolation of the centers, in
time and in space, creates a type of claustrophobia. There is time
for gossip and intrigue. Dissident elements find explosive possi-
bilities in the very nature of center life. Political disputes, sim-
mering in pre-evacuation days, are fanned into overt hostility.
Personal disputes break out into acts of physical violence. The
fear of insecurity, of postwar reprisals, of gnawing anxiety; the
endless talk and gossip and rumor-mongering all these tend to
upset the residents. It is interesting to note that British and
American prisoners in Japanese internment camps were similarly
affected by precisely these same factors. 14
Once in relocation centers, a definite rivalry for power devel-
oped between groups that had long been at loggerheads with
each other- There was, for example, a small group of militant
anti-fascists anxious to assume leadership of tie centers. Then
there was another Nisei group made up of fairly prosperous
middle-class elements, definitely pro-American and unquestion-
ably loyal, but essentially conservative and strongly inclined to
"red-bait" the anti-fascists. Lastly, there was a small but compact
group of politically conscious fascists, fanatically loyal to Japan,
and determined to make trouble in the centers. None of these
groups really commanded the allegiance of the people; none of
them really represented the people. An exceedingly well-informed
Nisei resident of Manzanar has told me that 95 per cent of the
10,000 center residents were "curious, fearful, somewhat bewil-
dered spectators" of the struggle going on in the center be-
tween the groups mentioned. The anti-fascists were isolated from
the people in the centers just as they had been in pre-evacuation
days. They were courageous, intelligent, but very lonely voices
in a wilderness.
Karl Yoneda, a former longshoreman, a man who has fought
fascism in Japan and on the San Francisco waterfront for years,
was severely beaten at Manzanar and his life was threatened. He
14 See "City in Prison" by Joseph Alsop, Saturday Evermg Post, January 9
and 1 6, 1943.
179
circulated a petition in the center calling for the opening of a
second front in Europe and promptly volunteered for service
when enlistment was made possible (he is today serving in the
Southwest Pacific). These anti-fascists were called "Aka" or
reds and denounced as trouble-makers; and the middle-class pro-
American groups were vilified as sneaks, informers, and ap-
peasers. Also in the Poston, Manzanar, and Tule Lake centers
was a small hoodlum element, troublesome, anxious for a fight,
politically unconscious of what was going on. When the anti-
fascist and loyal middle-class elements were removed from these
centers, for their own safety, it had the effect of leaving the
fascists in possession of the field.
These were the factors that throughout 1942 were building
toward a climax. In the fall of 1942, the explosions occurred,
first at Poston, and then at Manzanar. (Nearly every center,
however, had a somewhat similar blowoff or "incident.") From
November 14 to November 25, the center residents at Poston
were on strike, protesting the arrest of two persons charged
with having beaten an alleged informer. The protest was orderly
enough (there was no rioting); but the incident which precipi-
tated the protest was not its real cause. The causes were to be
found in all of the tensions, resentments, and frictions that I have
mentioned. Similarly, on the eve of the anniversary of Pearl Har-
bor, December 6, 1942, a riot occurred at Manzanar. Here, too,
the ostensible cause of the incident was the arrest of a center
resident; but the incident was merely the result of antecedent
tensions. In both cases, the bulk of the center residents were not
directly involved and were spectators rather than participants.
Both incidents were widely and sensationally reported in the
West Coast press and contributed to the wild outburst of agita-
tion that developed during 1943.
6. Segregation and the Tule Lake Incident
As a result, first of the Manzanar and Poston incidents, and
second of the demand of the West Coast Congressional delega-
tion, WRA determined to segregate the loyal from the disloyal
elements in all the centers and to concentrate all the "disloyal
segregants" in one center. While plans for segregation were being
considered, the President announced on January 28, 1943, that the
Army had decided to form a Japanese-American combat team
on a volunteer basis. "It is the inherent right of every faithful
citizen," the President stated, "regardless of ancestry, to bear
arms in the nation's battle." Since the Army proposed to send a
recruiting team to each of the centers, and to circulate a selective-
service questionnaire, WRA decided to conduct, at the same time,
a general registration of all persons in the centers seventeen years
of age and older. The registration was conducted on extremely
short notice; and with virtually no advance preparation. The per-
sonnel of the centers were not clear as to the purpose of the
registration and could not, therefore, answer perfectly pertinent
questions raised by the evacuees. Registration was conducted
during February and March, 1943, and came, at Poston and Man-
zanar, almost immediately after both centers had been profoundly
disturbed by the incidents previously described. The timing of
the registration was, therefore, extremely bad. Psychologically,
it is unfortunate that the registration should have been conducted
at the same time that a call was being made for volunteers.
It is extremely important to keep in mind that only those
center residents seventeen years of age or older were asked to fill
out the registration form. The registration form itself was in part
devised for the purpose of securing information that might aid
in finding employment for the evacuees. Question 28 was the so-
called loyalty question. All male United States citizens were
asked:
Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States
of America and faithfuly defend the United States from any
or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and foreswear any
form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or
any other foreign government, power, or organization?
Citizen females, seventeen years of age and over, were required
to fill out a form which contained these two questions:
Question 27: If the opportunity presents itself and you are
found qualified, would you be willing to volunteer for the
Army Nurse Corps or the WAAC?
Question 28: Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the
United States of America and foreswear any form of al-
legiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other
foreign government, power, or organization?
Aliens, both male and female, over seventeen years of age, were
also asked to answer Question 28 as it appeared in the ques-
tionnaire for citizen females. While the registration was being
conducted, Question No. 28 was changed insofar as aliens were
concerned. They were then asked to answer this substitute
question:
Will you swear to abide by the laws of the United States
and to take no action which would in any way interfere
with the war effort of the United States?
At the Manzanar center, registration had already proceeded so
far that the Project Director concluded that it would merely
confuse matters to use the substitute question for the aliens. For
reasons not clear to me, the project director at Manzanar had,
in fact, devised a substitute question which was asked only the
aliens in that center. It read:
Are you sympathetic to the United States of America and
do you faithfully agree to defend the United States from any
or all attack by either foreign or domestic forces?
This procedure calls for specific comment. In the first place,
it is extremely doubtful whether the complex question of loyalty,
under the most ideal conditions, can be determined on the ver-
balistic basis of C4 yes" or "no" answers to questions. A Japanese
agent, for example, citizen or alien, would not be inclined to
avow disloyalty when, by merely answering the question affirm-
atively, he might pass as loyal. The proper basis of the segrega-
tion procedure should have been much the same as that followed
in the internment centers namely, individual hearings before a
formally constituted hearing board. 16
15 See The Internment of Aliens by F. LaFitte, London, 1940; also the
article by Lieutenant Commander Ringle, Horpei*Sy October, 1942; and
my own testimony before the Tolan Committee.
182
Few persons realize that "loyalty" is a complex, and not a
simple, issue to determine. Even the well-trained lawyers who
have served on the Department of Justice boards (set up to hear
the cases of those Japanese arrested on Presidential warrants)
have confessed that their task has not been an easy one. "It is a
difficult question," writes one of them, "to try to determine the
loyalty to this country of a man who comes before you and
who cannot speak your language, who is a native of a country
with which we are at war, who may have relatives in Japan,
whose children are citizens of this country and perhaps whose
sons are in the army of this country, whose record discloses some
ties with Japan, contributing to Japanese army relief during the
Chinese- Japanese War, membership in some society now con-
sidered detrimental to the security of this country, who expresses
the view that as his own country and his children's country are
at war, he cannot give the board any statement which will help
them in determining the case. He may have a wife and minor
children who will be deprived of the support and comfort of
the husband and father if the ruling is internment." le This diffi-
culty might have been resolved, insofar as the aliens were con-
cerned, by posing, not the question of loyalty, but, as Lieutenant
Commander Ringle suggested, the degree of probable menace.
The question of "loyalty" is a question for psychologists and phi-
losophers to debate; the degree of probable menace is a juridical
issue.
Not only was the procedure inherently faulty, but the ques-
tions themselves were objectionable. It should be remembered
that Japanese aliens were and are ineligible to American citizen-
ship. To answer question No. 28 as originally phrased, in the
affirmative, meant that they would automatically divest them-
selves of the only citizenship they possessed, particularly as they
were not offered the alternative of becoming American citizens.
Many of them had relatives in Japan and naturally feared re-
prisals. Furthermore, they were well aware of the fact that Cali-
f ornians were advocating their deportation to Japan. If they were
16 See article by Mr. Stephen M. Farrand, Los Angeks Bar Bulletiny May,
to be deported to Japan, then it would certainly be very unwise
for them to answer this question in the affirmative.
The question used at Manzanar was very confusing to the
aliens since there is no Japanese character, apparently, by which
the words "to defend" can be literally translated. As translated,
it carried the connotation of "taking up arms to defend." The
final question, or rather the substitute question asked the aliens,
was a proper question. But before the problem could be straight-
ened out, the confusion in the centers was waist-high. The ques-
tion asked the Nisei or citizen group was capable of a rather
insulting interpretation. It could be interpreted as implying that
they were citizens of Japan or that they had previously acknowl-
edged their allegiance to Japan. It was argued, for example, that
an affirmative answer implied or acknowledged the existence of
prior dual citizenship.
The recruitment campaign and the registration program af-
forded the trouble-makers in the centers a magnificent oppor-
tunity for rabble rousing. They came to the meetings, at which
both matters were discussed, with carefully prepared arguments,
a well-thought-out strategy, functioning as a well-organized
fraction. They grabbed the microphone and monopolized the dis-
cussion; they heckled other speakers; they interrupted patriotic
demonstrations. They objected to the Special Combat Team
because it was a "segregated Jim Crow" unit; they harped upon
the wrongs and injustices of evacuation and relocation. They
baited the Nisei by shouting: "So you're an American citizen?
Well, let's see you walk out of this center." Some well-meaning
and quite innocent Nisei, losing all sense of perspective or pro-
portion, fell for this line. They had become so intensely pre-
occupied with their "civil rights" that they could not see any
other considerations. Some of them expressly refused to answer
the loyalty question unless: (a) their full rights were restored;
and (b) until the ban on their return to the West Coast was
lifted. In most of the centers, the meetings were tumultuous and
disorderly, with the disloyal elements taking full advantage of
the chaos that prevailed. There was, also, considerable direct
intimidation and coercion. Twenty-seven evacuees were arrested
184
for acts of violence in the Gila center; nearly sixty were arrested
at Tule Lake; Dr. T. T. Yatabe was severely beaten in the Jerome
center; Saburo Kido, president of the Japanese-American Citizens
League, was savagely attacked at Poston; Professor Obata and
the Reverend Taro Goto were beaten at Topaz.
The worst phase of the mess was this: once the parents had
determined to answer the question "no," the pressure on the
children (over seventeen) became intolerable. If they answered
"yes" it meant permanent separation from their parents. The
facts, in particular cases, were hopelessly complicated. I know
of one case involving an Issei widower. He had four children
two Nisei sons now serving with our armed forces and two Nisei
daughters (eleven and thirteen years of age) living with relatives
in Japan. Is this man to be branded as disloyal because he felt
that his primary duty was to join his daughters in Japan? It is
also grossly unfair to brand a Nisei as disloyal because, for
example, he felt that his duty was to remain with aged parents
who had expressed a desire for repatriation. I know of one case
in the Topaz center where a fourteen-year-old boy held out
against his parents and against his brothers and sisters, all of
whom were being sent to Tule Lake. The boy insisted on re-
maining in Topaz. One week after his parents and family left
for Tule Lake, he was in the hospital suffering from a complete
nervous and spiritual breakdown. In literally hundreds of cases,
the registration issue cut families apart, precipitated the most
intense personal crises, and resulted in starkly tragic situations.
In other cases, this all-important determination was premised
upon the most trivial considerations. In one instance, an Issei
couple insisted on repatriation because their Nisei daughter was
in love with a young man they disliked. I know the couple and
it would never occur to me to regard them as "disloyal," yet
they have branded themselves as such, and for extremely inade-
quate reasons. But human beings have an unfortunate propensity
for making foolish decisions and for doing all sorts of things
with little or no reason.
In Hawaii, the Army called for 2500 volunteers for the combat
team: nearly 10,000 volunteered. In the relocation centers, due
185
to the mess that was made of the procedure itself, the results
were somewhat disappointing: 1200 evacuees volunteered for
service. There are in the Army today approximately 8000
Japanese-American citizens (4500 were in the Army on December
7, 1941 ). It is interesting to note that the proposal to form a com-
bat team of volunteers met with instant opposition in California
from the American Legion, the Native Sons of the Golden
West, and the California Grange. Representative Rankin of
Mississippi took the floor in Congress to denounce the proposal.
All persons of Japanese descent, he said, should be put in labor
battalions. He was particularly upset by the response shown by
the Nisei in Hawaii, who, he charged, had "aided in fifth-column
activity," despite conclusive evidence that no acts of sabotage
were reported. At the same time, he recommended that the
United States deport all persons of Japanese descent at the end
of the war and that the government buy their property holdings,
valued at $200,000,000. Interestingly enough, he suggested that
the South would be happy to co-operate with the West in its
efforts to "wipe out the Japanese menace.*' 1T Senator Chandler,
of Kentucky, has also spoken out in favor of a racial alliance
between the South and the West. 18
The male citizens answered Question 28 as follows: 15,011,
"yes"; 340, "qualified yes"; 4414, "no"; 375, "qualified no"; 128
made no reply. In other words, 73.7 per cent answered affirma-
tively; 21.7 per cent answered negatively. Of the female citizens,
15,671 answered "yes"; 376 "qualified yes"; 1919 "no"; 210
"qualified no"; 226 "no reply" 85 per cent affirmatively, 10.4
per cent negatively. Of the male aliens, 20,197 answered "yes";
137 "no" (96.4 per cent affirmative, 0.7 per cent negative). Of
the female aliens, 14,712 (96.5 per cent) answered "yes"; 263
(1.8 per cent) "no." Considering the entire group, citizens and
aliens alike, and before any changes were made in the replies
given, 65,079 (874 per cent) answered "yes"; 6733 (9 per cent)
answered "no." In considering these answers, two factors must
17 Sa Francisco Exammer^ February i, 1943.
Arkansas Democrat, March 28, 1943*
186
be remembered: first, many evacuees feared that WRA, in circu-
lating the registration form, was preparing to close the centers.
They thought, therefore, that an affirmative answer might mean
another compulsory dislocation. Second, it should be noted that
of the Nisei who answered the question, 25 per cent were be-
tween the ages of seventeen and twenty; three fifths were under
twenty-five; and less than 10 per cent were in their late thirties
and forties. Being quite young as a group, they were influenced,
in many cases, by the stated wishes of their parents.
Once the returns to the questionnaire were tabulated, it was
announced (May 25, 1943) that the "disloyal" evacuees would
be transferred to Tule Lake center and the loyal elements in Tule
Lake would be distributed among the other centers. This transfer
was effected between September 15 and October 15, 1943. The
adoption by the Senate, on July 6, 1943, of Senator Downey's
resolution, which called for a policy of segregation, prompted
this decision (although I am sure that WRA officials would be
the first to admit that the registration technique did not consti-
tute a proper basis for segregation). Segregation involved the
transfer of approximately 9000 people to the Tule Lake center
and the transportation of approximately the same number of
people from Tule Lake to the other centers: an exchange of loyal
for "disloyal" evacuees.
The basis of segregation, as finally determined, was as follows:
(i) all persons were automatically sent to Tule Lake who had
requested repatriation; (2) the "no-nos," that is, those who had
answered the loyalty question negatively, were sent to Tule Lake
after a hearing in the center at which they were given a chance
to explain, qualify, or change their answer; (3) all evacuees to
whom the director of WRA had denied leave clearances were
also sent to Tule Lake; and (4) close relatives of persons in the
foregoing categories who expressed a preference to remain with
the segregants rather than to disrupt family ties. 1 * After the ex-
change was effected, the total number of "disloyal" segregants
in Tule Lake was 13,540, divided into the following categories:
18 Statement of Mr. Dillon Myer, November 14, 1943.
Repatriates and expatriates 5* I2 7
Registration segregants 4,222
Other segregants 4? I 9 I
Since the segregation was effected, all of these people in Tule
Lake have been labeled by the press as "disloyal." Personally, I
doubt if more than 25 per cent of the total can, by any fair test,
be regarded as "disloyal." Of those who requested repatriation,
family considerations, in nearly 90 per cent of the cases, were
the determining factor (that is, the presence in Japan of near
relatives wives, husbands, children). Political considerations,
insofar as those requesting repatriation are concerned, were
wholly negligible. Of those leaving Manzanar for Tule Lake, 28
per cent were children lender sixteen years of age whose loyalty
has never been questioned and who did not fill out the registra-
tion -form. Of this same group from Manzanar, 483 or 22 per cent
actually answered "yes" to Question 28 and are going to Tule
Lake as "family members" and solely to preserve family ties.
Thus, 176 "no" answers have been found to involve 731 "yes"
individuals and family members. In the Manzanar group, 80 per
cent of these who requested repatriation had actually answered
the loyalty question in the affirmative. Of this same group, 55
per cent of those going to Tule Lake are rumors. These per-
centages, which I was able to obtain for the Manzanar group,
would, I am sure, apply to those who went to Tule Lake from
the other centers.
I witnessed the departure of the segregants from some of
the centers for Tule Lake and it was my most fervent wish
that the entire membership of the Native Sons of the Golden
West wight have been present to see for themselves the an-
guish, the grief, the bottomless sorrow that this separation oc-
casioned. They might then have been convinced although I
doubt that even these scenes would have convinced them that
the Japanese are not an inscrutable, unemotional, stoical, or mys-
terious people. The evacuees realized that those who were going
to Tule Lake were destined to be deported, some day, to Japan;
and that this was a final sepajcation, a fateful farewell. Parents
Tfi
were being separated from children and children from parents;
brother from brother, sister from sister. In these scenes was the
stuff of timeless tragedy and excellent documentation for the
one immortal theme: man's inhumanity to man.
I also witnessed the arrival in the Topaz and Granada centers
of the Tule Lake contingents. Mothers were running around in
a dazed and distraught manner, trying to find children, to corral
possessions, to locate relatives, to find some means of heating
the baby's formula or some place to wash out a diaper. When
several hundred new families move into a center overnight the
whole community is turned upside down. The new arrivals want
to live in the same barracks with friends and relatives. The whole
center becomes a madhouse, and even the best trained adminis-
trators appear to be slightly insane. The exchange was not, how-
ever, without its amusing sidelights. There is a story current in
the centers about the two trains passing in Wyoming; one
carrying segregants to Tule Lake, one moving east with loyal
evacuees. As the two trains passed, a group of east-bound Sansei
yelled at a group of west-bound youngsters: "Go on back to
Tokyo, you Jap bastards!"
Anyone familiar with the background of the relocation pro-
gram might have anticipated the trouble that subsequently devel-
oped at Tule Lake. With the arrival of 9000 new residents, the
usual battle foj; power ensued. As in the Poston and Manzanar
incidents, the same compact clique of trouble-makers began to
take advantage of the situation. On October 15, 1943, an accident
occurred at the center in which some 29 evacuees were injured
and one was killed. On the day following, no evacuees reported
for work. The strike or protest lasted for about two weeks.
During this time, the real trouble-makers raised a very serious
legal issue. Prior to segregation, it could be argued that the
evacuees were not "prisoners of war" and that they were, there-
fore, not protected by the provisions of the Geneva Convention.
But the moment segregation was effected, a different situation
arose. WRA had been careful to call those sent to Tule Lake
"segregants" and not "prisoners." But Tule Lake is not a reloca-
tion center: it is a concentration camp. There is a much larger
189
detachment of troops on hand; the camp is carefully guarded;
a double barbed-wire fence encloses the camp; and a military
censorship prevails. Residents of Tule Lake are not, of course,
eligible for either seasonal or permanent leaves. Unquestionably,
their liberties have been restricted in a sense that was never true
of those in the other centers. As a consequence, the Tule Lake
agitators raised the issue that all residents of the center were,
in fact, prisoners of war, and entitled to treatment as such. It
must be admitted that the issue is a very close one: the distinc-
tion between a "segregant" and a "prisoner" is largely a matter
of semantics.
Demonstrations occurred at the Tule Lake center on Novem-
ber i, and on November 4 the Army assumed full control. During
these demonstrations a doctor was beaten, some property was
damaged, and some of the resident personnel were moved outside
the center for a few days. The evidence indicates, however, that
the demonstrations, with the exception of the acts noted, were
conducted in an orderly fashion and that their subsequent char-
acterization as "riots" was wholly unjustified. As in the Poston
and Manzanar incidents, the vast majority of the residents were
not directly involved and were merely spectators: some were
friendly, some were partially hostile, some were laughing good-
naturedly. Children were present in large numbers at the demon-
strations. Major General David McCoach subsequently announced
that die Army had no difficulty in handling the situation; that
only a "small group of evacuees" were involved in the disorders;
and that no firearms or explosives had been found. On January 14,
1944, control of the center was restored to WRA.
190
CHAPTER VI
One Nation, Indivisibk . . .
NOT ONLY has the relocation program been a vast experiment in
planned resettlement challenging in the unprecedented demands
it has made on available techniques and resources but it has
also been a stupendous human drama. The time has not yet
arrived when this story can be told in full. It will have to be
told in retrospect by an evacuee, someone who actually saw, felt,
and was a part of this amazing adventure. The adventure itself
involved highly diverse types and an infinite variety of individ-
uals, from aged farm laborers to sophisticated artists, from shop-
keepers to professors. The impact of the experience naturally
varied with the type of individual involved. For some it has
meant nothing but bitter disappointment and defeat; for others
it has promised liberation and new opportunities. Regardless of
its varying impact on particular individuals, it has profoundly
affected the lives of every individual involved. Having witnessed
this drama at close range, I feel wholly inadequate to convey
even the vaguest impression of its magnitude and dimensions.
Yet no account of the relocation program would be even toler-
ably complete that failed to convey at least an inkling of the
feelings and emotions it has precipitated among the people them-
selves.
I have sought to resolve this difficulty by including a variety
of quotations, selected more or less at random, from letters and
documents that have been sent to me by the evacuees or taken
from documents gathered by WRA* Wherever possible, I have
selected documents written by children, for they seem to have
the best eye for detail. Obviously my selection is incomplete; but
it may suggest the enormous drama of relocation. In this section,
then, the evacuees speak for themselves.
191
1. Before Evacuation
"My father," writes a seventh-grade youngster, "said it would
be nice to go for a little ride around San Francisco. The front
door opened and I saw my father coming out of the house. Just
as he entered the car we heard the telephone ringing and my
father ran and opened the door. He didn't come out for about
ten minutes or so and my mother went into the house to see
what was keeping my father. . . . My mother didn't return; so
I put on the radio and was listening . . . suddenly the music was
out and there was a flash. I was listening with all my might. He
started to say something and said Japan has attacked Pearl Har-
bor. I ran into the house to tell my folks. My father said that
my uncle had told him that war has been declared between Japan
and America. I couldn't go for the ride. . . ." "We were coming
back from Golden Gate Park," writes another child, "and I
noticed the headline of the San Francisco Chronicle. It read
WAR! It was written in black print and covered about half the
front page. Before long every paper had the headline WAR!"
. * . "As soon as I heard the news," writes one child, "I ran out
to get a newspaper. Just then the man next door told me to
come in. I was kind of scared but I went in. He said, *I don't
want you to worry about what occurred and I want you to feel
just the same as if this war hadn't started/ "... "At school the
next day I found most of my friends treating me as if nothing
had happened. I was glad of this because I knew they were my
friends, no matter what happened" ... "I went to school,"
writes another, "feeling like I would get picked on. When I
entered the school, my school mates were very nice to me. Some
of the boys gave me a dirty look and said bad things about me.
I did not feel too bad because I knew that I was an American
citizen and I would always be. This always gave me courage
after that." . . . "One of the kids popped up and said, 'Say, how
did you kids feel when the teacher started to talk about war? 7
Tunny!' we all agreed. We had a little talk about it, and before
I knew it, the subject was changed and we were talking about
something else."
As the weeks passed, the shadow of evacuation deepened.
What had seemed a remote possibility began to loom large as a
very real eventuality. "It just didn't seem true!" writes one
school-age Nisei. "Moving from the place I was born, raised and
half-educated. Moving from friends, not just ordinary friends,
but life-long, dear friends. This also meant moving from the city
we loved and everything about and around it. All of these things
added up to losing something of very great importance which
we dreaded to lose. We tried to grasp the meaning of it. Some
people said, 'Just a rumor.' Some said, 'Indeed it's true.' But way
deep in our hearts we knew it was no rumor, it was no matter
that should be considered lightly, that it was something very
important that would leave an impression for the rest of our lives.
Although I was just a child I knew and could sense the terror
of evacuation in my mother and father's eyes. It was worse
enough to go but when we found out that we were the first
contingent, that was quite depressing news. Our friends and
relatives all gathered to see us off and when they whispered
words of encouragement we realized there and then that this
was one means of showing patriotism to our country.*'
Preparing to leave for an assembly center, Kenny Murase, a
brilliant young Nisei, wrote these lines:
A lot of you have felt the same way you get an aw-
fully funny feeling, knowing that in a few days you are
going to be living in a world so unbelievably strange and
different. You never thought such a thing could happen to
you, but it has. And you feel all tangled up inside because
you do not quite see the logic of having to surrender free-
dom in a country that you sincerely believe is fighting for
freedom. It hurts especially because you were just begin-
ning to know what freedom really means to you, as an indi-
vidual, but more so, as one of 130,000,000 other Americans
who are also beginning to know the meaning of freedom.
You are upset about it but you are not mad, though there was
a time when you were furious and you wanted to shout
from the house-top that you thought it was an out-and-out
fascist decree, and that this was Ajnerica, a democracy, and
you wanted to know what's the Bigidea. . . . You think you
know something about the background of evacuation about
California's long anti-Oriental history and it helps you to
understand why it was so, but it still does not ease a dis-
turbed conscience that is trying to seek an explanation con-
sistent with a deep-seated faith in the workings of American
democracy. You start off on another line of reasoning, and
you think you are getting closer to an attitude that will
keep you from turning sour and cynical. You begin to see
democracy is something tremendously alive, an organic
thing, composed of human beings and behaving like human
beings; and therefore imperfect and likely to take steps in
the wrong direction. You see that democracy is still young,
untried and inexperienced, but always in the process of grow-
ing and growing towards higher levels of perfection. And
because you realize that democracy is a process, a means
towards better ends, you now see that it is not precisely the
failure of democracy that produces undemocratic practices.
You know that you cannot say democracy has failed because
truthfully we have not attained a level of democracy that can
be fairly tested. You are not going to judge democracy on
the basis of what you have found it to be, but rather upon
the basis of what you think it is capable of. ... You are
aware that discrimination against racial, religious and political
minorities, attacks on the rights of labor, suppression of the
press and radio, and all the rest of the undemocratic prac-
tices in America today are not the products of the free
will of the people; but rather the actions of powerful minori-
ties who stand to gain economically and politically by such
measures. ... As you prepare to entrain for a distant re-
settlement camp, you think you have some objectives pretty
well established in your mind. You are not going to camp
because of "military necessity" you know that such a reason
is groundless. You are going because groups of native Ameri-
can fascists were able to mislead an uninformed American
public, and this partly because you yourself were uninformed
and unaware of your responsibility as one integral part of the
democratic process.
Up in the state of Washington, Yuri Tashima and another Nisei
girl attempted to leave the West Coast ajrea voluntarily in order
to resume their college studies in another university. An over-
vigilant sheriff picked them up in Idaho and lodged them in jail,
needless to say without a warrant and without cause. Miss
Tashima writes:
On an April night in 1942 I sat on a hard bunk bed cov-
ered with cheap new blankets, and scribbled on a sheet torn
out of a notebook, a sheet which I had headed, "Notes on a
Night in Jail." The occasion, as I expressed it in my notes,
was "demagogues having a field day/' with us as their objects
of attention. It was difficult to be objective about a situation
like this, although, as a student of the social sciences, I was
trying hard. All we wanted, was to be allowed to continue
quietly our interrupted education. At that moment, however,
my companion and I were only two frightened girls trying
to keep our equilibrium, she by knitting furiously on a
sweater and smoking, I by resorting to my usual outlet, writ-
ing out my confused thoughts in an attempt to formulate a
clearer picture of what it all meant. The past week had been
like a bad dream a hostilely curious small town, recurrent
threats of mob violence floating up from the saloon gangs
downtown, a ranting sheriff refusing protection in event of
actual danger, the shock of encountering in an American set-
ting some of the worst fascistic elements we were supposed
to be fighting, and now this, the necessity of hiding behind
barred windows and locked doors to avoid possible "acci-
dents." The kindness of those faculty members who had
taken us in and the unspoken trust of a few other educated
townspeople stood us in good stead. We were grateful, too, for
the indignant protests of students who saw in the refusal
of their president to admit us to their institution a weak
toadying to the powers that held the political strings. Our
stay in the cell and in the town itself was a brief one, but I
will never forget it. The reception we received was too vivid.
Events since then have proved that it was not a typical re-
ception. And perhaps it was of value in itself, to me as an
American citizen. I am more convinced than ever that the
fight for freedom and equality must be carried on in all the
corners of the earth.
2. White Papers on Posts
"I didn't live on Terminal Island," writes Hiro Kusudo, "but
one morning in March my boss told me to take a truck to Termi-
nal Island and help the women and children there. The able-
bodied men had been taken to internment camps because they
were fishermen and lived near the navy base. Those left were
told by the army they wouldn't be evacuated, but the navy came
in and told them to get out within 24 hours. No one talked much,
everybody was too busy. The women cried awful. That was one
thing about the whole evacuation that was terrible, the way the
women cried so hard and they couldn't stop. The evacuation
of Terminal Island was long before the rest of us were evacu-
ated, so I've seen a lot of crying. Men came out to the Island
to buy the stuff the people couldn't take with them and had to
sell, as most of them rented houses. Some of them smashed their
stuff, broke it up, right before the buyers eyes because they
offered such ridiculous prices."
"I ran home," writes one youngster, "to tell my father they
had put white papers on the post, so my father went to see what
it was. I read one part and it said after May ist no Japanese
people are allowed to come into the white zone." . . . "We were
told," writes Dave Misakami, "that if we voluntarily evacuated
Zone i, we'd be all right. So we did, right away, leaving our
places, our crops, and got an 80 acre place in the so-called White
Free Zone, which we cleared and planted with tomatoes. They
were just coming along nice when the Army pushed us all in
relocation camps. I didn't have to go to an Assembly Center
being out of Zone 1. 1 went right to Poston, but I'll never forget
that ride. We left Lindsay at 7 P.M. We hadn't had any supper
and we were given a dried out apple butter sandwich, an orange,
a piece of cake and % pint of milk. The next morning we were
given the same thing for breakfast and that was funny every-
body all together threw their apple butter sandwiches out
the windows."
"We were on the back seat of the greyhound bus/' writes an
eighth-grader, "with crowds of people outside bidding us good-
bye. As the bus started to move, I caught a last glimpse of our pink
house. How I wished then, that I could stay. ... I was not
happy, nor were my parents. But my little sister and brother
were overjoyed since it was their first ride on a greyhound bus.
They didn't know why they were moving, they just thought
that they were moving to another place. My mother was not
happy. She was smiling but I could tell by her face that she
was thinking of the hardships ahead of her. When we came near
the City Hall almost everyone in the bus looked out to see it,
because they knew that it would be a long time before they saw
it again. Soon the bus started to slow down and I looked out the
window and saw rows of litde houses. We had reached the gate?
of Tanf oran."
"My cousin's dog," writes another youngster, "was a big colly.
He knew something was wrong because my cousin said we will
be back soon. He said we're going shopping, but somehow the
colly knew it was not so and he also knew that he wanted to go
with us. He suspected because we were carrying our suitcases.
When we were going down our garden, the dog followed us. I
told him to go home. He just sat and howled. My cousin and I
got mad at him but we love him almost as if he were a human
being. He seemed to be one that day because he seemed to
understand what we were saying to him. I got down to the
sidewalk (I was the last one) and looked back and I could see
him but he was still following me. His name was Spruce. The
lady that rented our house said she would take good care of him.
When we drove away from the front of the house, he was
sitting inside the fence looking out."
"The first time I have ever been among so many Japanese,"
writes another, "was on the day of May ist, when we arrived at
Tanforan. There were only three in our family so we had to
have a horse stable for our apartment. Thinking it was about
time for supper, we set off for the messhalL The road was very
muddy. On the way I saw many people, who had just come in.
They were all dressed in their best. Many of them had no um-
brellas and were soaking wet. Children and babies were crying.
197
Men were all carrying heavy baggage, and the women had tears
in their eyes, making their way through the mud. I thought it
must be very discouraging for them, getting their good shoes
muddy, mud getting splashed on their clothes, and then finding
that they were to live in a horse stall where it still smelled."
. . . "When they have roll calls," wrote another, "the sirens ring.
I get so scared that I sometimes scream and some people get
scared of me instead of the siren. I run home as fast as I can
and then we wait about five minutes and then the inspector
comes to check to see that we are all home. I hate roll call be-
cause it scares you too much."
"The soldiers that guarded Tanforan," to quote from another
document, "were all very nice. They would joke around with
us. Once when we were playing baseball, a soldier shouted from
his watch tower: 'Come On! Make a Homer!' One night we
had a festival. We dressed like the people from the South Sea
Islands (at least we tried to). The boys wore sarongs. Every-
body had leis to wear. We carried signs, too. The people that
won were from Recreation Hall No. 2. Their theme was 'Sultan
Takes a Holiday.' They were very good. I often get homesick
for Tanforan. There was so much doing there but there isn't
a thing to do here." The novelty and excitement of life in an
assembly center did tend to offset the crowded living conditions
and the turmoil and the tangled scheme of things. "When I first
came I thought this pkce was really going to be fun and ex-
citing," writes one Nisei. Some groups had come to the centers
with plans already prepared for social, educational, and cultural
activities. But these bright hopes did not long survive the dis-
tractions, the petty irritations, the innumerable inconveniences
of assembly center life.
"Already a year and a half have gone," writes Paul Asano from
a beet field in Utah, "since that memorable day when we Japa-
nese, citizens and aliens alike, packed our meager belongings
and sadly trudged to registration halls where we were tagged,
counted, put in busses, and sent away to what was virtually a
concentration camp. We departed bidding tearful farewell to
lifelong friends and looking back with mingled feelings to see
1 08
all that we had left behind: friends, homes, churches, much that
had been built by a lifetime of labor, sacrifices and love. Yes, it
was almost like a dream until the gates clanged shut behind us
in the Assembly Centers and we stood inside looking out to life
and home while between us stood barbed wire fences and patrol-
ling sentries who shot and killed. There, certainly every one of
us felt extreme bitterness."
"It would be quite impossible," writes Togo Tanaka, "to
describe how I felt on that dusty, dismal day of April 28th, 1942,
when suddenly I found myself and my little family staring out
at the world from behind a barbed wire fence. . . . Let me try
to tell you something about how my wife and I felt, as we sat
in the misery of a Manzanar dust storm one rather gloomy after-
noon, with thick clouds of dust practically billowing in our
barrack room. It was mostly in such moments as these, when
our eyes became bloodshot with the fine dust, our throats
parched, and I suppose our reason a little obtuse, that we fell
into the common practice of trying to figure out just how in
the world we would find our way out of this little man-made
hell. Why were we here? What had happened to us? Was this
the America we knew, had known?" They all asked the same
question. "Why," wrote Kiyoshi Hamanaka, "why did it have
to be me? What did I do to deserve this? what rhyme or reason
is there? I don't know why ... I guess Ffl never know all the
reasons, all the causes."
Gordon Hirabayashi, who refused to comply with the order for
evacuation, wrote some interesting reflections in jail. "Some-
times," he wrote, "I think about evacuation and its various im-
plications. The reaction is usually one of deep disappointment.
At other times I am overcome with callousness and think, -'if I
were only born of Caucasian parents . . .' Yet I am quite aware
that these feelings will not achieve the things which I desire. I
try to understand why it has happened. . . . Why? Why? . . .
Lin Yutang once wrote: 'the causality of events is such that
every little happening is conditioned by a thousand antecedents.'
This evacuation, then, came as a result of the various experiences
of the various persons who encouraged it, perhaps. Some may
199
have learned race prejudice in their homes; others may have had
unpleasant experiences with the Japanese; still others learned to
consider that business came first; then there are many who have
lost on the battle front close relatives. Add to these the things
which whip up hysteria. Could these and a few other incidents
have been some of the Antecedents'? Could I through thought-
fulness and study come to understand some of these actions and
thereby not only learn the why of it but also get an insight into
how to overcome it? It seems to me that a lot of these little
things have turned out to be significant things."
3. The Trek Begins
No sooner had the evacuees become partially adjusted to life
in an assembly center (usually a fairground or race track or
pavilion converted overnight into a city accommodating thou-
sands of people) than they were moved again. This time they
were moved from California to center cities that had been hastily
built in the inter-mountain "wilderness" areas, in Utah, in Idaho,
in Wyoming, in Arizona, in Colorado. Most of the evacuees,
needless to say, had never been outside the West Coast states
in their lives,
"One afternoon," writes a youngster, "I saw on the bulletin
board a note saying we were going to Utah." Again the rush
to get suitcases packed; to be checked and counted; to bid fare-
well to friends; to get children dressed, tagged, and in their
places. "There were miles and miles of desert, sagebrush, and
mountains," writes one Nisei; and "then we came to Delta, Utah,
where soldiers put us on the busses for Topaz. We traveled a
long time. And then some barracks came in sight. We came
closer and saw some people. Most of the people were sort of
dark. We then heard music which was off tune a bit and we
learned later that it was played by the welcome band. We
finally got out. As I stepped on the ground, the dust came up
in my face. This was Topaz! We had a hard time to find our
home for the barracks were all alike. Topaz looked so big, so
200
enormous to us. It made me feel like an ant. The dust gets in
our hair. Every place we go we cannot escape the dust. Inside
of our houses, in the laundry, in the latrines, in the mess halls,
dust and more dust, dust everywhere. ... I wonder who found
this desert and why they put us in a place like this, but I hear
it is a good place to live for the duration of a long war."
"Sometimes I wonder," writes another young Nisei, "how the
garden in our home in San Francisco is coming along. Whether
the plants withered and died and weeds cover the garden or the
house was torn down and the sign that says 'Real Estate call
so and so on so and so street to buy this place* covers the
front while among the weeds which cover the lot bloom roses
and violets. I wonder which is better dying from kck of care
or blooming among the weeds every year. Maybe someone
moved into the house (although it isn't very likely because the
house is sort of old) and tended the garden with care and pknted
a victory garden among the flowers." Those who left the centers
for occasional visits, on special passes, to near-by towns and cities
felt like strangers in a world they had almost forgotten. "In the
morning I woke up in our hotel room," writes one youngster,
"and it felt good to hear the horns of automobiles and every-
thing you hear in the city. I thought, for a moment, I was back
in San Francisco and the whole evacuation was just a dream,
but it was not a dream and I was only visiting Salt Lake City
for a few days."
"It is exactly a year ago today," writes Mrs. Mary Tsukamoto,
"that we came to Arkansas. I remember we were tired but eager
to get our first glimpse of our new home. Then, we saw the
black rows of regimented, one story barracks surrounded by
dust. I felt only tears and inarticulate words choked me. . . .
Then, I remember the cold of our first winter, the fuel shortage!
The Arkansas mud! We dug ditches, women and children too,
to fix the paths in the blocks so that we no longer waded
through the impossible mud. There were great lessons to be
learned in every block, barrack, and apartment. None of us were
ever so closely confined. Doctors, scholars, wealthy business men,
humble farmers, we were all thrown together, and for the first
201
time, forced to live closely and intimately with each other. Ugly
traits were forced to the fore. We were unhappy. We were
bitter. We were afraid. All these intensified our difficulty to
make adjustments."
For the evacuees, the "gate" at the relocation center is the
symbol of hope and despair; it is also the scene of endless de-
partures and arrivals, of welcomes and farewells. New evacuees
arrive as old ones depart; visitors come and go; seasonal workers
leave in groups for the sugar-beet fields and are welcomed "home"
with much fanfare; Nisei soldiers, on furlough, pass in and out;
volunteers depart for the army as "disloyal segregants" leave for
Tule Lake (and perhaps for Japan); "repatriates'* leave to meet
the Gripshohn bound for Japan as new evacuees arrive from
Hawaii. "Incorrigible trouble makers" are taken through the gate
on their way to the special detention center in Leupp, Arizona,
as young Nisei leave to take jobs in Boston and Chicago, Kansas
City and Baltimore. Young Nisei girls, in the uniform of the
WAC, arrive to visit parents who are leaving for Tule Lake.
And, through the gate, comes a constant stream of "investiga-
tors": gimlet-eyed amateur sleuths from California legislative
committees anxious to believe that muddy pools in the canals
are "luxurious swimming plunges"; that the fare in the mess halls
is the equivalent of the Santa Barbara Biltmore; and that the
<c white" personnel sleep every night with a new batch of Japa-
nese girls. Through the gate come California legislators breathing
death, damnation, and destruction; reporters from the Hearst
press seeking to take a few "angled" photographs; pious mis-
sionaries to pray with the people; wide-eyed social workers to
"deplore" and "survey." Every center has had its "blowoff" its
"incident." And in every center registration and segregation were
major events.
Writes Mrs. Tsukamoto:
The darkest days since Pearl Harbor, I remember now,
to be those oppressive, stifling days of registration. We were
afraid to breathe. There was a tenseness in the air. Bewil-
derment and confusion was at its height. People walked the
roads, tears streaming down their troubled faces, silent and
202
suffering. There were young people stunned and dazed. The
little apartments were not big enough for the tremendous
battle that waged in practically every room: between par-
ents and children, between America and Japan, between
those that were hurt and frustrated, but desperately trying
to keep faith in America and those who were tired and old
and hurt and disillusioned. Then, there was a strange hush,
something was sure to snap. Then a few were attacked! We
wanted to run away. There were rumors, gangs, prowlers.
The outside world seemed hostile; we were falling apart
within, with no where to turn! It is hard to believe that we
are still living in the same camp. We all feel and look years
older. WeVe had tears to shed every week through the
spring and summer. Friends were leaving for freedom* The
new friends we grew to admire and love. Then, too, there
was the echo that followed registration. Over 1600 from our
camp left for Tule Lake. They were ridiculed, they were
cowards and quitters, they were ungrateful to this country.
No, not all, only a few out of that great number were disloyal.
Many had been here for over forty years. Many had never
been to Japan. They haven't seen the new terrible Japan.
Many were going only because there were leaders that swayed
their decision. Many were forfeiting the future of their
American children. There were so many fine young people
that suffered, more than we will ever know, because they
could not break up the family. They sacrificed this time
for their parents who had sacrificed all these years for their
children. Then, there were a few courageous youth, a shining
symbol of true loyalty and love for this country. They en-
dured beatings, but they were determined. There are not a
f ew who are remaining alone, not even of age, but certain
that they belong to America, and America done. So, they
parted from their family, to start life alone. ... I will never
forget the children. There was one boy, 17, who did not want
to accompany his family to Tule Lake. The truck came for
the family. He refused to get on the truck. He walked behind
it to the train. He hugged his favorite high school teacher
and refused to let her go. Finally, he said, "I'm going to re-
turn, I am an American/* The train pulled out * * . how
long is this nightmare to last?
203
For the old people, the Issei, relocation has not been as trying
an experience as for the young. "The life of most of us Issei,"
writes Akana Imamura, "is now well spent. We stand in the
evening of life where there is no hope the hope attributed to
the Phoenix which brings a new vibrant life out of the ashes
of the old* We are told and encouraged to relocate again into
the world as a stranger in strange communities! We now have
lost all security. WRA urges readjustment, relocating outside.
Where shall we go? What shall we do at the twilight of the
evening of our lives?"
"I know an old man," writes Kiyoshi Okamoto from the Heart
Mountain Relocation Center, "who started as a railroad laborer
forty years ago. He pioneered in the fish canneries in Alaska;
he contributed his mite toward the development of Imperial
Valley. Then, because of an increasing family and failing health,
he bought a stall in Little Tokyo and established himself as a
vendor. Shortly afterwards, he underwent a major operation.
. . His fortitude and his wife's loyalty enabled them to main-
tain their self-respect and to contribute towards their children's
education. His efforts are only one portion of a hundred and
thirty million hopes and aspirations that contributed toward the
commonwealth of this nation. . . . Today, he is sick in bed.
He admits that he may not live until spring. He visualizes the
little cemetery on the bleak hillside back of our camp, where
a small dozen have already preceded him. Despite his stoicism,
there is something that bothers him. He was pauperized at the
time of evacuation; his children are still minors; his wife cannot
earn a living. What is to become of them after this winter?"
One old Issei bachelor, James Hatsuaki Wakasa, on April 1 1,
1943, left his barrack at the Topaz center, and started walking
toward the barbed-wire fence which surrounds the area. The
soldier in the watchtower ordered him to stop; but he kept right
on walking toward the fence. He was unarmed, alone; he seemed
in a daze. Again he was ordered to halt; but he seemed not to
hear or to understand. He was shot and killed by the sentry.
There are old bachelors like that in the centers; men who have
been broken by a lifetime of hard labor, utterly indifferent to
204
what goes on around them, insensitive to pleasure or pain, not
caring what goes on, not minding what happens. . . .
"This is my second evacuation," an old Issei woman told
Toshiko Imamura. "You see, we lived in Yakima, Washington,
for twenty-three years. We leased 160 acres of sagebrush knd
which we cleared and turned into green tillable acres where we
raised potatoes known as Yakima Beauties. But during 1923,
when die Alien Land Act was passed, we got into an awful
predicament and we were done up. They threatened to blast our
farmhouses and camps with dynamite. We were all tied up we
couldn't buy or sell. So we finally decided, reluctantly, to take
the last step and evacuate by stealth. My husband took our four
children and me with a few suitcases one day, and we came to
California, leaving behind us the house, all our furniture, farm
implements, sixteen domestic animals, and over three thousand
tons of potatoes that were kept under the ground in an old-
fashioned way of storage. We started all over again in Arroyo
Grande. Nine years ago we bought twelve acres of land, but no
sooner had my husband signed the paper one day when he
passed away the next. There was no savings nor deposits in our
account. Fear and worry overcame me and I took to bed. I lay
there for days like one to whom life's cord seemed nearly snapped.
I got up one morning. I felt an irresistible feeling surge within
me which made me feel as strong as a man. After that time, I
got up nearly every day at four o'clock in the morning, put up
breakfast for my children and saw to it that they got to school.
Then I went out to the field, to oversee my Filipino workers
and drove the team myself, plowing and cultivating. There was
always so much to do in the field, usually it was dark when I
came back to the house. I made it my business to plan out what
I should plant next. To do this I devoted a good deal of my time
and thought. Literally, I worked hard, like a horse, and thank
God, I have this year paid off the balance on the land. Two
children had finished the junior college. The oldest girl got mar-
ried. I began to see my way again. I had made up my mind to
take a long-expected voyage back to Japan, to see my old parents
and friends . . . now I am an evacuee. But this time, my second
205
exodus was not so miserable as that of the first. I have leased
my land and my personal property is in safekeeping."
4. Life in a Relocation Center
No two impressions of life in a relocation center, from the
evacuee's point of view, would be the same. The centers them-
selves differ each from the other. Minidoka in Idaho, Topaz in
Utah, and Granada in Colorado in the order named are "the
cream of the lot." Minidoka rates highest, on all counts, and
there are at least a dozen explanations of the fact. The Minidoka
evacuees are better adjusted; there has been virtually no trouble.
One reason suggested is that most of the evacuees in Minidoka
came from Portland where they were fairly well integrated in
the community prior to evacuation. The theorizing about Mini-
doka is fancy and profuse. Topaz has its partisans and Granada
insists that it is the best of all possible centers. It is difficult,
therefore, to select, from the material I have collected, docu-
ments that might be said to be typical of the reaction of the
evacuees to center life. I have, however, selected two. The first
was written by a Caucasian observer about the Heart Mountain
Relocation Center in Wyoming. It gives the "dark side" of the
story. The other document was written by a Nisei friend of mine,
S. J. OkL It refers to the Topaz center, in Utah, and is the most
objective document of the kind that I have seen. First, then, the
story from Wyoming:
As the first light breaks the darkness, the roosters of a
concentration camp suddenly come to life. First one, then
another, then a chorus of dishpans rattle and clatter the call
to breakfast. It is partly clouded, and the deep pink in the
Eastern sky suddenly gives way as the whole heavens blaze.
The eyes are pulled up and up, above the drab barracks and
the drab countryside, to this spectacle of the Great Plains.
The color dies as quickly as it had lived. For a moment the
whole world is gray, and then the sun catches the snow on the
mountains to the southeast.
Inside the black barracks the people stir. Some groan and
206
roll over. Others push back the covers and slip quickly into
their clothes. Grabbing towel and toothbrush, they go out-
doors where the bits of snow and ice crunch under their feet.
"Cold," they say to one another, and hurry towards the
warmth of die latrines. Soon they are lining up to get their
breakfast: grapefruit, cold cereal, french toast, coffee.
As the sunlight reaches the camp, a bell on one of the
barracks starts ringing and the kids come down to school.
Lacking a schoolhouse, they sit in barracks all day, many
on benches without backs, sharing textbooks because there
aren't enough to go around. The teachers try to get along
under the primitive conditions, finding their classes noisy be-
cause the partitions separating the rooms are flimsy and
don't go up to the roof,
Over in the Administration Building the block administra-
tors get together for their daily meeting. Appointed by the
WRA, this group is all-Nisei. It carries out the minor func-
tions of government, takes 'the complaints of the people to
the Administration. Like any governing body that doesn't
have much power, its members sit and smoke and appoint
committees. The Issei, who are not eligible to be block ad-
ministrators, serve on a block council. And the people laugh,
and call the block administrators stooges and the block coun-
cil blockheads, for they know who really runs the gov-
ernment.
Out in a corridor two Caucasian members of the Ad-
ministration talk with each other about the colonists. Unlike
the Army which ordered the evacuation, most of the WRA
staff want to see the Japanese really relocated. One of these
men is from Washington and tells how well former colonists
who have gone out under student relocation have fared. He
hopes the WRA will work on public opinion so that more
and more colonists can go out. And the Administrators are
tall, clean-cut, Caucasians who are rather embarrassed be-
cause they know as well as any one the difference between
voluntary partnership and coercion*
And two of the people overhear a snatch of their conversa-
tion as they pass, and one mutters: "Colonists! Jesus Christ!
I wonder if they call tigers pussy cats?"
As the morning goes on, the sun becomes wanner and
207
now it falls full on the ground which f onus the streets and the
spaces between the barracks. The puddles of water which
have been frozen hard all night long begin to melt* When a
boot lands on them, they crack and break, and muddy water
spurts up over the toe of the boot. Then the millions of little
frozen water particles in the earth that had been holding the
ground firm and hard, these too begin to melt, and the ground
softens. As the sun continues to shine on it and the people
to walk over it, it becomes muddy* The people's feet get
wet and dirty whenever they step outside a building.
TW T O Nisei girls walking across the camp jump and slide
in the mud, and try to keep in the shade of the barracks where
the ground is still firm. They are social workers. Social
workers in a place like this? What does a social worker do
to prevent juvenile delinquency when kids are suddenly
jerked from normal life to this? Recreation? When there's no
item in the budget for recreational material and the recrea-
tion halls are even used as offices? Education? When they
promise us school buildings and good equipment and we
don't get them? Worthwhile work? When die majority of
the jobs they give us are so meaningless that most of the kids
act as if they were doing time?
How can you teach democracy in a concentration camp?
Or praise American labor standards where people get $4 for
a 44-hour week, and nothing for overtime? Or talk about
racial equality when the Caucasians on the WRA staff are
setting up a whole Jim Crow system of their own? Lookit
these litde boys. They used to worship football players.
Remember when you were a little kid, how every little boy
had a hero? Now they follow the toughest gang leaders, and
the gangs get tougher and fight one another and steal lum-
ber. New gangs are formed, and they look at the girls more
often . . lookit that girl, most gregarious damn person I
ever saw. But even she needs to be off alone sometimes but
she never can. We're not individuals here, but cogs that eat
and sleep and work and live all alike. Lookit that Mother ~
she used to be the core of her family, providing the meals,
training her children, those little things that buSd a family
unity. Now other people throw food at us, the kids no longer
208
eat with the parents, but learn their manners from the rough-
necks, run wild most of the time.
I read in a paper how a minister said we oughta be satis-
fied because we are being well-fed and housed and given a
chance to work. Is that all living means to that guy? Is life
just getting your belly filled and a hoe put in your hands?
Betcha that same fellow talks a lot about liberty and spiritual
values when he's thinking about Hitler. . - .
The people have learned to laugh at the things that hurt
them most. Whenever anyone mentions that they may stay
here permanently, "like Indians on a reservation," everyone
always laughs. But they do not think the subject of Indian
reservations is funny.
And they tell me about the two washrooms at the Pomona
center. Over the big washroom was a sign which read:
"Caucasian Administrative Staff Only" and over the little
washroom, "Japanese Administrative Staff Only."
Then there's the story about the Caucasian history teacher
who told her class: "Today we will study the Constitution."
And the class laughed and tittered so that they never did.
And the people who have been hurt make cracks about
the number of Jews on the WRA staff, and they say to one
another: "Did you see the two new Hebes who are here?'*
And they make disparaging remarks about Negroes, and
point to the economic degradation of the Mexicans.
In the afternoon many persons crowd into the "Court-
house" for a public forum. The Niseis who run it have hope-
fully hung a sign which proclaims Voltaire's famous state-
ment about free speech. Toward the end of the speech a
Caucasian walks in, and one woman whispers to another:
"Here comes an administrative stooge. Now we can't say
anything/* But the other, sizing the newcomer up, disagrees:
"Naw, he's only a kid high school teacher.**
The discussion begins, and the chairman is nervous. He
wants it to be a frank discussion to satisfy the people, but
is scared of future censorship if it gets out of hand. A tall,
lean fellow with a goatee rises again and again. "Are you go-
ing to participate in this camp government? Do you still
think you're citizens of this country? Do you have the rights
209
of citizens? Isn't the government just going to coddle you
and make you into another bunch of people on an Indian
reservation? Or will they ship you all back to Japan? What
sort of jobs could you get if you could go outside? What
are you, citizens or Japs? Or, are you donkeys?"
The fears that lurk in the people have been touched, and
they stir nervously* The chairman raps for order. A block
administrative officer jumps up: "I read in a novel once where
Kathleen Norris or someone said a man and his wife with
chickens could live on the prairie happily as in New York
City. We've got plenty of prairie here. All we need is the
chickens!"
The crowd roars, the chairman relaxes a litde, the talk goes
on and the Niseis ask each other about Nisei problems and
discuss "J a P anese -American Salvation" as if the Japanese-
American problem was the only problem in an otherwise
unimportant world*
It is Hallowe'en evening, ; and across the camp are many
parties. In the mess-halls, gay streamers enliven the walls,
and the people crowd together as the orchestra comes in.
Ten Nisei boys, each wearing a red-and-black checked flan-
nel shirt, and a girl at the piano, start to play remarkably good
music. But no one dances. Finally a boy says to a girl: "Hell!
Let's dance!" The ice is broken, and the floor is suddenly
jammed with couples dancing or watching a hot jitterbug
exhibition. People laugh and joke and a boy says to a girl
he is dancing with: "I almost forgot where I am!" "I never
do," the girl replies, as the smile goes from her face.
What will these camps produce? Out of them can come
great leaders and prophets. Men and women of great faith
and great patience, blazing new paths in overcoming racial
prejudice. Will hardship burn and temper their faith and make
it strong?
The people do not know. In one of the barracks, a late
bull session is going on around the warm stove. "It's too
easy," said one boy. 'We get food, there's no rent to pay,
the routine is deadening. Everything leads to a degenerative
life instead of an invigorating one. Everyone is grabbing for
himself. We grab the coal, grab bits of wood lying around,
grab for clothing allotments, grab our food. No wonder the
210
little kids are getting so that they do it too, and think only
of themselves. No wonder we're apathetic and ingrown/'
The people walk quickly home through the sharp cold of
the night. The ground is hard under their feet along the
brightly-lighted streets and alleys. From a thousand chimneys
the harsh coal smoke tries to rise, curls under the weight of
the cold air, and settles like a blanket close to the ground.
A train whistle sounds in the darkness. Music comes from a
guard tower where a bored soldier listens to the radio. From
the floodlights an arc of light surrounds the camp. 1
S. J. Old, who wrote the following statement, is a "premature
anti-fascist." I have known him for years, long prior to evacua-
tion. A young man, he is at present serving in the language school
at Boulder, Colorado. The following statement was written while
he was at the Topaz Relocation Center. It is entitled "Notes on
What They Think."
Objectively, and on the whole, life in a relocation center
is not unbearable. There are dust-storms and mud. Housing
is inadequate, with families of six living in single rooms in
many cases. Food is below the standard set for prisoners of
war. In some of the camps hospitals are at times understaffed
and supplies meager, as in many ordinary communities. Yet
while Mr. Ata, former San Francisco importer, complains
of the low quality of the food, Mrs. Baito, widow of a San
Joaquin farmer, is grateful for what the United States gov-
ernment is doing to make life as comfortable as possible for
the evacuees. In short, no one is pampered and at the same
time no one is starving or sick because of neglect on the part
of the War Relocation Authority.
What is not so bearable lies much deeper than the physical
make-up of a center. It is seen in the face of Mr. Yokida, 65,
a Montebello farmer. It is seen in the face of Mrs. Wata, 50, a
grocer's widow from Long Beach. It is seen in the face of
little John Zendo, 9, son of an Oakland restaurant owner.
It is seen in the face of Mary Uchido, former sophomore
from UCLA and the daughter of a Litde Tokyo merchant.
1 NcxrE: This document is dated November 6, 1942.
211
It is seen in the face of Sus Tana, young kibei who had been an
employee in a vegetable stand in Hollywood.
Their faces look bewildered as they stare at the barbed-
wire fences and sentry towers that surround the camp. Their
eyes ask: Why? Why? What is all this?
Kats Ento, serious-looking ex-farmer from Norwalk, has
made up his mind. He says: "I am an American citizen. I
was born and brought up in California. I have never been
outside the United States, and I don't know Japan or what
Japan stands for. But because my parents weren't considerate
enough to give me blue eyes, reddish hair, and a high nose,
I am here, in camp, interned without the formality of a
charge, to say nothing of a trial. Does the Constitution say
that only white men are created equal? Put me down as dis-
loyal, if you will, but I'm going where I won't have to live
the rest of my life on the wrong side of the tracks just be-
cause my face is yellow. Keep me in camp for the duration.
I will find my future in the Orient."
Mrs. Jones, elementary school teacher appointed by the
WRA, sighs as she looks towards the little children in shabby
but clean clothes. "To be frank with you, it embarrasses me
to teach them the flag salute. Is our nation indivisible? Does
it stand for justice for all? Those questions come up to my
mind constantly*"
Mr. Yokida, technically an enemy alien after forty years*
continuous residence in California, appears tired. "For forty
years I worked in central and southern California. I remem-
ber when Los Angeles was only a small town compared to
San Francisco. This country never gave me citizenship,
but I never went back to Japan and I have no interests there.
The evacuation has worked a hardship on me and my family,
but I suppose in time of war you have to stand for a lot of
hardships. Don't ask me what I think of Japan or about the
incident at Pearl Harbor. I don't know. What I know is that
this is my country, and I have given my only son to its army.
I wrote him just the other day, telling him to obey his com-
mander-in-chief without reserve. I have worked as long as
anyone and I am satisfied. The only thing I think about is
my son. I hope that he will make good In the army. I hope
that he will come back to me as a captain, at least."
2T2
"I have a son in the army too," says Mrs. Wata. "Besides,
my daughter has volunteered to join the WAACS. I am an
alien, and being an alien I have nothing to say about evacua-
tion or about having to live in camp, although it would have
been so nice to have spent the last winter in Long Beach. It
was so cold here, and the stove in my apartment never gave
out enough heat. I do wish, though, that they would let my
children go back to California on furloughs. They have so
many friends out there, and they miss them."
John Zendo, 9, is always talking about his friends, too,
says his mother. "He was a pretty popular boy in the neigh-
borhood," she smiles reminiscently as she speaks. "He talks
about them all the time, and asks me when we can go back to
them. When we were in Oakland, Johnny used to bring all
his friends to our restaurant Mexicans, Chinese, and white
children and my husband used to give each of them a
dish of ice cream. Poor Johnny, he talks about such things
every day."
"I keep on thinking about Los Angeles and the people I
know," says Mary Uchido, an attractive girl of twenty. "My
girl friend writes me and tells me all about the changes that
have taken place since evacuation. How the Little Tokyo
has been left unoccupied, how some of our Chinese and
Korean friends are working in airplane factories, things like
that. But I don't want to go back there any more, except
perhaps for a visit. Yes, my father is in internment, but I
don't think about him much. Maybe he will go to Japan the
next time there is a boat, but I am going to stay here. We
will try to relocate, of course. Maybe I will try to get a do-
mestic job or something, because I can't possibly hope to
continue my education. I would join the WAACS if they
would put us in an ordinary unit instead of an all-Japanese
unit."
Sus Tana, 32, is a volunteer for the special Japanese-
American combat team. He smiles broadly and seems jolly,
but his dark eyebrows betray an uneasiness which is con-
cealed somewhat behind his sunburned forehead. "I am a
kibei and a Young Democrat. I lived and worked in Los
Angeles nine years after my return from Japan. I never made
over a hundred dollars a month, mosdy seventy-five to
eighty, and I could never save enough money to buy any-
thing. So when evacuation came, I had nothing to lose. I do
miss my friends among the Young Democrats, though. They
were such a fine bunch. You forgot you were a Jap when
you were with them; you were just an American fighting
for the President and die New Deal. I do wish I could be
back there now. Maybe I could get a defense job and do what
I can. But I am glad that we are going to have a combat unit.
Maybe I can show the reactionaries in California that a
Japanese-American can be just as good a soldier as any
American if not better."
Tana's best friend is Mr. Osaka, 40. He, too, is a kibei, but
his English is good. They call him a Red, because he is an
anti-fascist. He has been against Japanese imperialism for
years, and for that reason he led a poverty-stricken life for
twenty years among the Japanese-American communities
in California where the Japanese consuls and fascist-minded
officials of the Japanese chambers of commerce held a domi-
nant position until the outbreak of the war. Osaka is a man
of few words, except when he is aroused by a challenging
topic. And now he speaks out: "They call me a Red, but I
am only a democrat with a small d. In fact I am quite opposed
to the way in which Communists seem to be doing things,
and I have tried to make it clear a number of times. Yet
there are people here, even people in administrative positions,
who resort to name-calling in order to defend their 19th-
century opinions against progressive ideas. While they de-
nounce anti- Japanese racism, they themselves are anti-Semitic,
anti-Negro, and anti-Mexican. What do I think of evacu-
ation? I don't believe there is a single right-minded Japanese-
American who didn't feel the necessity of evacuating some,
though I personally think the government could have saved
a tremendous sum of money and much manpower if they had
tried selective evacuation. Post-war? If we can win the war
for democracy, then we Japanese-Americans will be in a
very fortunate and unique position of being able to choose
one of the two courses for our future: remain in a fully
democratized America or go to a defeated but popularly-
controlled Japan to help construct a democratic Japan. There
is no use talking about compensation. Wars require sacrifices.
Draftees don't talk about the constitutionality of the draft
act, and they don't complain when they are 'evacuated' from
their homes into army camps. Everything must be concen-
trated on winning the war if we are to see the race-caste
system destroyed in America as well as elsewhere."
Mr. Osaka smiles as he reads this passage from a pamphlet:
"The color of one's skin is a permanent, immutable character-
istic, while habits of dress, speech, or action can be modified
and outgrown. An Americanized foreigner with an adopted
name can pass completely into the dominant society as long
as his skin is white and his features are not pronounced. An
American of a different color is always apart. . . ."
Always apart?
"No, not always,** says Mr. Osaka.
5. To the Beet Fields
Beginning in the fall of 1942, hundreds and later thousands of
evacuees were released, on seasonal leaves, to relieve the man-
power shortage in agriculture, particularly in the sugar-beet areas
of the inter-mountain West. Tlie experience represented, for the
evacuees involved, their first taste of "freedom" in long months
although they were subject to certain restrictions. "I can't
make much money," writes one sugar-beet worker, "but the idea
of being a 'free' man and eating die things you like the way
you like them is mighty fine." While they were paid the pre-
vailing wages for the different types of work involved, die
evacuees nevertheless realized that they were in effect on parole.
i We are aware," writes one, "that we jtnust not do or say any-
thing or go anywhere that might incite antagonism. Therefore
we are avoiding public places, such as restaurants, bowling alleys,
and theaters. We are avoiding being obvious. For our responsi-
bility is to pave the way for those to come." The universal praise
that they evoked from employers, the fact that no "incidents"
resulted and that the seasonal-leave program involved 15,000 or
16,000 evacuees, are tributes to their ability to make themselves
inconspicuous and to their tact and good judgment.
I have before me a stack of reports, written by evacuees,
about their experiences while on seasonal leaves. They are writ-
ten from beet fields, from potato fields, from carrot fields, from
turkey farms, and from many types of camps. They describe
very bad working conditions, tolerable working conditions, and
good working conditions. The variety of impressions encoun-
tered makes generalization impossible. Many letters testify to the
kindliness of the Mormon people in Utah. "The people are very
friendly," writes one evacuee. "They seem to be our kind of
people." . , . "The people are very polite and amiable," writes
another (also from Utah); "for the first time in a long while I
had a sense of freedom. To walk and to look at the streets of an
American town that was quite a feeling." In the main, I believe
the seasonal-leave program built up, in most of the evacuees, a
sense of self-confidence; it made them feel, once again, part of
America. It encouraged thousands of them to apply for perma-
nent leaves. Obviously working in the sugar-beet fields is no lark.
"Our living quarters," writes one evacuee, "are very primitive;
oil-lamp, wood-burning stove, no bath or shower, an old bed
with hay mattress and a broken leg; and a stinking outhouse
filled with dried hay." Working in the frosty mornings, in the
heat of midday, in the whipping winds of evening that tear
across the inter-mountain flatlands, they managed to average not
more than $3.00 to $4.50 a day. But to most of them the experi-
ence seems to have been a profound relief from the monotony
of life in a relocation center. "As we got up this chilly morning,"
one of them writes, "we noticed the quiet, serene atmosphere of
this valley community. A typical rural community with large
barns stacked high with golden hay. The valley is bounded on
all sides by high green hills as though to shelter it from the out-
side world. Our little shack is surrounded by tall poplars and
cedars with leaves turning yellow in the autumn sun. The hills
on the east are tinted by yellowing leaves of the Box Elder, red-
dening leaves of the Maple, and the golden colors of the Sarsa-
parilla. As we three slowly hiked toward the fields, countless
grasshoppers sprayed the ground before us. We followed the
winding irrigation canal, just day-dreaming along. My mind is
much clearer and my appetite has grown quite ravenous. I give
216
my personal recommendation that this valley will cure nervous
breakdowns and other mental ailments that center people are
susceptible to or have incurred through long confinement and
boredom." There is no doubt that the psychological success of
the seasonal-leave program, as well as its admitted economic
success, encouraged WRA to go forward with the program for
permanent relocation.
6. California Interlude
Not many evacuees have returned to California since they
were removed. Some Nisei soldiers on furlough have returned;
and a few have been permitted to return for short business trips
or to attend sessions of court. Mrs. Cecil Itano returned to Los
Angeles in October, 1943, to survey the damage caused when
vandals broke into the Nichiren Church in Los Angeles and
wantonly destroyed personal property which the evacuees had
stored in the church. "As we neared Los Angeles," she writes,
"many familiar landmarks brought faint nostalgia of former
happier occasions. After registering at the hotel, I had a chance
to glance around. The Los Angeles that I knew is no more.
Everything has changed. On October nth, 1943, we went out
to view the Nichiren Church. The catastrophe before my eyes
was a hopeless mass of deliberate destruction. Everything was a
conglomeration of unrecoverable damaged things. Nothing was
untouched, sewing machines were ruined, furniture broken, mir-
rors smashed to smithereens, broken glass from breakable articles,
household goods scattered helter-skelter, trunks broken beyond
repair, albums, pictures, precious only to the respective owners,
thrown to the four winds. It had been like a dream, returning
to the California that is so dear to my heart. Standing among
this debris of disreverent damage, I thought, could this un-
warrantable plundering have been averted if we had not been
slandered by a propaganda depicting us as a despicable and
undesirable race? My only hope is that such pilfering will be
stopped before malice gnaws too deeply in our hearts."
217
7. From a Nisei Soldier
Not all of the Nisei in our armed services are in the special
combat team. Quite a few are serving with other units. I have
a letter from one of these. Although he spent one or two years
in Japan, this man is not considered a Kibei by the authorities.
He enlisted in the Army immediately after Pearl Harbor. "I was
taken to a camp in California," he writes, "for my basic training.
I spent a few months there, and then came evacuation. There
weren't more than a dozen or so Nisei in our camp. We were
kept there until April, 1942, when we were all gathered together
and brought here, to Camp X. There are a couple of hundred
Nisei here, all brought from different states. Shortly after we
arrived, we were disarmed; we turned in our guns and were
assigned to service jobs, mess hall details and such. I suppose they
think we are not exactly to be trusted. Remember the time Presi-
dent Roosevelt went around to different camps for inspection?
He came to our place, too, and that morning, a short time before
his arrival, they put us Nisei in a garage, surrounded us with
machine guns and armed officers, and kept us there under guard
until he left. That's when our morale really went down. If we
are dangerous, why don't they tell us we are dangerous? Why
don't they courtmartial us or something? Why don't they dis-
charge us? Til never forget that it was after this evacuation
rumpus in California that I was segregated from the rest of the
American soldiers. I don't want any part of California as long
as I live. Fd rather be in a country where nobody talks about
democracy or dictatorship or anything, where people just work
to make a living. Of course, Fd like to stay here. I like America
better than any country. But how can I ever change my face?
Tell me that"
8. Two Trains
During the period of segregation, when the "disloyal" segre-
gants were being taken to Tule Lake and the loyal Tuleans were
being distributed among the other centers, I received many in-
218
teresting comments from residents in the centers. None of these
comments, however, is as graphic as this brief note which
appeared in the Minidoka Irrigator:
The train that came from Tule met the train going to Tule
at a junction. The occupants looked at each other, but no
conversation was possible. They were patterned from the
same genus, skin and hair color. Many of them were Japanese-
Americans. They shared typical American lives, knew the
love for slang, coke and hamburgers. The Issei nursed the
earth, they did their bit in the making of the United States
into one of the greatest industrial nations in the world.
They lived, loved, and laughed in the cosmopolitanism that
is America.
But yet a Himalayan wall of psychological difference
placed the groups in two tragically distinctive categories.
One group, a tragic picture of lost faith, had bowed to
the desire to walk down a metropolitan street and see faces
with the same structure and color; they had swayed to a
longing to walk through life free of prejudiced glances.
But all of them had left their lives strewn in memorable
bits around the country they loved. In the rusting plow
in the barn back on the Coast, in the baby willow planted
on the river bank, in the carved initials on the drug store
counter at Bill's, in the basketball championship trophy dis-
played at the High with the lone Japanese name inscribed
on it, in the waving apple orchard in the dip of the val-
ley. . , .
The other group chose to go back to that drug store
counter, to urge on once more the plow, to add another name
to the trophy, to nurse the willow to be a stalwart bulwark.
They heard and answered defiantly the challenge in every
doubting look of other Americans. They chose to fight and
extinguish the ugly red light of discrimination. They chose
to fight until democracy was real.
9. On the Relocation Centers
While generally endorsing the program of WRA and com-
mending its policies, the evacuees as a group feel the relocation
219
experience itself is irredeemably bad. Even those who, for a
variety of reasons, are opposed to individual relocation outside
the centers (for the duration of the war) echo the same senti-
ments about the centers. "In the relocation centers," writes
Franklyn Sugiyama, "the people are like fish dynamited they
are helplessly stunned, floating belly up on the stream of life."
. . . "The most terrible factor concerning camp life," writes
Frank Watanabe, "is the havoc this uneasy, restricted and en-
closed life is working upon the young people's character and
personality. Many of the youngsters are growing up in this en-
vironment knowing very little about the outside. Consequently,
their ideas, their outlook upon life have changed greatly. Many
are bitter towards the outside society while others are just indif-
ferent. It's just not an ordinary healthy environment. Parent-child
relationships are broken down in many cases. Discipline is neg-
lected because the parents in many cases have lost faith in
themselves as well as in this country. Initiative, individual assur-
ance and the will to succeed have been lost in the desert sands
just as water evaporates in its intense heat. Even educated men
and women in a few cases have gotten this 'devil-may-care'
attitude and it sure hasn't helped matters very much." Those
who have remained in the centers are becoming overcautious,
more timid, highly race-conscious. Their world tends to grow
smaller, not larger; and it was a small airless world to begin with.
They lose perspective; they become Rip Van Winkles, out of
touch with the world, with the nation, with the people.
"The shock that we sustained," writes Hanna Kozasa, "and
the bitterness that overwhelmed us was most trying. The barbed
wire fences, the armed sentries, the observation towers, increased
our sense of frustration to the point that many have not been
able to regain a proper perspective. The most alarming aspect of
life in the centers is the demoralization it is working in the people.
It is sapping their initiative in a frightening manner. The forced
labor, with its low pay, indecent housing, inadequate food, the
insecurity of their position in a post-war America, have contrib-
uted to a deterioration of family life that is beginning to show
220
in a sharply increased juvenile delinquency this among a people
that had the lowest crime rate of any group in the United States."
. . . "Evacuation," writes Howard Imazeki, "distorted the life
philosophy of the Japanese-Americans and their parents. It com-
pletely warped the perspective of the majority of the Nisei in
its earlier stage. They are, however, slowly recovering from this
initial impact." . . . "The wounds both physical and spiritual,"
writes an Issei woman, "caused by the tragic evacuation have
begun to heal. Some are beginning to have vision enough to
think about the future."
As the relocation program itself has moved forward, more and
more of the evacuees (a clear majority of the Nisei) are inclined
to regard evacuation itself as "past history." Letter after letter
speaks of "evacuation as a thing of the past." Had it not been
for the prompt adoption by WRA of the present release or re-
location program, I am convinced that little or nothing could
have been salvaged from the program itself. The moment the
possibility of relocation was offered the evacuees, "the tragedy
of evacuation" began to recede. If WRA is permitted to continue
this program, evacuation will soon become merely a memory
for most of them./0ne observation should, however, be made on
this score: not more than one per cent of the evacuees believe
or have ever believed that evacuation was ordered as a matter
of military necessity or that it was, in fact, justifiejcQThe only
Nisei who have taken the position that the measure was justified
are a handful of individuals holding pronounced anti-fascist views.
With scarcely a single exception, the Nisei believe that evacua-
tion was brought about by race bigots in Calif ornia and that they
were singled out for removal by reason of the color of their
skins and the slant of their eyes. This is a factor which must be
taken into account in any appraisal of the entire program. In the
eyes of the evacuees, however, as expressed by Joe Koide, "the
very boldness with which the American government has endeav-
ored to rectify this wrong while the t war is still going on is a
tribute to American democracy." More is involved in the relo-
cation program than the economic and social rehabilitation of
221
100,000 people. It is equally important to see that they are psy-
chologically rehabilitated and that their somewhat shaken faith
in American democracy is fully restored.
There weje about 20,000 Japanese who resided outside the
Western Defense Command and who were never involved in
the relocation program. Needless to say, they have watched this
program with the most intense interest. Typical of their attitude
toward evacuation is this excerpt from a letter which I received
from Tsuyoski Matsumoto:
Fortunately, I had left the Pacific coast before the out-
break of the war and was elsewhere when the mass evacua-
tion took place. Therefore, I have gone through this historic
event only vicariously. To me, the evacuation came as a
shock, a sobering eye-opener of the blind worshipper of
America that I had been, a wound in the heart. I was shocked
because America failed to live up to her professed principles
of democracy, and the decent and humane manner in which
the authorities carried out the evacuation does not in my
mind erase the blunder the nation at large committed against
the Japanese immigrants and their descendants. I am made to
feel like a fool before 100,000,000 Japanese subjects in Japan
who now have a good reason to question the sincerity and
moral integrity of this Republic. This is a wound in my heart,
because I love this country for what she is. I still love her.
I am being comforted by the fact that, despite the blun-
der, the government of the United States has been quick
to correct its own mistakes and is sincere in trying to bring
justice to all people. I have fully recovered from the initial
shock and can now proudly point to my fellow slave-like
brethren in the world outside and say that a democracy
like the United States of America is not perfect-in the sight
of God but is surely better than any other form of govern-
ment man has ever known' or tried. As for the future of the
Japanese-Americans in this country, I have no doubt that
both they and their fellow citizens of Caucasian blood can
work out a democratic solution. If not, I will be damned!
222
10. Back to America
Today most of the talk in the centers is about "relocation."
"Relocation," as one evacuee phrases it, "is in the air." For most
of them, the past year has been largely given over to a debate
to relocate or not to relocate; but thousands are now preparing
to leave. They are making plans now for their return to normal
society; for their return, as they phrase it, "back to America."
They are quite clearheaded about the risks they will run; about
the unforeseeable factors involved. But some are leaving the
centers every day and others are packing their belongings, once
again, for still another phase in this curious cross-country trek.
You are likely to see them on the trains; inclined to be shy,
highly self-conscious, and endeavoring to "make themselves in-
conspicuous." The first leg of the journey, they report, is the
most trying. It is that initial experience on the train that they
fear most. Rather to their astonishment, they quickly discover
that few questions are asked; few incidents arise, few people
stare. Soon they begin to feel, as one of them writes, "like a
human being. You begin to forget that you are of Japanese an-
cestry, or any other ancestry, and remember only that you are
an American." They are stepping from trains and buses, through-
out America, "leaving the dust of relocation centers behind,"
as Larry Tajiri writes, "and returning to the broad boulevards,
the movie palaces and the sky-scrapers of America. From Topaz
and Minidoka, from Rivers and Poston, from Heart Mountain
and Granada, from the California and Arizona camps, from all
the giant 'Little Tokyos' of war relocation, the exiles of evacua-
tion are returning to the free lives of ordinary Americans."
They are not coming back into the stream of American life
with any unseen chips on their shoulders; nor are they harboring
any grudges against their fellow Americans. Most of them sin-
cerely iwmt to forget about the entire experience of evacuation.
All they ask, as George Yasukochi writes, "is to be treated as
individuals as fellow Americans and not as problem children
to be cried over and pitied. They are willing to be judged on
223
individual merit whether the Japanese-American -unit fighting
on Italian terrain covers itself with glory, or whether the Tule
Lake segregants riot in shame for as individuals they are then
judged on what they are. They wish to be grouped with Tojo
no more than LaGuardia would with Mussolini. JLJnfortunately
a large number of Americans simply cannot digest the idea that
a person with dissimilar physical characteristics may speak per-
fect English, may possess American ideologies and yearnings, and
be an ordinary human being.'* They are not inclined to regard
themselves self-pityingly as "victims of injustice." "Evacuation,"
writes Eddie Shimano, "is no more important than the poll tax
in its denial of American rights. Only the theatrical suddenness
and the immediate personal tragedies of it, together with the
fact that it was the Federal government which decreed it, plus
its relation to the war, make it seem so important. The denial
of Constitutional rights in the practice of the poll tax affects
more American citizens than did the evacuation."
"The Nisei," to quote again from a letter by George Yasu-
kochi, "are ahead of their first generation parents in American
ways and thought and speech. And even in wartime America,
the Nisei face more favorable public opinion than their parents
did three decades ago, as far as the country east of the Sierras
is concerned. So long as the Nisei do not attempt to entrench
themselves economically in conspicuous fashion, they will avoid
the treacherous attacks of jealous reactionary groups. The Nisei
thus must forge ahead as individuals rather than as a group so
that they will be assimilated into the main stream of American
society continuing to offer whatever cultural gifts and under-
standing they can transmit from the Oriental to the Occidental
civilization. The Nisei can be Americans pure and simple and
discard the Nisei label." (They are already doing this in their de-
termined effort to avoid being called "American- Japanese" ojr
"Japanese-Americans," referring to themselves frequently as
"AJ's" or "AJA's.") "An imperative 'must 5 for the Nisei is to
realize that their own problem is but a back scratch in the great
problem of American democracy to unite peaceably all people
of different races, backgrounds, creeds and ideologies in a pro-
224
gressive society. The Nisei should give full support to all pub-
lications and all organizations working on behalf of democracy
political, social and economic for all. They must fight the
insidious press that tries to use them as scapegoats, as they will
protest the grossly unfair action of the Navy in closing educa-
tional institutions to the Nisei while its left hand recruits the same
Nisei to teach language to its cadets in those institutions. But
they must defend with equal vigor attacks upon the rights of
the Negroes, Catholics or Labor. The complacent pleasures of
their own society are not to serve as sands into which the Nisei
may duck their heads ostrich-like, nor is the sight of their own
problem to blind them into thinking the universe revolves about
them. The Nisei, like everyone else in the country today, must
be thinking how to promote the democratic well being of
America."
"Several months ago," writes Robert Hosokawa from Inde-
pendence, Missouri, "my wife and I were permitted to leave a
WRA center and to pursue the normal life with freedom and
responsibility which waited beyond the barbed wire and watch-
towers of the mono-racial wartime community. We have settled
in a suburban community close to one of the great Midwest
cities. We have tried to be honest and diligent. We have tried
to carry our loads as Americans, who want foremost to help
win the war. We have made friends and have established ourselves
fairly well. We are hopeful of the future and we will jealously
fight for the perpetuation of true American ideals, opposing all
the pseudo-democrats. During the months of confinement, our
minds lived in the future not in the past hoping, planning,
dreaming and thinking. The freedom we had always taken for
granted as most Americans still do began to take on deep
meaning when we had been deprived of it. There were times
when we began to lose faith in ourselves and our ability to take
it. Life in the camps was not easy. It was inadequate and mojale-
killing. But never in those months did we lose faith in America.
Sometimes we were bitterly disappointed and enraged when we
read the lies, distortions and testimony of un-American politicians
and false patriots. If the government gives genuine backing to
225
make a success of the plan for widespread resettlement, then
the heartaches, losses and hardships will be partly compensated.
If this fails, if Americans with Japanese faces are cast aside as
unassimilables, as creatures to be shipped across to the land of
their ancestors, despite their citizenship, then American democ-
racy may as well throw in the towel. For what happens to one
minority group will happen to another and the four freedoms
will be enjoyed by only those powerful enough to keep it from
the others. Now the Nisei are blocking at the door, asking to be
admitted."
11. The Sansei
In the centers is a group of American citizens that not even
the Dies Committee has honored with much attention. This group
is made up of the Sansei, or third generation, American-born of
American-born parents (there is also a small -fourth generation).
There are several thousand of these youngsters in the centers;
many of them have now spent two years in the "giant Little
Tokyos" that are the relocation centers attending school with
other dark-skinned, black-haired youngsters, associating exclu-
sively with Japanese and Japanese-Americans, and becoming
highly conscious of their racial ancestry. Several hundred of them
have been born in relocation centers. It was to one of these San-
sei, her son in fact, that Ellen Kiskiyama wrote these lines:
TO MY SON, ARTHUR
Listen my son, now that you are older, Mother wants
you to understand why your only friends are the sanseis and
why your only home is the barrack why you eat in the
mess halls and why you don't ride the street cars, busses and
automobiles.
When Dad and Mother found out you were coming to
live with us, we started making big plans for a most hearty
welcome. Like most new parents, we looked forward to
your arrival and talked to our friends about you.
One Sunday we were, as usual, enjoying a late breakfast
226
and listening to the radio. All of a sudden, unbelievably, we
heard the tragic news of Pearl Harbor. Even to this day,
Mother can vividly recall that day when our Caucasian
friends dropped in to assure us of their friendship and to tell
us not to worry.
And so we began changing our plans. We sacrificed the
new car, the lovely gas range, the refrigerator, the vacuum
cleaner, the rugs, sofa and all the rest of the household fur-
nishings. Dad had a wonderful collection of rare tropical
fish, complete with electric motor for light and filtering and
we used to talk about how much you would enjoy watching
the Angel Fish, the gapies, Black Molly, Scavenger and
snails. But we had to leave it all behind. Mother, too, had
more than forty dolls collected from China, Korea, Man-
churia, Hawaii, etc. Little by little our home was broken up
and all the fancy dreams we planned for you had to be altered.
The well-established business had to be left behind. We
had also planned for you to have a good college education,
so we began laying aside a definite sum. Each week Mother
went to the bank and bought war bonds until one day in
May, 1942, when we were moved to the Pomona Assembly
Center.
Preparations for moving added to worry and anxiety
somehow taxed your Mother's burden and ten days after we
were inducted in the center you, my son, came so unexpect-
edly that we caused the Center Hospital Staff quite some
excitement. 'Tirst Jap Baby Swells Center Population" was
the headline in the Pomona newspapers.
Two weeks later we were back in the screenless, dusty
barrack. We were so afraid to even handle you, for you
didn't weigh more than four pounds. After three months of
California sunshine, the whole camp was moved still further
inland this time to Wyoming.
Being a camp baby, we had no baby picture of you until
a news photographer snapped one on your zooth day and
that is the only picture we have of you.
Listen, son, did you know you have an Uncle who is serv-
ing in the United States Army? He is the one who keeps you
supplied with toys. And you have never met your cousins
who are in camps in Manzanar, Poston, Gila, and Minidoka.
227
Some day soon, we hope, we will all be able to get together
for a grand reunion.
Your first Christmas was observed in camp, and Mother
took you to see the nice Santa Glaus and the colored lights
and the prettily decorated tree. You with your tiny friends
had a merry rime and received your gift from Santa.
And so each day rolled into weeks and weeks into months
and months into years
You look tired and sleepy now, my son. Go to sleep and
dream of the glorious future we will plan together. Good
night, my son, Arthur.
Arthur is a "camp baby" living in a center; but Joyce is the
six-year-old daughter of a Nisei couple living in Boulder, Colo-
rado. "The other day," her father writes, "Joyce came home
from school and said: 'Mommy, I want to be a real American.'
When she was assured that she is an American, she repeated:
'But I want to be a real one.' The implication is clear. If Joyce
were much older than she is now I'm confident that I could reason
with her and give her consolation, not of course an apology for
her having Japanese blood, but in terms of humanity and the
universe and Americanism. I might perhaps point out the cultural
heritage of her race and the country of her birth. But all these
things are beyond her imagination now. If you were in my shoes,
how would you explain this deep and disturbing question to your
daughter?"
12. A Young Patriot Writes Mr. Stimson
February 4,
SECRETARY OF WAR STIMSON
WASHINGTON, D.C.
DEAR MR. STIMSON:
I know you are a very busy man and I hate to bother you
like this when you are busy in more important matters.
This is just a simple plea that comes from within my heart,
crying for someone to listen.
I was very happy when I read your announcement that
228
Nisei Americans would be given a chance to volunteer for
active combat duty. But at the same time I was sad sad be-
cause under your present laws I am an enemy alien. I am a
22-year old boy, American in thought, American in act, as
American as any other citizen. I was born in Japan. My
parents brought me to America when I was only two years
old. Since coming to America as an infant, my whole life was
spent in New Mexico. My only friends were Caucasian boys.
At Pearl Harbor, my pal Curly Moppins was killed out-
right without a chance to fight back when the Japanese
planes swooped down in a treacherous attack. And Dickie
Harrell and other boys from my home town came back
maimed for life. Then more of my classmates volunteered
Bud Henderson, Bob and Jack Aldridge, and many others;
they were last heard of as missing in the Philippines. It
tears my heart out to think that I could not avenge their
deaths.
The law of this country bars me from citizenship because
I am an Oriental because my skin is yellow. TTiis is not a
good law and bad laws could be changed.
But this is not what I want to bring up at this time. As
you well know, this is a people's war. The fate of the free
people all over the world hangs in the balance. I only ask
that I be given a chance to fight to preserve the principles
that I have been brought up on and which I will not sacri-
fice at any cost. Please give me a chance to serve in your
armed forces.
In volunteering for active combat duty, my conscience
will be clear and I can proudly say to myself that I wasn't
sitting around, doing nothing when the fate of the free
people was at stake.
Any of my Caucasian friends would vouch for my loyalty
and sincerity. Even now some of them may be sleeping an
eternal sleep in a lonely grave far away from home, dying
for the principles they loved and sincerely believed.
I am not asking for any favors or sympathy. I only ask
that I be given a chance a chance to enlist for active com-
bat duty. How can a democratic nation allow a technicality
of birthplace to stand in the way when the nation is fighting
... to preserve the rights of free men?
229
The high governmental officials have ofttimes stated that
this is a people's struggle regardless of race or color. Could
it be a people's struggle if you bar a person "who sincerely
believes in the very principles we are all fighting for from
taking part?
I beg you to take my plea and give it your careful consid-
eration,
I have also sent a copy of this same letter to President
Roosevelt in hopes that some action will be taken in my case.
Sincerely,
HENRY H. EBIHARA
TOPAZ, UTAH
230
CHAPTER VII
The Manufacture of Prejudice
j~*
\FROM 1900 to 1924, the anti-Japanese forces in California con-
ducted an unrelenting campaign for the exclusion of Japanese
immigration. After this major goal was achieved, a momentary
lull ensued. But when an emergency developed after December 7,
1941, these same forces, taking advantage of the situation, began
to urge evacuation of all resident Japanese from the West Coast.
Mass removal of the Japanese was merely the logical end-result
of the earlier campaign for exclusion: first exclusion; then, at the
earliest opportune date, removal. Once evacuation had been
achieved, the next logical step was taken: the launching of a
large-scale campaign to prevent the return of the evacuees. But
the eventual goal that these forces have in mind, and toward
which they are now bending every effort, is the deportation of
every man, woman, and child in the United States of Japanese
ancestry old and young, citizen and alien, first, second, third,
and fourth generations].;
It was not the failure or mismanagement of the relocation pro-
gram, but rather the likelihood of its being successful, that served
as a match to light a keg of dynamite. During 1942 there was rela-
tively little agitation in California. All of the Japanese were in
either assembly or relocation centers; there was no immediate issue
that could serve as the basis for a renewal of the 1941 agitation.
But by the end of 1942, WRA policy had begun to assume defi-
nite form. Over 9000 evacuees had left the centers on seasonal
work-permits; and a number of employment offices had been
opened throughout the Middle West and a number of perma-
nent leaves had been granted. Early in 1943, WRA announced
that, perhaps, 25,000 evacuees might be released during 1943.
On October 12, 1942, the Attorney General had lifted the "en-
231
emy alien" restrictions on Italian nationals; and, on December 12,
1942, General De Witt had, in effect, removed the restrictions on
German nationals on the West Coast. At the same time, Japanese
were granted permission to re-enter Military Area No. 2 (being
the eastern part of Oregon and Washington), while the prohibi-
tion against their return to Military Area No. i and the California
portion of Military Area No. 2 was retained. A Gallup poll, taken
in January, 1943, indicated that 54 per cent of those interviewed
in the Pacific Coast states were favorable to the return of the
Japanese after the war (some would permit only citizens to re-
turn, others would permit all to return). The Poston and Man-
zanar incidents in 1942 had merely given additional impetus to
the relocation policy, since the public began to demand segre-
gation of the disloyal (which implied that the loyal would, and
should, be released). By the end of 1942, WRA was wholly com-
mitted to the policy of getting as many of the evacuees out of the
centers as possible. Noting all of these developments, the "anti"
forces in California decided that the time had arrived for the
final the big push.
There were, however, other motives that served to inspire
this 1943 campaign. An extremely important Presidential elec-
tion was approaching in 1944 and past experience had amply
demonstrated the effectiveness of anti-Japanese agitation. The
WRA could be denounced as another absurd New Deal agency;
the administration could be accused of "pampering" the evacuees;
in short, the relocation program could be effectively used as a
means of "smearing*' the administration in power. A renewal
of anti-Japanese agitation would serve to divert public attention
from the real issues of the campaign; and it could be used to
"smear*' the liberal and progressive movement in California.
Lastly, it could be used to frighten the people and to shift public
opinion in general to the right
These same forces also realized that the WRA program stood
an excellent chance to succeed. In urging mass evacuation they
had never, for one moment, contemplated that the evacuees might
be released. They had assumed that all evacuees would be interned
for the duration. Once they realized that the evacuees might be
released before the war was over (thereby making it possible for
some of them to return to the West Coast the moment the ban
was lifted and also serving as an important break on eventual de-
portation), they decided to renew the attack. An important objec-
tive of this strategy was to interfere with to disrupt if possible
the entire relocation program. If necessary the agitation could
be carried to Congress with the possibility that it might become a
national issue. If successful, they might even succeed in driving
the evacuees back to the centers. Once this was accomplished,
the campaign for deportation could be accelerated. For obvi-
ously deportation could be urged with greater effectiveness if,
at the end of the war, all the evacuees were conveniently assem-
bled for shipment to Japan.
It is not necessary to infer such an intention in the resumption
of agitation, for it has been expressly avowed. Shortly after Jan-
uary i, 1943, Senator Ward of Santa Barbara County, represent-
ing the anti-Japanese forces in the state, toured California out-
lining the tactics and strategy of the campaign. This tour rep-
resented the first attempt to orgamze a state-wide agitation against
the return of the Japanese. At one of these meetings, Mr. C. L.
Preisker (for thirty years chairman of the Board of Supervisors
of Santa Barbara County) stated the objectives of the campaign:
"We should strike now, while the sentiment over the country
is right. The feeling of the East will grow more bitter before
the war is over and if we begin now to try to shut out the Japa-
nese after the war, we have a chance of accomplishing some-
thing. Now that all the treaties between the two nations have been
abrogated by Japan's war on the United States, Congress is under
no treaty obligation and it could easily pass an act ordering all
nationals of Japan to return after the peace and forbidding the
immigration of others after the war. This would at least relieve us
of part of the problem. Maybe the return of the aliens would
mean that some of the American-born relatives would follow
them. I think the state legislature should memorialize Congress
for action. We don't want to see the time return when we have
to compete with the Japanese again in this valley." * During this
1 Pacific Citizen, February 18, 1943.
233
tour, Senator Ward repeatedly stated that this was a problem
peace 'would not solve.
The implication of this statement is best read in the light of an
editorial which appeared in Mr. Hearst's San Francisco Examiner
of January 25, 1943:
Bad as the situation is in Europe, the war there is between
European Occidental nations, between 'white races. Antago-
nisms, hatreds and jealousies, no matter how violent, cannot
obscure the fact that the warring nations of Europe stem
from common racial, cultural, linguistic and social roots. It
is a family affair, in which the possibility of ultimate agree-
ment and constructive harmony has not been dismissed even
by the most determined opponents. [Italics mine.]
Such has been the consistent policy pursued by the Hearst news-
papers. "The war in the Pacific," to quote from the Los Angeles
Examiner of March 23, 1943, "is the World War, the War of
Oriental Races against Occidental Races for the Domination of
the World."
One other important factor was behind the renewal of agita-
tion in 1943 namely, the relocation program had operated so
successfully that Californians were becoming indifferent to the
entire question. If they lost all interest in the problem, reaction-
ary forces in the state would be robbed of one of their favorite
and most effective political weapons a weapon as effective to
them as anti-Semitism to Hitler. As late as December 3, 1943, the
Los Angeles Examiner complained bitterly that "there is an
amazing kck of public interest' 7 in the problem. The Gallup poll
of January, 1943, showed a much fairer attitude on the West
Coast than one might have expected. The anti-Japanese forces
really do not represent the people of the West Coast, not even
in the state of California. My own appraisal of the situation is that
30 per cent of the California public is poisonously anti-Japanese
(that is, anti-evacuee) ; 30 per cent are moderately anti-evacuee;
and 40 per cent are indifferent or inclined to be fair. While the
press, as a whole, is vicious (there are exceptions, notably the
Santa Barbara News-Press and the Tidings the Catholic publi-
cation in Los Angeles), many individual columnists and reporters
are conspicuously fair. For example, Mr. Chester Rowell, the
dean of California journalists, has consistently denounced the cur-
rent agitation in his column in the San Francisco Chronicle; and,
on the Los Angeles Times, the columnists Bill Henry and Lee
Shippey and the reporter Chester Hanson have been notably fair-
minded. Public opinion in California would not present a prob-
lem if the issue were not constantly agitated in the most unscru-
pulous fashion.
yfhere was a time in California when everyone hated the Chi-
nese. Today there is no hatred whatever of the Chinese (although
the professional anti-Oriental organizations retain their tradi-
tional position])/The famous Daily Aha (June 15, 1853) summa-
rized the widely prevalent view of Calif ornians of the time, when
it said that the Chinese were "lower than the beasts that prey upon
the flesh of inferior animals." The explanation for the disappear-
ance of anti-Chinese feeling is simple: there has been no anti-
Chinese agitation in the state for nearly twenty-five years. For
nearly a decade prior to 1940, there was very little anti-Japanese
feeling (and for the same reason namely, that agitation had
abated). Writing in 1935, Harry Carr, for years the ace reporter
and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, correctly stated the
fact when he said: "There is very little anti- Japanese feeling in
Los Angeles." 2 Race prejudice is not indigenous in California:
it is manufactured there. As one observer has said: "people have
to work hard in Calif ornia to keep race hatred alive." Just who
are some of these individuals and organizations? '
L Dramatis Personae
In the present as in the past, organizing race hatred has been a
fairly lucrative business in California. Japanese-baiting, in partic-
ular, has always paid high political dividends. It is not surpris-
ing, therefore, to discover that organized groups, of the "fringe"
variety, have been actively needling the Californians since mass
evacuation was ordered. It is fervently to be hoped that some
2 Los Angeles; City of Dreams, 1935, p. 241.
day the searchlight of a Congressional committee of inquiry will
be thrown upon certain of these groups, organizations, and indi-
viduals.
One such group is the Americanism Educational League (838
South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles). Incorporated under the laws
of California, this organization is really the alter ego of an inter-
esting character, Dr. John R. Lechner, MA., LL.D. a former
clergyman. It is interesting to note that Dr. Lechner, at the outset,
could not make up his mind whether he opposed or favored mass
evacuation of the Japanese from the Coast. Speaking in Los An-
geles he said that mass evacuation "would only cause hardship
both to the Japanese and to the other residents of the state." 3
Shortly after this speech was given, the editor of Rafu Shimpo,
a Los Angeles Japanese-American newspaper, received a letter
from Dr. Lechner, enclosing a clipping of the speech and sug-
gesting that the Rafu Shimpo might do some printing, gratis. Not
long after the incident mentioned, he published a pamphlet en-
tided Playing With Dyncnmte, full of the usual bedtime stories
about the Japanese.
Dr. Lechner has not only been extremely active in organizing
anti-Japanese sentiment in California (by speaking at meetings
throughout Southern California), but he has had a hand in or-
ganizing two recent "investigations" into "the problem" con-
ducted by committees of the California legislature. On Decem-
ber 14, 1943, he addressed a mass meeting in Phoenix, Arizona,
which was widely advertised by "newspaper ads, handbills, and
announcements on local radio stations," * at which he inveighed
against the Japanese in his by now familiar and inimitable
style. A great many of the anti- Japanese resolutions adopted
by California service clubs, civic organizations, and similar
groups emanate from Dr. Lechner's organization. He recently
testified that his organization had sent out some 900 letters con-
taining copies of the "stock resolution" for concurrence. It is
also apparent from his testimony that he has long worked in the
closest collaboration with the 'Vhite-American" interests in the
*Los Angeles Daily Neiw, January 21, 1942.
4 Pacific Citizen, December 25, 1943.
236
floral industry in Southern California. A prominent figure in the
industry Mr. T. H. Wright is a director of the Americanism
Educational League. Under date of October 15, 1943, Senator
Jack B. Tenney of Los Angeles County (a would-be Martin Dies
of Southern California) addressed a letter to all members of the
Los Angeles Bar, on the letterhead of the Americanism Educa-
tional League, requesting these lawyers to join in an "investiga-
tion" of the Japanese problem. Several of the so-called "front"
names, or sponsors of the organization, knew nothing of the
letter and had not authorized its issuance. Shortly prior to the
issuance of this appeal, the Right Reverend Joseph T. McGucken,
of the Catholic Church, resigned as a sponsor of the organiza-
tion. Recently Dr. Lechner made a trip to Washington, during
which he interviewed various Congressmen and officials "as a
representative of the American Legion." In its issue of January 15,
1944, the California Legiormaire, official publication of the Cali-
fornia Department of the Legion, not only repudiated any con-
nection with the gentleman, but characterized his action as being
in "flagrant violation of written notice from our Department
Commander."
Another interesting "anti" organization is the Home Front
Commandos, Inc., of 607 Nicolaus Building, Sacramento, Cali-
fornia. The president of the organization is Mr. A. J. Harder, a
Sacramento lawyer. In sponsoring a mass meeting in Sacramento
on June 20, 1943, dedicated to "Ousting the Japs" (all Japanese
had, of course, been removed from the state for over a year),
the Home Front Commandos issued a handbill which contained
these stirring exhortations:
Come and hear the facts Lend your help to Deport the
Japs If you can't trust a Jap, you won't want him as a neigh-
bor Any good man can become an American citizen, but
a Jap is and always will be a Stabber-in-the-Back gangster;
rebel. After the war, ship them back to their Rising Sun
Empire.
A recently issued pamphlet urges all patriotic Californians to
"Slap the Jap Rat." Prominently featured on the pamphlet is a
237
list of the characteristics of all Japanese: "treacherous, faithless,
untrustworthy, irresponsible, inhuman, depraved, ungodly, soul-
less, disloyal," which is coupled with the generally benign state-
ment that "No Jap Is Fit to Associate with Human Beings." The
organization issues bulletins, pamphlets, and throwaways; and
conducts a continuing agitation against the return of any Japa-
nese to the West Coast. It is also responsible for the adoption
of many resolutions and has circulated numerous petitions.
The financial angel of this organization is Mr. C. M. Goethe,
a Sacramento millionaire, who, however, is unwilling to be listed
as a sponsor. His reluctance to join an organization that he did
not hesitate to subsidize is probably to be explained by reason of
the fact that he was one of the founders of the Church Council of
Sacramento County, extremely active in the Northern California
Council of Churches, and a pioneer in the work of the Federal
Council of Churches. Formerly chairman of the Immigration
Committee of the Commonwealth dub of San Francisco, Mr.
Goethe is also treasurer of the California Joint Immigration
Committee.
One of the interesting things about him is that, ideologically
speaking, he is a direct and self-acknowledged heir of Mr. Madi-
son Grant. For years he has been the director, and the sole moti-
vating force, in the Eugenics Society of Northern California,
which has issued a stream of pamphlets, documents, and press
releases devoted to eugenics but which also show a constant pre-
occupation with the doctrine of "racial integrity." In the rather
weird vocabulary of these pamphlets, society is said to be made
up of the **high-powers" that is, the energetic, ambitious, indus-
trious Anglo-Saxons and the "morons." Since "about 1870,"
it seems that the "high-powers" have been committing "race sui-
cide,* 7 while the "morons" and "near-morons" have actually
accelerated their birth rate. They tend to "breed like rabbits."
The Old New Englander or the Virginian is constantly praised,
in these pamphlets, to the detriment of the "Sicilian black-hander"
and the "Mexican peon." In Eugenics Pamphlet No. 12, which
carries the code number "O-Wi3 VSNC 538," one finds this
interesting statement:
238
. . . Since Hitler had become Fuehrer, he had made
eugenics an applied science. Germany has set up hundreds
of Eugenics courts. These try German social inadequates
as to their fitness for parenthood. Please do not think these
trials are based on race hatreds. Whatever else may happen
in the Reich, the eugenics trials proceed with fully as much
caution as if they were held in the United States. Germany
has cross-card-indexed her people until she has located all her
probable weaklings. Available food supplies considered, her
population is at the saturation point. Her plan is: Eliminate
all low-powers to make room for high-powers. And thereby
ALSO SAVE TAXES!
It is also worthy of note that not even in "Superior" that is,
Northern Calif ornia where the native sons are most numerous,
have the Home Front Commandos been able to secure volunteer
workers. For the organization has run the following advertise-
ment in many editions of the Sacramento Bee:
Out with the Japs. Men and women wanted to solicit
membership in the Home Front Commandos, an organization
whose objective is to deport die Japs after the war. Workers
will be compensated for their time. Write for appointment,
give references, age, and occupation, telephone number.
Address Home Front Commandos, 1020 8th Street, Sacra-
mento, California. Help organize a Chapter in your county.
It should be pointed out, parenthetically, that Mr. Goethe is not
the only Californian to have swallowed the Hitler line on eu-
genics. I had occasion, in a series of articles written in 1935, to
point out that the Human Betterment Foundation, of Pasadena,
was giving wide currency to Nazi doctrines on eugenics. As a
matter of fact, the Los Angeles Times actually carried the propa-
ganda of Dr. 1C Burchardi, at that time a resident of Southern
California. 5
Still another "anti" group is the Pacific Coast Japanese Problem
League (112 West Ninth Street, Los Angeles). Formed on July
13, 1943, the purpose of the League is to "co-ordinate" the efforts
5 See Los Angeles Times, Magazine Section, August n, 1935.
239
of all groups on the West Coast interested in the "Japanese
menace." Its incorporators include two prominent officials of the
Native Sons of the Golden West, an American Legion Official,
the president of the Junior Chamber of Commerce of California,
a former Mayor of Los Angeles, and a number of ambitious local
politicians. This organization boasts that it was responsible for at
least one legislative investigation of the "Japanese menace" during
1943. It circulates petitions and obtains numberless resolutions.
The executive director of the organization, Dr. John Carruthers,
is an interesting personage. Presbyterian minister, graduate of
Princeton, one-time professor of religious history at Occidental
College, for five years assistant to the President of the University
of Southern California, Dr. Caxruthers is also a politician and,
at this writing, a candidate for the state legislature. His testi-
mony before a committee of the California State Senate on Oc-
tober 19, 1943, represents a fancy and incoherent flight of racist
theorizing.
"It is our Christian duty," he says, "to keep the Japanese out
of this western world of Christian civilization. . . . Let's get up
and be counted," he said, "and let's help the helpless, disturbed,
confused people of the coast to feel that it is the moral obligation
of the Christian civilization to preserve what it has against its
own deterioration, and its external penetrations" whatever that
may mean. Before testifying, he had bowed his head "in the
privacy of that precious American heritage, the Christian home
in a Christian city in a Christian land of freedom. ... I prayed,"
he said, "at this altar of my dining room where my silent type-
writer rested on the freshly garnished breakfast table." As a
result of this prayer session, he had come before the committee
to urge "the deportation, if possible, by every means possible,
of all the Japanese from the American continent." The Japanese-
Americans should not object, he said, if they were Christians,
since, as Christians, "they ought to be glad to be shoved out
anywhere that they can bear witness to the Kingdom of Christ."
It is interesting to note that, like Dr. Lechner, Dr. Carruthers
has not always been anti-Japanese. During the years 1924-1926,
he was a director of the Council of International Relations in
240
Los Angeles which had been created primarily to combat anti-
Oriental prejudice on the West Coast.
But there are still other groups, such as the California Citizens
Association of Santa Barbara, formed on February 25, 1943 (after
a speech by Senator Ward). Included among the incorporators
of this group appear such sterling old-stock American names as
Giorgi, Ardantz, and Fernini. Still another organization is the
California Citizens Council (416 West 8th Street, Los Angeles),
formed on October u, 1943, by two ambitious local politicians.
This organization began to circulate petitions for the "ouster of
the Japanese from California forever," at the very moment Con-
gress was considering the bill to place the Chinese on a quota
basis. Its slogan is: "Remember a Jap is a Jap," and its members
are urged to put this sticker on the windshield of their automo-
biles. The sticker contains a picture of a rat with a Japanese face.
Still another organization is the American Foundation for the
Exclusion of the Japanese, incorporated on December 16, 1943,
by a group of Los Angeles citizens. And yet another incorporated
anti-Japanese group is No Japs, Incorporated, formed by a group
of San Diegoans on August 16, 1943.
It is significant that virtually all of the resolutions concerning
the Japanese that have been adopted in California during the last
year are identical in text and that, almost without exception, they
are circulated by organized groups. I have examined scores of
these resolutions, memorials, and petitions and have yet to find
one that gives evidence of having arisen spontaneously within the
ranks of the particular organization. Taken at their face value,
these resolutions would indicate that the people of the state are
about 95 per cent opposed to the return of any Japanese after
the war. I doubt, however, if more than 35 per cent of the citi-
zens of the state actually hold this view. The presentation of such
a resolution to a civic group for concurrence smacks of intimida-
tion, for the group, as such, will be somewhat reluctant not to
concur. Its members, moreover, hesitate to oppose such a resolu-
tion, although, in private conversation, they freely admit that the
whole procedure is so much hokum.
Certain of these actively "anti" groups in California are spread-
241
ing the virus of race hatred throughout the United States. The
Salinas Chamber of Commerce (a California community domi-
nated by shipper-grower interests) recently sent its secretary,
Mr. Fred S* McCargar, on a nation-wide speaking tour, for the
purpose of "warning Eastern residents" against the "dangers of
Japanese-American relocation." Speaking before the secretaries
of all the Western Chambers of Commerce in Denver, Mr.
McCargar stated that California was opposed to the return of
any Japanese after the war but was ready to co-operate with
other communities in finding some "way to settle the Jap prob-
lem.** The next day a committee was appointed to explore the
various possibilities for a solution of the problem satisfactory to
California's interests. Thus a program has doubtless been evolved
which will ultimately reach every Chamber of Commerce in the
inter-mountain West. Speaking in Pittsburgh, the Salinas spokes-
man emphasized the "racial undesirability" of the Japanese. In
the wake of this tour, numerous Western committees began to
pass anti-Japanese resolutions and to explore the possibilities of
adopting restrictive clauses in property deeds. 6 If these California
groups were honestly concerned with keeping the Japanese out
of the state, then logic would compel them to support the relo-
cation program. For the greater the number of Japanese who
can be satisfactorily relocated outside the state before the war
is over, the fewer there will be who will want to return to the
West Coast.
Some of these organizations, however, are distinctly of the
"fringe" or "crackpot" variety: they represent no one but the
original incorporators and the paid organizers. The most effective
organizations are the groups that originally initiated anti- Japanese
agitation in the state and have consistently worked at the problem
ever since: the California Joint Immigration Committee (cur-
rently directed by Mr. H. J. Mcdatchy); the Native Sons of the
Golden West; the American Legion (not quite as rabid as it
used to be); the State Grange; and the Associated Farmers. The
State Federation of Labor is still nominally a sponsor of the
California Joint Immigration Committee, but it has not taken
6 See Pacific Citizen, November 6, 1943.
242
an active part in the current agitation. The California Joint Im-
migration Committee, created by V. S. McClatchy, is the real
force behind the current agitation.
2. The Campaign Begins
The current campaign was opened early in December, 1942,
when the Executive Committee of the American Legion, Cali-
fornia Department, announced the creation of a special five-
member committee to conduct an "impartial investigation of all
Japanese Relocation Areas in the State of Calif ornia." 7 Appointed
as members of this committee were Harper L. Knowles (who
figured prominently in the La Follette Committee investigation
of antilabor activities in California); H. J. McClatchy (of the
California Joint Immigration Committee); and Senator Jack
Tenney of Los Angeles County (chairman of the state legisla-
ture's "Little Dies" Committee). Actually this committee made
no investigation: its work was promptly taken over by the Little
Dies Committee, headed by Senator Tenney.
Throughout 1943, the committee held numerous hearings on
the Japanese problem; detailed its investigators to visit relocation
centers, in collaboration with the Dies Committee; and late in
1943 issued, in red covers, a volume entitled Un-American Activ-
ities in California. Containing much lush material of the pulp-
magazine variety on "the Japanese problem," the volume is chiefly
remarkable for the illiteracies that are embalmed in its turgid
pages. The principal witness, at all hearings of the committee on
the Japanese problem, was Dr. John Lechner. Before this com-
mittee had held any hearings on the relocation program, local
posts of the American Legion, in January, 1943, began to pass
resolutions urging the deportation of all Japanese, citizens and
aliens alike. The moment the original American Legion com-
mittee was appointed, resolutions and memorials began to flow
from California; grand juries throughout the state began to adopt
resolutions asking for the permanent exclusion of the evacuees;
city councils, boards of supervisors, public officials, and lay
7 California Legioimaire, May i, 1943.
243
groups began to take similar action. All of this activity occurred
nearly a year before the Little Dies Committee had concluded
its so-called investigation. With scarcely a single exception, these
protests, resolutions, and memorials are identical in character,
and in most cases the same printed forms appear.
Within a space of two months (January i to March i, 1943),
literally hundreds of organizations in the state had "gone on
record." In addition to adopting the form resolutions, they began
to contrive fancy and contradictory demands of their own. The
Supervisors Association of the State of California, for example,
went on record in favor of the proposition that "the teaching
of the Japanese language should be forever barred in the United
States" (with the Army and Navy clamoring for translators and
interpreters!); the Native Sons of the Golden West and the Cali-
fornia Grange opposed the formation of the Japanese-American
combat team (which was the first unit to storm the beaches
at Salerno); the city of Gardena omitted, from its honor roll
of citizens in the service, the names of seventeen Japanese-
Americans from that area; and on December 10, 1942, the
American Legion suspended the charters of the Townsend Har-
ris and Commodore Perry posts (made up exclusively of persons
of Japanese ancestry who had served in the First World War).
In Portland, Oregon, the American Legion protested against local
citizens caring for the local Japanese-American cemetery. Vigi-
lante groups were formed in Salinas "to prevent the return of
any Japanese." The California Federation of Women's Clubs ex-
pressed grave anxiety for their "sisters" in the East and Middle
West, into whose communities the evacuees were being released.
Miss Hedda Hopper, movie columnist for the Los Angeles Times,
did not want to be accused of "implying anything"; at the same
time, however, she called her readers' attention to the- fact that
**we've had more than our share of explosions, train wrecks, fires
and serious accidents since the evaquees were relocated." While
in San Francisco, Elsie Robinson, the Hearst columnist, said that
die would "cut the throats" of any evacuees who returned to the
West Coast (in 1938 she was attempting to drive the Okies out
of California).
244
"California," wrote David Starr Jordan, "is emphatically one
of 'earth's male lands.' "^It is not apparently in the nature of the
average Californian," wrote Julian Street, "to go at things in a
moderate way. He likes antagonism. He feels the need of it. He
must have something to combat to neutralize the everlasting
sunshine and the cloying sweetness of the orange-blossoms and
roses^' Every one certainly had his say during this melodramatic
free-for-all. All the organizations "spoke out," including the Cali-
fornia Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, the San
Jose Knights of the Round Table, and the Grand Court of Cali-
fornia of Foresters of America. By seizing upon this inspired
activity, the press managed to convey the impression that the
entire state was just one step removed from open rebellion and
that it might probably secede from the Union if so much as a
single Japanese-American were to set foot in California.
The moment the California legislature convened on January
6, 1943, a spate of anti-evacuee bills, resolutions, and memorials
were immediately introduced. In the debate on these measures,
as during all of the preceding excitement, it is interesting to note
that a new twist had suddenly been given the Japanese problem.
The fact that the federal government had ordered evacuation
was cited as proof of the undesirable traits of the Japanese as a
race and as proof of their disloyalty as a group. The Pacific
Citizen (official publication of the Japanese-American Citizens
League) correctly analyzed the situation when it stated editori-
ally on December 24, 1942, that "there is every reason to believe
that a deliberate campaign is being conducted to keep the 'Japa-
nese' issue alive in California. . . . The function of these anti-
democratic campaigns seems to be the maintenance of a public
opinion which will make difficult any reassimilation of the
evacuated people. The stress and continuance of these campaigns
make it increasingly evident that military necessity alone was
not the only catalyst in activating evacuation. 7 ' This campaign
convinced most of the evacuees, in fact, that they had been
manipulated out of California for economic and political reasons.
As Bill Hosokawa pointed out: "These attacks that persist against
us are more sinister [than evacuation], for now it is no longer
2 45
possible to say that our persecutors are motivated by an honest
if misguided patriotism. There has been plenty of time now to
ascertain the facts. There is no reason after all these months for
anyone to be morally honest and yet base his charges against us
on misinformation." 8 Most emphatically, this campaign was not
launched to prevent the return of the Japanese to California
(although it was represented as such to the public). Its real
objective was to prevent the release of any further evacuees from
the centers and to drive back into relocation centers all those who
had been released and relocated in the Middle West.
Since no one was urging (least of all the WRA) that the
evacuees be permitted to return to California, this initial cam-
paign began to fall apart. An issue had to be found and, since
none existed, the anti-forces invented one. Consequently an in-
flammatory campaign was launched in the California press in
January over the question of "idle" Japanese-owned farm ma-
chinery and equipment. Not only was the amount of this
machinery inflated out of all relation to the facts, but news
stories implied (and public officials were quoted to the effect)
that thousands of acres of tomatoes were in jeopardy because
of the "willful" refusal of the evacuees to "co-operate." The
McCIatchy newspapers (Fresno Bee and Sacramento Bee) on
January 28, 1943, charged that the tires on 25,000 Japanese-
owned trucks and automobiles were rotting in storage and "that
is the way the Japanese want them," implying in the most un-
equivocal fashion that the evacuees were interfering with the
war effort. The campaign took on increasingly fantastic pro-
portions. A sports writer for the San Francisco Chronicle on
February 7, 1943, argued that California should seize, for "home
defense, all firearms stored by the evacuees. Vast quantities of
mighty expensive rifles and pistols," it seems, had been acquired
by the Japanese prior to evacuation. No proof whatever was
cited in support of this provocative statement. Senator Tenney's
committee announced that it 'Vould ferret out" the concealed
farm machinery if it took all year. This agitation continued
throughout January, February, and March, 1943. As late as April,
8 Pacific Citizen, January 28, 1943.
246
responsible state officials were still implying that as much as 80
per cent of the tomato crop might be lost because of the failure
of the evacuees to turn over idle farm machinery. These same
stories implied that WRA was being "obstinate" and "stubborn"
about the matter. Long after the WRA had punctured this
bogus balloon, the stories kept appearing. By April the agitation
began gradually to disappear from the newspapers. The public,
however, was left with the definite impression that the evacuees
had been guilty of a discreet but effective type of sabotage.
3. "An Almost Sensational Report"
The "idle farm machinery" ballyhoo was a satisfactory issue
to keep the Japanese problem alive in California; but obviously
the nation could not be expected to froth at the mouth over such
an issue. Something bigger and better had to be devised. Early
in January, Senator Wallgren (from Washington) and Congress-
man Leroy Johnson (from California) introduced resolutions in
Congress calling for a transfer of control from WRA to the
Army (despite the fact that the Army insisted then and still
insists that it does not want to be burdened with this additional
assignment). Accompanying the introduction of these resolu-
tions, much comment began to appear about the "coddling" and
"pampering" of the evacuees. Since the fight had now been car-
ried by West Coast agitators to Congress, the whole question
began to assume national proportions and the national press began
to show some interest in the matter.
The Senate resolution (No. 444), introduced by two West
Coast Senators (Wallgren and Holman), was referred to a sub-
committee of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, con-
isting of Messrs. Chandler, Wallgren, Holman, Gurney, and
O'Mahoney. It should be noted that Senator Holman had previ-
ously introduced a bill to strip the Nisei of their American
citizenship. Senator Chandler, chairman of the subcommittee,
obviously thought of the investigation as part of his "Lick-Japan-
First" campaign. Newspaper reports indicate that he actively
247
sought the chairmanship of the subcommittee. "There has been
a persistent rumor around Washington," commented Helen
Fuller in the New Republic (on May i, 1943), "that at an early
stage of his own personal 'Pacific-consciousness,' Chandler re-
ceived overtures from Hearst representatives, keen on strength-
ening their traditional yellow-scare editorial policy, who offered
him nationwide publicity and backing for a national office in
return for constant harping on the Japs-First and Yellow-Peril-
at-Home tunes. Regardless of the truth of the rumor, large hunks
of Hearst front pages have recently been devoted to Chandler's
'exposes' of Japanese relocation centers, and a Hearst corre-
spondent in Washington, Ray Richards of the Los Angeles
Examiner^ is most often the one who floats Chandler's atrocity
stories about the recent methods the War Relocation Authority
has used in handling our Japanese- American evacuees." Through-
out 1943, as a matter of fact, Ray Richards, assisted by Warren
Francis of the Los Angeles Times, directed, steered, and manipu-
lated the "anti-Japanese" campaign. 9
The committee hearings opened in Washington, with Mr.
Dillon Meyer and former Ambassador Joseph Grew as the chief
witnesses. Ambassador Grew testified that, in his opinion, it was
altogether possible to segregate the loyal from the disloyal ele-
ments among the Japanese. His statement scarcely received men-
tion in the West Coast press. Then Senator Chandler set out on
a tour of the relocation centers, announcing that he was momen-
tarily prepared to submit "an almost sensational report," and
releasing press statements from time to time en route. His first
announcements stated that he had discovered that 60 per cent
of the residents of one center were disloyal (with no further
explanation of how he had arrived at this determination); he then
proceeded to state that "in my mind there is no question that
thousands of these fellows were armed and prepared to help
Japanese troops invade the West Coast right after Pearl Har-
*NOTE: At the same time, Representative Henry M. Jackson, from
Washington, introduced a resolution for the appointment of a standing
Congressional committee "to review the intricate web of subversive
activity which Japan wove over this country by means of business repre-
sentatives." (San Francisco Examiner, February 9, 1943.)
248
bor." 10 The Senator's investigations were, to put it mildly, brief.
Observers noted that his technique was to breeze into a center,
ask a few questions with the rapidity of a quarterback calling
football signals, and then depart. Great prominence was given the
Senator's hurried inspection by feature stories written for the
Hearst press by Mr. Ray Richards. As a direct consequence of
Senator Chandler's visits to Arkansas and Arizona, local groups
became excited and agitation was renewed against the WRA
centers in these areas. It is significant that anti- Japanese legisla-
tion was introduced in the legislatures of both states at about the
time of the Senator's flying visits.
The general upshot of these alleged investigations was a report,
the recommendations of which had little relation to the sensa-
tional stories written by Ray Richards. For, after all this fuss and
fury, the committee recommended: (i) that the Nisei be reclas-
sified so that they might be drafted for service in the Army;
(2) that the disloyal elements be held in detention camps for the
duration; and (3) that the rest of the evacuees be placed in
private employment. One explanation for the mildness of the re-
port is that Senator Wallgren, about this time, began to receive
a barrage of letters from his libecal constituents protesting that
he was playing the fascist game. The Senator suddenly became
very conciliatory and began to "clarify" his position.
During the course of these hearings, the consequences of the
agitation in California began to be apparent. Governor Osborn of
Arizona, for example, told the committee that "California was
attempting to close its back doors to the Japanese." If the West
Coast states persisted in this position, he explained, then Arizona
would have to appeal to Congress for "protection," since, at the
end of the war, it would be left with a disproportionate number
of Japanese on its hands. Shortly afterwards WRA was forced
to declare Arizona "out of bounds" for relocation purposes. The
net result of such action is, of course, to build a cordon saTiitaire
around the West Coast and to force the evacuees farther east.
Noticing the policy of California, several Congressmen began to
ask questions. Representative Karl Mundt, of South Dakota, a
10 Washington Post, March 9, 1943.
249
member of the Dies Committee, asked a question which, to this
day, has not been answered. Jf the Japanese were, in fact, a
menace to the defense industries of the West Coast, and were
removed for this reason, why aren't they an equal menace in
Omaha, Nebraska, or Kansas City, Missouri.^
While the West Coast anti-Japanese forces did not get all that
they had anticipated out of Senator Chandler's excursion into the
Japanese problem, nevertheless the hearings served their purpose.
For the effect of the jiearings, and of the carefully planned news-
paper campaign conducted by the Hearst press, was to make
Middle Western, Eastern, and Southern communities Japanese-
conscious. By starting a campaign "to prevent the return of the
Japanese," California implied that the evacuees were collectively
and individually an undesirable lot. Since California refused to
accept any of these evacuees, other states began to feel that there
was no reason why they should. Arizona passed a memorial pro-
testing the admission of Japanese-Americans to its colleges and
universities and a bill to restrict the liberties of released evacuees
(this was before the state was declared out-of-bounds). Wyo-
ming passed a bill making it impossible for the evacuees at the
Heart Mountain center to qualify as voters in the state; Arkansas
sought to close the doors of its public schools to "members of
the Mongolian race"; communities in Michigan and Indiana pro-
tested against the employment of evacuees in their localities; the
Deriver Post, on February 14, 1943, launched a vicious series of
articles aimed at making the position of the evacuees in Colorado
untenable; the movement for deportation gained definite momen-
tum in California; petitions and resolutions from various state
legislatures and California citizen groups against the student re-
location program and the induction of Japanese-Americans into
die services were presented to Congress; Arkansas passed a bill
making it illegal for a person of Japanese ancestry to own land
in the state; Arizona passed a statute making it virtually impos-
sible for anyone to conduct business transactions with a person
whose liberties had been "restricted"; mass meetings were held in
Wisconsin protesting the employment of evacuees; "unreceptive
256
attitudes" towards evacuees were reported from points as distant
from the West Coast as Alexandria, Virginia, Toledo, Ohio, and
West Virginia. (All between January i and May i, 1943.)
4. "Once a Jap, Always a Jap"
On April 19, 1943, General J. L. De Witt issued Public Procla-
mation No. 17 which, by its terms, authorized Japanese-American
soldiers, serving with our forces, to return to the West Coast
while on furlough or on leave. There is every reason to believe
that General De Witt signed this proclamation not on his own
initiative, but pursuant to instructions from the War Department.
For on April 13, testifying in San Francisco before the House
Naval Affairs Subcommittee, he had volunteered this information:
"There is developing a sentiment on the part of certain
individuals to get the Japanese back to the Coast. I am oppos-
ing it with every means at my disposal. ... A Jap's a Jap.
They are a dangerous element, whether loyal or not. There
is no way to determine their loyalty. ... It makes no differ-
ence whether he is an American; theoretically he is still a
Japanese and you can't change him. . . . You can't change
him by giving him a piece of paper."
He was not worried, he said, about German or Italian nationals;
"but the Japs we will be worried about all the time until they are
wiped off die face of the map." n In response to this statement,
which was volunteered by the General and not given in response
to a question, two California members of the Congressional com-
mittee gave vent to their own lawless sentiments by saying: "If
you send any Japs back here we're going to bury them." A little
later, rumors began to circulate on the West Coast that General
De Witt was to be replaced by General Delos Emmons, com-
mander of the Hawaiian Department. These two events the
granting of permission to furloughed soldiers to return to the
Coast, and the rumor of General De Witt's replacement were
11 See Los Angeles Times, April 14 and 19, 1943.
251
widely interpreted on the coast, in the light of General De Witt's
testimony already quoted, as indicating the existence of a plot
in the War Department to lift the ban altogether and to permit
the return of the loyal Japanese to their former homes.
The reaction was instantaneous and violent. Several California
Congressmen opposed the proclamation granting permission to
furloughed soldiers to return to the Coast and indicated they
would oppose any attempt to replace General De Witt; 12 the
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce immediately sent its repre-
sentatives to Washington to confer with Assistant Secretary of
War McQoy; 13 and the editorial Big Berthas were at once
brought into action* Denouncing the "current soft-headed agi-
tation for the return of loyal Japanese" as "stupid and danger-
ous," the Los Angeles Times proceeded to rest the opposition on
strictly racial grounds. "As a race? it stated in an editorial of
April 22, 1943, "the Japanese have made for themselves a record
for conscienceless treachery unsurpassed in history." Ergo, all
resident Japanese, including the American-born, must per se be
treacherous. This agitation, moreover, occurred at a time 14 when
the newspapers carried sensational headlines about the barbarous
execution of American fliers in Tokyo.
For weeks on end, the West Coast newspapers were full of a
torrid denunciation of everything Japanese with, curiously
enough, the resident Japanese (who had quickly denounced the
Tokyo executions as "a barbaric defiance of the Geneva Conven-
tion") ** becoming the principal targets for the public's wrath.
[Mayor Fletcher Bowron an able and honest public official, re-
form mayor of Los Angeles completely lost his head, bom-
barded Washington with protests against the return of the
Japanese, and proceeded to advocate measures to deprive the
American-born of their citizenship! 6 The orgy of Jap baiting
that swept the West Coast press was not limited to protests
against the return of the Japanese to California, but began to
"**Los Angeles Times, May 6, 1943.
^I&id.y April 23, 1943.
"April 22, 1943.
u Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1943.
**Los Angeles Dotty News, May 26, 1943.
assume the form of a protest against the release of any Japanese
from the centers to go anywhere
Because they suspected a "plot" to lift the ban on the Japanese
returning to the West Coast, California groups sent a hurry-up call
to the Dies Committee to conduct still another "investigation."
Arriving in Los Angeles before the committee hearings had even
been prepared, Representative J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey
(a member of the Dies Committee) registered at the Biltmore
Hotel and began to issue press releases at regular intervals to
meet the demands of the local newspapers for more anti-Japanese
headlines. At this time, the Dies Committee had conducted no
hearings and Representative Thomas had not so much as visited
or been within a hundred miles of a single relocation center. Yet
bloodcurdling press releases literally flowed from his headquar-
ters at the Biltmore Hotel, as the headlines burgeoned hourly.
"Stop Freeing Interned Japs!" screamed the Los Angeles Herald-
Express on May 19, 1943; "Dies Prober Charges Whole Reloca-
tion Plan Is Farce." "Rep. J. P. Thomas Reveals Jap Army in
L. A." ranted another headline (May 13, 1943).
Knowing full well that only three types of Japanese were per-
mitted in the state namely, soldiers on furlough or leave, those
in public institutions, and Japanese women married to Caucasians
who had children (about twenty in all Los Angeles County)
the newspapers nevertheless steadily insinuated the notion that
Japanese were being allowed to return to the Coast. Groups that
must certainly have known the true facts, such as the San Joaquin
Council of the State Chamber of Commerce, passed resolutions
demanding the "re-evaczuttion of those who have moved back
into the state." M
5. The Dies Treatment
The antics of Representative Thomas advance triggerman
for the Dies Committee would constitute the subject matter
of high-grade farce were the implications not so serious in terms
17 See Los Angeles Herald-Express, May 19, 1943.
18 Los Angeles Times, June n f 1943.
of the well-being of thousands of American citizens. Shouting
in the press that "fat-waisted Japs are being released while our
American boys on Guadalcanal are barely receiving enough food
with which to keep alive," Representative Thomas, on May 25,
1943, released the following statements to the press (see San Fran-
cisco Examiner of that date):
The Dies Committee investigators and I found conditions
very bad in the War Relocation Centers.
Camp newspapers are virulently critical of anyone who
opposes Japanese interests.
Short wave radios are permitted, although even a Japanese
subject may not own or use one in Japan.
At the time that these and many similar statements were released
to the press, Representative Thomas had yet to visit a relocation
center. On May 29, Mr. Stripling, an investigator for the com-
mittee, authorized a statement in the Washington Star that WRA
was releasing "spies and saboteurs." Representative Thomas
charged that "food and wine" were being served in relocation
centers (the food allowance was 45 cents per person per day).
On May 28, the staff of the committee released statements to the
press that the evacuees were being so well fed that they were
sending packages of "butter, coffee, and other rationed food to
friends outside the centers." Again on May 28, the staff of the
committee informed the press that 76 per cent of the Japanese in
one camp had refused to profess their loyalty a gross exaggera-
tion. On June 4, the Washington Times-Herald carried a story
to the effect that "evacuees at the centers are allowed five gallons
of whiskey per person," and this statement was attributed to Act-
ing Chairman Joe Starnes (who subsequently denied that he had
made the statement). Needless to say, the statement was not true.
For at least a month before the committee had taken a single
word of testimony these false, malicious, demagogic statements
were fed to the press. As indicative of the perspicacity of the
Dies Committee investigators, suffice it to say that on a flying
visit to Los Angeles in 1941, they had wired Chairman Dies as
follows: JAPANESE PREFECTURAL SOCIETIES ARE CALLED KENS STOP
2 54
SIXTEEN SHINTO TEMPLES IN LOS ANGELES STOP THIS IS NOT A
RELIGION BUT WORSHIP OF THE JAPANESE RACE PERSONIFIED IN
THE EMPEROR. This sensational bit of news is quoted by Mr.
Alan Hynd in his book Betrayal From the East as proof of the
investigatory talents of Messrs. Steedman and Stripling, who,
apparently, have never had access to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
The systematic dissemination of "vital lies" by the Nazis about
the Jews should be compared with the systematic propagation of
"vital lies" about the resident Japanese by the Dies Committee.
Here, indeed, is real competition in falsehood.
When the Dies Committee finally got around to holding public
hearings (they had really conducted their hearings in advance in
-the press), it developed that Mr. Dies had been pushed aside to
make way for an ambitious junior colleague, Representative John
Costello of California. Mr. Costello a member in good standing
of the Native Sons of the Golden West (decisively defeated for
re-election to Congress in the May 16, 1944, primary election)
chaired the meetings on the West Coast; and, for his benefit, the
press obligingly referred to the committee as the "Costello Com-
mittee." Hearings were held between June 8 and July 7, 1943.
Following its familiar "smear" techniques, the committee always
managed to call the so-called smear witnesses before it heard from
WRA officials, thereby permitting the newspapers to carry sen-
sational stories which the committee must have known were false
and untrue. Prominently featured, for example, was the testimony
of a discharged employee of WRA. An examination of his testi-
mony later revealed some thirty-five separate and distinct false-
hoods. While the committee was hearing from these disgruntled
witnesses, WRA was not permitted to comment upon the evidence
or to correct, at the time, obvious misstatements of fact. Despite
the laudable efforts of Representative Herman P. Eberharter to
be fair about the evidence, the acting chairman, Mr. Costello,
conducted not a hearing, but an inquisition.
No effort whatever was made to get a really representative
cross section of Southern California opinion. The committee per-
mitted witnesses to tell "scare stories" about "dynamite caches"
and such, which were known to be thoroughly "phony" stories
and which were subsequently exposed as such. Witnesses were
encouraged to threaten the Japanese with mob violence and
actual threats of violence went unrebuked. While the committee
was in session, the so-called "zoot-suit" race riots occurred in
Los Angeles. There is no doubt whatever that the sensational
racist propaganda released by the committee throughout May of
1943 contributed to kindling the fires of racial antagonism in the
community and were in part responsible for the riots.
The Dies Committee never intended to make an investigation
of the evacuation program. It was summoned to California to
make newspaper headlines and to keep the "J a P anese issue" alive,
for political and other purposes. Considering its sensational pre-
hearing publicity releases, the final report of the committee is
laughably mild. For, after all this sound and fury, a majority of
the committee recommended: that the segregation policy be
pushed as rapidly as possible; that a board be established to inves-
tigate evacuees who applied for release; and that a program of
Americanization be instituted (one was already in effect). The
committee also intended to smear the WRA which it did and
to interfere with the release program which it did. But the
effect of the committee's hearings was not precisely that which
had been intended. Generally speaking, the committee was thor-
oughly denounced in the national press for its prejudiced attitude
and its farcical procedures. In short, the hearings badly backfired
and, as a consequence, were quickly dropped. The notable mi-
nority report of Representative Eberharter tells the story. "I can-
not avoid the conclusion," he stated, "that the report of the major-
ity is prejudiced, and that most of its statements are not proven."
6. Free Murder
Since the agitation conducted by both the Senate Subcommit-
tee on Military Affairs and the Dies Committee had, in effect,
backfired on the race baiters, it then became necessary to enlist
the services of various committees of the state legislature, in order
to keep the public properly excited about the Japanese question,
so-called. California's "Litde Dies Committee," headed by Senator
256
Jack Tenney, throughout 1943 was continually sniping at the re-
location program. As a matter of fact, the American Legion had
abandoned its plan for an investigation by announcing that Sena-
tor Tenney's committee would undertake the task for them.
Following the Dies Committee fiasco, various state legislative
committees, with roving assignments, began to fish in the trou-
bled waters.
One of these committees was a State Senate Committee con-
sisting of Senators Hatfield, Quinn, Slater, and Donnelly, which
held hearings throughout the state in October, 1943. In Los
Angeles, the committee was told by Mr. Fred Howser, District
Attorney of Los Angeles County, that "we are going to have
large scale massacres or we might say free murder or man-
slaughter" if any Japanese were permitted to return to the Coast.
The usual parade of special-interest groups was in evidence: the
agricultural section of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce;
the floral industry; the nurserymen's industry all merrily grind-
ing the same axes. Representatives of the Native Sons of the
Golden West volunteered the information that they opposed any
modification of our immigration policy insofar as the Chinese
were concerned. The Gold Star Mothers were represented as
were the Navy Mothers. The following colloquy from the tran-
script is typical of the lush and emotional atmosphere that pre-
vailed:
MRS. BENAPHFL, representing the Gold Star Mothers: We
want to keep the Japs out of California.
SENATOR SLATER: For the duration?
A. No, for all times.
SENATOR SLATER: That's the stuff! *
I testified at these hearings and was cross-examined at length
about my views on "miscegenation," "racial purity," "mongreliza-
/ tion," and similar fancy topics. Watching the proceeding at close
range, I was constantly impressed with the fact that this was not
a hearing but rather the enactment of a native-son pageant or
ritual. It had something of the character of an old-style morality
19 Vol. n, Transcript, p. 171.
play. It provided a marvelous opportunity for those present to
express long-pent-up emotions; to wallow in the corniest senti-
ments; to beat an invisible adversary; and to evidence an un-
speakable self-righteousness. The hearings were conducted in the
assembly chamber of the State Building in Los Angeles. On the
walls of the chamber appear some handsome murals depicting the
colorful background of the state and its varied population. I could
imagine, at moments, that the Indians and Mexicans in these
murals enjoyed the show as much as I did.
This particular "show," however, got badly sidetracked. For
Miss Pearl Buck happened to be in Los Angeles and some of us
prevailed upon her to appear before the committee. She testified
for over an hour, during most of which time the members of the
committee were consulting their watches and suggesting an ad-
journment. They had not planned on her appearance, which had
the effect of disturbing the performance of a time-honored ritual.
Naturally the committee members had to treat Miss Buck with
a certain amount of courtesy and even a measure of respect
(attitudes they never show when dealing with a local resident
who commits the unpardonable heresy of advocating fair play).
While one or two Los Angeles newspapers carried fairly com-
plete stories on Miss Buck's appearance, the press of the state, as
a whole, neglected so much as to mention the fact that she had
appeared as a witness.
Following the appearance of the State Senate Committee came
the so-called Gannon Committee (a committee of the state assem-
bly presided over by Legislator Chester Gannon of Sacramento
County). This particular committee had, as its avowed purpose,
an examination of those individuals and organizations in the
state who were advocating fair play. Its guns were particularly
directed at the Committee on American Principles and Fair Play
which includes among its members Dr. Robert Gordon Sproul
of the University of California, Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur of Stan-
ford University, and Dr. Robert Millikan of the Calif ornia Insti-
tute -of Technology. Among the witnesses questioned at the
Los Angeles hearings was Mrs. Maynard Thayer of Pasadena
a member of the DA.R. and a sponsor of die Committee on
z 5 8
American Principles and Fair Play. As a sample of the hearings,
I quote the following (Mr. Gannon is interrogating, or rather
shouting at, Mrs. Thayer) :
GANNON: What do you know of the Bill of Rights? The
Bill of Rights has no application to state legislation and we
know you attacked the American Legion and the Native
Sons. When was the Bill of Rights written? What is it?
MRS. THAYER: Of course, it's the first ten amendments of the
Constitution.
GANNON: You're like all these people who prate about the
Bill of Rights and don't know a thing about it. The Bill
of Rights is not such a sacred thing after all. Don't you
know at the time the Bill of Rights was written that we
had 150,000 slaves in the U. S.? What did the Bill of Rights
do about that nothing. Slavery was accepted. And yet
you talk about the rights of minorities being protected by
the Bill of Rights.
MRS. THAYER: I think we've made some progress in our in-
terpretation since then. Our committee will back any
groups whose constitutional rights are threatened. It is of
the greatest importance that in time of war we do not get
off into race hatred.
GANNON: Are you a Communist? This sounds like Com-
munist doctrine.
MRS. THAYER: I have been a registered Republican for thirty
years and have been active in various things connected
with good citizenship. This is a matter of American citizen-
ship with which I am concerned, not with the Japanese
as such.
GANNON: You don't have anyone near or dear to you fight-
ing the Japs, do you, Mrs. Thayer? Don't you think if you
had sons you would feel different at this time of the year?
MRS. THAYER: No, what does the war in the Pacific have
to do with the rights of American citizens in California?
I do not want the return of the Japanese to the Pacific
Coast. It is a military matter for the War Department to
decide. Our committee merely says that we must not do
anything in time of war which threatens the principles of
American citizenship.
259
GANNON: What do you know about the morals of the Japs
in Santa Barbara County? Do you want your U. S. govern-
ment to protect a people who farm their wives out -to
another man to procreate his name?
MRS. THAYER: We have no concern or knowledge of this.
GANNON: Do you want to champion the rights of a people
where different sexes do nude bathing together? You don't
know anything about the habits and morals of Japs in
California. Mrs. Thayer, have you ever smelled the odor of
a Jap home?
It is interesting to note how the whole tenor of the Japanese
problem had changed since 1942 when, at the Tolan Committee
hearings, all witnesses were treated with respect and when, so
we were told, the evacuation of the Japanese was being ordered
for their protection and as a matter of "military necessity," By
December, 1943, witnesses were being browbeaten for defend-
ing the Bill of Rights and all Japanese were loathsome and im-
moral creatures whose homes "smelled" bad. The hearings were
too much even for the Los Angeles Times, which has consistently
supported the anti-Japanese forces. The day following the exami-
nation of Mrs. Thayer, the Times carried an editorial captioned:
"Legislative Committees Should Not Be Bullies." Previously the
Times had shown no such laudable concern for the rights of
witnesses before legislative committees. But Mr. Gannon had
committed the unpardonable sin of having insulted Mrs. May-
nard Force Thayer, a stanch Republican, a member of the
D.AJL and a resident of Pasadena. So the Times was moved to
characterize the whole proceeding as a **witch-burning" enter-
prise. Actually the Gannon hearings were no more unfair than
the Dies Committee hearings or the hearings of the Little Dies
Committee or the hearings of the State Senate Committee. The
Los Angeles Examiner, on the other hand, devoted sixty-two inches
of space in one issue to the Gannon Committee hearings. By and
large, however, these particular hearings, like those which had
preceded them, seriously backfired. Time magazine did an excel-
lent piece on the hearings (December 20, 1943) and this, coupled
with the Times editorial, served momentarily to silence the Cali-
260
fornia samurai, who, previously, had been figuratively waving
swords, making hideous grimaces, and shouting imprecations
from Eureka to San Diego.
7. The Tramp of Racial Hatred
The Great California Razzle-Dazzle Campaign continued
throughout 1943 without abatement. During the year two Con-
gressional and three legislative investigations of the relocation
program were conducted. All of these investigations were inspired
by the anti-evacuee forces in California. Thus there was not a
month, and scarcely a week, throughout the entire year in which
the Japanese problem was not being publicly agitated. Through-
out the year, groups were busily organizing, collecting resolu-
tions, circulating petitions, bombarding Congress and the Presi-
dent with memorials. The seeds of suspicion were planted
throughout the Southwest, the Middle West, the East, and the
South. Libels that had been repeated for forty years in California
began to be echoed in Colorado and the Dakotas, in Arkansas
and Illinois. On December 5, 1943, 1500 Iowa, Missouri, and
Nebraska farmers held a protest meeting in Hamburg, Iowa,
objecting to the relocation of any evacuees in the area. 20 Similar
meetings were held in many areas in which, prior to this agitation,
excellent reception had been accorded the evacuees. All during
1943, as Mr. Dillon Myer has said, one could hear the "tramp,
tramp, tramp of racial antagonism."
In California itself hatred was constantly fomented and by
increasingly more unscrupulous means. The use made by the
newspapers of stories told by Americans who had been seized
in Shanghai, and other parts of the Far East, is a case in point.
Doubtless some of these individuals had received shocking and
inhuman treatment; but to direct the resentment which they felt,
and which their stories aroused, at the evacuees was not striking
at Japan: It was striking at American citizens. Dr. J. S. Pyne, a
California dentist, told, for example, of having had "his finger-
20 Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1943.
261
nails pulled out by the roots"; a and Commander C. M. Wassell
told the Los Angeles Rotary Club, "For God's sake keep the
Japs behind barbed wire." M A Mrs. Garnett Gardiner, who spent
seven months in a prison camp in Shanghai, addressed mass meet-
ings in San Diego and Los Angeles. After her appearance in San
Diego, 4000 residents signed a petition against the return of any
evacuees to the Coast. "When I hear," she said, "of those Japs
getting steaks and chocolate bars, which even American citizens
can't always get, and being permitted to throw away meat, I can
hardly believe my ears." M It needs to be emphasized, however,
that Mrs. Gardiner heard only these things. While one can readily
understand even sympathize with such expressions from per-
sons who have suffered injury and mistreatment, it is not so easy
to sympathize with other statements of the same character. For
example, at one legislative hearing, Dr. Ralph L. Phillips, "for 26
years a missionary in China," told how Japanese soldiers had
massacred 50,000 Chinese men on one occasion and "attacked
thousands of girls and women." The story may have been per-
fectly true, but one would expect a representative of Christ on
earth not to make use of such a story, before such a committee,
for the obvious purpose of whipping up racial hatred against
70,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry. 2 * The contrast
between the manner in which these stories were featured always
in connection with an appeal for petitions to be signed, and so
on and the treatment accorded the stories of repatriates on the
Gripsholm who told of "fair enough treatment" in Japan could
not have been greater. 35 It may well be that our repatriates were
instructed to minimize the stories of their mistreatment; but it
is worthy of note that a dozen or more American repatriates,
who had been held in civilian detention camps in Japan, issued
such statements.
During 1943, Governor Warren appointed a committee on
21 Ibid., October 6, 1943.
22 Los Angeles Herald-Express, November 30, 1943; italics mine.
23 Lor Angeles Times, November 17, 1943.
Angeles Herald Express, December 8, 1943.
Los Angeles Daily News, December 7, 1943.
262
race relations in Los Angeles. Mr. Leo Carrillo, a Native Son of
Mexican descent, was appointed a member of this committee.
Shortly after his appointment, Mr. Carrillo made a series of
speeches throughout the state. Here is a sample: 'When people
in Washington say we must protect American- Japanese, they
don't know what they're talking about there's no such thing
as an American- Japanese. If we ever permit those termites to
stick their filthy fingers into the sacred soil of our state again,
we don't deserve to live here ourselves." * The sheriff of Los
Angeles County, another Native Son, made a series of similar
speeches. At a meeting of the State Board of Agriculture in
December, 1943, three members of the board (Dr. Paul S. Taylor,
Mr. Stewart Meiggs, Mrs. Grace McDonald all appointees of
former Governor Gilbert L. Olson) succeeded in passing a reso-
lution in favor of the return of the evacuees to California and
urging fair treatment. Governor Warren lost no time in making
new appointments to the board so that this action might be
reversed (which was done). Individuals who, in testifying before
California legislative committees, had urged fair play were de-
nounced over the radio as "J a p-Lovers" and the "Kiss-a-Jap-a-
Day boys." Typical headlines from the Los Angeles Times were:
"District Attorney Sees Bloodshed if Japs Return Servicemen
Vow to KJQl Nips" (October 19, 1943) and "Rioting Predicted
in Event Japs Return to California" (December 10, 1943). As
during prior agitations, novelists began to write fancy tales about
the Japanese invasion and conquest of Los Angeles. 27 In review-
ing this record, one is reminded of the prediction made by Dr,
Eric Bellquist of the University of California when he told the
Tolan Committee in 1942 that Calif ornia's attitude toward this
problem "will blacken its record for years to come."
As a sample of the tactics employed in this campaign, reference
must be made to a "survey of opinion" conducted by the Los
Angeles Times. The questions and the answers received were
as follows:
26 Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1943.
27 See Invasion! by Whitman Chambers.
263
Yes No
1. Do you think the War Relocation Au-
thority has capably handled the prob-
lem of Japanese in the United States? 639 10,773
2. Do you favor Army control of Japa-
nese in this country for the duration? 1 1,203 372
3. Do you approve of the policy of freeing
avowedly loyal Japanese to take jobs in
the Midwest? 1,139 9,750
4. Would you favor "trading" Japanese
now here for American war prisoners
held in Japan, if it could be arranged? 11,249 2 5^
5. Do you favor a constitutional amendment
after the wajr for the deportation of all
Japanese from this country, and forbid-
ding further immigration? 10,598 732
6. Would you except American-born Japa-
nese if such a plan as the above were
adopted? 1,883 9 l8
7. Would you permanently exclude all Jap-
anese from the Pacific Coast states in-
cluding California?
9^55
999
The results were published in the issue of December 6, 1943,
accompanied by a page of comments from irate readers denounc-
ing the evacuees, and with a pious editorial plea entitled: "Public
Demands New Policy on Japs in U. S." On the same page was
a cartoon in which the West Coast states were shown putting
their thumb down on something labeled "Jap-Molly-Coddling."
It is hardly necessary to point out that each and every one of
these questions was leading, not to mention being misleading and
loaded; and that the order of the questions represents a delicate
but obvious fraud. Who would want to see "avowedly loyal"
evacuees released? As to question No. 5, all Japanese immigration
has been prohibited since 1924 by statute, and since 1908 by
agreement. To couple this phrase with the rest of the question
betrays the venom of the entire questionnaire.
One incident occurring in 1943 serves to show, most effectively,
how this attack on the relocation program was used for partisan
264
political purposes. A well-meaning official of the employment
office of WRA in Cleveland wrote an article in which he stated
that relocatees might be able to teach Eastern and Middle Western
farm hands the merits of a regular bath. This article was seized
upon by the Washington Times-Herald and the fabulous "bath-
tub" story hit the pages of nearly every newspaper in America.
A studied attempt was made to use this story to alienate Middle
Western farm sentiment from the administration. The Master of
the National Grange promptly announced that the statement
sounded like propaganda to him; Senator Taft and Congressman
Costello made speeches in Congress; and the West Coast news-
papers had a field day. "Jap Sanitation Claim Amazes Southland-
ers" reads a headline in the Los Angeles Times for Decmber 7,
1943; "Harby Says Japs Live With Pigs" is another headline
from the same paper (December 8). The Times then proceeded
to run a series of articles, with photographs, showing the
"squalor" of Japanese communities in California. That the un-
fortunate author of this article was a professor in Ohio State
University was cited as further proof of the "day-dreaming of
New Deal professors." The professor happens to be a registered
Republican.
As a matter of fact, there was some truth in the original story.
Having been for four years Chief of the Division of Immigra-
tion and Housing, in California, I can state that Japanese labor
camps were as good as the average and definitely better than
some of the miserably squalid rural housing provided by some
of the largest "farm factories" in the state. Early reports of the
Division, prepared in 1918, complimented the Japanese on their
efforts to provide good labor camps. 28 Another sample of the same
type of propaganda story was one which appeared in the Na-
tional press in October captioned: "Prison Camp Wooing Jails
Jap Girls." The purport of the story was that five girls in a
relocation center had been arrested for "wooing" with German
prisoners of war. While the story received considerable pub-
licity, not a newspaper carried the indignant denial that ap-
peared in the Granada Relocation Center Pioneer.
** Rising Japan by Jabez T. Sunderland, 1918, p. 152.
265
8, The Tule Lake Barrage
The selection of Tule Lake as the center to receive the seg-
regants the "disloyal" evacuees was a serious error. For the
Tule Lake center is located on the sacred soil of California: to
house "disloyal Japs" on this soil was to invite disaster. WRA
selected Tule Lake for three reasons: it is a large center; it has
good fanning lands and offers the best possibilities of becoming
self-sufficient insofar as food is concerned; and it had the largest
number of segregants. Even before Tule Lake had been desig-
nated as the camp for segregants, California elements began to
protest the policy of segregation which, for over a year, they
had been loudly advocating. These "anti" groups were quick to
realize that segregation implied that the loyal elements would
be released. Noting this possibility, the Los Angeles Examiner
quickly reversed its stand in favor of segregation and reverted
to its earlier position that it was impossible to segregate the loyal
from the disloyal. Within a few weeks, the same newspaper was
screaming that the real danger consisted not of the disloyal, but
of the loyal elements. The only honest "J a P s " it stated, were
those in Tule Lake; the others "who are LOOSE in the country"
were dishonest, disloyal, and subversive. 29
The real "riot," in fact, did not occur at Tule Lake: it oc-
curred in the Calif ornia press. The moment the disturbances were
reported, the Los Angeles Examiner got out a special "war extra" *
with a two-inch banner headline across the front page: "14,000
Japs on Strike in State! Army Guarding Fenced-In Nips at Tule
Lake." The Los Angeles Times on November 10 carried a lurid
cartoon captioned "Hon. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," showing
the usual bucktoothed guerilla-like Jap lighting a bomb. For
weeks on end, the Tule Lake "riots" pushed the war news from
the front pages of the California newspapers. Nearly every public
official from Governor Warren to the lowliest justice of the
peace managed to make his particular two-bit contribution. Leg-
islative committees converged on Tule Lake from north, south,
29 Editorial, December 3, 1943. * October zp, 1943.
266
east, and west. There had been "bombs, knives, guns, and vari-
ous lethal weapons" at Tule Lake; a Japanese evacuee had "pished
his way into" the bedchamber of a "white woman" at the camp;
the personnel of the center was "intermingling" with the evac-
uees; "sabotage" had been discovered; the staff was ridden with
"Jap lovers"; the evacuees were being "coddled" and the staff
was "pussyfooting"; and severe measures must be taken. Ray
Richards implied that Mr. Dillon Myer had knowingly failed
to confiscate "lethal weapons"; in fact, he implied that Mr.
Myer had been a party to the "manufacture" of such weapons. 31
A new West Coast Congressional committee was formed in
Washington, as such California Congressmen as Poulson, Engle,
Costello, Lea, and Phillips fought for the headlines "back home."
At fairly regular intervals over a two-week period, Governor
Warren kept announcing that he "would take action" and that
"the menace must be removed" and that "California was threat-
ened." The Dies Committee reopened its hearings in Washington
and two California legislative committees began hearings at Tule
Lake. The usual ex-employees of WRA were paraded before
these committees and interviewed at length in the press. A spate
of editorials appeared urging a bewildering and contradictory
barrage of recommendations: Remove Dillon Myer! Stop the
Segregation Program! Don't Stop the Segregation Program! Stop
Releasing the Japs! Let the Army Take Over! Don't Bother the
Army with the Problem! Deport Them All! Intern Them All!
The prize discovery of these frenzied weeks was that made by
Senator Jack Tenney: evacuees from the Poston center were vio-
lating the state laws of Arizona by "despoiling desert flora." The
Los Angeles Herald-Express carried a headline reading: BARE
DEADLY PERIL AS ARMED JAPANESE STREAM INTO CALIFORNIA.
There was not one word of truth in the story. Congressman Cos-
tello announced on December 8 that "hundreds of Japanese-
Americans and alien Japanese" were being permitted to return to
California. 82 There was not one word of truth in this report. Even
the emphatic denials issued by General Delos Emmons failed to
31 See Call-Bulletin, December 21, 1943.
82 Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1943.
267
quiet these rumors. Investigation revealed that there were exactly
twenty American-born Japanese in Los Angeles County: all ac-
counted for, all women married to Caucasian men, all mothers of
minor children. Newspapers all over the nation carried echoes of
the same stories.
Just to spice the campaign, the Los Angeles Times announced
on December 4, 1943: "450 Cases of Whisky to Go to Tule Lake."
A headline from the same newspaper on December 5 reads:
"Whisky Flow to Tule Lake Under Inquiry." In an editorial
of the same date the Times coyly inquired: "Is there perhaps
some relation between rioting Japanese and a lot of whisky for
Tule Lake?" Needless to say, whisky is not permitted at the
Tule Lake center, nor at any other relocation center. The whisky
in question had been consigned to the town of Tule Lake, Cali-
fornia, not to the relocation center. "These Japs," wrote Ed
Ainsworth in the Los Angeles Times, referring to the evacuees,
"are a depraved breed who can't be dealt with like mischievous
boys at a Sunday-school picnic . . . we should wake up to the
fact that protection of Americans from these degraded Jap brutes
is of more importance than the Little Tokyo Knitting and Broth-
erly Love Club." **
A number of very serious consequences flowed directly from
the newspaper campaign precipitated in California by the Tule
Lake incident. In the first place, the Japanese government broke
off negotiations for the exchange of nationals pending an investi-
gation to be made by the Spanish Embassy. There can be no
doubt, as stated by Mr. R. B. Cozzens, Assistant Director of WRA,
that "the interruption of negotiations . . . was caused by the
malicious campaign which has been carried on by agitators of race
hatred, including public as well as private organizations and in-
dividuals." ** Despite clear warning from Mr. Myer that the
Tule Lake situation was loaded with dynamite, and might in-
volve the most serious complications, the newspapers in Cali-
fornia refused to abandon their carefully planned campaign. They
persisted in the campaign even after negotiations with Japan had
88 November n, 1943.
* UP dispatch, December 15, 1943.
268
been terminated. "Report that Tokyo Halting Exchange Pend-
ing Tule Lake Check Discounted," reads a headline in the Los
Angeles Times for December 13, 1943.
In shouting for Army control of Tule Lake, despite repeated
statements from the War Department that the Army did not
want to assume this additional burden, the newspapers did so
despite the warning that, if such a transfer of control were ef-
fected in this country, Japan would probably transfer control
of its civilian camps to the Japanese Army. Not only did the
press ignore these warnings, but it proceeded to castigate Mr.
Myer for having attempted to impose a "censorship of the press."
When it became apparent, however, that Japan really had broken
off negotiations for the exchange of nationals, then and only then
did the papers quiet down. The manner in which the California
press handled this incident, in fact, seriously backfired. Earlier in
November, Governor Warren had intimated that "anti-Japanese
legislation" would be the principal subject matter of a special
session of the" California legislature called for January, IQ44. 35 T^ e
various California legislative committees that had been holding
hearings during 1943 were planning on filing elaborate reports
upon the basis of which forty or fifty proposed "anti- Japanese"
bills would be enacted. But after he had observed the manner
in which the Tule Lake incident had backfired, the Governor
suddenly decided to limit the legislature's attention to penal re-
form! American civilians in Japan will probably suffer additional
hardships as a result of this campaign in California. iQjj November
24, 1943, Radio Tokyo announced that the Japanese government
"might reconsider its treatment of Americans because of the man-
ner in which Japanese in the United States were being treated^
For "the witch hunters," in Mr. Cozzens' phrase, "were not con-
tent with the facts. Distortions, half-truths and exaggerations were
more in keeping with their desires. Official investigations and
public hearings were used to -dignify the most fantastic stories,
thus giving them a semblance of truth."
Thoughtful Americans will do well to consider with care
what Congressman Herman P. Eberharter has to say in his minor-
35 See Los Angeles Herald-Express, November 26, 1943.
269
ity report on the Dies Committee investigation of the Tule Lake
disturbances. Apropos of the majority report, he writes:
^Groundless public fears and antagonisms have been stirred
up^at a time when national unity is more than ever needed,
and widespread distrust has been engendered toward the
operations of a hard-working and conscientious agency.
Even more important, the investigation has encouraged
the American public to confuse the people in relocation
centers with our real enemies across the Pacific.
Thus it [the investigation] has fostered a type of racial
thinking which is already producing ugly manifestations
and which seems to be growing in intensity. Unless this
trend is checked, it may eventually lead to ill-advised actions
which will constitute an everlastingly shameful blot on our
national record.^
The Tule Lake incident also precipitated a grave constitutional
problem. Taking advantage of the incident itself, certain groups
in California began to renew their plan to strip the Nisei of Amer-
ican citizenship. On December 9, 1943, the Dies Committee forced
Mr. Biddle to suggest, or rather to imply, that an act of Con-
gress, along these lines, would be constitutional. He referred,
of course, to the Kibei and to those Nisei who had given nega-
tive answers to questions No. 27 and No. 28 during the regis-
tration. The difficulty is that 50 per cent of the nearly 15,000
evacuees at the Tule Lake center are children under seventeen
years of age. It will be recalled that the registration itself was re-
stricted to evacuees over seventeen years of age. Any such legis-
lation, therefore, is likely to divest thousands of American-born
evacuees, under seventeen years of age, of their citizenship al-
though they have never expressed themselves one way or another
about their loyalty. At the present writing, it seems to be a fore-
gone conclusion that the Nisei in Tule Lake will be stripped of
their American citizenship (in the manner suggested by Mr.
Biddle) and eventually deported to Japan. 87 Mr. Warren Ather-
ton, National Commander of the American Legion, is now de-
88 Quoted in PM, March 18, 1944.
87 Statement of Air. Cozzens, October 2, 1943.
270
manding the deportation of all aliens regardless of whether they
are in Tule Lake or elsewhere. 88
"The "anti" groups in California will not rest until they have
secured the deportation of all the evacuees of every person of
Japanese ancestry in the United States^ Whether they will suc-
ceed in this campaign remains, of course, to be seen. But no one
should be under any illusions about the real objective itself. The
curiously belated "final report" of General J. L. De Witt on the
evacuation program (released January 20, 1944) was skillfully
used as still an additional step in the carefully planned propa-
ganda campaign. Finally the release, on January 28, 1944, of the
horrible and shocking story of the mistreatment of American
prisoners of war aroused a wave of justifiable indignation through-
out the nation. As might be expected, however, the West Coast
press, which had been clamoring for five months for permission
to break the story, managed to sandwich into the columns they
devoted to it little items about the evacuees. Reading the edi-
tions of the West Coast papers that carried Captain Dyess' story,
one got the unmistakable impression that it was being deliberately
used, not for the purpose of whipping up hatred of Japan, not
for the purpose of exposing the barbarous nature of the enemy,
but as propaganda in support of the deportation campaign. The
story was accompanied, at least in the West Coast press, by no
official words of caution no warning, for example, that Amer-
ican hatred should not be directed against the evacuees. It was
not accompanied by an explanation of why fascists are fascists.
It was immediately seized upon with great glee by the leaders
of the Fight- Japan-First clique the Hearsts and the McCormicks
eager to get possession of such an effective weapon on the eve
of the opening of a great second front in Europe. When die story
was released, police in such cities as Denver immediately went on
the alert, fearing mob violence against the evacuees in those
areas.
The effect of this agitation in California is clear: it leads di-
rectly to mob violence; it constitutes an incitement to racial
hatred. In Martinez, California, Mrs. Horton Terry (who happens
88 Boston, January 30, 1944.
271
to be of Japanese descent, married to a Caucasian defense worker,
the mother of an American-born child) has been frequently in-
timidated and threatened by her neighbors. "No Japs Wanted
Here" signs have been posted in view of the apartment house in
which she resides. It is worthy of note, however, that when a
mob threatened to drive her from the community, people *from
all over California wrote letters of protest. Mrs. Terry has a
brother now serving with the American forces in Europe. Sim-
ilar campaigns have been launched near Hayward, California.
The Colorado legislature has now begun to investigate its local
"Japanese problem." One witness testified: "I doubt that Cali-
fornia could be entirely wrong in its stand against the Japa-
nese. California is determined not to let the Jap return, even after
the war." ** At these hearings, nine Nisei soldiers appeared and
asked to be heard. "We are going overseas. We're going to be
hungry and wounded and we may not come back. But let us
have this assurance that our loved ones over here won't be dis-
criminated against." It remains to be seen whether they will be
given this assurance, even in Colorado, where there are some
public officials who speak like Americans. "I hate the Japanese,"
said Senator Roy Chrysler of Denver, "God help me, with all
the bitterness I possess. But never would I take out my personal
revenge by voting for a law which violates the first principle
which has made America great justice for all." Senator Chrysler
has a son in the Army and his grandson was killed at Pearl Har-
bor.
"I beg of you men and women of the most important part of
our country," Pearl Buck told a Town Hall group in Los An-
geles, November i, 1943, "as I now believe California is, to keep
your wits and common sense. For on your attitude toward Asia
depends the attitude, I am convinced, of our whole country.
In a curious fashion you are or soon will be the leader of the
nation. The people in our Eastern states are already looking toward
you as these great questions arise of how to deal with the people
**Lof Angeles Times, February 6, 1943.
272
of Asia and South America. 'What does the West Coast say?'
I hear that question asked every day and wherever a policy
is about to be shaped. The Eastern states are far more sensitive
to your opinions today than they have ever been before. Im-
perceptibly the center of gravity in our country is moving west-
ward. I say confidently that the future foreign policies of our
government will be primarily decided by you, looking out over
the Pacific, and not by those who face the Atlantic. The reason
is that the center of the world has moved from Europe to Asia.
. . . Once in an aeon a single people is given the opportunity
to shape the world's direction. That opportunity is now ours.
And because you in California face the Pacific and Asia, you
among us have the crux in your hands. You can, by what you
decide, be a barrier or you can be a gateway to a new and
better world, for us and for all peoples."
At the conclusion of this speech, Miss Buck was warmly ap-
plauded. A majority of the people of Calif ornia are fair-minded;
and many of them have the courage of their convictions. I could
cite, if space permitted, a long list of distinguished citizens of
California who have not hesitated to urge fair play for the evac-
uees; who have denounced proposals to strip the Nisei of their
American citizenship; and who have called attention to the un-
fairness of the current attacks being leveled at the WRA. At
every hearing in California, dozens of citizens have come for-
ward to speak for fair treatment and to urge a respect for con-
stitutional rights. The "anti" groups described in this chapter do
not speak for a majority opinion in California; the newspapers
quoted do not voice a majority sentiment. As a California!!, I
take pride in the fact that, during a period of widespread hysteria
and intense prejudice, there have been citizens like Dr. Robert
Gordon Sproul, Mr. Chester Rowell, and Dr. Paul S. Taylor, and
many others, who, by their courage, their intelligence, and their
conspicuous fairness have upheld the rights of a luckless minor-
ity. It is my best judgment that these men speak for a majority
of the residents of California.
273
CHAPTER VIII
Towards the Future
AT THE end of 1943, the Japanese-Americans were distributed
somewhat as follows: between 8000 and 10,000 were in the United
States Army; about 87,000 were in the relocation centers (includ-
ing nearly 15,000 in the Tule Lake center); 8000 who had volun-
tarily moved from the West Coast and 20,000 who had never re-
sided in the Western Defense Command were not involved in the
relocation program. In addition, 19,000 evacuees had been re-
leased from the centers during the year. They were to be found
primarily in the Middle West, the inter-mountain "West, and the
East: 3500 in Chicago; 1083 in Denver; 740 in Salt Lake City; 787
in Cleveland; 531 in Detroit; 464 in Minneapolis; 406 in New
York City; around 350 in the District of Columbia and the rest
in other areas. Several thousand evacuees were away from the
centers on seasonal work permits. Immediately after Pearl Har-
bor, 5234 resident Japanese were arrested on Presidential warrants
as "dangerous enemy aliens." Of this group, 40 per cent had been
cleared by the authorities; around 1300 were paroled to WRA
centers, and others were released. Of those originally arrested,
2079 were ordered interned for the duration (in special detention
camps operated by the Department of Justice not to be con-
fused with WRA centers). By the end of 1943, 368 evacuees had
been repatriated to Japan.
There are so many uncertain factors involved that it is impos-
sible to chart the future course of WRA policy. Of the 19,000
evacuees who have been granted permanent leaves, 85 per cent
are Nisei. Thus nearly 50 per cent of the Nisei eligible for release
are already outside the centers. The general success of the in-
dividual relocation program will doubtless encourage others to
274
apply for release. As more and more Nisei become established
outside the centers, they will send for their families and relatives.
It is quite likely, also, that WRA will experiment in the future
with "group relocation," so as to make it possible for small groups
of families to relocate as units. Such a policy would assist in
getting the Issei out of the centers. Now that the Nisei are being
drafted, Selective Service will doubtless draw additional evacuees
from the centers. Assuming that Congress does not reverse pres-
ent WRA policies, it is possible that an additional 30,000 evacuees
can be relocated by the end of 1944.
However this will leave a "residue" population the lame, the
halt, and the blind; old Issei bachelors; aged Issei couples; teen-'
age Nisei who are likely to remain in the centers for the dura-
tion of the war. Resistance to relocation is still an important
factor. Recently in one center 75 per cent of the Issei indicated
that they intend to remain in the center for the duration and
28 per cent of the Nisei expressed a similar intention. While
WRA is trying to minimize the number of residue cases the
future "reservation population" still it is not reasonable to ex-
pect that all of the evacuees can be relocated before the war is
over. As the center population declines, some of the centers will
probably be closed. It is possible that one or two of them will
be converted into genuine resettlement projects, of a co-operative
character, and gradually turned over to the remaining evacuees.
This would mean that, at the end of the war, there would be
one or two small rural Japanese colonies left in the inter-mountain
West. As to the Tule Lake segregants, some will doubtless apply
for a review of their cases and a few will be released (the first
couple was released on April 4, 1944). Of those remaining in
Tule Lake, some will request repatriation, others will probably
be deported to Japan at die end of the war.
The relocation centers could probably be emptied tomorrow,
if the ban on return to the West Coast were lifted. When I
visited the centers in the fall of 1943, I found many evacuees
who were remaining in the centers primarily in the hope of
eventually being able to return to the West Coast. California
was a favorite topic of discussion. A survey in the Heart Moun-
275
tain center revealed that nearly 50 per cent would return to
California or the West Coast, If they were permitted to do so.
People cannot live in a particular area for most of their lives
without coming to regard it, however ironically, as "home." The
hope of an eventual return to their homes is certainly one of the
resistances militating against relocation at the present time.
I also talked with numerous Issei farmers who had investigated
the possibilities of produce fanning in other areas. The prospects,
they reported, were not encouraging. The one type of fanning
they know intensive produce farming requires certain types
of soil and certain climatic conditions. Many of them still re-
tained interests in California: leases, machinery, equipment, prop-
erty in storage. They felt that their best prospects of again be-
coming self-supporting were on the West Coast. Some of them
would be willing to relocate elsewhere, if they could return to
the Coast for the purpose of liquidating their holdings and ar-
ranging their affairs. As the Issei come to realize that there will
not be a mass return, they will be more inclined to leave the cen-
ters. For, in the absence of a mass return, it would be impossible
to reopen Japanese businesses which catered almost exclusively
to a Japanese clientele.
Agitation against the return of the evacuees has served to direct
many of them eastward. The Nisei, in particular, are very bitter
on the subject of California. A recent article in the Heart
Mountain Sentinel (September 8, 1943) indicates current Nisei
thmking;
Californians need not exert themselves to prevent the re-
turn of evacuees. Evacuees know when they are not wanted.
They are not looking back. Their eyes are projected east-
ward, where people are in control of their emotions, where
greed, avarice and spite play minor roles in the drama of
human relations. . . . California's pattern of living and
thinking is designed to hate Japanese. It's a new and differ-
ent California, in an ugly, unbelievable sort of way. . . .
California is foreign, and will always be to the evacuees.
In the seething cauldron that is Calif ornia since Pearl Harbor,
the s&ttn has risen to the surface, overflowing and over-
276
running the Golden State, contaminating and putrefying,
giving it a sour, diseased, unrecognizable complexion.
The trouble with California is that it doesn't do anything
in half measures. It always goes for the jackpot. It builds
the biggest race tracks, the roomiest stadium, the most
sprawling estates. It grows the biggest oranges and grape-
fruits. And even if they aren't the biggest and the best,
Californians really believe that they are. It's a complex. And
so when they go in for race hatred, watch out; they really
do it up brown.
Returning evacuees will find it will be only a matter of
time before they will be booted out again. Evacuees will do
well to forget California completely, to lock its memory in
their chamber of horrors. They've just lost a friend who
ran true to form in the pinch; they will find a better and true
friend on the rockbound Atlantic, on the rolling plains of
the expansive midwest, and on the hills and dales of the
stretching Alleghenies.
Of the 93,717 persons evacuated from California, William
Flynn of the San Francisco Chrowcle estimates that 50,000 will
never return. As a result of a survey which he conducted, Mr.
Flynn came to the conclusion that 50 per cent of the evacuees
are determined not to return to the West Coast; 40 per cent are
undecided although they would "like to return"; and 10 per cent
are fearful of the consequences if they do return. Many evacuees
live for the day when they can return to their former home
town "just to see what would happen." Nisei soldiers, who
have visited the West Coast on furloughs, went there primarily
to see, as many of them have told me, how they would be re-
ceived. Much to their surprise, they did not meet with unpleasant
incidents. They were entertained in the canteens; welcomed by
their former friends; and, in many cases, royally entertained. The
predicted "violence" and "free murder" did not take place. In
the files of WRA are perhaps 50,000 letters written by residents
of California vouching for the character and patriotism of a par-
ticular evacuee some person that the writer knew, as employee,
friend, neighbor, or classmate.
While the Little Tokyos on the West Coast will probably
277
never exist again, Americans of Japanese ancestry have a place
in California, Oregon, and Washington. Relocation is a back-
stream movement; it is an attempt to reverse the current of
migration. Unquestionably some of the evacuees will return, not
immediately but gradually, not en masse but individually. They
will return perhaps the better for the experiences they have un-
dergone. "Living away from the west coast," writes Larry Tajiri,
"we felt more a part of the whole of America and less a member
of a minority group. We liked New York because there we felt
that we were losing our racial identity."
1. The Opportunity Is Ours
In considering the future of the Japanese-Americans, it is im-
portant to recognize that a unique opportunity now exists, not
only to eradicate the dangerous tension zone of race feeling on
the West Coast, but to change our racial ideologies in general.
In the case of the Japanese-Americans, this opportunity arises by
reason of the concurrence of a number of largely unforeseen
factors which have tended to accelerate the process of cultural
change. This process involves a change in the thinking and feel-
ing of the minority group itself, as well as a change in the
thinking and feeling of the dominant group. What is said in this
section has, of course, particular reference to Japanese-Americans;
but to some extent the same observations would apply to other
racial minorities.
In the first place, the visible and invisible ties which existed
between the Japanese settlements on the West Coast and Japan
have been severed. This severance has occurred all the way from
Alaska to Peru. The Japanese communities have been uprooted;
the Little Tokyos have vanished. As long as Japanese were con-
centrated in relatively small areas on the Coast, there was always
the possibility of friction and the manipulation of the resulting
tensions by Japan or by Germany or by local race bigots. While
this possibility still exists, the dangers have been minimized.
The relocation of the evacuees has taken the "Japanese issue"
away from the West Coast bigots. The problem has now become
278
part of a national minority question for the solution of which
the federal government has begun to assume a measure of re-
sponsibility. While in the past the federal government has been
powerless to cope with anti-Japanese agitation on the West Coast,
it has been finally forced to assume exclusive jurisdiction. It was
the federal government that ordered evacuation; it is the federal
government that must assume responsibility for the direct and
indirect consequences of mass evacuation. Evacuation has been
but one of a number of wartime measures all of which have
served to bring the whole question of race relations within the
reach of the democratic process applied at the federal level. In
other words, the management of race relations has become a
function of the federal government.
Wide dispersal of the evacuees should reduce some of the preju-
dice against them. For race tensions do tend to abate in relation
to the number of racially different persons in a particular area
and to their general geographical distribution within that area.
While I do not share the view that race prejudice is directly
related to the size of a particular minority in a particular area,
nevertheless Dr. David P. Barrows is probably right in urging
that this relationship is an important factor in the problem. 1
A factor of still greater importance, however, is that Japanese-
Americans are now becoming known to Americans in the East
and Middle West. The national press has already begun to refute
some of the prejudicial nonsense that has so consistently issued
from the West Coast newspapers. Other colored minorities, nota-
bly the Negro minority, have become interested in the Japanese-
Americans. 2 Not only are the racial minority groups coming to
recognize the similarity of their problems, but, as a nation, we
are beginning to realize that we have a race problem in the
United States and not a series of unrelated local issues. With this
recognition comes a widespread realization that we can never
"solve" any one minority problem until we undertake a solution
of the race problem as such.
The kind of world that emerges from this war will have a
1 See "Citizen and Alien," California Monthly, April, 1942.
2 See CoTnmon Ground, Winter, 1944, p. 94.
279
great deal to do with the future of racial minorities in the
United States. If it is a world that breeds fear and distrust be-
tween nations, then fear and distrust will continue to separate
groups inside the nation. Not only will Germany and Japan be
overwhelmingly defeated, but we are not likely to repeat our
former errors in dealing with Germany; and I am sure that the
Japanese will not be dealt with in a tender manner. In the past,
both nations have manipulated the West Coast Japanese issue to
their own advantage. Until both nations are liquidated as military
powers, we can never hope for a solution of the resident Japa-
nese issue. Long before Pearl Harbor even the Nisei had come
to recognize that they were distrusted because Japan was dis-
trusted.
In an article addressed to the Nisei, the New Canadian of
December 25, 1940, had this comment to offer:
You are feared and disliked because the country of your
father's origin, Japan, is in open alliance with Germany
and Italy, two powers and two systems against which
Canada is pledged to war to the death. This is no fault of
any of you; but many Canadians, understandably, wonder
if and how many of you rejoice at this alliance.
You are feared and disliked because Japan seems very much
akin in ideals and government to an authoritarian, undemo-
cratic state. Again, no fault of yours; but, honestly, Nisei,
you would be much more trusted and respected if you did
not attempt to tell Occidental Canadians that Japan is a
Japanese version of democracy. And there's no need to be
apologetic; there is no scientific nor historic reason for sup-
posing that a system devised and developed in one part of
the earth is necessarily fitted for another part.
You are feared and disliked because of what, for lack of
a better term, may be called your "questionable relations"
with Japan, "dual citizenship" and the whole vague aspect
of your allegiance. This is a cruel question to raise. It is
natural and proper to love. and value the country and culture
of one's fathers; but these times are not natural and if you are
not for this country you are against her.
Finally, and as importantly, you are feared and disliked
280
because you do not do very much about clearing up the
fear and dislike. Take the matter of friendship and getting to-
gether; there are many Occidental Canadians, with the kindli-
est and most interested intentions towards you and your
possible human and cultural offerings, who simply do not
know how to get to know you. It is up to you to break
down your own barriers of conservatism and formality, not
the Occidentals. Mention of shyness brings up a notable
reason for calling you ostriches. You have worked yourselves
into a resentment-complex because you are denied a few
rights in this country. Admittedly it is not fair, but when
weighed against the above mentioned causes of your un
popularity, it is understandable.
The war is in process of removing "this whole vague aspect
of allegiance" and of liquidating these external causes of fear and
distrust. One factor in the distrust of the Nisei on the West Coast
and in Hawaii was the doubt, in the minds of friends and enemies
alike, of just how they would act in a crisis. It was assumed, by
those who knew them, that they would be loyal; but no one
could attest to their loyalty as an unequivocal fact since the test
itself had not arisen. Not only has the test finally occurred, but,
thanks to the good sense of an enlightened administration, the
Nisei have finally been afforded a chance to demonstrate their
loyalty. Loyalty does not exist in a vacuum. It grows or withers
in response to external as well as subjective factors. It must be
given a chance to express itself. As one observer has said of the
Nisei: <c You must give them something to be loyal to."
The Nisei have met the test of their loyalty in a magnificent
manner under the most trying circumstances. The fact that they
have done so will, in the long run, finally remove those long-
standing doubts and misgivings. In this sense, one can even say
that the war has been a war of liberation for the Nisei liberation
from doubt, suspicion, hatred, and distrust. As the American and
Canadian evacuees move eastward and settle in communities in
which there is no traditional prejudice against them, some of their
sensitivity vanishes, some of their notorious reserve disappears,
and the "oppression psychosis" is lifted. The circumstances of
281
their new life are forcing them to make that initial first step
toward the other person.
i^nother factor of great importance has been pointed out by
Dr. Robert E. Park. 3 "Isolation," he writes, "as a geographical
and geopolitical fact has ceased to exist and isolationism as a dec-
trine and policy has become obsolete." The isolationism that we
practised in foreign affairs was related to the isolationism we
practised toward racial minorities at home. Since a change in the
one type of isolationism is likely to bring about a change in the
other, the whole minorities question is inextricably interwoven
with the outcome of the war and the nature of the peace. "In
the prosecution of the war," writes Dr. Park, "and in the or-
ganization of the peace, racial diversities of the American popu-
lation will be either a national handicap or a national asset,
depending upon our ability to make our racial policies and our
racial ideology conform to our national interests. We have not
succeeded in doing that yet. A revolution in race relations in
,the United States may be impending, but it has not yet arrived.
-,3?he war has changed the nature of the race problem, but it has
not changed fundamentally the mind of the American peopJ&J!
It should also be pointed out that the modern social sciences
now have a good working knowledge of how to deal with the
problem of cultural conflicts and how to assist in the process of
acculturation (anthropology has recently become an "applied
science"). In the past, the inadequate state of the social sciences
was responsible for an enormous amount of misinformation on
the subject of "race" and "racial conflicts." It was an American
economist, Francis A. Walker, who first developed the fearful
notion that "foreign immigrants" were driving Anglo-Saxon
workers from their "rightful heritage" in America. It was an
American sociologist, Dr. Edward Alsworth Ross, chief theo-
retician of the anti-Oriental forces in California, who gave wide
popularity to the kindred notion that the Anglo-Saxons were
committing "race suicide." Both notions have had a baneful in-
fluence on race relations in the United States.
The modem social sciences have also made some important
* American Society in Wartime, p. 180.
282
contributions to our understanding of immigration and migra-
tion movements. In prewar days, such publicists as K. K. Kawak-
ami and the Reverend Sidney Gulick deeply impressed American
church groups with the argument that Japan must solve its popu-
lation problem by sending immigrants throughout the world.
Japan itself made excellent use of the argument, thereby subtly
cultivating the "yellow peril" myth. Not only did Japan sell its
own people this particular bill of goods, but it consistently lied
about its population problem, juggled its population statistics,
and, at the time of the Washington Conference, spent a million
dollars on publicity and propaganda which was largely predi-
cated on this same argument. Immigration from Japan did
not come from the areas where the pressure of population on
resources was greatest; emigration never made a dent on Japan's
so-called "population problem"; nor can what is termed a popu-
lation problem be solved by emigration. To advance such an
argument is usually to obscure the real causes of the problem,
which are to be found, in most cases, in the social structure of the
particular country. India has, perhaps, the most acute population
problem in the world today. Yet, as H. N. Brailsford has so
conclusively demonstrated, emigration is not the answer to the
problem.
There is more interest in, and more intelligent discussion of,
the race question today than at any time in our history. Over
two hundred interracial committees have been established in
American urban communities since the war. At a conference held
in Chicago in March, 1944, a national "clearinghouse" committee
was established to assist in co-ordinating the work of these com-
mittees. Not since the Civil War, writes Horace Cayton, has the
Negro problem received the attention that it is receiving today.
Negroes from the Deep South are moving north and west (500,-
ooo to the North, 170,000 to the West); Japanese-Americans are
moving into the Middle West and East; "whites" from the Deep
South have moved north and west by the thousands. Northern
draftees have been trained in Southern army camps and Southern
draftees have been trained outside the South. With increasing
industrialization, trade-unionism is getting a real foothold in some
283
Southern areas. The militant fight waged by the CIO and nu-
merous AFL unions against discrimination is a powerful leavening
influence. All of these developments,, and many others not men-
tioned, merely indicate that the rate of cultural change in America
is being rapidly accelerated. In considering what can be done,
as well as what should be done, about race relations in the United
States, these factors must be kept in mind.
2. Change within the Minority Groups
One of the most hopeful aspects of the relocation program
is that it now becomes possible for the Nisei to win full accept-
ance. By loosening the ties of the Japanese family system and
by breaking the barriers of Little Tokyo, many formerly re-
stricting influences have been removed. "The attack on Pearl
Harbor," writes Yoshitaka Takagi, "ended the old traditional
bondage to the established leadership, and Japanese-Americans
were freed for the first time from the rigid political-social ma-
chinery which had so tightly held them, freed to express their
own opinions and to act according to their individual con-
sciences."
Great changes have come over the Nisei since December 7,
1941. They are asserting themselves today, not as Japanese-
Americans or as American-Japanese, but as American citizens.
They are using new techniques to win respect and acceptance.
They are discovering the red American tradition the tradition
of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and Lincoln and they are no
longer confused by its bogus counterpart. "New vistas," to quote
from an editorial in the Heart Mountain Sentinel of May 22, 1943,
"have been opened to the Nisei. Economic opportunities denied
them by the west coast's deep-rooted prejudices are being made
available to skilled and trained individuals in other sections of
the land. Unions are being opened up, and evacuees are being
accepted in literally hundreds of communities as social equals
and fellow-Americans. The evacuees are re-discovering the real
America, to their and America's advantage."
They are reaching out to identify themselves with other mi-
284
nority groups, such as Negroes* Chinese, and Filipinos. They are
showing a very healthy interest in the Negro problem. They are
subjecting their own experience, and the experience of their
parents, to an extremely exacting scrutiny and criticism. Recog-
nizing that there might be factors in their own background that
contributed to the prejudice against them, they are seeking to
discover and to isolate these factors. They are becoming increas-
ingly interested in the play of social forces in American life.
Their publications contain excellent editorials on the poll tax,
on the Fair Employment Practice Committee, and on similar
issues. The experience of relocation has aroused in them a new
consciousness of the value of civil liberties and they are inclined,
as one of them has said, "to start swinging back" at their de-
tractors.
They are using the courts, with increasing frequency, as a
means of winning recognition of their rights a procedure
thoroughly in keeping with the manner by which all minority
groups, economic and political as well as racial, have tradition-
ally functioned in America. They have borrowed the strike
technique from the labor movement and used it to win accept-
ance of their rights. They have shown a real understanding of
the labor movement and a growing political maturity. The Nisei
leaders are constantly urging the Nisei to join American organ-
izations, or rather to join with other Americans in mixed or inter-
racial organizations. Realizing that the Japanese-American church
had a tendency to set them apart, they have taken a strong stand
against the segregated church and against all types of segrega-
tion. They are reaching out, in a variety of ways, to function
as American citizens.
It should also be observed that evacuation has leveled off many
social distinctions within the group. It has brought "to an un-
precedented degree the majority of us into the ranks of the
working proletariat." 4 Evacuees are tending to identify their
views with those of the economic group to which they have
become attached in the process of relocation, rather than to the
ethnic group itself or the Japanese-American family or the
* Pacific Citizen, September n, 1943.
285
Japanese-American community. Typical of these new-found
attitudes are these words from an article by Tom Shibutani:
"The only salvation for the Nisei or for anyone in a racial
minority is to throw off the narrow personal interest in local
and personal problems and to join in the larger battle for a
better world. The Nisei must try to lose their identity and must
take part in a united effort with people of other racial extrac-
tions to defeat fascism and to reconstruct the world along lines
that are more conducive to peaceful and co-operative living. We
should begin in our own backyards by. getting rid of our own
prejudices against peoples of other races and creeds. By being
prejudiced against the Negroes, Jews, Chinese, and Filipinos, the
Nisei are contributing to their own self-destruction." All over
the country, racial minorities are showing a similar tendency to
move out of their segregated worlds and to live in the full
stream of American life. This tendency is in itself an indication
of cultural change. In fact, there are observers who insist, and
with much evidence to support their views, that the rate of cul-
tural change within the minority groups is actually faster than
in the nation as a whole.
3. The Nisei and the War
The California groups who opposed the induction of the Nisei
into the armed services were, from their point of view, extremely
farsighted. They realized that if the Nisei were given a chance
to demonstrate their loyalty in this concrete fashion, the ma-
jority of Americans would admire their spirit and would want
to accept them as fellow citizens. The opposition of Southern
race bigots to the use of Negroes in combat units is premised
upon a similar consideration. But this being a total war, it has
become difficult to restrict the opportunities of the minority
groups in the services. The hero of Pearl Harbor was Done
Miller, a Negro; the hero of the Aleutian campaign was Jose
Martinez, a Mexican sugar-beet worker from Colorado.
It is for this reason that the War Department's announcement
of the formation of a special Japanese-American combat team
286
was the boldest and most effective step taken by the administra-
tion to win for the Nisei a measure of acceptance in American
life. While discrimination still exists in the sense that Nisei are
not eligible for all branches of the service, still the discrimination
against them in Selective Service has been removed. Today
Japanese-Americans are serving with our armed forces all over
the world. Over 200 of them are in the Merchant Marine. Be-
tween 8000 and 10,000 are in the Army.
They have given an excellent account of themselves. Some
have served as intelligence officers in the Southwest Pacific with
distinction and courage. A Japanese-American combat battalion
was among the first units to land at Salerno. This particular bat-
talion has suffered casualties amounting to more than 40 per cent
of its entire personnel. One Distinguished Service Cross and thir-
teen Silver Stars have been bestowed on members of the unit for
gallantry in action, and fifty-eight, or more, have been awarded
the Purple Heart. Sergeant Kazuo Komoto and Sergeant Fred
Nishitsujii have been cited for gallantry in dispatches from the
Southwest Pacific. Several hundred Nisei are with the British and
American forces in India as intelligence officers. Nisei have served
in Africa, India, Italy, Attu, and in the European theater of the
war. General Mark Clark has repeatedly praised the Nisei soldiers
in his command. Lieutenant Colonel Karl Gould has described*
the Nisei as playing an "indispensable role in the war" as inter-
preters. Brigadier General R. E. Mittelstaedt and Colonel Farrant
L. Turner have praised the Nisei in unstinted terms.
Sergeant Ben Kuroki, of Hershey, Nebraska, has taken part in
twenty-nine combat flights over Hitler's Europe. He participated
in the raid on the Ploesti oil fields. He wears die Air Medal with
four Oak Leaf Clusters. He has been on bombing missions over
Wilhelmshaven, Bordeaux, Danzig, Vegesack, Minister, La Pal-
lice. When he was in Los Angeles recently a local radio station
canceled a broadcast in which he was scheduled to take part on
the ground that the appearance of a Japanese-American on a
radio program in California would raise a "controversial issue"!
When he spoke in San Francisco, however, before the Common-
wealth dub, he received a ten-minute standing ovation. "I had
287
thought," he said, "that after Ploesti and twenty-nine other mis-
sions so rough it was just short of a miracle I got through them,
I wouldn't have to fight for acceptance among my own people
all over again. In most cases, I don't, and to those few who help
breed fascism in America by spreading such prejudice, I can only
reply in the words of the Japanese-American creed: 'Although
some individuals may discriminate against me, I shall never be-
come bitter or lose faith, for I know that such persons are not
representative of the majority of the American people.' The
people who wrote that creed are the thousands of Japanese-
Americans whom certain groups want deported immediately.
These Japanese-Americans have spent their lives proving their
loyalty to the United States, as their sons and brothers are prov-
ing it now on the bloody battlefields of Italy. It is for them, in
the solemn hope that they will be treated justly rather than with
hysterical passion, that I speak today."
In literally hundreds of ways the Japanese-Americans, once
provided with a chance to demonstrate their loyalty, have done
so in the most conclusive manner. They have purchased war
bonds in the relocation centers; organized volunteers for victory
committees; made radio transcriptions for the OWI; and, within
the limitations of their detention, have done everything in their
power to aid in the war effort. At the time the Tokyo fliers
were executed, the Nisei soldiers in training at Camp Shelby
bought 1 100,000 in war bonds in a single day to demonstrate
how they felt about this act of barbarism. Nisei girls are serving
in the WAG It is interesting to note, however, that, with rare
exceptions, little news of their participation in the war effort
has been carried in the West Coast newspapers.
The magnificent spirit shown by these people, both here and
in Hawaii, cannot but win the admiration of the American people.
Faced with such conclusive proof of loyalty, plans for the depor-
tation of the parents of these soldiers become monstrously unfair.
To turn from a dispatch from Italy listing the casualties of the
Japanese-American combat unit to an item in which some dema-
gogue is advocating a constitutional amendment to strip the Nisei
of their citizenship is to experience a feeling of extreme nausea. I
288
should like to see Pfc. Yoshinao Omiya, who lost the sight of
both eyes from a land-mine explosion during the Italian cam-
paign, attend the next annual convention of the Native Sons of
the Golden West. In the days, weeks, and months to follow, the
Nisei will be steadily building up an indefeasible title to fair
treatment, to full citizenship, just as the loyal Issei will be estab-
lishing, by their excellent conduct under the most trying circum-
stances, an irrefutable claim to the chance to become American
citizens. There are some facts which not even bigots can ignore.
There are some facts which, unadorned and unelaborated, speak
far more convincingly than the rantings of a Representative
Rankin or an editorial in the Los Angeles Examiner.
4. Towards a Policy and Program
While an excellent opportunity exists today to liquidate the
last vestiges of racism in America, this opportunity must be used
in a dynamic fashion. Sensing the factors that I have outlined
above, our domestic fascists are seeking a national alliance on
the race question. Reaction against further changes in the racial
status quo has already begun to crystallize on a national scale,
with representatives from the Deep South extending the right
hand of bigotry to their colleagues from the Far West and seek-
ing support in Northern industrial communities. With the migra-
tion of racial groups, the issue has arisen in Detroit and Chicago,
in Seattle and Los Angeles: "Are Southern patterns of racism to
be implanted here?" "Is segregation the answer?" This much is
to be said for the advocates of White Supremacy: they have
a policy and a program. They know what they want. In the
absence of a federal policy and program, these forces might win
in America by default. They realize that their position has been
seriously jeopardized, but they are resourceful and determined.
When the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the
Lonnie Smith case on April 4, 1944 (upsetting the Texas "white"
primary), Southern spokesmen in Congress, with one accord,
denounced the decision. They not only denounced the decision
they spewed contempt upon the Supreme Court, boasted that
289
they would defy its mandate and evade the effect of the decision
by trickery, and voiced their determination to uphold the White
Supremacy doctrine by every means at their disposal. There is
only one way to cope with these individuals and that is to mo-
bilize majority American opinion behind a far-reaching federal
policy and program. Without attempting to list the items of such
a program in detail, the salient points can be briefly summarized.
The essence of the matter is that we have no federal policy
on race relations. Prior to the issuance of President Roosevelt's
Executive Order No. 8802, it could be said that the federal gov-
ernment had never taken a single affirmative step to discourage
discrimination, much less to cultivate understanding and accept-
ance. This negative policy has been particularly striking in the
field of education. We have thrown our schools open to minority
groups and have instructed our children to believe that there
should be complete equality before the law; that there should be
no taxation without representation; that individual rights should
be respected; and that all careers should be open to all citizens.
But the content of our education has been largely barren of con-
structive and affirmative programs designed to combat prejudice,
to explain cultural differences, to expose the myth of race. If the
state of California had spent on an intelligent educational pro-
gram one tenth of what groups in California have spent on anti-
Oriental campaigns, there would be a much larger area of racial
tolerance in the state today.
Here is what we need: (i) a declaration of federal policy in
the form of a joint resolution of both houses of Congress to the
effect that it is the declared public policy of the United States
government that there shall be no discrimination based upon race,
color, creed, or national origin. Once such a policy has been
declared, it can be implemented in various ways: in the armed
services; in government service; in every agency of the federal
government; by utilizing the purchasing power of the federal
government to force compliance with the policy itself. Our
courts could rely upon such a declared public policy in striking
down discriminatory statutes, state and federal, as being in
violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. (2) In addition to
290
eliminating the poll tax in federal elections and enacting an anti-
lynching statute, we need to adopt a new federal civil-rights
statute in the form of a Fair Racial Practices Act, and to give
the Fair Employment Practice Committee real legislative sanc-
tion. We should enforce the second section of the Fourteenth
Amendment, which provides for the reduction of the represen-
tation of any state in Congress when that state discriminates in
the exercise of the franchise. What we tend to forget is that
discrimination has been legislated into existence, as a glance at
the statute books of almost every state in the Union will demon-
strate. Since we have embalmed our prejudices in the form of
discriminatory statutes, an obvious first step is to eliminate these
statutes, or to nullify their effect, by federal action. It is against
the law to be fair-minded on the race question in most Southern
states today. If you practise racial equality in these states, you
are likely to end up in jail. (3) Remove every vestige of racism
from our immigration and naturalization codes. (4) Create a
federal agency expressly authorized to deal with the problem
and thereby recognize that the management of race relations has
become a function of the federal government.
Since I made this last suggestion in Brothers, under the Skin,
it has begun to receive considerable consideration. 5 Mr. Ward
Shepard has made some particularly important contributions to
the proposal. He has suggested that such an agency should be
assigned five major functions: research and education; the re-
definition and enforcement of legal and constitutional rights;
mediation; welfare planning; and the function of organization
(that is, seeking to correlate the activities of existing groups and
stimulating the expression of latent good will). Much of the
work of such an agency could, as Mr. Shepard points out, be
carried on through already existing local agencies. The proposal
itself is premised upon a simple basic proposition: that it is the
responsibility of the federal government to see to it that no citi-
6 See "An Institute of Ethnic Democracy" by John Collier and Saul K.
Padover, Common Ground, Autumn, 1943; "Are Race Relations the Busi-
ness of the Federal Government?" Common Ground, Winter, 1944; and
"The Tools for Ethnic Democracy" by Ward Shepard, Co?ranon Ground,
Spring, 1944.
291
zen of the United States is discriminatorily denied, on the basis
of race alone, access to those services and facilities which are a
vital requisite of good citizenship. It does not contemplate an
extension of the wardship principle or the creation of another
Indian Bureau. The pattern for such an agency might well be
found, for example, in the Children's Bureau of the Department
of Labor.
Before rejecting this proposal, we should consider our experi-
ence in dealing with other disadvantaged groups in American life.
At one time women occupied a position in our democracy which,
in some respects, was not unlike that of certain racial minorities
today. How did we proceed to remedy this situation? First, by
removing the disabilities which handicapped women (giving
them the franchise, making it possible for them to hold property
in their own names, and so on); and, second, by recognizing cer-
tain special problems which they faced as women and by giving
them additional, or, if you will, special protection in the form
of legislation requiring rest periods, restrictions on hours of em-
ployment, and so forth. When we sought to improve the status
of labor, we followed exactly the same procedure: we removed
labor's disabilities by recognizing the principle of collective bar-
gaining and by safeguarding the exercise of this right through
special legislation.
The case for federal intervention is unanswerable. Recently
Dr. L. D. Reddick listed the basic objectives of Northern Ne-
groes as follows: equal access to employment; equal access to
adequate housing; full civil liberty; an end to Jim Crow practices
in the armed services; and an end to anti-Negro propaganda and
ridicule. With the possible exception of the last item, each of
these objectives presupposes federal action. The Northern Negro
will never accept a solution of the problem which involves segre-
gation; while the South insists, and wfll continue to insist, that
segregation is not a debatable point but a major premise of any
approach to the problem. In view of this continuing impasse,
how can we even pretend that the Negro problem is the "pecu-
liar problem" of the South? In the absence of federal interven-
tion, the problem will become increasingly involved. Although
292
the percentage of Negroes residing in the Deep South has been
declining, the South still adheres to the doctrine of White
Supremacy and Jim Crow regulations are more prolix today
than they were twenty years ago. Do we want California to
dictate our policy toward the peoples of the Far East? Shall we
concede to the South the right to formulate our policy toward
the peoples of Africa?
"Our edifice of racial inequality," as Dr. Earnest A. Hooton
has so well said, "is a sepulchre, whitened without and full of
festering corruption. It smells to high heavens and is an offense
in the nostrils of all honest men. We have a Government Bureau
of American Ethnology, restricted, however, to the study of dry
bones, ruined dwellings, dying languages, and dead customs of
the American Indian, harmless but relatively futile pursuits.
. . . Why do we not have a powerful, nonpolitical, honest gov-
ernment organization devoted to the study, protection, and
improvement of our oppressed Negro minority, another for our
large population of Mexican origin, and still others for various
underprivileged racial and national elements which live in this
land of freedom and equality without experiencing either? We
could do a great deal better if in our government an effective
Department of Race and Culture would bend its efforts to the
scientific development of every racial and national stock in our
country and to the task of co-ordinating the efforts of each to
further its own happiness and the advance of American civi-
lization."
When I am told that progress in racial understanding can only
come about as the result of a millennial process of education, I
am moved to suggest that education is action. Involve the im-
portant mass organizations of the nation in the struggle to achieve
a program such as I have suggested, and, by this very process,
you will educate the people on the issues involved. In fact, I can
think of no more effective means of mass education. Powerful
sources of organized support can be mobilized behind such a
program, such as the trade-unions, the churches, the welfare or-
ganizations, the minorities themselves. A clear majority of the
American people will support such a program. They have never
293
been asked to join in a campaign of this kind. In organizing
them behind such a program, we shall be building a powerful
national wall against prejudice and intolerance in America. Adopt
a policy of "nonintervention" and "appeasement" and bigotry
will be left in possession of the field. We can end that curious
schism in American life the distinction between our overt
morals and our covert mores by evoking the real American
tradition; by seeking to apply it in practice; and by appealing
to a national public opinion on racial equality.
5* The West Coast and the Pacific
The federal government must also take official cognizance of
ie problems of cultural conflict in the world of the future,
the new and more inclusive society which is emerging,"
writes Dr. Park, "we shall be living particularly if it is to be
a free and democratic society in a new intimacy with all the
peoples of the world, not only with our allies but with our
enemies. . . . We shall need, as never before, to know human
geography and, perhaps, geopolitics. We shall need to know
not all of us but some of us all the languages. We must have
institutes, such as they have long had in Germany, France, and
England, for the study of the languages and cultures of the
peoples outside of Europe, in Asia and Africa. We must, in short,
prepare ourselves qs never before to live not merely in America,
but in the world^J
This suggestion is particularly apposite in relation to the
peoples, languages, and cultures of the Far East. As a nation,
we knew little about Japan prior to Pearl Harbor. Not only
was our knowledge of the most superficial variety, but we ra-
tionalized our ignorance by creating a myth of Oriental inscruta-
bility. According to the Washington Post of December 12, 1943,
there were only about 600 civilians in this country, aside from
the evacuees, who were familiar with the Japanese language.
"The basic reason," writes Dr. Jesse F. Steiner, "for our mis-
judgment of the Japanese nation lies in our superficial knowledge
6 American Journal of Sociology, May, 1943, p. 107.
294
of the history and culture of the Far East. The perpetuation of
this myth of oriental incomprehensibility was made possible by
our abysmal ignorance of the history of Japan and of the factors
that have entered into the building of this nation. Our historical
interest has been largely limited to the study of those countries
and peoples to which our ancestral roots can be traced. However
inadequate may be our knowledge of the history of western civi-
lization, we at least are familiar with the names and exploits of
its great leaders and feel that our present heritage is a product
of their struggles and aspirations. But to most Americans Japan's
past is a closed book. . . . The religions to which Japanese have
given allegiance are looked down upon as pagan and therefore
unworthy of serious study except by scholars. Their customs
that come to our attention impress us as exotic and irrational and
strengthen our convictions that the Japanese are a peculiar people
whose behavior is difficult to forecast." 7
Far Eastern studies, as Dr. Steiner notes, have never been popu-
lar in American colleges and universities. Even the universities
on the Pacific Coast failed to devote much attention to Oriental
cultures. A few West Coast colleges had a chair of Oriental Art
and Philosophy which was usually occupied by a Chinese or a
Japanese scholar. In more than one case, the Japanese "scholar"
was an official apologist for Imperial Japan; and, in at least a
few cases, his salary was in part paid by funds raised by the
local Japanese associations! 8
The need for readily available bodies of organized information
about the Far East will be magnified after the war. It requires
no imagination to appreciate lie problems of rehabilitation, of
reconstruction, of relief, that will arise in the Far East; not to
mention the problems arising by reason of the necessity of mili-
tary occupation. We are woefully unprepared to assume these
responsibilities. For not only has the field of Oriental studies
been of limited interest in this country, but our few trained Ori-
entalists have tended to become increasingly preoccupied with
the more recondite subjects in their field. Only a small portion
7 Behind the Japamse Mask, 1943, p. 7.
8 See Must We Fight Japan? by Walter B. Pitkin, 1921, p. 452.
295
of the available information has undergone a process of vulgar-
ization and percolated down to the people.*
This is not a matter of academic interest: it should be of vital
concern to the people of the West Coast. For whether they
realize it or not, the economic future of the area lies in the
Pacific. The war has brought about an industrial revolution in
California and, to a lesser extent perhaps, throughout the Pacific
Coast. Heavy industry rather than agriculture is now the chief
factor in the economy of California. The war has accelerated
the industrial growth of the Far West by at least twenty years,
and in some fields by fifty years, in advance of normal expecta-
tions. Nearly 1,500,000 people have flocked to the West Coast
since 1940. For the first time, the region now has a steel industry;
it has aluminum mills and magnesium plants. It has vast man-
power and great resources in petroleum and wood chemistry,
food processing, and the exploitation of minerals; and it has great
untapped sources of hydroelectric power. The increasing utiliza-
tion of light metals will afford West Coast industry an excep-
tional opportunity for expansion in the postwar period.
The major problem, of course, is markets. The Coast really
has no hinterland. It is encased by the arid, sparsely settled inter-
mountain West. This territory can never provide a market large
enough to absorb the production of which Pacific Coast industry
is now capable. Mr. Robert Elliott of the San Francisco News
is obviously correct in stating that the future markets for the
emerging industrial West are in the Orient. China, according to
Mr. Elliott, will want to buy equipment for twenty thousand
(eventually a hundred thousand) miles of railroads. China will
want equipment for factories, for highways; it will need ma-
chinery, planes, petroleum products, railway equipment, raw
cotton, automobiles and tires, tools and accessories. And China
is but part of the Far East.
At the present time, however, the West Coast is entirely un-
prepared to take advantage of whatever economic opportunities
may exist in the Far East. Language and cultural barriers exist
9 See comments of Cyrus Adler, Journal of the American Oriental Society,
September, 1924.
296
and fundamental information about the areas involved is lacking.
The task of organizing such a body of information is far beyond
the resources of the colleges and universities; and the necessary
trained personnel is not presently available. Furthermore the con-
tinued existence of present West Coast anti-Oriental attitudes
would jeopardize not merely a sound foreign policy in the Far
East, but the development of a give-and-take policy in trade
and commerce. Testifying before the House Committee on Immi-
gration and Naturalization on May 27, 1943, Mr. J. J. Underwood
of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce spoke out in support of
the legislation lifting the ban on Chinese immigration. The
measure involved, he testified, an estimated $5,000,000,000 in post-
war trade with the Orient. The "irritants" in our relations with
the Far East had to be removed. "We fear," he said, "that this
all-Asia propaganda might be successful if they Japanize the
Chinese you gentlemen are going to think that the gates of hell
have been left ajar in the countries washed by the Pacific Ocean
are two thirds of the raw material of the world and three fourths
of the people who tread the earth."
Economic considerations such as these will, in the long run,
bring about important changes in West Coast racial mores. But
the process needs to be intelligently aided and, if possible, accel-
erated. There should be established, for example, a federally
supported Institute of Pacific Affairs. It should be located in
California not in Boston or New York, New Orleans or Des
Moines. It is worthy of mention, in passing, that the American
Oriental Society was founded by John Pickering in Boston in
1842; the present headquarters of the Institute of Pacific Rela-
tions is in New York City. It should form a part of the institu-
tional life of the peoples of the West Coast, so that they might
come to look upon it with great pride and feel that it belonged
to them. It should assemble a large staff of experts and correlate
and organize, on an area basis, all the available information about
the Far East. Through such media as lectures, exhibits, motion
pictures, and publications it should seek to develop an intelligent
public opinion on Far Eastern affairs.
To be effective such an institute would have to be publicly
297
financed. The people of the West Coast would be suspicious of
any privately supported organization. Far too much special plead-
ing has been involved in the past in cultivating an understanding
of the Far East. Today all such special pleading in relation to
the Orient is looked upon with profound distrust. Considering
the background of such men as the Reverend Sidney Gulick and
the Reverend Frank Heron Smith, who would blame the Cali-
fornians for ignoring all that they had to say about Japan and
the Japanese people? Missionary spokesmen of this type only
arouse additional antagonism on the West Coast. I have before
me, at the moment, a copy of a pamphlet by the Reverend Frank
Heron Smith entitled The China-Japan Imbroglio which is cer-
tainly an unblushing defense of Japanese aggression in the Far
East. No organization after the pattern of the Japan Society; no
spokesman such as Hamilton Holt or Lindsay Russell; no com-
mittees such as those established by the Federal Council of
Churches, can possibly bring about a change in racial attitudes
on the West Coast. In fact, no individual or organization sus-
pected of having even a remote interest or stake in amicable
postwar relations with Japan can contribute toward a broader
understanding of the problems of the Orient on the Pacific Coast.
6. Remove die Racial Wall
Lastly, we need to bring the relocation program to the speedi-
est possible termination. If it can be successfully concluded at
an early date, such a conclusion can be pointed to with justifiable
pride as an example of how democracy corrects its own mistakes.
It can be pointed to as an example of how democracy converts
a harsh wartime measure into an instrumentality for strengthen-
ing democracy itself. We do not need to apologize for the pro-
gram as a "detour from democracy," for it has a strong demo-
cratic potential.
The damage which the program has caused to the fabric of
democracy can be repaired. During the postwar period, for
example, a claims commission can be established to pass upon the
claims of the evacuees for damages suffered. There is ample
208
precedent for such a procedure. The federal government has, on
occasion, assisted the victims of natural disasters, such as floods,
earthquakes, and fires. The volume of claims alone will require
some such procedure. In many cases, WRA already possesses
the information upon the basis of which losses might be esti-
mated with accuracy. Many citizens have suffered economic
losses as a result of the war and certainly the Japanese-Americans
should not be accorded favored treatment. But to the extent that
they have suffered special losses directly caused by the action
of the federal government, they should be compensated.
In view of the changed military situation, the time has arrived
when the ban on the return of loyal evacuees to the West Coast
should be lifted. The Little Tokyo settlements have been de-
stroyed; the colonies located around strategic installations have
been removed; the disloyal elements have been ferreted out and
are now isolated. Virtually every person of Japanese descent in
the United States has been thoroughly investigated by the au-
thorities. There is no longer a danger of an actual military
invasion of the West Coast (although, of course, there is always
a possibility of token raids). The Japanese have been removed
from the Aleutians; Japan itself is now on the defensive. On the
West Coast itself, the dim-out restrictions have been removed
and many of the emergency measures taken after Pearl Harbor
have been modified. Even in Hawaii, the restrictions imposed
under martial law have been relaxed.
The ban on the West Coast should be lifted gradually, not
only for the protection of the evacuees, but to guard against a
possible mass return. Nisei soldiers are now permitted to return
on furloughs; and the wives of Caucasians have been permitted
to join their families. New categories should gradually be added
to the list. For example, the wives of Nisei soldiers might well
form the next category permitted to return to the Coast. Any
lifting of the ban should be accompanied by emphatic state-
ments from the proper federal authorities that inciters to racial
hatred will be dealt with in the most vigorous manner and that
the government will intervene whenever necessary to protect the
civil rights of American citizens. Proper measures should like-
299
wise be taken to insure that the West Coast public is fully advised
of the valuable contributions of the Nisei and the Issei to the
war effort. If these measures are taken, there will be no rioting
on the West Coast; there will be no violence.
If the ban were lifted it would assist in emptying the reloca-
tion centers; it would improve the morale of the evacuees; it
would remove the shadow of suspicion that now hangs over the
entire group. It would demonstrate to the world that a measure
dictated by "military necessity" was changed the moment the
military situation improved. It would eliminate the inconsistency
of our policy as between the West Coast and Hawaii. The longer
the evacuees remain in the centers, the more difficult it will be to
relocate them. Dependency within the centers is growing at an
alarming rate. Those evacuees still remaining in the centers should
be encouraged to minimize property losses either by liquidating
their holdings on the West Coast or by resuming their former
vocations now that the military situation has changed. The es-
sence of the argument in favor of lifting the ban at the earliest
possible date has been stated by 'Fortune:
The longer the Army permits California and the rest of
the Pacific Coast to be closed to everyone of Japanese descent
the more time is given the Hearst newspapers and their allies
to convince Californians that they will indeed yield to law-
lessness if the unwanted minority is permitted to return. By
continuing to keep American citizens in "protective custody,"
the U. S. is holding to a policy as ominous as it is new. The
American custom in the past has been to lock up the citizen
who commits violence, not the victim of his threats and
blows. 10
"With the segregation of the disloyal evacuees in a separate
center/' President Roosevelt stated on September 14, 1943, "the
War Relocation Authority proposes now to redouble its efforts
to accomplish the relocation into normal homes and jobs in com-
munities throughout the United States, but outside the evacuated
area, of those Americans of Japanese ancestry whose loyalty to
this country has remained unshaken through the hardships of
10 April, 1944, p. 118.
300
the evacuation which military necessity made unavoidable. We
shall restore to the loyal evacuees the right to return to the
evacuated areas as soon as the Tmlitary situation mil make such
restoration feasible" Now that the military situation has changed,
the time has arrived when this solemn pledge spoken by the Presi-
dent in the name of the American people should be redeemed.
1 . The Next in Order
In considering the future of racial minorities in the United
States, one or two simple propositions should be kept constantly
in mind. "It seems to me," wrote Dr. Robert E. Park in a recent
letter to Horace Cayton, "that the Negroes and Americans who
seek to be intelligent on the race question should realize that
the people who have kept democracy in America are just the
immigrants who have had to fight for democracy from the time
they landed in this country seeking to get themselves established.
The Jew is fighting for democracy, Jews and other people in
this country are beginning to recognize that our cause is bound
up with that of the Jew. The same thing is true of the Negro.
Democracy is not something that some people in the country
can have and others can not have, not something to be shared
and divided like a piece of pie some getting a small piece and
some getting a large piece. Democracy is an integral thing. If
any part of the country has it they all have it, if any part of the
country doesn't have it, the rest of the country doesn't have it.'*
Not only have immigrants kept democracy alive in America,
but they have given our culture its c *world potential," which is
perhaps the most important asset that we possess as a people. "I
believe," wrote William Dean Howells, "we have been the better,
we have really been the more American for each successive
assimilation in the past, and I believe we shall be the better, the
more American for that which seems the next in order" The
racial minorities are the next in order.
301
CHAPTER IX
Epilogue
COMMODORE PERRY, as Mr. Willard Price has reminded us,
thought of his expedition to Japan as the completion of the
voyage of Columbus. As a matter of fact, however, it really
represented the resumption of an earlier relationship. As traders
in the South Pacific, the Japanese had come in contact with the
Spaniards from the New World in the latter part of the six-
teenth century. In 1610 Japanese embassies had proceeded to
Mexico to study the conditions of trade with New Spain. The
Mayfloiver had not yet arrived the back door to the North
American Continent was wide open. But the Japanese failed to
take advantage of their opportunity and withdrew into the seclu-
sion that prevailed until I854- 1
With the opening of Japan to Occidental influences, the isola-
tion of the Pacific ceased to exist. The staggering significance of
the event itself has been frequently noted but usually in mystical
terms. It has been heralded as ushering into existence "a new
phase in world history"; as bridging the gap between East and
West; as creating the circumstances out of which a "marriage
of East and West" might be consummated and mankind, at long
last, united. It has provided the stuff for magnificently sonorous
sentences: "The Pacific Ocean," said Seward, "its shores, its
islands, and the vast region beyond will become the chief theater
of the world in the world's great hereafter." "The age of the
Pacific begins," wrote Frederick Jackson Turner, "mysterious
and unfathomable in its meaning for our future." Behind such
rhetoric, however, were realities that we largely ignored.
Victimized by the illusions of time and space, we looked back-
ward over our shoulders to Europe rather than forward across
1 See article by George Kennard in the Outlook, June 27, 1914; and, also,
History of California by Charles E. Chapman, 1921, Chapter IV.
302
the Pacific to the Orient. In our minds the Pacific "that great
ocean of hopes and dangers" separated not merely two con-
tinents, but two worlds forever destined to remain separate and
apart. We failed to recognize that, in one sense at least, the Pacific
unites rather than separates the peoples around its rim. It is a
highway as well as a barrier; a bridge as well as an abyss.
Long before the appearance of the airplane, modern technol-
ogy had shattered the illusions of rime and space. Fast steamers
were plowing their way from Seattle to Yokohama in less time
than it took a Roman captain to sail from Gibraltar to Phoenicia;
in one fourth the time it took to cross the Atlantic in 1776; in
less time than it took to travel from New York to Washington
in colonial days. On occasion Japanese fishermen, in ordinary
fishing boats, have drifted across the Pacific and landed in Oregon.
The completion of the Panama Canal, described by geographers
as the most important political and economic event in the history
of the Pacific, profoundly changed our relation toward the Far
East.
With the discovery of gold in California, a great process of
change was set in motion around the Pacific Basin. It was the
discovery of gold in California that prompted Commodore
Perry's fateful mission to Japan in 1854. Tte letter that he car-
ried from President Fillmore stated that "California produces
about sixty millions of dollars in gold every year, besides silver,
quicksilver, precious stones, and many other valuable articles"
new wealth that we were anxious to use as the basis of trade.
The rapidly developing clipper trade between California and
China made it imperative that our ships put in at Japanese ports
for repairs and provisions still another circumstance mentioned
by President Fillmore. The discovery of gold in California and
the opening of Japan to Occidental influences were, in fact, his-
torically simultaneous and closely related events. "The extension
of California commerce, made suddenly important in conse-
quence of the recent discovery of gold, was the chief argument
used with Japan in our successful effort to open the gates that
lyeyasu had barred." 2
2 The Japanese Crisis by James A. B. Scherer, 1916.
33
It was the westward expansion of the American people that
eventually initiated the significant movement of Japanese from
their island empire. From 1683 to 1854, it had been an offense
punishable by death for Japanese to emigrate. The building of
all ocean-going boats had been prohibited by imperial decree to
make certain that Japan would preserve its rigid policy of isola-
tion. Even after the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate in
1867, this policy was modified only to the extent of permitting
students to go abroad. Although some two hundred Japanese
students were enrolled in American schools, colleges, and uni-
versities in 1875, Japan still adhered to its policy of isolation.
With the conclusion of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1876 be-
tween Hawaii and the United States which opened the islands
for American capital the sugar interests of Hawaii began to
clamor for Japanese labor- As early as 1868 these interests had
"piratically stolen" 147 Japanese for plantation labor in the
islands. Most of these initial immigrants, however, were returned
to Japan in response to a sharp note of protest. The execution
of the Reciprocity Treaty was followed, in 1886, by the adoption
of the Hawaiian- Japanese Labor Convention. It was this agree-
ment that, for the first time, "officially opened the doors for the
emigration of Japanese laborers to the outside world." 3 Under
the terms of the agreement approximately 180,000 Japanese were
sent to Hawaii the largest single body of workers that Japan
sent to any land. This development was a direct consequence of
our westward expansion. When we annexed the Hawaiian Islands
in 1898 and later acquired the Philippines, we pushed that much
farther westward and came into still more intimate contact with
the peoples of the Orient.
Just as it was the discovery of gold in California that started
the first movement of Orientals the Chinese to the Western
Hemisphere, so it was the annexation of Hawaii that launched
the first major movement of Japanese to the mainland of the
United States. Prior to the annexation of Hawaii, there were
only 2039 Japanese on the mainland. The annexation of Hawaii
had the effect of releasing thousands of Japanese contract laborers
*An Island Community by Andrew W. Lind, 1938.
304
from a kind of feudal bondage. For years prior to 1898, the
breach of a labor contract had been a punishable offense in the
islands. When this provision of the penal law was lifted after
annexation, thousands of Japanese laborers began to escape to
the mainland. By 1900 there were 24,235 Japanese in this country;
by 1910, 72,157.*
As a nation we seemed incapable of grasping the fact that it
was our westward expansion that had brought about this return-
ing tide from the Orient. When the current of change which our
appearance on the Pacific had set in motion reached the Orient
and then reversed its direction, our amazement was complete and
our resentment instantaneous. The Pacific Coast became our racial
frontier. We proceeded to establish a racial picket line which
was gradually extended from Alaska to Peru. Long after the
physical isolation of the Pacific Basin had been broken, we in-
sisted on the maintenance of a policy of cultural and racial
isolation.
In much the same manner, we closed our eyes to the problem
of cultural conflict which the opening of the Pacific had precipi-
tated. For around the Pacific Basin were cultures in every imagi-
nable stage of evolution. Long isolation had created the sharpest
cultural differences. Increased travel, communication, and trade
only aggravated the conflicts and tensions inherent in the dis-
parity of these cultures, for, as so frequently happens, cultural
change lagged behind technological advancement. Given the
added fact of racial difference, it was inevitable that the ensuing
cultural conflicts should have been rationalized, on both sides of
the Pacific, as essentially racial in character. These conflicts still
exist. They would continue to exist, in an aggravated form, even
if we were to deport every man, woman, and child of Japanese
ancestry in America. For the conflict precipitated by the appear-
ance of Japanese immigrants on the West Coast is but one phase
of a much larger pattern of adjustment and change taking place
in the Pacific.
4 On the effect of annexation on immigration to the mainland, see Rising
Japan by Jabez T. Sunderland, 1918, pp. 142-143.
305
1. Japan and America
It would be difficult to imagine a more fundamental conflict
of cultures than that which existed in the case of Japan and
America. The highly homogeneous culture of Japan had been
organized around the factors of a scarcity of resources and limi-
tation of space; the heterogeneous culture of America upon an
abundance of resources and unlimited space. The one culture was
old, the other new; the one static, the other dynamic. From food
habits to religious practices, from language, systems to social cus-
toms, they were antipodal. Japan and America, wrote Carl Crow,
are "two countries which in history, ideals, civilization, and cul-
ture have nothing in common." Neither country, he noted, could
"without danger to itself, adopt the ideals and culture of the
other/'
Both the earliest and the latest American observers in Japan
echo the same preoccupation with the utter contrast ^between
the two cultures. From Percival Lowell to Helen Mears, from
Lafcadio Hearn to Miriam Beard, the story is the same and the
conclusion identical. "For to the mind's eye," wrote Percival
Lowell in 1888, "their world is one huge, comical antithesis of
our own. What we regard intuitively in one way from our
standpoint, they as intuitively observe in a diametrically opposite
manner from theirs. To speak backwards, write backwards, read
backwards, is but ,the a, b, c, of their contrariety. The inversion
extends deeper than mere modes of expression, down into the
very matter of thought. Ideas of ours which we deemed innate
find in them no home, while methods which strike us as prepos-
terously unnatural appear to be their birthright." 5
"One of the supreme contrasts to American civilization on the
globe," wrote Miriam Beard, "is Japan. . . . She presents a pow-
erful opposite to all we have seen or thought before. Her civili-
zation rests on a foundation which is the antithesis of our own.
The American way of living is a synthesis of European cul-
tures, modified by vast natural resources and fabulously in-
* The Soul of the Far East.
creasing wealth; it is the speediest, most flamboyant, most
democratically comfortable. Japan's peculiar culture edifice, on
the other hand, is a composite of Asiatic elements; it is supported
by the most restricted natural resources behind any of the lead-
ing Powers . . . when the American returns from a sojourn in
Japan he looks 'at his native land as if reborn. Everything from
political conventions down to the custom of eating with knives
and forks seems to require a revaluation." *
When Japan began to take over and readapt to her own uses
some of the aspects of Western culture, the problem of cultural
conflict in the Pacific was immediately magnified. It was this
partial and one-sided fusion of cultures taking place in Japan
that, some years before his death, began to alarm Lafcadio Hearn.
During the fourteen years of his residence in Japan (1890-1904),
he produced twelve books interpretative of Japanese life and cus-
tom. In the later chapters of this monumental record, he had oc-
casion, again and again, to express his profound forebodings about
what was likely to happen in Japan. 7
The conflict precipitate^ by the immigration of Japanese to
the western shore of the Pacific was but one phase of the deep-
seated conflict which Hearn observed in Japan. The persistence
of the struggle on the West Coast and the uses that were made
of it on both sides of the Pacific should long ago have been
recognized as an obvious warning of the vastly greater strug-
gle in which we are now involved. When cultures so diverse are
suddenly brought into intimate contact, and when the factor
of racial difference also exists, hatred and hostility, fear and aver-
sion, create a chasm which cannot be bridged by pious plati-
tudes, missionary endeavors, or the exchange of products. "The
1 day of the completed world is dawning," wrote Paul Valery,
"and henceforth there will be an ever more bitter conflict be-
tween the habits, emotions, and affections contracted in the
course of anterior history and strengthened by immemorial hered-
ity, by culture." The danger to the future peace of the Pacific
6 Realism in Romantic Japan, 1930, p. 13.
7 See Japan: The Warnings and Prophecies of Lafcadio Hearn by William
W. Clary, April, 1943, No. 5, Qaremont College Oriental Studies Series.
307
arises not by reason of the fact of cultural difference, but as a
result of the tendency to rationalize this difference in terms of
race.
2. Inside Japan
The story of Japan's remarkable transformation after 1854 has
been frequently told. It was a favorite success story during the
latter part of the nineteenth century. Taken at face value, it
certainly demonstrated the ability of Eastern peoples to absorb
and to master Western industrial technics in the span of a single
generation. But of recent years, and particularly since Decem-
ber 7, 1941, it has become the fashion to rewrite this story. To-
day we are told, with increasing frequency and unanimity, that
Japan took from the West only those phases of its culture which
she needed in order to protect her own institutions and way of
life from disintegration. So widely prevalent is this point of view
at the moment that we run a distinct risk of overlooking our
unique points of strength and Japan's peculiar weaknesses.
Shocked by the turn of events since December 7, 1941, we are
belatedly searching the archives for a clue to the strength that
Japan has shown. Our few Oriental scholars have been brought
forth from their obscurity and assigned the task of deducing the
character of "the Japanese mind" from the tenets of Japanese
philosophy. 8 When these scholars report that Japanese philosophy
is not based on logical concepts, as we understand them, and that
they can throw but little light on the problem, we revive the
myth of Oriental inscrutability and conclude that we can never
understand the enemy. In much the same fashion, we conclude,
apropos of 70,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry, that
"a Jap's a Jap" and consign the entire lot to relocation centers.
Both conclusions the stated inability to understand the mind
of the enemy or to distinguish one resident Japanese from an-
other indicate a definite weakness on our part and, at the same
time, an ability to ignore realities that is truly alarming.
Years ago Thorstein Veblen provided us with the real clue to
8 See 'The Japanese Mind" by Karl Lowith, 'Fortune^ December, 1943.
the strength (and weakness) of Japan as a nation. His attention
was focused not on Japanese philosophy, but upon the cultural
conflict going on inside Japan. Writing in 1915, he predicted the
future course of Japan with uncanny accuracy:
It would of course be hazardous [he wrote], to guess how
long an interval must necessarily elapse between Japan's
acquirement of the western state of the industrial arts and
the consequent disintegration of that "Spirit of Old Japan"
that still is the chief asset of the state as a warlike power; but
it may be accepted without hazard that such must be the
event, sooner or later. And it is within this interval that
Japan's opportunity lies. The spiritual disintegration has al-
ready visibly set in, under all the several forms of moderniza-
tion, but it is presumably still safe to say that hitherto the
rate of gross gain in material efficiency due to the new sci-
entific and technological knowledge is more than sufficient
to offset this incipient spiritual disintegration; so that, while
the climax of the nation's net efficiency as a political or war-
like force lies yet in the future, it would seem at least to lie in
the calculable future.
... If this new-found efficiency is to serve the turn for
the dynastic aggrandisement of Japan, it must be turned to
account before the cumulatively accelerating rate of insti-
tutional deterioration overtakes and neutralizes the cumula-
tively declining rate of gain in material efficiency; which
should, humanly speaking, mean that Japan must strike, if at
all, within the effective lifetime of the generation that is now
coming to maturity ... the imperial government must
throw all its available force, without reservation, into one
headlong rush; since in the nature of the case no second op-
portunity of the kind is to be looked for.
And here is what Veblen had to say, in this remarkably pro-
phetic essay, about the mysterious "Japanese mind":
... As soon as her people shall have digested the western
state of science and technology and have assimilated its spir-
itual contents, the "Spirit of Old Japan" will, in effect, have
been dissipated. Ravelings of its genial tradition will still trail
at the skirts of the new era, but as an asset available for the
enterprise of dynastic politics the "Spirit of Old Japan" will
have little more than the value of a tale that is told. There will
doubtless continue to float through the adolescent brains of
Young Japan some yellow vapor of truculence, such as would
under other skies be called el valor esfanol, and such as may
give rise to occasional exploits of abandon, but the joy of liv-
ing in obscure privation and contumely for the sake of the
Emperor's politics and posthumous fame will be lost to the
"Life under the conditions imposed by the modern industrial
system," wrote Veblen, "is in the long run incompatible with the
prepossessions of mediaevalism." Japan, as he clearly demonstrates
elsewhere in the essay, is no exception to this rule;. The mere in-
troduction of a competent system of internal and external com-
munications had doomed "the isolation, parcelment, and conse-
quent home-bred animus of its people." The introduction of
popular education and of the workday habits of an industrial
society comported ill, as he phrased it, "with those elusive puta-
tive verities of occult personal excellence in which the 'Spirit of
Old Japan' is grounded." The spread of such matter-of-fact in-
formation would "unavoidably act to dissipate all substantial be-
lief in the opera bouffe mythology that makes tip the state religion
and supplies the foundation of the Japanese faith in the Em-
peror's divine pedigree and occult verities; for these time-worn
elements of Shinto are even less viable under the exacting mech-
anistic discipline of modern industry than are the frayed rem-
nants of the faiths that conventionally serve as articles of belief
among the Christian peoples."
A wealth of evidence has accumulated since 1915 to support
this thesis. It was the "incipient spiritual disintegration" which
Veblen noted that, in its more advanced stages, threw Japan,
in D. C. Holtom's phrase, "into an introverted psychosis of na-
tional proportions." After 1930 the rulers of Old Japan realized
that they must act swiftly if they were to capitalize upon the op-
9 From "The Opportunity of Japan" in Essays in Our Changing Order
(copyright 1934 by The Viking Press, Inc.), pp. 255 and 265 (my emphasis).
By permission of The Viking Press, Inc., New York.
210
portunity which Veblen granted that they possessed. They acted
precisely as he predicted that they would act and within the
time that he had estimated. A state of "crisis" was precipitated
in Manchuria and continuously maintained; the whole apparatus
of the state was utilized in an effort to stem the tide of Western
influence. Demonic spirits were summoned from the murky past
to stamp out the contaminating and infectious Western practices.
If additional proof of the accuracy of this thesis is required,
it is available, in living form, in the ten relocation centers. For
the cultural conflict that has raged in Japan for the last several
decades has been resolved in America in a manner that can be
appraised, examined, and documented. "Far from being impervi-
ous to educational processes," writes Miriam S. Farley, "the Japa-
nese are one of the most teachable peoples on earth. The very
thoroughness with which they have been indoctrinated with a
false and vicious creed demonstrates their susceptibility to prop-
aganda. The extreme type of chauvinistic nationalism which grips
Japan today is, in fact, the recent product of one of the most
comprehensive and efficient propaganda systems which the world
has ever known. . . . Here in America we can see the results
produced by another kind of training in the space of one genera-
tion. We have in this country several thousand persons of Japa-
nese ancestry who were born and brought up in the United
States. They attended American schools; they read American
books, magazines, and newspapers. Their tastes, habits of thought
and political ideas are the same as those of any other group of
American citizens. They are good democrats and good Amer-
icans." 10
If we fall into the trap of assuming that the Japanese are an
incomprehensible people, we shall not be able to fight them in-
telligently, much less to live with them in a postwar world. If
we continue to believe that a nonindustrial people can adopt
Wester industrial arts and techniques without, in the long run,
also adopting the ideas that are inescapably a part of such a sys-
tem, we shall have committed ourselves, in advance of peace, to a
disastrous policy in the Far East If such an assumption were cor-
10 Far Eastern Survey, April 19, 1943.
3 11
rect, it could then be argued that it was our duty to prevent the
spread of industrialism in the Orient.
The extent of American influence in Japan completely refutes
such an assumption. Japanese immigration to America was par-
alleled by the penetration of American influences in Japan. The
jailers of Japan feared this "invasion of ideas" as much as our
native sons feared the "Japanese invasion" of the West Coast.
In no small measure, Japanese immigration contributed to the
spread of American ideas in Japan. The students who had stud-
ied in America, the Nisei who went to study in Japan, and the
returning immigrants, all were carriers of American cultural
influences. The thousands of Japanese who had relatives in Amer-
ica were at least emotionally involved in the same process. We
had a remarkable influence in Japan an influence that may yet
prove to be a prime military asset.
The ordinary rank-and-file citizens that Carl Randau and
Leane Zugsmith met in Japan, even during the height of the of-
ficially inspired anti-American campaign, were warm and friendly
toward America. "They like American movies, American slang,
American baseball. They like their American relatives" u "Amer-
ica," according to G. C. Allen, "has had a profound influence
on the manners and general outiook of the younger people of
the cities. . . . Many serious-minded young men with a liberal
political outlook are favourably disposed toward Americanization
because it stands for individual freedom and is hostile to their
oligarchial system of government. The films, the American mag-
azines, American business men, tourists, missionaries and school
teachers, Japanese business men who visit America and students
who are trained there, and, finally, the Japanese born in America,
all help to spread the new way of life." ** Jim Marshall, writing in
Colliers for October 19, 1935, pointed out that there was a
section of the younger generation in Japan that "speak American,
read and write American, laugh at Yankee jokes, love American
movies, dote on cafeteria food, imitate Hollywood fashions,
dance to American jazz and trifle with Manhattan cocktails."
11 See The Setting Sun of Japan, 1942, Chapter 9; italics mine.
12 Japan: The Hungry Guest, 1938; italics mine.
While it is only a detail, still the fact that a thousand or more
English words have been incorporated in the Japanese language
is some measure of this influence. It would be extremely foolish,
of course, to overestimate the extent of our influence in Japan;
but it would be equally foolish to forget that it does exist. 18
3 . The Nisei in Japan
A few observers have long recognized the importance of the
Nisei in America in terms of the future of Japan. Jim Marshall
once wrote that the Nisei on the West Coast held the key to the
future of Japan. In an editorial in June, 1941, Common Sense
pointed out that they should be "feted and honored as living
proofs of the universality of America rather than feared." What
we tend to overlook is the curious "two-way passage" involved
in the West Coast Nisei problem. The Nisei problem has ex-
isted, in fact, for the last two decades on both sides of the Pa-
cific. If the Nisei constitute a problem for us, they constitute
a similar problem for Japan. In this section I propose to tell
something about the Nisei who went to live in Japan, reserving
for the following section the story of those who went to Japan
to study, or to live for a time, and then returned to America
(the Kibei).
Because of the age level of the Nisei on the West Coast, only
a few were living in Japan in 1922. The number steadily increased
during the following years, reached a peak around 1935, and then
began to decline. The bulk of the Nisei originally went there to
study, usually at the insistence of their parents in America; but a
few went to live in Japan as a matter of deliberate choice. Writ-
ing in the Great Northern Daily News of January i, 1940, Ed-
ward Chishi voiced the sentiments of this latter group:
There are two choices [he wrote]. One is living in Amer-
ica and own a small business, purchase a car, and live a
comparatively easy life, besides benefiting from the abun-
18 See comment by Carl J. Friedrich, in American Journal of Sociology y
March 1944, p. 427: "Institutionally speaking, Japan is considered to have
progressed farther toward democratization than China."
313
dance of food, clothing, and shelter. The other choice is to
return to a country of poverty, of limited land, of over-
population, and of a low standard of living. Here, the food
prices are high, and the quality of the expensive clothing
is poor. Lawns are seldom seen, as every inch of land is
utilized for the production of food. Automobiles are a mil-
lionaire's luxury, and they don't fully enjoy this privilege,
as car fuel is terribly expensive. After careful consideration,
I am inclined to choose the latter choice. Why? Just for an
equal opportunity for success if my ability warrants it. At
least I will have a fighting chance for success, whereas in
America it's like pounding one's head against a stone wall
and expect the wall to break. Others possessing far superior
ability than mine have tried to break the wall and have
failed, and I feel that I would learn from their experience.
For years some variation of this debate echoed on the West
Coast: were the chances better in Japan than in America? For
what type of individual? With what training? All manner of
advice was given the Nisei: by their parents; by the community
elders; by Nisei already in Japan; by their American friends and
sponsors. This debate was merely another phase of the conflict
they faced in their homes and in the communities in which they
lived. After 1937 the Japanese government began to encourage
the Nisei to visit the homeland of their parents: by special prop-
aganda; by offering cheap tourist rates; and by dangling various
inducements before them. "We cannot urge too strongly," wrote
YuM Sato, a consular agent, "the advisability of as many as pos-
sible of the young people of the second generation crossing the
Pacific to the shores of Nippon to study first-hand the Japanese
conditions, traditions, culture and institutions." M
The number of Nisei in Japan, as might be expected, constantly
fluctuated. From 1920 to 1940, movement back and forth across
the Pacific was more or less continuous. At one time, however,
it was estimated that there were 16,340 American-born Nisei in
fourteen of the forty-six prefectures of Japan, with a total num-
ber in Japan probably in excess of zo,ooo. 15 An American Citizens
14 Great Northern Daily N&ws, January i, 1940.
Shimpo, December 12, 1929.
League had been formed in Wakayama, Japan; and there existed
in Tokyo an organization known as the Ria Club (raised in
America) made up of Nisei girls. Many of the Nisei in Tokyo
lived in a section of the city that had come to be known as Little
Tokyo, after the settlement in Los Angeles.
The Nisei have always been misfits in Japan. In a study of 1 141
Nisei living in Tokyo and Yokohama, 16 it was found that most of
the Nisei were antagonistic to the general scheme of things in
Japan. They were critical of the school system; of the customs;
of the dominant ideas; of the food; and of the mode of living.
Many of them particularly the Nisei girls expressed a strong
desire to return to America, For most of them, the language dif-
ficulty was as serious a problem as it had been for their parents in
America. While stating that they had moved to Japan to escape
the race prejudice that existed on the West Coast, they also stated
that they had encountered a variation of the same prejudice in
Japan. They were, for example, definitely set apart from the
general population. The study refers to them as being "Japanese
in features, American in ideas." Generally speaking, they were
regarded as a dubious lot in Japan and were suspected by the au-
thorities of harboring "dangerous thoughts."
While this study was prepared by Nisei in Japan, a wealth of
testimony by disinterested observers confirms the same conclu-
sions. Mr. Willard Price has reported that many Nisei discov-
ered that they were out of place in Japan; that they were dis-
liked because they were "different"; and that any number of them
had returned to America "full of resentment toward their own
people." John Patric met a young Nisei in Japan who complained
to him that "the Japanese call us Americans, and the Americans
call us Japs." He reported that he was constantly being spied
upon in Japan and that his every movement was noted by the
police. This particular Nisei disliked Japanese food; moaned over
the absence of good coffee; and charged the Japanese with being
"filthy" and "dirty" in their habits. "Which would you rather
be?" Patric asked this Nisei. "American," was the reply; "you'll
16 The Nisei: A Study of Their Life in Japan, published by the Nisei
Survey Committee of Keisen School, Tokyo, 1939.
never find an American-born Japanese who, after he's seen the
Japs, doesn't prefer the United States." 1T
"Most Nisei," report Carl Randau and Leane Zugsmith, "went
to their parents' homeland in the period of 1935 to 1938. They
went there to study Japanese culture and language or to find
better jobs than they could get in prejudiced America. Some
merely paid visits and some planned never to leave. At the end
of 1938, there were about 1,500 Nisei in Tokyo and Yokohama,
and they were not accepted as true Japanese." 18 "They're too in-
dividualistic," one Japanese manufacturer reported. "They can't
learn filial piety and loyalty to the Emperor or, for that matter,
our total-family system, no matter how hard they study. I do not
hire Nisei. The food doesn't suit them, the winter doesn't suit
them, they expect central heating. And they don't suit me. My
employees must do only what they're literally told to do. Nisei
want to learn everything that's going on and make suggestions
about what they think they've learned in the United States. They
may look Japanese to you. They don't to me."
Commenting on this statement, Randau and Zugsmith observe:
"They did look Japanese to us, but they did not act Japanese.
Their blood was pure Japanese; they were not Eurasians; their
environment and, in many instances, their tastes were Western."
In Japan they seemed to have improved their social, but not their
economic, position. The Nisei girls, in particular, reported that
they found it difficult to adjust themselves to "the debasing stand-
ards of etiquette for Japanese women." Many of them were pre-
paring to return to America. As a group they are reported to have
been critical of Japanese customs, Japanese living standards, and
the censorious attitude of the Japanese. Only one small group
among the Nisei in Japan were, in the judgment of these re-
porters, a danger to the United States: those employed in the For-
eign Office.
As trade between the United States and Japan began to de-
cline after 1940, many Nisei returned to this country and others
were planning to do so when war broke out. Since December 7,
17 See Chapter VU, Why Japan Was Strong, 1943.
18 Op. cit.
316
I94 1 * virtually no information has been available about the Nisei
who were trapped in Japan. Mar Hill has reported that they
were being forced to relinquish their American citizenship and
that many were being inducted into the Japanese army. Subse-
quent reports indicate that individual Nisei were putting up a
courageous fight to retain their American citizenship. 19 Captain
Paul Rusch, an American repatriated from Japan, reports that
the Nisei "are being closely watched and checked almost daily
by the government. Many have been placed in internment camps
under conditions similar to those of the enemy nationals. The gov-
ernment will not allow the Nisei to leave Japan." 20
As a group, the West Coast Nisei never had an active interest
in Japan. Dr. Edward K. Strong, Jr., who made quite elaborate
studies of the Nisei in California in 1934, concluded that "prac-
tically none expressed a desire to go to Japan." Even those who
had visited in Japan were not enthusiastic about the land of their
parents. "I felt out of place in Japan," one Nisei told Dr. Strong.
"Everything seemed so strange to me. I was really afraid to go
about alone because I could not read the signs and I was afraid
I would get lost. The Japanese also made comments about me.
They commented on my dress and my ways. . . . The modern-
ness of the capitol surprised me, but like a true Angeleno, I com-
pared everything I saw with some corresponding thing in Los
Angeles and said to myself: We can beat that in Los Angeles.' "
Satoko Murakami, born in California, spent fifteen years in
Japan. While there, she writes, "I felt a heavy fog in front of
me. I began to wonder why the people had such a poor life in
the darkness, burning their nails to live on. I could find no ex-
planation in the Japanese school, where traces of feudalism still
had a large influence. There was no relationship between school
learning and the social life of man. The teachers did not dare
explain, even if a student raised questions, which was seldom,
for he knew his name would be put on the black-list." n "One has
to go to some forsaken cluster of mud-houses like Bavabnusu
w See Pacific Citizen, January 28, 1943.
20 Gila News-Courier, December 16, 1943,
21 Common Ground, Spring, 1942, p. 15.
in North Manchuria," remarked Larry Tajiri, "before he re-
alizes that a spot in the LIT Tokyos of America looks pretty good
whether that spot is a two-bit job in a fruit stand, out in the hot
fields, or behind the counter of a back street shop." a
The Pacific Citizen of June, 1938, contained the following quo-
tation from an article which had originally appeared in the Japan
Chronicle of Kobe:
A Tokyo professor engaged in the education of American-
born Japanese has made the discovery that the mental atti-
tude of these pupils raised almost insuperable difficulties in
the way of their proper instruction in the traditions of their
forefathers. It is not, of course, a new discovery. It is made
every now and then, in varying circumstances, but somehow
never ceases to astonish. In the present case it is pointed out
that American-born Japanese, unlike second or third genera-
tion Nisei in Hawaii, persist in looking at the Sino-Japanese
crisis with American eyes. Even worse, many of them can-
not think of the Far East except from the Chinese angle,
and the professor has confessed himself at a loss as to how to
bring his charges over to the Japanese way of thinking.
I know of no more graphic demonstration of the attitude of
the Nisei toward Japan, in prewar days, than the following quo-
tation from an article by Tani Koitabashi, which appeared in
the Pacific Citizen for November, 1933. It was written in Tokyo
on the eve of departure for America:
Sailing time! The outward-bound President Jackson trem-
bles impatiently at her moorings like a leashed greyhound
eager for the chase. The cannonade rumbles of the winches
are silenced and from the deck to shore is one colorful mass of
serpentines. People making a last-minute rush for the gang
planks, tear-blurred eyes, smiling faces. It is time to say good-
bye.
From the inner bowels of the ship issues a deep-throated
roar that scatters pell-mell the sea-gulls sunning themselves
on the glistening white outer breakwater, and as the echoes
22 'Pacific Citizen) April, 1936.
roll and re-echo over the busy harbor and the green bluff,
it seems joyously to say:
Sayonara, Japan, I am going home. Farewell, O nation
of age-old traditions, of Bushido and the "way of the gods"
struggling with the perplexing inadequacies of modernism;
where a coalition government fails to coalesce and politics is
still in its rompers stage; where the uniform is a badge of
superiority and gold-teeth a sign of affluence.
Good-bye Fujiyama, peerless of mountains, farewell, Bi-
wako, lake of perfection. I am going to a land where the
mountains are higher and the scenery more vast; where the
lakes are bluer and the waters more serene, and not so over-
emphasized. Good-bye Ginza, street of imposing exteriors
and barrack-like interiors; where modern fronts hide shanty-
town "back doors" and where "the great white way" is dark
at eleven, avenue of much promise and little realization.
Good-bye Tokyo, I am going home.
Good-bye to garret-like apartment houses and match-box
homes, to high-walled gates and foot-square gardens. I am
going to a land of spacious gardens. I am going to a land
of spacious mansions and palacious pent-houses, where win-
dows look far out over the city as from a mountain peak;
where baths are taken individually and not collectively, and
are a glory to the plumbers' art; where suburban gardens njn
into each other without hedge or fence, and are a thing to be
seen, not hidden.
Gomen-nasai to bulky and unsatisfactory meals; and
heaped-up rice bowl and the byproducts of the prodigal bean,
the "tofu" the "shoyu," and the insipid, uninspiring "miso-
shiru." Farewell, O anemic coffee, you deserve a better fate,
and "ton-Katsu," half-brother to the pork cutlet. I am going
to a land of sublimated viands, of thick-wedges of apple-
pie and the juicy steaks on the plank; where asparagus is har-
vested from the field and not from a tin, and lettuce is a
whole-meal instead of a garnish; of "scrunchy" celery and
the melting melon; the five-layer cake with its inch-thick
chocolate frosting.
Good-bye, Tempura.
Good-bye, O land of contradictions, where the soda bot-
tles pop down instead of up; where theater box offices offer
3IO
reductions at premiers instead of demanding a premium, and
choice seats are in the balcony instead of title five-row aisle,
where baggage cars usurp the section where fancy-priced
"observation pullmans" should be; where self-deprecation is
virtue and bluffing a sin. Good-bye, Topsy-Turvy Land.
Farewell, to "salary men" whose sole incentive in life is
semi-annual bonuses and a pension twenty years hence;
whose pay day is pay-out day, leaving little or nothing.
Good-bye to dimly-lit, grotesquely furnished, "joku" clut-
tered cafes where coffee is seldom served; where food is mostly
liquid and the price is out of line; where noise is usually un-
confined and joy is unrestrained; where "service" is a by-
word but commensurate with the tip. Farewell, O Land of
the Sun, I am going home.
I am leaving you for a far-off land where they believe all
Japanese are inherently honest and always polite; to a place
where all Japanese women are judged by Madame Butter-
fly standards and considered very cute; where it is smart to
wear happy coats and artistic to clutter up mantel shelves
with bric-a-brac of the "yomise" variety. Good-bye Nippon,
and again, Good-bye.
I am going back to a people who are your best friends
and yet who keep antagonizing you; who are always trying
to understand your view-points and admire you. . . , Sayo-
nara, gokigen but who usually end up by misunderstanding
you; who wish you well, yo. I long for America, Farewell!
Some of the Nisei in Japan have unquestionably gone over to
the Japanese. A few of them hold responsible positions in the gov-
ernment and are taking a leading part in the war. The editor of
a Japanese magazine published in China is a Nisei graduate of the
University of Southern California. Herbert Erasmus Moy, a grad-
uate of Columbia University, is reported to head Japanese radio
propaganda. Some of them are serving in the Japanese armed
forces. Clark Lee in They Call it Pacific has told of meeting a
Sergeant Matsui who had been born in Southern California.
"People would not accept me as an American," he told Lee;
"because I look Japanese. So I went to Japan and they put me in
uniform." Unquestionably Nisei are fighting under different flags
320
in the Southwest Pacific today. The evidence would indicate,
however, that the bulk of the Nisei who were trapped in Japan
on December 7, 1941, are either in concentration camps or under
close surveillance. When news stories mention Nisei serving in
the Japanese armed forces or working in the government, they
sometimes confuse Japanese who have studied in this country with
Japanese born in this country; in many cases, the facts are not
known.
4. The Kibei
There is still another level of cultural conflict involved in this
weirdly complicated transpacific drama. If the Nisei are a prob-
lem in Japan, the Kibei are a special problem in America. The
Nisei who have studied in Japan and then returned to America
are known as Kibei (meaning, "returned to America"). There
are about 9000 Nisei now in America who received part of their
education in Japan. A sample study made in 1942 indicates that
72.7 per cent of the Nisei have never been in Japan. Of the 27.3
per cent who have been in Japan, 14.4 per cent received no school-
ing there, having gone merely as visitors; but 12.9 per cent re-
ceived some education in Japan,
While the Nisei are distrusted in Japan, the Kibei are distrusted
in both America and Japan. Not only are they especially dis-
trusted here, but their own people view them with some sus-
picion. Kibei have been returning to this country, a few every,
year, for the last twenty-five years. Some Kibei served in the
American Army in the First World War. Those who returned
some years ago are, in general, quite well-adjusted. They are in-
distinguishable from the other Nisei. But those who have returned
of recent years are, in many cases, products of a profound cultural
confusion. The transition from America to Japan and from Japan
to America has usually been effected during their most impression-
able years. Many Kibei had no more than returned to America
when they were interned in the relocation centers. They thus
found themselves involved in a genuinely harrowing experience
before they had had time to readjust themselves to American
3 21
life. Many of the Kibei who have caused trouble in the relocation
centers belong to this category.
In the history of American immigration there is no more com-
plex story than that presented by the Kibei. With the sharp con-
trast between Japanese and American culture in mind, consider
the anomalous position of the Kibei: raised by Japanese parents
in America, partially educated in Japan (where they were ostra-
cized and made conscious of a sense of difference), and then re-
educated in America, where, in the eyes of many American-born
Japanese as well as of most other Americans, they were regarded
with suspicion and distrust. A recent report of the WRA on the
Kibei appropriately refers to them as "a new immigrant group."
Their return to America was an experience not altogether differ-
ent from that of their parents who came to this country as an
original immigrant group. The problem of the Kibei has endless
complications. Often it was only the eldest child who was edu-
cated in Japan. Thus the Kibei, in most cases, is isolated from his
own family by sharp cultural differences. Not only has he lived
apart from his family during his most impressionable years, but
he has been educated in a very different culture from his broth-
ers and sisters. The Kibei have been aptly characterized as a
minority within a minority.
The other side of the story of the Japanese who have stud-
ied in America cannot be documented. But thousands of Japa-
nese have received a major part of their education in America.
The Japanese-Student Christian Association, in its report for
1940^-1941, indicated that there were 190 Japanese students en-
rolled in American colleges and universities in some twenty-six
states. These students who have studied in America are a part of
the "American problem" in Japan. 28
5. The Jews of the Orient
One of the great risks that we run in this war is that the Pacific
conflict may become, in Mr. Hearst's phrase, "a War of Oriental
races against Occidental Races for the Domination of the
23 See Restfaf Wave by Haru Matsui, 1940.
3"
World." 2 * It is not surprising to find that this view of the Pa-
cific war so steadfastly advocated by Mr. Hearst and the Fight-
Japan-First elements should be quoted with approval in Berlin
and Tokyo. 26 For this is exactly the interpretation that Japan seeks
to place upon the war in the Pacific.
Not only is the risk grave but its realization is dangerously
possible. According to Mr. Menefee, only half of the American
people feel that the Japanese government is our major enemy
and not the people of Japan. In the case of Germany and Italy,
three fourths of the American people hold the Nazi and Fascist
governments, rather than the German and Italian people, re-
sponsible for the war. One third of us would oppose sending any
food to Japan after the war, while only one sixth would take such
a stand in the case of Germany. Only 39 per cent of the American
people would allow Japan to join a postwar union of nations.
As Mr. Menefee points out, this feeling is primarily racial and
it is strongest on the Pacific Coast. What is genuinely alarming is
that this feeling may be gauged by the related feeling toward the
evacuees. That people can confuse their hatred of Japan even
of the Japanese people in Japan with their feeling toward 70,000
American citizens with Japanese faces indicates the dangerous ex-
tent to which race feeling has risen since the war.
So far as I know no one in America advocates a "soft" or a
"negotiated" peace with Japan. But there are important segments
of our population who feel that every liberalization of the WRA
program represents "appeasement" of Japan. "As a native Cali-
fornian born of native Calif ornians," writes a woman in the Los
Angeles Times on February 7, 1944, "I have felt keenly on this
reprehensible subject, the liberation of the Japanese within the
United States. Whoever started this vicious movement could not
possibly have ever lived among the treacherous little grinning yel-
low beasts. Altruism cannot possibly be entertained toward these
sons of hell. It is high time that the busybodies who prate
about our 'Christian responsibilities' are silenced." I could match
this quotation with nearly a hundred similar "letters to the
Angeles Examiner -, March 23, 1943.
25 See Assignment; 17. 5. A. by Selden Menefee, 1943, p. 285.
3 2 3
editor" clipped from the West Coast press during the last year.
It would not take much, in the way of additional instigation
and incitement, to unleash a furious popular hatred of the evacu-
ees that would convert them into die most helpless and abject
pariahs imaginable. They could easily become our modern "un-
touchables," Scattered over the country, lacking even the strength
which internal solidarity gave their West Coast settlements, they
could be singled out for attack, discrimination, and persecution.
If the race bigots have their way, all the evacuees will be rounded
up, before the war is terminated, relodged in concentration camps
(not relocation centers), and deported to Japan at the end of the
war. This possibility is closely related to a possible fate which
may be in store for the Japanese people throughout the world.
On several occasions in the past the Japanese have been referred
to as "the Jews of the Orient." Because anti-Semitism has become
so closely identified with Nazism in the eyes of the American
people, the Jew could scarcely be made the "ideal" scapegoat of
a fascist movement in America. But the resident Japanese could
be made the ideal "internal enemy," as, indeed, they already are
on the West Coast. Substitute the "bucktoothed, slant-eyed, bow-
legged Jap" for the "hook-nosed, grimy Jew," and you have
created a symbol against which much of the accumulated hatreds
(racial and otherwise), and all of the pent-up fury, of some sec-
tions of our population might easily be directed. Speaking in
San Francisco recently, Sinclair Lewis shrewdly observed: "If
fascism ever comes to California, its campaigns of racial hatred
will be directed not at the Jews but at the Orientals."
The future peace of the Pacific unquestionably requires the
destruction of Japanese militarism. The Japanese military machine
must be completely destroyed and every vestige of fascism must
be obliterated at whatever cost, sacrifice, and suffering. But
there is a difference between this type of defeat for Japan and
the one recently conjured up by a well-known war correspondent
when he said that Japan must be fought "until not alone the body
but the soul is annihilated, until the land is plowed with salt, its
men dead, and its women and children divided and lost among
other people." If we permit the war in the Pacific to become a
3 2 4
racial conflict then we may well have succeeded, better perhaps
than we can now realize, in making the Japanese "the Jews of
the Orient." For an undemocratic policy toward postwar Japan
could make of the Japanese a nation of peddlers and hucksters
and could result in a Far Eastern Diaspora that would make the
wanderings of the Jew look like a minor pilgrimage in time and
space. Today Japanese are already scattered over a fairly wide
area: they are in South America, the United States, Canada, and
throughout the Pacific. Like the Jews, the Japanese are a proud
and gifted people; like the Jews they have shown a remarkable
chameleon-like talent for adaptation; like Israel, Japan stands be-
tween two worlds.
The nation must realize that the foundations for the Second
Pacific War are being systematically laid in California today. Re-
cently a Los Angeles editor has been advising his public that we
should take our time about defeating Japan. We shall need, he ar-
gues, a vast postwar military establishment. Popular sentiment
will be against such an expensive undertaking. Therefore, we
must keep the war going in the Pacific; and we must continue
to harp upon "the grave national peril from the 1,000,000,000
people of the Orient." 26
It is precisely this unreasoning, groundless, stupid fear of col-
ored races that we must guard against. ^JVhen ^ consider," writes
Mr. Ferner Nuhn, "the depths of fear out of which has come
our action in the evacuation and detention of our people of Jap-
anese descent, and the degree of unbelief it represents ii* our own
ideas, I have forebodings not only as to our usefulness in the
evolving of a world culture, but of our survival as a culture in the
world. In numbers this group is one of the 'leasts' among us. In
significance it is one of the most important. Our ability to be
faithful in this 'least' is a test not only of sincerity but of fitness.
How can we suppose ourselves ready to bring freedom and se-
curity to hundreds of millions of Asiatics when we have shown
ourselves incapable of maintaining the minimum rights of a
hundred thousand citizens of Oriental ancestry at
26 Los Angeks Dotty News, October 14, 1943.
3*5
6. The Real Weakness of Japan
While it is the current fashion to scoff at the suggestion thai
we have any "liberal" allies inside Japan and to discount the be-
lief that there ever existed in Japan a movement that might fairly
be characterized as a liberal movement, nevertheless some of the
outstanding experts on Japan have constantly reminded us not to
forget the existence of these allies. 27 One may even share the cur-
rent misgivings about liberalism in Japan, however, and still re-
main convinced that there is a distinct possibility of a social revo-
lution in Japan.
The peculiar factors involved in the Japanese economy which
point to the possibility of an internal upheaval were carefully
analyzed by Freda Utley in 1937, and her analysis is more per-
suasive today than when it was written, 28 In 1937 Miss Utley
was convinced that Japan was "as politically and socially un-
stable and as near to revolution as was the Old Russia." Within
the last few months, reports reaching the United States from the
Far East suggest at least the possibility that Japan is threatened
with internal collapse.
In an interview with Walter Rundle of the United Press, March
24, 1944, General Ho Ying-Chin, China's War Minister, suggested
the possibility of an early internal collapse and pointed out that
the Japanese were, in his opinion, more vulnerable on this score
than the Germans. One of the most significant news stories of
1944 although it was generally ignored in the press was the
announcement of the formation of a Japanese People's Liberation
Front in communist-occupied China and the issuance by Shushumu
Okano, a Japanese communist, of a manifesto calling upon the
Japanese people to revolt.
The recent dispatches of Israel Epstein, Chungking corre-
27 See "Liberalism in Japan" by Sir George Sansom, Foreign Affairs,
April, 1941; "Our Allies in Japan" by Harry Paxton Howard, Commonweal,
October 9, 1942; and "Our Allies Inside of Japan" by William Henry
Chamberlin, Common Sense, November, 1942.
28 See the chapter entitled "The Imminence of Social Revolution" in
Japan's Feet of Clay.
326
spondent for Allied Labor News, call attention to the fact that
in 1941, Japan was shaken by a series of major strikes: at Kobe,
in April, 1941 (a strike said to have involved 100,000 workers);
at Nagoya in August; at Kokura in September; and in Taurumi
in October. 2 In a dispatch from London dated March 24, Fred-
erick Kuh pointed out that two of Japan's leading newspapers
admitted the suppression of food riots in Kagoshima, the liquida-
tion of the Japanese Fanners' Union, and the issuance of decrees
disbanding the new Shakai or Workers' Party that had held a
mass meeting in Ueno Park in Tokyo in 1942 attended by over
40,000 people. At this same meeting, some thirty-seven people
were killed by the police. Among those arrested in the suppression
of the food riots was one Mitsuhashi, a member of the Diet. 30
Japan has long been overripe for a social revolution and now,
with military defeat looming on the horizon, the likelihood of a
revolutionary upheaval cannot be dismissed as unthinkable. Com-
munist influence was widespread in Japan during the years from
1918 to 1930; and, as the Okano manifesto clearly shows, this in-
fluence has never been wholly extirpated. The narrow basis of the
Japanese economy does not afford opportunities for the ruling
class to make concessions of a reformist nature without jeopardiz-
ing their own position. Faced with a rising tide of unrest, these
same classes plunged the nation into a state of crisis in 1932 in
large part as a desperate attempt to avert an internal upheaval.
The people of Japan will hold these classes responsible for the
war. The prominence given the Okano manifesto in the com-
munist press indicates that Soviet Russia is well aware of the rev-
olutionary potential in Japan and that its policy in the Far East
is governed, in large part, by the belief that, even before Japan
suffers final military defeat, an internal collapse will occur.
The considerations briefly outlined in this epilogue have been
advanced with one thought in mind: to place die relocation pro-
gram in proper perspective; to suggest its relation to what has
29 See PM, March 24, 1944.
30 See summary of the Epstein stories, PM, February 6, 1944.
327
been going on in Japan and what is likely to happen in Japan;
and to point out its relation to what is happening throughout
the Pacific. We are in danger today, as in the past, of permitting
a fog of prejudice to obscure our relationship to the momentous
developments which now impend in the Pacific. A new world
is coming into existence in the Pacific, a world of which our
West Coast is an integral part; a world which we have ushered
into being. The distant peoples and diverse cultures of the Pa-
cific Basin have been brought into the closest possible intimacy.
In the past, time and space have served to minimize some of the
conflicts arising out of this new meeting of peoples and cultures
in the Pacific. In the future, these conflicts are likely to increase
in scope and in complexity. The first step toward a mastery of
the conflicts involved is to understand their true character and
this understanding we can never achieve so long as race prejudice
is capable of blinding us to the most transparent realities.
Recently Donald Culross Peattie forwarded to Time (April
10, 1944) a letter which he had received from a captain in the
Army Air Force who is now flying a Liberator in the Central
JPacific and who wears the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster.
"I want to tell you," writes the captain, "what a group of us
officers and enlisted men have been talking about tonight. Though
we have done a good job of killing the enemy, I find no sign of
an organized hate in any of our men. . . . Our men come closer
to hating those at home who break faith with us at the fronts
the shirkers, the profiteers, those who bicker in Washington over
our rights. . . . To the last man our group is not in accord
with what some people in the states are trying to do with some
American citizens, namely the Jap citizens. We say, if they step
out of line of faithfulness to our country, punish them severely.
But don't touch one of them just because he has Japanese blood.
We are fighting for all American citizens, and when we die for
them we don't stop to ask what kind of blood they have. We are
fighting for the sacred rights of man; we don't want them toyed
with behind our backs??
328
INDEX
Index
ABBOT, JAMES FRANCIS, 41
Adams, Dr. Romanzo, 143
Adkins, Homer M., 130
Adler, Cyrus, 296
Ainsworth, Ed, 268
"Air Force," 145
Also, John, 101
Alaska, 147, 156
Alien Land Act, 23, 45, 50, 51, 59, 60,
64-66, 77
Allen, G. C, 312
Allied Labor News, 327
Alsop, Joseph, 179
Altman, Aaron, 22, 31
America First, in
American Foundation for the Ex-
clusion of the Japanese, 241
American Federation of Labor, 17, 58
American Legion, 24, 54, 60, 118, 186,
240, 242, 243-244
American, New York, 52, 53
American Oriental Society, 297
Americanism Educational League,
236
Anson, Austin F., 127
Anthony, Garner, 147
Anti-Asiatic League, 59
Aoki, Viscount, 35
Argonaut, San Francisco, 29
Arizona, 70
Asano, Paul, 198
Associated Fanners, 242
Atherton, Warren, 270
Atkinson, Alfred, 160
BACON, SENATOR, 29
Bailey, Dr. Thomas A,, 15, 1 8, 27, 35,
Balch, J. A., 143
Bancroft, GrifEng, 60
Barrows, Dr. David P., 279
Bates, Ernest Sutherland, 52
Beard, Miriam, 306
Bellquist, Dr. Eric, 112, 263
Bendetsen, Colonel Karl, 135
Bloom, Dr. Leonard, 142
Bouslog, Charles S., 143
Bowron, Fletcher, Mayor of Los
Angeles, 114, 116, 252
Brailsford, H. N., 283
Brazil, 148
British Columbia, 150
Brown, Lawrence Guy, 74
Bryan, William Jennings, 45
Bryce, Lord, 23, 32, 49, 81-82
Buck, Pearl, 258, 272
Buddhism, 124
Buell, Raymond Leslie, 21, 26, 57,
62, 63, 69
Burchardi, Dr. K., 239
Burgess, Senator, 29
Burnett, Congressman, 29
CALIFORNIA AND THE ORIENTAL, 59
California Citizens Association of
Santa Barbara, 241
California Council on Oriental Rela-
tions, 69
California Grange, 24, 54, 186, 244
California Joint Immigration Com-
mittee, 54-55, 118, 143, 242
California Oriental Exclusion League,
22, 60
Call, San Francisco, 17, 21, 34
Caminetti, Anthony, 22, 38
Canada, 149
Cannery and Agricultural Workers
Industrial Union, 93
Carlson, Oliver, 52
Carr, Harry, 120, 235
Carr, Ralph, 163
Carrillo, Leo, 263
Carruthers, Dr. John, 240
Castle, Mrs. Vernon, 53
Caverly, Richard, 58
Cayton, Horace, 283
33 1
Chamberlin, William Henry, 326
Chambers, Whitman, 263
Chandler, Senator, 186, 247
Chapman, Charles E., 302
Chicago Federation of Labor, 92
Chicago Sun, 166
Chijiwa, Saikichi, 95, 123
Chinese Exclusion League, 17
Chira, Chugo, 72
Chronicle, San Francisco, 18-19, 21,
26, 79, 107, 246, 277
Chrysler, Senator Roy, 272
Chung, Henry, 58
Church Council of Sacramento
County, 238
Clark, Chase, 163
Clark, Tom, 116
Clary, William W., 307
Cleland, Frank A., 164
Cleveland, Grover, President of the
United States, 32
Close, Upton, 68
Coast Seamerfs Journal, 28
Coggins, Cecil H., 146
Collier, John, 291
Collier's, 34, 44, 114
Colorado legislature, 272
Commission of Immigration and
Housing, 50
Committee of One Thousand, 70
Committee on American Principles
and Fair Play, 258
Conmy, Peter T., 25
Coolidge, Calvin, President of the
United States, 12, 67
Cossio, Salinas, 147
Costello, John, 255, 265
Cozzens, R. B., 268
Crow, Carl, 27, 306
Cynn, H. H., 58
DENBY, CHARLES, 34
Denman, Mr. Justice, 163
Denver Post, 131, 250
Deseret News, 164
De Witt, Generar J, L., 108, no, 112,
113-116, 144,232,251,271
DeYoung, M. H., 19
Dictionary of American History, 40
Dies Committee, 116, 243, 253, 255-
257, 267, 270
Division of Immigration and Hous-
ing, 265
Dofo, 114
Douglas, Mr. Justice, 162
Downey, Senator, 187
"dual citizenship," 123
Dyess, Captain, 271
EBERHARTER, HERMAN P., 255, 256,
269
Ebihara, Henry H., 230
Eisenhower, Milton, 155-157
Eliot, Charles W., 46
Elliott, Robert, 296
Embree, John, 5, 78, 173, 174
Emmons, General Delos, 144, 145,
251, 267
Epstein, Israel, 326
Ernst, Hugo, 58
Ethnic Ties, 121
Eugenics Society of Northern Cali-
fornia, 238
Examiner, Los Angeles, 53, 107, 178,
266, 323
Examiner, San Francisco, 47
FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICE COM-
MITTEE, 285, 291
Fair Racial Practices Act, 291
Farley, Miriam S., 311
Farnsworth, John, in
Farrand, Stephen M., 183
FBI (Federal Bureau of Investiga-
tion), 119, 178
Federal Council of Churches, 55
federal policy, 290
Federated Trades Council of Sacra-
mento, 58
Fillmore, Millard, President of the
United States, 303
floral industry, 127, 257
Florin (California), 54, 101
Flowers, Montaville, 42, 61
Flynn, William, 277
Fontaine, Joan, 45
Fortune, 112, 300
Fourteenth Amendment, 29, 48
Fowler, Ruth, 14, 24, 44, 61, 72
Fox, Edward Lyell, 52
Frampton, Dr. Paul, 100
Francis, Warren, 248
Fresno Bee, 54
Fujii, Shuji, 114
Fuller, Helen, 248
Fuller, Dr. Varden, 76
33*
GAGE, HENRY T., Governor of Cali-
fornia, 17
Gallagher, James L., 22
Gannon, Chester, 258
Gannon Committee, 258
Gardiner, Mrs. Garnett, 262
Geneva Convention, 252
Gentlemen's Agreement, 35, 56, 57
Gerbi, Antonello, 148
Gillett, James N-, Governor of Cali-
fornia, 32, 37
Gilroy (California), 113
Goethe, Charles M., 143, 238, 239
Gold Star Mothers, 257
Goto, Taro, 185
Gould, Lieutenant Colonel Karl,
287
Granada Pioneer, 166
Grange, California, 24, 54, 186, 244
Grant, Madison, 42, 67, 238
Great Northern Daily, 313
Gripsholm, 202, 262
Griswold, Dwight, Governor of
Nebraska, 168
Grizzly Bear, 23, 58
Gulick, Sidney, 55-57, 72, 283, 298
HAMANAKA, KIYOSHI, 199
Hanihara, Ambassador, 67
Hanson, Chester, 235
Harcourt-Smith, Simon, 68
Harder, A. J., 237
Hariuchi, T., 93
Hawaii, 14, 16, 18, 24, no, 118, 122,
125, 141-147* W i5<$ i fi 5 34
Hayes, E. A., 25, 31
Hearn, Lafcadio, 306, 307
Hearst press, 42, 51-53, 234, 250
Hearst, William Randolph, 51-53,
107, 234, 322
Heart Mountain Relocation Center,
206
Heart Mountain Sentinel, 276, 284
Henderson, Ben, 142
Henry, Bill, 235
Herring, Hubert, 148
Hill, Max, 317
Himmel, William, 102
Hirabayashi, Gordon, 199
Hirabayashi, Gordon, vs. United
States, 162
Hitchborn, Franklin, 21, 31
Hobson, Captain Richmond P., 32
Holt, Hamilton, 56
Holton, D. G, 310
Home Front Commandos, Inc., 237
Hooton, Dr. Earnest A., 293
Hopper, Hedda, 244
Hosokawa, Bill, 245
Hosokawa, Robert, 225
House Naval Affairs Subcommittee,
251
Howard, Harry Paxton, 326
Howells, William Dean, 301
Howser, Fred, 257
Hughes, Charles Evans, Secretary of
State, 67
Human Betterment Foundation, 239
Hynd, Alan, m, 255
Hynes, Captain William F., 103
IMAMXTRA, TOSHIKO, 205
Imazeki, Howard, 221
Immigration Commission, 93
Independent, 56
Inman, J. M., 22
Institute of Pacific Relations, 297
International Equality League, 76
Inui, Minnie, 44
Irish immigrants, 20
Irwin, Wallace, 44, do, 71
Itano, Cecil, 217
lyenaga, Dr. T., 56
JACKSON, HENRY M., 248
Japan in American Public Opinion,
18
Japan Society, 55, 56
Japanese-American Citizens League,
113, 124, 245^
Japanese-American combat battalion,
287
Japanese and Korean Exclusion
League, 19
Japanese language schools, 294
Johnson, Hiram, 22, 25, 45
Johnson, Leroy, 247
Jones, Stella M., 145
Jordan, David Starr, 19, 95, 245
Junior Chamber of Commerce, 240
KAISER, the, 40
Kane, Lail, 107
Kato, Viscount Takahira, 60
Kawai, Michi, 76
Kawakami, K. K., 56, 72, 283
333
Kearney, Dennis, 20
Kcisen School, 315
Kennard, George, 302
Kersey, Vierling, 122
Kibei, the, 321
Kido, Saburo, 55, 185
King^ vs. Reagan, 162
Kiskiyama, Ellen, 226
Knowles, Harper L., 243
Kohler, Max J., 48, 57
Koide, Joe, 221
Koitabashi, Tani, 318
Komoto, Sergeant Kazuo, 287
Korematsu vs. United States, 163
Kozasa, Hanna, 220
Kuroki, Sergeant Ben, 287
Kurokawa, Koji, 133
Kusudo, Hiro, 196
Kyne, Peter B., 60
LABOR COUNCIL, Los Angeles, 92; San
Francisco, 16
Ladies' Agreement, 75
LaFitte, F., 182
London, Alfred M., Governor of
Kansas, Republican nominee for
President, 103
language schools, 95, 122
Lansing, Robert, Secretary of State,
57. 59
LaViolette, Dr. Forrest E., 150, 152
Lea, Homer, 41-44, 61
Lechner, Dr. John R., 236-237, 240,
243
Lee, dark, 320
Leighton, Lieutenant Alexander H.,
6
Leupjp (Arizona), 159
Lewis, Sinclair, 324
Life, ii2
Lind, Dr. Andrew W., 141, 142, 304
Literary Digest, 35, 125
Living Age, 41
Lodge, Senator Henry Cabot, 34, 67
Los Angeles Examiner, 53, 107, 178,
2<$6, 323
Los Angeles (California), Chamber
of Commerce, 257; City Council,
113; Harbor, 119; Labor Council,
92; Police Department, 103
Los Angeles Times, 31, 34, 50, 178,
2 5 2 263* 2<$6> 268
Lowell, Percival, 306
Lowith, Karl, 308
Luce, Clare Booth, 42
Ludwig, Emil, 41
Lundberg, Ferdinand, 52
MACARTHUR, WALTER, 20, 58
Macfadden, Bernarr, 107
Maclnnes, Tom, 147
Alagdalena Bay, 39
Alainichi, Osaka, 66
Mainichi, Shimbun, 27
Manzanar (California), 176-178, 180
Markino, Yoshio, 96
Marshall, Jim, 114, 131, 312, 313
Martinez, Jose, 286
Masacka, Mrs. Haruye, 166
Matsumoto, Tsuyoski, 222
Matsumoto, Turu, 169
Maw, Herbert, Governor of Utah,
168
McCajgar, Fred S., 242
McCarthy, P. H., 20-31
McClatchy, H. J., 143, 242, 243
McClatchy newspapers, 54, 246
McClatchy, V. S., 22, 42, 53-55, 56,
60-61, 147
McCloy, John J., Assistant Secretary
of War, 252
McCoach, Major General David,
190
McCormick, Frederick, 14, 27
McDonald, Mrs. Grace, 263
McGucken, Joseph T., 237
McKinley, William, President of the
United States, 32
McKensie, F. A., 58
McKensie, R. D., 66
McReynolds, Tupper and, 58, 60
Mead, Elwood, 51
Mears, Eliot Grinnell, 24, 49
Mears, Helen, 78, 94, 306
Meiggs, Stewart, 263
Menefee, Selden, 112, 323
Metcalf, V. H., 28
Mexican labor, 165
Miller, Doric, 286
Millikan, Dr. Robert, 258
Minami, H. Y., Sr., 139
Minidoka (Idaho), 170
Minidoka Irrigator, 219
Misakami, Dave, 196
Mishima, Sumie Seo, 81
334
Mittelstaedt, Brigadier General R. F.,
287
Miyamoto, Frank, 77, 88, 94, 104
Mizuno, J., ioo
Modesto Bee, 54
Moore, Frederic, 72
Morimitsu, George, 96, 99
Morley, Alan, 151
Moy, Herbert Erasmus, 320
Mundt, Karl, 249
Murakami, Satoko, 317
Murase, Kenny, 105, 193
Murata, Hideo, 133
Murphy, Mr. Justice, 162
Myer, Dillon, 132, 157, 164, 165, 248,
261, 267
NAKAMURA, DR. T., 26
Native Sons of the Golden West,
22-24, 31, 54, 59, 186, 240, 242, 244,
255. 2 57> 263
Naval Intelligence, 114, 119
Navy Mothers, 257
Negroes, 140
New Canadian, 102, 152, 280
New York, 169
News, San Francisco, 296
Nevus, Seattle, 34
New York American, 52, 53
New York Sun, 35
New York Times, 34, 35
New York Tribune, 35
New York World, 31
Niisato, Kanichi, 98
Nisei, in Japan, 314, 321
Nishitsujii, Sergeant Fred, 287
No Japs, Incorporated, 241
Normano, J. F., 148
Northern California Council of
Churches, 238
Nuhn, Ferner, 325
nursery industry, 127, 257
OB ATA, PROFESSOR, 185
O'Conroy, X, 56, 68
Odum, Howard W., 145
Office of Government Reports, 164
Okamoto, Kiyoshi, 204
Okano, Shushumu, 326
Oki, S. J., 206, 211
Okuma, Marquis, 47, 59
Older, Fremont, 21
Olson, Gilbert L., Governor of Cal-
ifornia, 263
Omiya, Pfc. Yoshinao, 289
Omori, Dr. F., 26
Opler, Dr. Morris, 134
Oriental Exclusion League, 59
Osaka Mainichi, 66
Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 67
Ozawa, Takao, 66
PACIFIC CITIZEN, 245, 318
Pacific Coast Japanese Problem
League, 239
Pacific Rural Press, 92
Padover, Saul K., 291
Pan-Pacific Exposition, 38
Papen, Franz von, 52
Park, Dr. Robert E., 6, 15, 40, 82,
94, 282, 301
Pearl Harbor, no, 144
Pearson, C. H., 41
Peattie, Donald Culross, 328
Perry, Commodore, 302
Peru, 148
Phelan, James D., Mayor of San
Francisco, 16, 21, 22, 58, 59
Phillips, Dr. Ralph L., 262
Philpot, Elmore, 151
Pitkin, Walter B., 7, 50, 53, 60, 295
Pixley, Frank, 40
Police Department, Los Angeles, 103
Pooley, A. M., 37, 46-47
Poston (Arizona), 176-178
Preisker, C L., 233
Price, Willard, 302, 315
Pride of Palomar, The, 6*0
produce industry, 127
Pyne, Dr. J. S., 261
RADEMAKER, DR. JOHN, 65, 78, 84, 90
Randau, Carl, 312, 316
Rankin, Representative, 186
Ratner, Payne, 130
Reddick, Dr. L. D., 292
Redfield, Dr. Robert, 5, 12, 157, 158,
175
Reed, Arthur Clifford, in
Regan vs. King, 162
Registration, 181
Reid, Helen R. Y., 84, 89, 90, 99
Reynolds, Dr. Charles N., 62
Richards, Ray, 248, 249, 267
Ringle, Lieutenant Commander, 114,
182, 183
Ritchie, Robert Welles, 64, 80
335
Robinson, Elsie, 244
Rogers, Margaret Fowle, 120
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, Presi-
dent of the United States, 108, 154,
300
Roosevelt, Theodore, President of
the United States, 12, 20, 28-32, 34,
35-37
Root, Elihu, 27
Ross, Dr. Edward Alsworth, 16-17,
73, 282
Rowell, Chester, 112, 235, 273
Royce, Josiah, 61
Ruef, Abe, 21, 22, 25, 26, 31
Rundle, Walter, 326
Rusch, Captain Paul, 317
Russo-Japanese War, 18, 41
Ryan, Harold, 137
Ryder, David Warren, in
SACRAMENTO BEE, 53, 54
Salinas Chamber of Commerce, 242
San Francisco Argonaut, 29
San Francisco Call, 17, 21, 34
San Francisco Chronicle, 18-19, 2I
26, 79, 107, 246, 277
San Francisco Examiner, 47
San Francisco Labor Council, 16
San Francisco News, 296
Sansei, 226
Sansom, Sir George, 326
Sasamori, Janzo, 20, 80
Sato, Yuki, 314
Scherer, James A. B., 47, 303
Schmitz, Eugene E., Mayor of San
Francisco, 21, 22, 25, 26, 30-33
school-board affair, the, 25-33
Seattle News, 34
Seed of the Sun, 60
Seibold, Louis, 15, 62
Seine and Line Fishermen's Union,
119
Selvage, Senator, 19
Senate Subcommittee on Military Af-
fairs, 247, 256
Seoane, Manuel, 149
Shapiro, Dr. H. L., 100
Shepard, Ward, 291
Shera, H., 92
Shibutanim, Tom, 286
Shima, George, 80
Shimano, Eddie, 172, 224
Shimbun Mainichi, 27
Shimpo, Rafu, 236
Shintoism, 124
Shipper-Grower Association, 126-
127
Shippey, Lee, 235
Short, General, 144
Shortridge, Senator Samuel, 67
Shoup, Paul, 117
Sino-Japanese War, 40, 114
Smith, Senator Ellison, 12
Smith, Frank Heron, 55, 298
Smith, Robert Aura, 68
Smith, Simon Harcourt-, 68
Smyth, Joseph Hilton, in
South America, 147
Southern California Edison Com-
pany, 120
Soyeda, J., 47
Spanish Embassy, 268
Special Combat Team, 184
Speer, Robert E., 41
Sprague, Governor, 164
Sproul, Dr. Robert Gordon, 258,
273
Starnes, Joe, 254
State Federation of Labor, 21, 24, 54,
242
State Grange, 242
State Labor Commissioner, 38
State Personnel Board, 162
State Senate Committee, 257
State-Tribune, 130
Steiner, Dr. Jesse, 84, 294
Stephens, William D., 59
Sternberg, Speck von, 35
Stetson, Helen Sloan, 44
Stimson, H. L., 108
Stockton (California), 113
Stoddard, Lothrop, 42, 67
Street, Julian, 245
Strong, Dr. Edward K., Jr., 317
sugar beets, 164, 215
Sugiyama, Frarddyn, 220
Sumner, Charles, 48
Sun, New York, 35
Sun Yat-sen, 42
Sunderland, Jabez T., 51, 265
Suski, Dr. P. M., 100
TACOMA DAILY NEWS, 34
Taft, Henry W., 39, 67-69
Taft, Senator Robert, 265
Taft, William Howard, President
of the United States, 12, 32, 38
Tajiri, Larry, 223, 278
Takagi, Yoshitaka, 284
Tanaka, Togo, 199
Tashima, Yuri, 194
Tashio, Aiji, 99
Taylor, Dr, Paul S., 106, 263, 273
Tenney, Jack B., 237, 243, 257, 267
Terminal Island, 129
Terry, Mrs. Horton, 271
Thayer, Mrs. Maynard, 258
Thomas, J. Parnell, 253
Thompson, Harry Thomas, in
Tillman, Senator, 29
Time, 112, 260
Times, Los Angeles, 31, 34, 50, 178,
252, 263, 266, 268
Times, New York, 34, 35
Tokutomi, lichiro, 33
Tokyo Jiji, 66
Tolan Committee, 116-117, 121-123,
126, 128, 140, 260
Toledo (Oregon), 69
Topaz Relocation Center, 170, 211
Topaz Times, 169
Tower, Charlemagne, 34, 36
Townsend, Ralph, in
Toynbee, Professor, 68
Treaty of Versailles, 57, 59, 6*0
Tribune, New York, 35
Tsukamoto, Mrs. Mary, 201-202
Tsurumi, Yusuke, 67
Tule Lake (California), 171, 178, 180,
187, 266, 270
Tupper and McReynolds, 58-60
Turlock (California), 62-0*3
Turner, Colonel Farrant L., 287
Turner, Frederick Jackson, 302
UNDERWOOD, J. J., 297
Underwood, Senator Oscar, 29
Union Labor Party, 21
United States, Gordon Hirabayashi
vs., 162
United States vs. Korematsu, 163
Udey, Freda, 326
VALOR OF IGNORANCE, THE, 42
Vancouver (B. C.), 35, 89
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 61
Veblen, Thorstein, 308-310
WAKASA, JAMES HATSUAKI, 204
Walker, Francis A., 282
Wallace, John B., 25
Wallgren, Senator, 247
Ward, Senator, 233
Warren, Earl, Governor of Califor-
nia, 116, 1 1 8, 119, 120, 262, 266,
267, 269
Wartime Civil Control Administra-
tion, 132
Washington Naval Conference, 63,
67, 283
Washington Post, 11, 294
Washington Star, 254
Washington Times-Herald, 254
Wassell, Commander C. M., 262
Watanabe, Frank, 220
Watanabe, G. T., 104
Waterhouse, Paul B., 97
Webb, U. S., 22
Webb-Heney Bill, 45, 47-49
White, Henry, 34
White, John W., 149
Wigmore, Professor John H., 49
Wilbur, Dr. Ray Lyman, 67, 258
Wildes, Harry Emerson, *68
Williams, Frederick Vincent, in
Williams, Senator, 29
Wilson, Woodrow, President of the
United States, 12, 32, 39, 45
Workingmen's Party, 20, 21
World, New York, 31
WRA (War Relocation Authority),
155
Wright, Heizer, in
Wright, T. H M 237
YAEHONTOFF, VICTOR, 68
Yanaga, Dr. Chitoshi, 91
Yasukochi, George, 223-224
Yatabe, Dr. T. T., 185
Yellow Peril, the, 40, 149
Ying-Chin, General Ho, 326
Yoneda, Karl, 179
Young, A. Morgan, 60
Young Buddhist Leagues, 124
Young, Charles Y., 84, 89, 90, 99
Yutang, Lin, 199
"zoor-surr" RACE RIOTS, 256
Zugsmith, Leane, 312, 316
337
