WW11 Internment of Japanese-Americans in the USA.

[Rodney Mills]

WW11 internment of Japanese-Americans in the USA, a shameful event in US history.

Back in the 1970s I was involved in the booking of The California Japanese-American Society Convention into a Los Angeles hotel where I was employed. Quite frankly, at first,they simply represented a large lucrative piece of business on a weekend that was historically a slow period for the hotel. About 500 rooms for two nights, banquets for a thousand, three meals a day for two and half days and lots of bar action.

About six months prior to the event I started to receive the associations monthly magazine, having somehow been included on their mailing list. I guess something caught my interest and I started to read it. A large part of it was letters from members families and friends plus extracts from diaries of people interred in concentration camps, many in hostile environments like the deserts of California. from shortly after Pearl Harbor to 1946.

Between 110,000-120,000 people with as little as 1/16 Japanese blood; including 17,000 children under the age of ten; plus the elderly, were given six hours to divest themselves of belongings and sent to marshalling areas only with what they could carry, even orphaned children were included in the exodus. The marshalling areas were often fairgrounds or race courses, horse stalls, and cowsheds. From there they were dispersed throughout the West Coast from California to Oregon in remote and often hostile environments, internment camps enclosed by barbed wire and secured by armed guards.

Sixty-two percent were US citizens born in the USA, the rest were legal immigrants, green card holders, with the same rights as citizens only they couldn't vote. that is the only difference between the rights of a citizen vs the rights of a green card holder.

There were no acts of sabotage that set the internment of Japanese-Americans it was purely racially motivated and an act of xenophobia, German-Americans or Italian-Americans were never sent forcibly to internment camps.

Many of the Japanese-Americans wanted to fight in WW11 not just to escape internment, but to confirm their Americanism. They couldn't be sent to the far-east, so a special battalion, the 442nd Infantry was formed around them to fight in Europe, Italy and Germany,. Their motto became "Go for broke." from the expression in the dice game of craps, "To shoot the works." risk it all.

"In 1944, the most decorated unit in US military history was fighting fiercely on the European front in WW2. You’d be surprised to find out that their families back in the states were in an internment camp of all places. This is because the US’s most decorated military unit was .. Japanese. [Japanese-American]

"The 442nd became known as “the Purple Heart battalion” because of the casualties it suffered. The original 4,000 Nisei [ A person born in America of parents who came to America] who initially came in April 1943 had to be replaced nearly 3.5 times. In total, about 14,000 men served, ultimately earning 9,486 Purple Hearts (many earning double and triples), 4,000 Bronze Stars. 1,200 Oak Leaf Clusters added to the Bronze Star, 560 Silver Stars, 28 Oak Leaf Clusters to the Silver Star, 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, 15 battlefield commissions and 23 of America’s highest decoration, the Medal of Honor."

These are all combat medals, most posthumously awarded.

It wasn't until a Supreme Court decision in 1980 that an apology and $20,000 was paid for repatriation. In 1998 a further $20,000 was paid to 81,800 survivors and a formal apology by President H.W. Bush: Small beer to the many that lost homes and cars etc.

"In remembering, it is important to come to grips with the past. No nation can fully understand itself or find its place in the world if it does not look with clear eyes at all the glories and disgraces of its past. We in the United States acknowledge such an injustice in our history. The internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry was a great injustice, and it will never be repeated." H.W. Bush. POTUS.


Rodney

[happy daze john in oz]

We had a similar situation here in Australia Rodders.
Also some Italian and German migrants locked away for the duration.

[Captain Kong]

Our local Ice Cream man, Manfredi, an Italian migrant , used to come in our street before the War in a two wheel cart pulled by a donkey, with one tub of ice cream in it, Then he vanished when Italy joined the Axis,
He had been picked up and locked up on the Isle of Man for the Duration.
He came back and became the biggest Ice Cream maker around here.

[john walker]

Modern Democracies seem to apologise and pay compensation for past mistakes made in times of war or national emergencies on a regular basis. One country that has never apologised or paid proper compensation (At least to the U.K.) is Japan for it's abuse to British and Allied soldiers during World War Two. A paltry £76 was payed to ex Far East Prisoner's of War (FEPOW) and British civilian internees in 1952. Of the approximately 60,000 U.K. servicemen held captive by the Japanese 25% died in captivity through maltreatment, starvation, tropical diseases or despair. The Royal British Legion and the Far East Prisoner's of War Association had been fighting for proper compensation and an apology since that initial £76.
In 2000 that master of apologising Tony Bliar the British Prime Minister apologised to the FEPOW survivors, their widows and next of kin and awarded them £10,000. This came about after the furore an apology and £10,000 compensation caused, which had been payed to ex Italian and German civilian internees of the Isle of Man camps. My Father an ex FEPOW was at the time in hospital on a life support machine so never new that a life long fight over compensation had been achieved. He had always maintained in his latter years that he had forgiven the Japanese for his suffering but that He could never forget. I am not sure that He would have accepted the compensation and apology from Bliar. As He had waited his whole life after release from captivity to hear those words From Hirohito/The Japanese Prime Minister or their successors.

[Captain Kong]

In 2000 I had three friends, two brothers and one sister, They were interned in Shanghai where their father was working as an Engineer on a long term contract so the whole family lived there, indeed Elizabeth was born in Shanghai.Then the Japs invaded and they were interned in a POW camp and not released until 1945.
I had read about the £10,000 compensation so I applied for them and got the documents.,They knew nothing at all about it.
One brother lived in Bolton, one brother lived in Canada and Elizabeth lived in Arizona.
I gave them the Documents and they sent off the details and all three received the £10,000 each.

I received a bottle of duty free whisky, [ about £4 in those days]. not a bad reward for getting the family £30,000 between them.

[john walker]

It is sad that more ex FEPOW's or their next of kin were not alive to apply for the compensation. I have read that the initial claims totalled some 16,700 which is not a lot compared with the 45,000 military returnee's and goodness knows the amount of civilians involved. There were/are still arguments from families of Gurkha's and others seeking similar. I think also that at the time the person who had been interred had to be still alive.

[Rodney Mills]

John re.#4

Terrible what happened to your father, my sympathies. Similar atrocities happened to many nations P.O.Ws. However, WE (the allies) know better and paid-out compensation and publicly apologized for OUR nation's transgressions. Why? Because WE know better, THEY don't.


Perhaps you missed the point of my thread with your natural anguish over your father, please read again as I most definitely was not writing about members of the allied nations that were on active service and captured, you will see I meant no disrespect or comparison to them.

Those I were posting about were not only non-combatants they were American citizens, "62% of them and the balance legal residents. And could be Americans of many ethnic ancestry with just 1/16th of Japanese ancestry. Which means just 1 out of 8 great-grandfathers or grand-mothers who came from Japan. Any family members alive from this one great-grandparent at the outbreak of war were subject to being imprisoned as Japanese sympathizers; lost all worldly goods except what they could carry, and concentrated in camps in remote areas for the duration of the war, and the SURVIVORS were paid some compensation FORTY years later.


Terribly wrong.

P.S.
20,000 of the same ethnic backgrounds, though legal Canadians they were incarcerated for the duration and lost their possessions in Canada, but were compensated in the end as those in the US were.


Again, my condolences to you on the loss of your father.


Sincerely, Rodney D.R. Mills

[Rodney Mills]

Captain and Johno,

The simple answer to why weren't German and Italian-Americans similarly treated was that the largest ethnic group of Americans at that time were descended from German-Americans, followed by English, Italian and then Irish. A couple of the Mid West States had as much as 40% who claimed German ethnicity. Japanese were less than 1% of the population and voluntarily located in California to Oregon.

Canada's minimal Japanese population too were in Pacific coast cities.


I write only about this action in the USA: It was simply a case of prejudice and xenophobia and it was wrong.


Cheers, Rodney

[john walker]

Rodney, I understand you meant no disrespect with your original post and thread. I was never trying to take you to task over what you wrote, I empathise with those Japanese/Americans who fought as combatants on the allied side and sympathise with their parents/kin who were interred. I posted to the thread as an adjunct to something that I feel has not properly been addressed. Like most things to do with war it takes generations to forget, anything that we write will always be contentious to others but we were not there ? I still feel and probably always will that the Japanese have never apologised.

[j.sabourn]

Probably. Because the Japanese believe they did no wrong. They have different feelings on the subject, were not to my knowledge signotarys to the Geneva Convention and to most of that era to be taken prisoner was dishonourable. Different nations have different feelings rules and religions , one of the reasons why countries have policed borders. A lot of the Japanese armed forces at that time were also Korean and to ex POWs that I spoke to these were vying for what was cruelty done to them. You have to this day people crossing borders and gaining the right to stay under false reasons who still practice malpractice on their own women folk just one among many other things , and you get the slow learning advocates of the PC groups who say they should be allowed to practice their own faiths. I agree they should, but in their own country and not others that they wish to convert to their own ways . Carry on Trump and build your wall, at least your thinking hasn’t been corrupted ... yet. JS...