The Japanese American Story

1976. The first chapter talks about the history of Japan, and the second about Japanese immigrants. The third chapter gets into the topic of Pearl Harbor and persecution. Other chapters include the actual evacuation, the relationship of the JACL to what happened, the Nisei in combat, and life after the internment camps.

The book has one of the best discussions of the place of the JACL in what happened that I have seen in any other book on this subject.

The author goes into the history of the agricultural problem on the West Coast, where the efficient farming methods that the Japanese had adapted back in Japan proved very useful in the U.S. The white farmers became jealous and, instead of trying to duplicate the Japanese farming methods, decided to take out their envy and greed on the Japanese farmers and workers instead.

The author also notes that the “Little Tokyo” concentrations of Japanese immigrants developed basically because it was the only way the immigrants could really survive. They couldn't get jobs (except very poor ones) with whites, they were denied service at many white establishments, etc, so they had to turn to their own kind for business and social contact.

Why the Japanese Americans were not moved out of Hawaii and interned. It's interesting to note that, in spite of the fact that they formed over a third of the population, there were no massive uprisings, no sabotage, no spying by the immigrants, nothing of the bad things that were so discussed in the West Coast papers as being “wrong” with the immigrants.

The type of prejudice was so extreme that virtually anyone who was of Japanese ancestry was subject to it. Fortunately, not all people agreed with the haters.

What happened during the evacuation, and how some greedy people took major advantage of the suffering of others.

One can imagine if the government tried to do something like this today the violence and chaos that would result. Back then, though, that type of violence was not so commonplace. That, plus the different cultural views of the persons of Japanese ancestry (PJAs) led to a situation where the PJAs went along peacefully with the process.

The author of the book is proponent of the JACL (Japanese American Citizens League), but not everyone considers them in as friendly tones as he does.

The next chapter is about the JACL and from someone involved with it. The JACL was about the only organization left that could represent the PJAs, as most of the rest of the Japanese American organizations had been effectively neutralized by the government during its arrest of organization leaders.

The author notes that the JACL was not an extremely strong organization at the time, so what it could actually do was rather limited. The author then discusses some of the wild rumors about the PJAs in Hawaii.

One of the major problems in the evacuation/internment was that the West Coast political leaders wanted all the PJAs out (and they never wanted them to come back, either), and the governors and other political leaders of the states they could end up being moved to didn't want them in their states (with few exceptions.)

He notes that the PJAs of Hawaii were not evacuated, and then talks about how Earl Warren and Walter Lippmann played major roles in the West Coast evacuations.

The JACL position on why they encouraged cooperation is presented, one of them being to counter the anti-Japanese hysterical propaganda on the West Coast. They were also worried about the possibility of anti-Japanese violence there which could have led to widespread killing of PJAs.

Notice: there were some 500 laws and ordinances aimed directly at the PJAs on the West Coast. I don't think any other single group has had so many legal attacks aimed directly at them; at least definitely not since the blacks were slaves in the South, and I'm not sure the number of laws and ordinances against them reached the 500 mark.

When the evacuations commenced, some of the Issei thought they were going to be taken somewhere for mass executions. He then talks about the Puyallup assembly center and describes the conditions the people had to live under while there.

One of the people who was at the Topaz camp remembers how a PJA, 62 years old, was killed while walking and picking up flowers. It might have been that he guy didn't hear the sentry's warnings, or it might have been that the guy was tired of living He was not the only one to be killed in the camps, either.

There was actually an Emergency Detention Act that could have allowed the same thing to happen to any group. The act was not gotten rid of until 1971, and was originally put into place in 1950.

Which causes one to wonder who was it aimed at since it was after the end of World War II?

A Dr. Harry H.L. Kitano at the University of California said during a symposium on the evacuation that it could have led to genocide of the PJAs, especially if Japanese forces had actually invaded the continental U.S. or had at least bombed American cities resulting in high civilian casualties. The hatred for these actions would have been taken out on the internees, possibly, and the results could have been very horrible.

One chapter is on the Japanese Americans in combat. The Nisei fought both in the European Theater and the Pacific Theater, although it's noted that, in the Pacific Theater, some of the Nisei were mistaken for enemy Japanese and ended up being “captured” by American troops multiple times. The situation got so bad in places that a white soldier would be with the Nisei so no mistakes would happen.

The author then talks about post-war Nisei marriages, and how some inter-racial marriages were starting to happen. He also talks about the eta, the outcast group among the Japanese. In California, it was illegal for a white person to marry a non-white person until 1948. It wasn't until 1967 that the U.S. Supreme Court did away with the ban on mixed marriages based on race or color.

The rest of the book discusses the Nisei after the internment was over. George Takai, Mr. Sulu of Star Trek fame, is discussed. PJAs that made good are discussed, along with ones that had some problems with deliquency.



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