February 15, 2017 • 42 mins
After Executive Order 9066 was signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, people were incarcerated in inadequate and dehumanizing camps. Even once the detention program ended, things were still incredibly difficult for people after their release.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy B. Wilson Fry. Today we are picking up
the second part of a two parter, so if you
(00:21):
have not heard our previous episode, I strongly recommend getting
into that one before you get into this one. President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order ninety six on February nine,
and this paved the way for Japanese Americans to be
removed from the Pacific coast on mass and incarcerated in
(00:44):
camps for the duration of World War Two. Last time,
we talked about the history of Japanese immigration into the
United States and how the US arrived at deciding that
needed to plan a mass removal. This time we will
talk about the executive order, what happened in the camps,
and then what happened after the war was over. Following
(01:04):
the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U. S. War Department
in particular began to advocate for aggressive action to eliminate
the potential for espionage, sabotage, and anti americannectivity on the
part of the Japanese population. Its recommendation was a wide
scale effort of removal and incarceration. Just to recap the
thing that we said at the top of part one,
(01:27):
Japanese nationals were not the only people targeted by this.
They're also Germans and Italians who were incarcerated as well.
There were millions and millions of people in the United
States of German or Italian ancestry. There's no possible way
to in turn them all, and no effort for any
kind of wide scale in tournament of Germans and Italians. Uh.
(01:51):
And occasionally we will get notes and people suggesting that
there was there was really not. A key architect of
the removal UH of Japanese Americans from the West Coast
was Carl Benditson. His background was kind of deceptive. Uh.
He was the He was the son of Jewish immigrants
(02:14):
who basically changed his name and made up that he
was a immigrant from Denmark so that he could get
into an exclusive fraternity when he was in school. Like,
there was a lot of shadiness in his background, and
he was in this case working as a strategist. He
formulated the basic concept of how an executive order could
(02:36):
get around the many many unconstitutional aspects of incarcerating American
citizens without due process based on their nationality. There are
a lot of ways in which that entire idea is flatly,
unquestionably unconstitutional. So instead of conceiving this as an order
(03:00):
targeting Japanese Americans, he instead framed it as a need
to set up zones to be placed under military jurisdiction
from which any and all persons could be evacuated. He
also recommended a three step process to setting this up.
There would be an executive order that would give the
Secretary of War authority to do it, there would be
(03:22):
establishment of the military zones themselves, and there would be
a provision for removing persons from within these zones. The
only persons really being targeted here, even though it never
said specifically, we're Japanese Americans. At first, the recommended military
zones were imagined as small, specific areas around vulnerable targets
(03:46):
like bridges, power plants, and military pieces, but during discussions
leading up to the actual drafting of the executive order,
they grew. Whole cities were named as potential zones, then
whole regions. Soon it's the entire length of the West Coast,
which was also where nearly all Japanese Americans were living
apart from Hawaii. Yeah, there were only a very few
(04:09):
Japanese Americans living anywhere in the United States other than
the West Coast in Hawaii. On February seventeenth of ninety two,
President Franklin Roosevelt told Harry L. Stimpson, the Secretary of War,
and John McCloy, the Assistant Secretary of War, to draft
an executive order to get all this accomplished, and he
(04:30):
specifically directed them not to involve Attorney General Francis Biddle, who,
as we noted in Part one, regarded a mass incarceration
as unconstitutional from several angles. Biddle would wind up finding
out about this only upon seeing the final approved draft,
after which point he sent one more memo to the President.
(04:51):
He's stressed that distrust of the Japanese and a desire
to take over their now successful farmland, not national security,
was really what was driving this push for a removal.
The end result of all this was Executive Order six,
which was titled Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe
(05:12):
Military Areas. It's superseded previous proclamations made by the Attorney General,
who had raised so many objections to the plan, and
instead granted authority to the Secretary of War. The order
are authorized the Secretary of War and military commanders that
he designated, quote, to prescribe military areas in such places
(05:34):
and of such extent as he or the appropriate military
commander may determine, from which any or all persons may
be excluded, and with respect to which the right of
any person who enter, remain in, or leave shall be
subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the
appropriate military commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary
(05:58):
of War and the military commanders were also authorized to
take whatever steps they thought were appropriate to ensure compliance
with these exclusion zones. The order specified that the government
would quote provide for residents of any such area who
are excluded therefrom such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations
(06:18):
as maybe necessary. It authorized all executive departments of the
government to assist the Secretary of War and military commanders
with this effort. The executive Order did not have its
own enforcement provisions. These came in the form of Public
Law five oh three, which was also drafted by the
War Department and introduced to the Senate on March nine.
(06:40):
It was introduced to the House of Representative on March tenth,
and it was signed into law on March twenty one.
Public Law five oh three was quote to provide a
penalty for violation of restrictions or orders with respect to
persons entering, remaining, in, leaving, or committing any act in
military areas or zones. It's set a fine of up
(07:02):
to five thousand dollars and imprisonment of up to a
year for each offensive, entering, leaving, or committing any act
in a military zone established under the executive Order. Roosevelt
signed another Executive Order number O two, quote, establishing the
War Relocation Authority in the Executive Office of the President
(07:23):
and defining its functions and duties on March eighteenth. The
War Relocation Authority was the civilian agency that was responsible
for creating and maintaining the camps that would house the
people who were removed. Under the terms of Executive Order
ninety six, the War Relocation Authority was part of the
Office for Emergency Management. Executive Order n O two would
(07:45):
also quote provide insofar 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. There were also other acts and
(08:06):
laws that were connected to all of this as well,
but these two executive orders and public Law five oh
three were the primary ones involved with establishing the authority
to remove people, enforcing that removal order, and relocating and
housing the people who were removed, in some cases also
giving them work to do. If you begin with the
(08:28):
point of view that the government can be trusted to
see to the best interests of its citizens and residents,
and to be clear, that is not what was going
on here, this might sound somewhat innocuous. It was basically
saying that the Secretary of War and his designated military
commanders could set up evacuation zones for the sake of
national safety and security. The Pacific Coast, for example, was
(08:50):
considered high risk given how easily Japan could reach it,
and if your home was deemed to be in an
exclusion zone and you had to leave, the government would
have to provide you with food and shelter. It was
all framed out as being a military necessity, and most
government communications on the mattern used euphemistic terms like assembly
(09:11):
point and relocation center and evacuation as though this entire
removal plan was for people's own protection. It's deceptively normal
seeming when you read it, and during peacetime it certainly
would have raised a huge outcry. It clearly gave the
(09:31):
government a very, very broad authority to deprive people of
their rights to privacy and property and to process and
the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure under the
Fourth Amendment, just as a few examples. But in a
time of war, especially given that the attack on Pearl
Harbor had been such a devastating shock only a couple
(09:53):
of months before, it was deceptively easy, especially for people
not actually affected by this order, to read it as
common sense. For the sake of national security, certain parts
of the nation needed to be evacuated, and for anyone evacuated,
the government would see to their care in housing. This
sounds so reasonable in theory. Yeah, And of course there
(10:17):
were also people who were in favor of it, who
were motivated not by a sense of national security or safety,
but by greed for the farmland and the property that
we're going to have to be abandoned. Another factor was
definitely prejudice, and there were all manner of other issues
involved that had zero to do with national security. And also,
(10:39):
in spite of all the very rational sounding language in this,
it was not an evacuation to a relocation center. It
was a forced removal to a concentration camp. And we
are going to talk about that actual removal after we
first pause and take a little break in here from
(11:00):
one of the sponsors that keeps this show going. The
first step to executing Executive Order NINETI sixty six was
a recommendation that anyone of Japanese descent leave the established
military areas voluntarily. And these military areas has banned the
(11:22):
whole West coast. But since enemy aliens, again, that's just
people who were citizens of a country at war with
the place that they were living. Since enemy aliens assets
had all been frozen, that meant most people just did
not have the means to do it, even if they
wanted to. Their assets were frozen, they had no way
to fund a trip anywhere. Some who did try to
(11:45):
leave voluntarily also encountered violent resistance on the part of
white residents in the places they tried to go, so
they were forced to turn back and return to their homes.
A forced removal followed. Thanks to the ninety census, which
had been handed over to the Army and the FBI
for this purpose, officials knew where nearly all Japanese residents
(12:05):
were living. The first mass removal was from Terminal Island
in the Port of Los Angeles, which was owned by
the military, beginning on February. The first mass removal from
a civilian location was from Bainbridge Island, Washington, in March.
Throughout the duration of the removal, which would span about
six months from when it started until everyone being out
(12:27):
of the Pacific Coast, Japanese Americans on the West Coast
were placed under a curfew as well as movement restrictions.
Eventually there would be a hundred and eight individual exclusion orders,
each of them targeting about a thousand people. For the
most part, both first and second generation Japanese Americans cooperated
(12:48):
with the removal. Some of this was an attempt to
demonstrate their loyalty to the United States. Many in the
Japanese community had vocally denounced the Japanese bombing of Pearl
Harbor and invase of other nations in Asia and the Pacific,
and they had expressed their support to the United States too.
Many doing as the government asked in this removal would
(13:08):
be another way to show that they were true Americans,
regardless of whether they were citizens and regardless of their
Japanese ancestry. Some of this was also cultural. Japanese concepts
of bearing difficult circumstances with dignity UH and a concept
known as shakeda guy night or it can't be helped
(13:28):
come up repeatedly in accounts of how people on an
individual basis and within their communities dealt with this removal.
Once the removal order came, people had an average of
six days to prepare, although sometimes it was as little
as one. They were told to bring only what they
could carry, but they were also required to bring their
own linens, clothing, toiletries, in the like. Before leaving, many
(13:53):
Japanese Americans tried to liquidate their property. Some were able
to sell their homes and their property if they had
stores they had closed out sales for their stock, but
because they had so little time, many had to sell
their property for much much less than it was worth.
Those who owned farms often tried to negotiate with their
(14:14):
neighbors to see their crops while they were gone, which
in some cases this worked out and in others did not.
The only actual sabotage conviction of a Japanese American stemming
from all of this time was a farmer who plowed
under his strawberry crop because he had not been allowed
to harvest it before being sent to a camp. As
(14:35):
people were leaving, salvage companies used furniture salesmen and others
made the rounds, offering to buy people's possessions and generally
offering just pitifully small amounts of money for them. Some
who didn't sell, hoping to return home, eventually had their
homes looted after they were gone. Others destroyed their possessions,
(14:56):
sometimes in front of the people offering them insulting lye
small amounts of money a rather than sell them. The
Coast Guard also requisition boats left in the docks after
their owners were removed so that they could use them
in the war effort. As people were removed, they were
first sent to temporary assembly points that served as basically
a place to gather large numbers of people from different places,
(15:19):
before then moving them on to a more permanent camp.
A lot of these were places like race tracks and
horse stables and other facilities that were not really meant
for housing people. For example, over the course of the removal,
eighteen thousand, five hundred people were housed at the Santa
Anita race Track, including in the horse stalls, is actually
(15:42):
where George Decay and his family were housed. Immediately after
their removal from the assembly point, people were transported by
train with the curtains closed so they could not see
where they were going to one of ten relocation centers,
better known as internment camps and more accurately known as
centration camps. These were scattered in remote areas in Wyoming, California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho,
(16:08):
and Arkansas. For the most part, these camps themselves were
built on land that the government already owned, which was
often less than ideal for human habitation. It included things
like dry lake beds, lava fields, deserts, and swamps. Native
American reservation land was also used. The camps were hastily
(16:28):
built military style housing with communal mess halls and blocks
of tar paper barracks. They were surrounded by barbed wire
with armed guards and searchlights. Even though the plan was
to put people in these camps for a long term stay,
there had not really been a lot of thought put
into maintaining the needs of communities with things like schools
(16:49):
or houses of worship. People who were incarcerated there basically
had to take care of those things themselves. No one
of Japanese ancestry was exempt from the removal Included in
the order sick people in hospitals who were kept under
guard until they were either well enough to be removed
or until they died. Children including children living in orphanages
(17:12):
who quote looked at Japanese Japanese children that had been
adopted by white parents, Persons with severe disabilities. Seventeen thousand
of those removed were children under ten years old, two
thousand were over sixty five years old, and one thousand
were disabled or very ill. One exception to the removal
(17:35):
order was Hawaii. It was not yet a state. At
about a hundred and seventy five thousand people, Hawaii's Japanese
population was too large to just incarcerat, and many were
working in industries that were critical to the war effort,
including carpenters, who were needed to help rebuild the base
at Pearl Harbor. While some Japanese Americans in Hawaii were
(17:59):
deemed i risk and incarcerated, most were instead subject to
curfews and movement restrictions, and were banned from deep sea fishing.
And all of this was done without due process and
with no opportunity for appeal. The camps were fenced and guarded,
and the people incarcerated there could not leave, unable to
(18:19):
work or pay their bills. Many of those incarcerated lost
their jobs, homes, and possessions. Additionally, many of the states
that were home to these camps were fiercely opposed to
Japanese prisoners being sent there. Wyoming Senator Nel Smith insisted
that the state would not be California's quote dumping ground,
(18:40):
and said, quote, if you bring Japanese into my state,
I promise you they will be hanging from every tree.
Governor Herbert maw of Utah argued that the constitution should
be changed because, quote, if these people are dangerous on
the Pacific Coast, they will be dangerous here. Even in
the face of in my backyard style opposition to the
(19:02):
camps themselves, the general public was overwhelmingly in favor of
the removal, and continued to see the Japanese community as
a real threat even after they had been removed. In
December of nineteen forty two, a year after the bombing
of Pearl Harbor and about ten months after the signing
of Executive Order ninety sixty six, a Gallop Pole found
(19:23):
that forty eight percent of Americans believed the Japanese detainees
should not be allowed to return home after the war.
Half believed they should be sent back to Japan, while
thirteen percent responded put them out of this country. Ten
percent said leave them where they are under control, presumably
advocating a permanent imprisonment of citizens who had done absolutely
(19:46):
nothing wrong. At about the same time, in a Los
Angeles Times poll, a number of questions were asked about
people's support of the the incarcerations, and and what was
going on in the war. Ten thousand, five hundred people
answered yes to quote, do you favor a constitutional amendment
(20:08):
after the war for the deportation of all Japanese from
this country and forbidding further immigration, with an overwhelming no
vote for allowing an exception for American born Japanese people, who,
to be clear again, were already citizens and coming up,
we're going to talk about the resistance to the removal
and how it all came to an end. But first
(20:29):
we will once again take a quick break and have
a word from one of our sponsors. While on the
whole Japanese Americans had cooperated with the initial removal out
of the Pacific coast, over time divisions started to develop
(20:49):
within the camps. Some of this was generational, with younger
niss who were citizens of the United States increasingly rebelling
against being denied the rights of citizenship. NISSA began pushing
back against people who had been in the Japanese American
Citizens League, insisting that this organization should have been pushing
(21:11):
for a guarantee of their constitutional rights rather than working
to a pc the American government. And these divisions between
the first generation immigrants from Japan and their second generation
citizen children were exacerbated by overcrowding, poor living conditions, insufficient resources,
and a generally degrading to humanizing experience. And there certainly
(21:36):
were people incarcerated who really were loyal to Japan, many
of them the ones who had been educated there. And
over time these groups banded together and in some cases
turn on the rest of the camp, bullying and harassing
those who remained loyal to the United States as time
went on. This was particularly true at Tool Lake, where
(21:57):
people deemed disloyal or otherwise problematic dick were transferred. The
conditions in these camps were in general poor, and they
were often insufficient to withstand the climates where they were located.
As an example, desert camps were often just sweltering in
the summer and filled with dust from dust storms, and
(22:17):
there were also real incidents of violence, including at the
hands of guards. For example, two men were shot to
death in Lordsburg, New Mexico, at the camp there on
July seven, nineteen forty two, purportedly while they were trying
to escape, although both men were described as too ill
to walk at the time. Nineteen forty three saw a
(22:38):
number of huge changes in the war and in the camps.
On January ninety three, a little less than a year
after the Executive Order ninety six was signed, the Secretary
of War issued a press release describing the right to
bear arms in the nation's military as the right of
every citizen, no matter their national origin, after swearing their
(22:59):
un qualified allegiance and for swearing any form of allegiance
to Japan, Nissa would be allowed to voluntarily enlist in
the army. The response to this from within the camps
was mixed. There were people who were eligible to serve
and were elated at the chance to be released from
the camp, and many also had genuinely patriotic motives for
(23:21):
wanting to join the service, but others saw this as
deeply hypocritical, since it made no sense for a population
deemed so dangerous that they had to be incarcerated on
mass to be invited to join the war effort. There
was also the hypocrisy of the war in Europe, especially
being like against a nation that was putting people in
(23:42):
concentration camps, and the invitation was for people being held
in concentration camps in the United States to join the
effort to fight that force. It's a lot to wrap
your head around. Well, it's one of those things where
when you when you really can sider that, Uh, I
don't know if it's so much a lot to wrap
(24:03):
your head around in terms of like the details, but
it's like a head scratcher of like who could look
at all of this and be like, yeah, that that
makes sense. That seems there's some mental gymnastics involved. And
I mean a lot of times when we have talked
about wartime service and now it has related to civil rights,
(24:23):
it has been involving black soldiers who joined the service
to fight for freedom and then return home to find
that they were still subject to the same discrimination and
prejudice that had been true before the war. And this
is a little bit different because it was literally like,
please leave this concentration camp where we have been keeping
(24:45):
you to join the service and fight Hitler. Like, yeah,
it's a stretch, It's very weird. I'm sure people reconciled
it in their heads, but I cannot understand the math involved.
I'm sure we will get emails from people who insist
that it was the right thing to do. Uh. And
there have already been Japanese Americans in the Armed Forces
(25:06):
before Pearl Harbor, and along with new recruits, most wound
up in segregated units. These included the one hundred Infantry
Battalion and the four hundred twenty second Regimental Combat Team,
which were eventually combined. These could definitely be an episode
on their own. People have certainly asked for us to
do that, but overall, the short version is that they
(25:28):
served with extreme valor. My original plan was actually to
include a lot more on them in this episode, but
the whole rest of this episode there was too much
of it. Uh So maybe someday in the future we
will have a show on them. In ninety three, a
number of policies also allowed some people to be released
(25:50):
from the camps. One was a quote mixed marriage non
exclusive policy, which allowed young people who were parked Japanese
to be released under the argument that being kept in
a Japanese only camp might turn them against the United States. However,
many of those who were released had nowhere to go.
They had no funds because their assets had been frozen,
(26:12):
and their families have lost everything, and they faced huge
hostility out in the rest of the world. That same year,
the War Department and the War Relocation Authority also tried
to put together a way to figure out if the
people being held in the camps were loyal those who
were not could not be released under the newly announced policies.
(26:33):
They did this through a questionnaire that became known as
the Loyalty Questionnaire, and two of its questions, in particular
numbers twenty seven and eight, We're problematic. Question twenty seven
asked eligible men if they were willing to serve in
combat duty, and asked everyone else if they were willing
to serve in some non combat way, and people were
(26:53):
afraid that answering yes to question would basically volunteer them
for active duty in the military. Question asked whether they
would swear loyalty to the United States and forswear loyalty
to the Emperor of Japan. Being American citizens born in
the US, most of whom had never even been to Japan,
(27:13):
many had no loyalty to forswear, and people were reluctant
to swear loyalty to a government that had been imprisoning
them without due process in defiance of numerous aspects of
the Constitution. Because of their national origin, people who answered
no to both questions were branded as the no No Boys,
branded as disloyal, and in many cases transferred to tool Lake.
(27:38):
Those who were released from the camps in nineteen three
and beyond continued to face prejudice, discrimination, hostility, and even violence,
and this became more of an issue as incidents that
had actually happened earlier in the war involving the nation
of Japan became more public knowledge. He's included the Batan
Death March and the deaths of the participants in the
(28:00):
Doolittle Raid who were captured by the Japanese. We have
podcasts on the Doolittle Raid if you would like to
learn more about that story. Uh learning about these events
caused an even greater increase in anti Japanese sentiment. People
became increasingly angry that the camps were too soft on
(28:20):
the people who were incarcerated there, especially in cases when
the camps had facilities like hospitals that the nearby non
incarcerated community did not have easy access to. Through these policies,
in overall camp population dropped from about one d and
(28:41):
seven thousand to nine thousand, but many who were able
to leave were among the best educated, meaning that many
camps lost an important source of internal leadership. Unrest and
violent incidents within the camps increased, including more transfers to
tool Lake, whose non disloyal population shin had to be
transferred elsewhere to make room. In the spring of nineteen
(29:05):
forty four, Nissa once again, that is, the citizen children
of Japanese immigrants, were made eligible for the draft. This
led to the Fair Play Committee at the Heart and
Mountain Camp being organized and forming a draft resistance, with
many of them pointing out that they were being imprisoned
by a government that was now expecting them to serve
(29:27):
in the military involuntarily. The draft resistance at Heart and
Mountain led to indictments and convictions for violating the Selective
Service Act. Resistance to both the loyalty questionnaire and the
draft of Japanese American citizens eventually led to public Law
seventy eight DASH four oh five D Naturalization Act of
(29:49):
nineteen forty four, allowing citizens to voluntarily renounce citizenship during wartime.
The one hundred seventeen who first signed up had all
been edging caated in Japan, and we're all incarcerated at
Tool Lake and may have genuinely wanted to renounce American
citizenship and return to Japan. But then the administration at
(30:11):
Tool Lake started wilfully ignoring problems there, including bullying and
coercion at the hands of the people who really were
loyal to Japan. Eventually, five thousand, five hundred eighty nine
people at the camp renounced their citizenship, many under duress.
Most of these had their citizenship restored thanks to the
(30:32):
work of Wayne Collins from the A c l U. Yeah,
this space basically became an attempt to, like, let's see
how miserable we can make this situation to force people
to renounce their citizenship so that we can deport them
to Japan. Like that. They were not very uh covert
(30:53):
that that was the underlying purpose. Aside from the increasing
unrest and in some cases violence at the camps, especially
as the war dragged on, there were also legal challenges
to the internment that played out over the course of
several years. Four different cases went all the way to
(31:14):
the Supreme Court. Minorro Yusui was in the reserves and
after being turned away from enlisting in the regular army
nine times after Pearl Harbor, he broke curfew on purpose
and was arrested. Newspapers then described him as a spy
because his children had drawn pictures of the Panama Canal.
(31:35):
Gordon Hirabayashi, who was a Quaker, also broke curfew and
got arrested on purpose. Fred Korematsu had plastic surgery on
his eyes and tried to go into hiding before being
convicted of violating the executive order, and Mitsui Endo was
chosen by the a c l U as a test
case to try to have the removal and incarceration ruled unconstitutional.
(32:00):
The Supreme Court unanimously agreed in nineteen forty three that
Hirabayashi and Yasui's convictions were constitutional, and it held off
on hearing the other cases until after the nineteen forty
four presidential election. On December eighteenth, nineteen forty four, it
was unanimously ruled that the United States could not continue
to detain loyal citizens of the United States. Following this decision,
(32:24):
more and more people were allowed to leave the camps
if they were able to demonstrate that they were loyal,
and after the end of the war they were gradually
shut down. Tool Lake was the last to close, on
March twentieth, nineteen forty six. However, many of the cities
and towns that had been home to Japanese communities before
the war no longer welcomed them, including some going so
(32:46):
far as basically posting signs saying don't come back here.
In the end, fifty four thousands Japanese people UH and
citizens of Japanese ancestry returned to the Pacific coast. Fifty
two thousand went to other parts of the United States.
In Hawaii, nearly five thousand went back to Japan, although
(33:06):
many were allowed to return to the United States following
Wayne Collins legal advocacy on their behalf, basically having the
citizenship that they had relinquished under duress restored to them.
Many of these people were trying to start over with
virtually nothing. The total property loss from the people who
(33:27):
either had to sell or lost their homes and businesses
is estimated at one point three billion dollars and the
net income loss of two point seven billion dollars, although
that is a N three estimate, would be more dollars
than that now. One thousand, eight hundred sixty two people
died in the camps, including an incidence of violence, including
(33:49):
at the hands of guards. There were no serious convictions
of any Japanese American during the war for espionage, sabotage,
or any of the other at ativities that had led
to the incarceration in the first place. However, there were
at least ten convictions of white Americans for spying for
the Japanese. In nineteen forty eight, President Harry S. Truman
(34:13):
signed the Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act, which granted a
total of thirty eight million dollars and restitutions of people
who had been incarcerated. However, this amounted to a fraction
of just the lost income from people's time in the camps.
The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians was
(34:33):
established in nineteen eighty after a lengthy campaign for an
investigation and justice. After holding extensive hearings, it recommended an
apology and a twenty thousand dollar payment to each person
who had survived the internment and was then still living.
President Ronald Reagan signed Hr. Four forty two, also known
as the Civil Liberties Act of nineteen eighty seven, into
(34:55):
law on August tenth, which offered the recommended apolog g
and reparation. It quote declares that one A grave injustice
was done to citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese
ancestry by the evacuation, relocation an internment of civilians during
World War two two. These actions were without security reasons
(35:20):
and without any acts of espionage or sabotage documented by
the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, and
were motivated by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure
of political leadership. Three that the excluded individuals suffered enormous
damages for which appropriate compensation has not been made, and
(35:44):
four the Congress apologizes on behalf of the nation. The
same act also establishes a fund for the Aluts who
were evacuated from their home in Alaska, which was in
a war zone, and interned for far longer than was needed,
mainly in old fish cannery without sufficient care. Yeah, that's unlike, uh,
(36:05):
the incarceration of Japanese and Italian and German nationals and citizens,
which were like for reasons of suspicion and their the
idea that they were enemy aliens and all of that
kind of stuff. This evacuation was because, um, the islands
and peninsula peninsula that they were living on was in
a war zoom and lack could be a whole subject
(36:28):
of its own I think, I don't think there's a
thing on it in the archive. Um, but that boiled
down to you basically being moved for probably the right reasons,
but in appalling conditions for just way longer than was
actually necessary for anybody's safety or national security. As a
(36:49):
last note, Japanese immigrants became eligible to become United States
citizens in nineteen fifty two. I feel like we should
also point out, in case any of our listeners had
wanted to go see Allegiance when it was in movie
theaters and missed the first round, it will be back
in theaters this weekend. If you're listening to this the
(37:09):
week that it publishes on correct tickets are sold out
where I live. I have my tickets, so since I
missed it the first time because I was on a plane,
this time I'll get to see it. How about listener
mail on this one, I do have listener mail and
it is from Sandy, and Sandy says, hi, ladies. I
just want to say I'm a longtime listener and enjoy
(37:31):
your informative broadcasts. I have been a pediatric intensive care
nurse for many years. When I was a young nurse
in the eighties, we used iron lungs. They were good
for the patient who needed respiratory support due to muscle
weakness like polio, infant paralysis, and Gail and Barret syndrome.
As you said in your podcast, there are very few left.
(37:53):
I think not so much it was because it was
not good technology, but more the fact that they were
expensive to maintain. They were very big and heavy. They
became harder and harder to find a suppliers stopped making them,
and existing tank respirators eventually wear out and better positive
pressure ventilators were developed. I actually liked them as a
child could talk while in it, while a conventional ventilator
(38:16):
and a breathing tube is down their throat and into
their lungs and is uncomfortable, require sedation, and is always
at risk for being dislodged. There are less invasive ventilator machines,
but they require strapping a mask to the face, also
not comfortable, and they have their own pros and cons. Anyway,
I was recently home visiting my mom n years old,
(38:37):
also a nurse, and we stopped. I'm gonna leave out
the place where they stopped because privacy they have the
most fascinating warehouse. And right in the front door was
an old iron lung had a soul sign on it.
Not sure what the buyer was going to do with it,
but uh, it was interesting to see. I'm attaching a photo.
My mom said that when she was yet a young nurse,
(38:59):
they had Polly Awards with these iron lungs. Hospitals now
have backup generators for when there's a power outage. As
you can imagine, almost everything at a bedside now has
an electrical component, not so much. When my mom was
a young nurse, all i vs were regulated by hand,
no bedside monitors, et cetera. She did say that they
would if they would lose electricity with storms and such.
(39:22):
They had to pump the iron lungs with a foot
pedal to keep the bellows pumping. I did a search
on photos and came across a bunch. These were older
than the kind I worked with, but maybe not my mom.
There's a picture of a nurse holding a cigarette for
a patient in the iron lung sigh, and then she
gives a link to the photos. I'm always amazed to
(39:43):
see how far medicine has come in a relatively short time.
Early ventilators had very little that could be adjusted compared
to the ones we have now, sort of like two
tin cans in a string compared to an iPhone seven.
All I can think is that in another fifty years
we will look back on our state of the art
technology and think al barbaric. Sorry this is a bit wordy.
Don't apologize. It's great I love the wide variety of
(40:05):
interesting topics, your thoroughness, uh without overwhelming your listeners, your Sandy,
Thank you so much, Sandy. I'm gonna be honest, I
had not thought about the fact that, uh a pro
of the iron lung would be that it allowed patients
to speak and not have a tube down their throat. Yeah. Either.
But then when I first read that email, my thought
(40:27):
was like, if I were in a position to need
such a thing and have any level of say in
the matter, I would be like, iron lung, please, I
like to talk more. Uh. Yeah, I had not thought
about that at all. Um. And I can completely see
how that would be, especially with children who don't necessarily
have other means of communicating uh their own needs, that
(40:52):
being able to speak well in an iron lung could
be really really beneficial. Um And Yeah, there are lots
of pictures of polio awards that were basically rose and
rose of iron lungs with patients in them during the
hype of polio. So thank you so much for writing
to us. If you would like to write to us
about this or any other podcast or a history podcast
at how Stuff Works dot com. We're also on Facebook
(41:13):
at Facebook dot com slash miss in history and on
Twitter at miss in History. Our tumbler is missing history
dot tumbler dot com. We're on Pinterest at pinterest dot
com slash miss in history, and that's also where our
instagram is at missing history. You can come to our
parent company's website, which is how stuff works dot com
to find uh all kinds of information about just about
anything your heart desires. And you can come to our website,
(41:36):
which is missing history dot com to find show notes
on all the episodes Holly and I have ever worked
on an archive every episode ever, lots of other cool stuff,
so you can do all that and a whole lot
more at how stuff works dot com or miss in
history dot com for more on this and thousands of
(41:57):
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com dot
do
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy B. Wilson Fry. Today we are picking up
the second part of a two parter, so if you
(00:21):
have not heard our previous episode, I strongly recommend getting
into that one before you get into this one. President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order ninety six on February nine,
and this paved the way for Japanese Americans to be
removed from the Pacific coast on mass and incarcerated in
(00:44):
camps for the duration of World War Two. Last time,
we talked about the history of Japanese immigration into the
United States and how the US arrived at deciding that
needed to plan a mass removal. This time we will
talk about the executive order, what happened in the camps,
and then what happened after the war was over. Following
(01:04):
the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U. S. War Department
in particular began to advocate for aggressive action to eliminate
the potential for espionage, sabotage, and anti americannectivity on the
part of the Japanese population. Its recommendation was a wide
scale effort of removal and incarceration. Just to recap the
thing that we said at the top of part one,
(01:27):
Japanese nationals were not the only people targeted by this.
They're also Germans and Italians who were incarcerated as well.
There were millions and millions of people in the United
States of German or Italian ancestry. There's no possible way
to in turn them all, and no effort for any
kind of wide scale in tournament of Germans and Italians. Uh.
(01:51):
And occasionally we will get notes and people suggesting that
there was there was really not. A key architect of
the removal UH of Japanese Americans from the West Coast
was Carl Benditson. His background was kind of deceptive. Uh.
He was the He was the son of Jewish immigrants
(02:14):
who basically changed his name and made up that he
was a immigrant from Denmark so that he could get
into an exclusive fraternity when he was in school. Like,
there was a lot of shadiness in his background, and
he was in this case working as a strategist. He
formulated the basic concept of how an executive order could
(02:36):
get around the many many unconstitutional aspects of incarcerating American
citizens without due process based on their nationality. There are
a lot of ways in which that entire idea is flatly,
unquestionably unconstitutional. So instead of conceiving this as an order
(03:00):
targeting Japanese Americans, he instead framed it as a need
to set up zones to be placed under military jurisdiction
from which any and all persons could be evacuated. He
also recommended a three step process to setting this up.
There would be an executive order that would give the
Secretary of War authority to do it, there would be
(03:22):
establishment of the military zones themselves, and there would be
a provision for removing persons from within these zones. The
only persons really being targeted here, even though it never
said specifically, we're Japanese Americans. At first, the recommended military
zones were imagined as small, specific areas around vulnerable targets
(03:46):
like bridges, power plants, and military pieces, but during discussions
leading up to the actual drafting of the executive order,
they grew. Whole cities were named as potential zones, then
whole regions. Soon it's the entire length of the West Coast,
which was also where nearly all Japanese Americans were living
apart from Hawaii. Yeah, there were only a very few
(04:09):
Japanese Americans living anywhere in the United States other than
the West Coast in Hawaii. On February seventeenth of ninety two,
President Franklin Roosevelt told Harry L. Stimpson, the Secretary of War,
and John McCloy, the Assistant Secretary of War, to draft
an executive order to get all this accomplished, and he
(04:30):
specifically directed them not to involve Attorney General Francis Biddle, who,
as we noted in Part one, regarded a mass incarceration
as unconstitutional from several angles. Biddle would wind up finding
out about this only upon seeing the final approved draft,
after which point he sent one more memo to the President.
(04:51):
He's stressed that distrust of the Japanese and a desire
to take over their now successful farmland, not national security,
was really what was driving this push for a removal.
The end result of all this was Executive Order six,
which was titled Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe
(05:12):
Military Areas. It's superseded previous proclamations made by the Attorney General,
who had raised so many objections to the plan, and
instead granted authority to the Secretary of War. The order
are authorized the Secretary of War and military commanders that
he designated, quote, to prescribe military areas in such places
(05:34):
and of such extent as he or the appropriate military
commander may determine, from which any or all persons may
be excluded, and with respect to which the right of
any person who enter, remain in, or leave shall be
subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the
appropriate military commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary
(05:58):
of War and the military commanders were also authorized to
take whatever steps they thought were appropriate to ensure compliance
with these exclusion zones. The order specified that the government
would quote provide for residents of any such area who
are excluded therefrom such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations
(06:18):
as maybe necessary. It authorized all executive departments of the
government to assist the Secretary of War and military commanders
with this effort. The executive Order did not have its
own enforcement provisions. These came in the form of Public
Law five oh three, which was also drafted by the
War Department and introduced to the Senate on March nine.
(06:40):
It was introduced to the House of Representative on March tenth,
and it was signed into law on March twenty one.
Public Law five oh three was quote to provide a
penalty for violation of restrictions or orders with respect to
persons entering, remaining, in, leaving, or committing any act in
military areas or zones. It's set a fine of up
(07:02):
to five thousand dollars and imprisonment of up to a
year for each offensive, entering, leaving, or committing any act
in a military zone established under the executive Order. Roosevelt
signed another Executive Order number O two, quote, establishing the
War Relocation Authority in the Executive Office of the President
(07:23):
and defining its functions and duties on March eighteenth. The
War Relocation Authority was the civilian agency that was responsible
for creating and maintaining the camps that would house the
people who were removed. Under the terms of Executive Order
ninety six, the War Relocation Authority was part of the
Office for Emergency Management. Executive Order n O two would
(07:45):
also quote provide insofar 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. There were also other acts and
(08:06):
laws that were connected to all of this as well,
but these two executive orders and public Law five oh
three were the primary ones involved with establishing the authority
to remove people, enforcing that removal order, and relocating and
housing the people who were removed, in some cases also
giving them work to do. If you begin with the
(08:28):
point of view that the government can be trusted to
see to the best interests of its citizens and residents,
and to be clear, that is not what was going
on here, this might sound somewhat innocuous. It was basically
saying that the Secretary of War and his designated military
commanders could set up evacuation zones for the sake of
national safety and security. The Pacific Coast, for example, was
(08:50):
considered high risk given how easily Japan could reach it,
and if your home was deemed to be in an
exclusion zone and you had to leave, the government would
have to provide you with food and shelter. It was
all framed out as being a military necessity, and most
government communications on the mattern used euphemistic terms like assembly
(09:11):
point and relocation center and evacuation as though this entire
removal plan was for people's own protection. It's deceptively normal
seeming when you read it, and during peacetime it certainly
would have raised a huge outcry. It clearly gave the
(09:31):
government a very, very broad authority to deprive people of
their rights to privacy and property and to process and
the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure under the
Fourth Amendment, just as a few examples. But in a
time of war, especially given that the attack on Pearl
Harbor had been such a devastating shock only a couple
(09:53):
of months before, it was deceptively easy, especially for people
not actually affected by this order, to read it as
common sense. For the sake of national security, certain parts
of the nation needed to be evacuated, and for anyone evacuated,
the government would see to their care in housing. This
sounds so reasonable in theory. Yeah, And of course there
(10:17):
were also people who were in favor of it, who
were motivated not by a sense of national security or safety,
but by greed for the farmland and the property that
we're going to have to be abandoned. Another factor was
definitely prejudice, and there were all manner of other issues
involved that had zero to do with national security. And also,
(10:39):
in spite of all the very rational sounding language in this,
it was not an evacuation to a relocation center. It
was a forced removal to a concentration camp. And we
are going to talk about that actual removal after we
first pause and take a little break in here from
(11:00):
one of the sponsors that keeps this show going. The
first step to executing Executive Order NINETI sixty six was
a recommendation that anyone of Japanese descent leave the established
military areas voluntarily. And these military areas has banned the
(11:22):
whole West coast. But since enemy aliens, again, that's just
people who were citizens of a country at war with
the place that they were living. Since enemy aliens assets
had all been frozen, that meant most people just did
not have the means to do it, even if they
wanted to. Their assets were frozen, they had no way
to fund a trip anywhere. Some who did try to
(11:45):
leave voluntarily also encountered violent resistance on the part of
white residents in the places they tried to go, so
they were forced to turn back and return to their homes.
A forced removal followed. Thanks to the ninety census, which
had been handed over to the Army and the FBI
for this purpose, officials knew where nearly all Japanese residents
(12:05):
were living. The first mass removal was from Terminal Island
in the Port of Los Angeles, which was owned by
the military, beginning on February. The first mass removal from
a civilian location was from Bainbridge Island, Washington, in March.
Throughout the duration of the removal, which would span about
six months from when it started until everyone being out
(12:27):
of the Pacific Coast, Japanese Americans on the West Coast
were placed under a curfew as well as movement restrictions.
Eventually there would be a hundred and eight individual exclusion orders,
each of them targeting about a thousand people. For the
most part, both first and second generation Japanese Americans cooperated
(12:48):
with the removal. Some of this was an attempt to
demonstrate their loyalty to the United States. Many in the
Japanese community had vocally denounced the Japanese bombing of Pearl
Harbor and invase of other nations in Asia and the Pacific,
and they had expressed their support to the United States too.
Many doing as the government asked in this removal would
(13:08):
be another way to show that they were true Americans,
regardless of whether they were citizens and regardless of their
Japanese ancestry. Some of this was also cultural. Japanese concepts
of bearing difficult circumstances with dignity UH and a concept
known as shakeda guy night or it can't be helped
(13:28):
come up repeatedly in accounts of how people on an
individual basis and within their communities dealt with this removal.
Once the removal order came, people had an average of
six days to prepare, although sometimes it was as little
as one. They were told to bring only what they
could carry, but they were also required to bring their
own linens, clothing, toiletries, in the like. Before leaving, many
(13:53):
Japanese Americans tried to liquidate their property. Some were able
to sell their homes and their property if they had
stores they had closed out sales for their stock, but
because they had so little time, many had to sell
their property for much much less than it was worth.
Those who owned farms often tried to negotiate with their
(14:14):
neighbors to see their crops while they were gone, which
in some cases this worked out and in others did not.
The only actual sabotage conviction of a Japanese American stemming
from all of this time was a farmer who plowed
under his strawberry crop because he had not been allowed
to harvest it before being sent to a camp. As
(14:35):
people were leaving, salvage companies used furniture salesmen and others
made the rounds, offering to buy people's possessions and generally
offering just pitifully small amounts of money for them. Some
who didn't sell, hoping to return home, eventually had their
homes looted after they were gone. Others destroyed their possessions,
(14:56):
sometimes in front of the people offering them insulting lye
small amounts of money a rather than sell them. The
Coast Guard also requisition boats left in the docks after
their owners were removed so that they could use them
in the war effort. As people were removed, they were
first sent to temporary assembly points that served as basically
a place to gather large numbers of people from different places,
(15:19):
before then moving them on to a more permanent camp.
A lot of these were places like race tracks and
horse stables and other facilities that were not really meant
for housing people. For example, over the course of the removal,
eighteen thousand, five hundred people were housed at the Santa
Anita race Track, including in the horse stalls, is actually
(15:42):
where George Decay and his family were housed. Immediately after
their removal from the assembly point, people were transported by
train with the curtains closed so they could not see
where they were going to one of ten relocation centers,
better known as internment camps and more accurately known as
centration camps. These were scattered in remote areas in Wyoming, California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho,
(16:08):
and Arkansas. For the most part, these camps themselves were
built on land that the government already owned, which was
often less than ideal for human habitation. It included things
like dry lake beds, lava fields, deserts, and swamps. Native
American reservation land was also used. The camps were hastily
(16:28):
built military style housing with communal mess halls and blocks
of tar paper barracks. They were surrounded by barbed wire
with armed guards and searchlights. Even though the plan was
to put people in these camps for a long term stay,
there had not really been a lot of thought put
into maintaining the needs of communities with things like schools
(16:49):
or houses of worship. People who were incarcerated there basically
had to take care of those things themselves. No one
of Japanese ancestry was exempt from the removal Included in
the order sick people in hospitals who were kept under
guard until they were either well enough to be removed
or until they died. Children including children living in orphanages
(17:12):
who quote looked at Japanese Japanese children that had been
adopted by white parents, Persons with severe disabilities. Seventeen thousand
of those removed were children under ten years old, two
thousand were over sixty five years old, and one thousand
were disabled or very ill. One exception to the removal
(17:35):
order was Hawaii. It was not yet a state. At
about a hundred and seventy five thousand people, Hawaii's Japanese
population was too large to just incarcerat, and many were
working in industries that were critical to the war effort,
including carpenters, who were needed to help rebuild the base
at Pearl Harbor. While some Japanese Americans in Hawaii were
(17:59):
deemed i risk and incarcerated, most were instead subject to
curfews and movement restrictions, and were banned from deep sea fishing.
And all of this was done without due process and
with no opportunity for appeal. The camps were fenced and guarded,
and the people incarcerated there could not leave, unable to
(18:19):
work or pay their bills. Many of those incarcerated lost
their jobs, homes, and possessions. Additionally, many of the states
that were home to these camps were fiercely opposed to
Japanese prisoners being sent there. Wyoming Senator Nel Smith insisted
that the state would not be California's quote dumping ground,
(18:40):
and said, quote, if you bring Japanese into my state,
I promise you they will be hanging from every tree.
Governor Herbert maw of Utah argued that the constitution should
be changed because, quote, if these people are dangerous on
the Pacific Coast, they will be dangerous here. Even in
the face of in my backyard style opposition to the
(19:02):
camps themselves, the general public was overwhelmingly in favor of
the removal, and continued to see the Japanese community as
a real threat even after they had been removed. In
December of nineteen forty two, a year after the bombing
of Pearl Harbor and about ten months after the signing
of Executive Order ninety sixty six, a Gallop Pole found
(19:23):
that forty eight percent of Americans believed the Japanese detainees
should not be allowed to return home after the war.
Half believed they should be sent back to Japan, while
thirteen percent responded put them out of this country. Ten
percent said leave them where they are under control, presumably
advocating a permanent imprisonment of citizens who had done absolutely
(19:46):
nothing wrong. At about the same time, in a Los
Angeles Times poll, a number of questions were asked about
people's support of the the incarcerations, and and what was
going on in the war. Ten thousand, five hundred people
answered yes to quote, do you favor a constitutional amendment
(20:08):
after the war for the deportation of all Japanese from
this country and forbidding further immigration, with an overwhelming no
vote for allowing an exception for American born Japanese people, who,
to be clear again, were already citizens and coming up,
we're going to talk about the resistance to the removal
and how it all came to an end. But first
(20:29):
we will once again take a quick break and have
a word from one of our sponsors. While on the
whole Japanese Americans had cooperated with the initial removal out
of the Pacific coast, over time divisions started to develop
(20:49):
within the camps. Some of this was generational, with younger
niss who were citizens of the United States increasingly rebelling
against being denied the rights of citizenship. NISSA began pushing
back against people who had been in the Japanese American
Citizens League, insisting that this organization should have been pushing
(21:11):
for a guarantee of their constitutional rights rather than working
to a pc the American government. And these divisions between
the first generation immigrants from Japan and their second generation
citizen children were exacerbated by overcrowding, poor living conditions, insufficient resources,
and a generally degrading to humanizing experience. And there certainly
(21:36):
were people incarcerated who really were loyal to Japan, many
of them the ones who had been educated there. And
over time these groups banded together and in some cases
turn on the rest of the camp, bullying and harassing
those who remained loyal to the United States as time
went on. This was particularly true at Tool Lake, where
(21:57):
people deemed disloyal or otherwise problematic dick were transferred. The
conditions in these camps were in general poor, and they
were often insufficient to withstand the climates where they were located.
As an example, desert camps were often just sweltering in
the summer and filled with dust from dust storms, and
(22:17):
there were also real incidents of violence, including at the
hands of guards. For example, two men were shot to
death in Lordsburg, New Mexico, at the camp there on
July seven, nineteen forty two, purportedly while they were trying
to escape, although both men were described as too ill
to walk at the time. Nineteen forty three saw a
(22:38):
number of huge changes in the war and in the camps.
On January ninety three, a little less than a year
after the Executive Order ninety six was signed, the Secretary
of War issued a press release describing the right to
bear arms in the nation's military as the right of
every citizen, no matter their national origin, after swearing their
(22:59):
un qualified allegiance and for swearing any form of allegiance
to Japan, Nissa would be allowed to voluntarily enlist in
the army. The response to this from within the camps
was mixed. There were people who were eligible to serve
and were elated at the chance to be released from
the camp, and many also had genuinely patriotic motives for
(23:21):
wanting to join the service, but others saw this as
deeply hypocritical, since it made no sense for a population
deemed so dangerous that they had to be incarcerated on
mass to be invited to join the war effort. There
was also the hypocrisy of the war in Europe, especially
being like against a nation that was putting people in
(23:42):
concentration camps, and the invitation was for people being held
in concentration camps in the United States to join the
effort to fight that force. It's a lot to wrap
your head around. Well, it's one of those things where
when you when you really can sider that, Uh, I
don't know if it's so much a lot to wrap
(24:03):
your head around in terms of like the details, but
it's like a head scratcher of like who could look
at all of this and be like, yeah, that that
makes sense. That seems there's some mental gymnastics involved. And
I mean a lot of times when we have talked
about wartime service and now it has related to civil rights,
(24:23):
it has been involving black soldiers who joined the service
to fight for freedom and then return home to find
that they were still subject to the same discrimination and
prejudice that had been true before the war. And this
is a little bit different because it was literally like,
please leave this concentration camp where we have been keeping
(24:45):
you to join the service and fight Hitler. Like, yeah,
it's a stretch, It's very weird. I'm sure people reconciled
it in their heads, but I cannot understand the math involved.
I'm sure we will get emails from people who insist
that it was the right thing to do. Uh. And
there have already been Japanese Americans in the Armed Forces
(25:06):
before Pearl Harbor, and along with new recruits, most wound
up in segregated units. These included the one hundred Infantry
Battalion and the four hundred twenty second Regimental Combat Team,
which were eventually combined. These could definitely be an episode
on their own. People have certainly asked for us to
do that, but overall, the short version is that they
(25:28):
served with extreme valor. My original plan was actually to
include a lot more on them in this episode, but
the whole rest of this episode there was too much
of it. Uh So maybe someday in the future we
will have a show on them. In ninety three, a
number of policies also allowed some people to be released
(25:50):
from the camps. One was a quote mixed marriage non
exclusive policy, which allowed young people who were parked Japanese
to be released under the argument that being kept in
a Japanese only camp might turn them against the United States. However,
many of those who were released had nowhere to go.
They had no funds because their assets had been frozen,
(26:12):
and their families have lost everything, and they faced huge
hostility out in the rest of the world. That same year,
the War Department and the War Relocation Authority also tried
to put together a way to figure out if the
people being held in the camps were loyal those who
were not could not be released under the newly announced policies.
(26:33):
They did this through a questionnaire that became known as
the Loyalty Questionnaire, and two of its questions, in particular
numbers twenty seven and eight, We're problematic. Question twenty seven
asked eligible men if they were willing to serve in
combat duty, and asked everyone else if they were willing
to serve in some non combat way, and people were
(26:53):
afraid that answering yes to question would basically volunteer them
for active duty in the military. Question asked whether they
would swear loyalty to the United States and forswear loyalty
to the Emperor of Japan. Being American citizens born in
the US, most of whom had never even been to Japan,
(27:13):
many had no loyalty to forswear, and people were reluctant
to swear loyalty to a government that had been imprisoning
them without due process in defiance of numerous aspects of
the Constitution. Because of their national origin, people who answered
no to both questions were branded as the no No Boys,
branded as disloyal, and in many cases transferred to tool Lake.
(27:38):
Those who were released from the camps in nineteen three
and beyond continued to face prejudice, discrimination, hostility, and even violence,
and this became more of an issue as incidents that
had actually happened earlier in the war involving the nation
of Japan became more public knowledge. He's included the Batan
Death March and the deaths of the participants in the
(28:00):
Doolittle Raid who were captured by the Japanese. We have
podcasts on the Doolittle Raid if you would like to
learn more about that story. Uh learning about these events
caused an even greater increase in anti Japanese sentiment. People
became increasingly angry that the camps were too soft on
(28:20):
the people who were incarcerated there, especially in cases when
the camps had facilities like hospitals that the nearby non
incarcerated community did not have easy access to. Through these policies,
in overall camp population dropped from about one d and
(28:41):
seven thousand to nine thousand, but many who were able
to leave were among the best educated, meaning that many
camps lost an important source of internal leadership. Unrest and
violent incidents within the camps increased, including more transfers to
tool Lake, whose non disloyal population shin had to be
transferred elsewhere to make room. In the spring of nineteen
(29:05):
forty four, Nissa once again, that is, the citizen children
of Japanese immigrants, were made eligible for the draft. This
led to the Fair Play Committee at the Heart and
Mountain Camp being organized and forming a draft resistance, with
many of them pointing out that they were being imprisoned
by a government that was now expecting them to serve
(29:27):
in the military involuntarily. The draft resistance at Heart and
Mountain led to indictments and convictions for violating the Selective
Service Act. Resistance to both the loyalty questionnaire and the
draft of Japanese American citizens eventually led to public Law
seventy eight DASH four oh five D Naturalization Act of
(29:49):
nineteen forty four, allowing citizens to voluntarily renounce citizenship during wartime.
The one hundred seventeen who first signed up had all
been edging caated in Japan, and we're all incarcerated at
Tool Lake and may have genuinely wanted to renounce American
citizenship and return to Japan. But then the administration at
(30:11):
Tool Lake started wilfully ignoring problems there, including bullying and
coercion at the hands of the people who really were
loyal to Japan. Eventually, five thousand, five hundred eighty nine
people at the camp renounced their citizenship, many under duress.
Most of these had their citizenship restored thanks to the
(30:32):
work of Wayne Collins from the A c l U. Yeah,
this space basically became an attempt to, like, let's see
how miserable we can make this situation to force people
to renounce their citizenship so that we can deport them
to Japan. Like that. They were not very uh covert
(30:53):
that that was the underlying purpose. Aside from the increasing
unrest and in some cases violence at the camps, especially
as the war dragged on, there were also legal challenges
to the internment that played out over the course of
several years. Four different cases went all the way to
(31:14):
the Supreme Court. Minorro Yusui was in the reserves and
after being turned away from enlisting in the regular army
nine times after Pearl Harbor, he broke curfew on purpose
and was arrested. Newspapers then described him as a spy
because his children had drawn pictures of the Panama Canal.
(31:35):
Gordon Hirabayashi, who was a Quaker, also broke curfew and
got arrested on purpose. Fred Korematsu had plastic surgery on
his eyes and tried to go into hiding before being
convicted of violating the executive order, and Mitsui Endo was
chosen by the a c l U as a test
case to try to have the removal and incarceration ruled unconstitutional.
(32:00):
The Supreme Court unanimously agreed in nineteen forty three that
Hirabayashi and Yasui's convictions were constitutional, and it held off
on hearing the other cases until after the nineteen forty
four presidential election. On December eighteenth, nineteen forty four, it
was unanimously ruled that the United States could not continue
to detain loyal citizens of the United States. Following this decision,
(32:24):
more and more people were allowed to leave the camps
if they were able to demonstrate that they were loyal,
and after the end of the war they were gradually
shut down. Tool Lake was the last to close, on
March twentieth, nineteen forty six. However, many of the cities
and towns that had been home to Japanese communities before
the war no longer welcomed them, including some going so
(32:46):
far as basically posting signs saying don't come back here.
In the end, fifty four thousands Japanese people UH and
citizens of Japanese ancestry returned to the Pacific coast. Fifty
two thousand went to other parts of the United States.
In Hawaii, nearly five thousand went back to Japan, although
(33:06):
many were allowed to return to the United States following
Wayne Collins legal advocacy on their behalf, basically having the
citizenship that they had relinquished under duress restored to them.
Many of these people were trying to start over with
virtually nothing. The total property loss from the people who
(33:27):
either had to sell or lost their homes and businesses
is estimated at one point three billion dollars and the
net income loss of two point seven billion dollars, although
that is a N three estimate, would be more dollars
than that now. One thousand, eight hundred sixty two people
died in the camps, including an incidence of violence, including
(33:49):
at the hands of guards. There were no serious convictions
of any Japanese American during the war for espionage, sabotage,
or any of the other at ativities that had led
to the incarceration in the first place. However, there were
at least ten convictions of white Americans for spying for
the Japanese. In nineteen forty eight, President Harry S. Truman
(34:13):
signed the Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act, which granted a
total of thirty eight million dollars and restitutions of people
who had been incarcerated. However, this amounted to a fraction
of just the lost income from people's time in the camps.
The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians was
(34:33):
established in nineteen eighty after a lengthy campaign for an
investigation and justice. After holding extensive hearings, it recommended an
apology and a twenty thousand dollar payment to each person
who had survived the internment and was then still living.
President Ronald Reagan signed Hr. Four forty two, also known
as the Civil Liberties Act of nineteen eighty seven, into
(34:55):
law on August tenth, which offered the recommended apolog g
and reparation. It quote declares that one A grave injustice
was done to citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese
ancestry by the evacuation, relocation an internment of civilians during
World War two two. These actions were without security reasons
(35:20):
and without any acts of espionage or sabotage documented by
the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, and
were motivated by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure
of political leadership. Three that the excluded individuals suffered enormous
damages for which appropriate compensation has not been made, and
(35:44):
four the Congress apologizes on behalf of the nation. The
same act also establishes a fund for the Aluts who
were evacuated from their home in Alaska, which was in
a war zone, and interned for far longer than was needed,
mainly in old fish cannery without sufficient care. Yeah, that's unlike, uh,
(36:05):
the incarceration of Japanese and Italian and German nationals and citizens,
which were like for reasons of suspicion and their the
idea that they were enemy aliens and all of that
kind of stuff. This evacuation was because, um, the islands
and peninsula peninsula that they were living on was in
a war zoom and lack could be a whole subject
(36:28):
of its own I think, I don't think there's a
thing on it in the archive. Um, but that boiled
down to you basically being moved for probably the right reasons,
but in appalling conditions for just way longer than was
actually necessary for anybody's safety or national security. As a
(36:49):
last note, Japanese immigrants became eligible to become United States
citizens in nineteen fifty two. I feel like we should
also point out, in case any of our listeners had
wanted to go see Allegiance when it was in movie
theaters and missed the first round, it will be back
in theaters this weekend. If you're listening to this the
(37:09):
week that it publishes on correct tickets are sold out
where I live. I have my tickets, so since I
missed it the first time because I was on a plane,
this time I'll get to see it. How about listener
mail on this one, I do have listener mail and
it is from Sandy, and Sandy says, hi, ladies. I
just want to say I'm a longtime listener and enjoy
(37:31):
your informative broadcasts. I have been a pediatric intensive care
nurse for many years. When I was a young nurse
in the eighties, we used iron lungs. They were good
for the patient who needed respiratory support due to muscle
weakness like polio, infant paralysis, and Gail and Barret syndrome.
As you said in your podcast, there are very few left.
(37:53):
I think not so much it was because it was
not good technology, but more the fact that they were
expensive to maintain. They were very big and heavy. They
became harder and harder to find a suppliers stopped making them,
and existing tank respirators eventually wear out and better positive
pressure ventilators were developed. I actually liked them as a
child could talk while in it, while a conventional ventilator
(38:16):
and a breathing tube is down their throat and into
their lungs and is uncomfortable, require sedation, and is always
at risk for being dislodged. There are less invasive ventilator machines,
but they require strapping a mask to the face, also
not comfortable, and they have their own pros and cons. Anyway,
I was recently home visiting my mom n years old,
(38:37):
also a nurse, and we stopped. I'm gonna leave out
the place where they stopped because privacy they have the
most fascinating warehouse. And right in the front door was
an old iron lung had a soul sign on it.
Not sure what the buyer was going to do with it,
but uh, it was interesting to see. I'm attaching a photo.
My mom said that when she was yet a young nurse,
(38:59):
they had Polly Awards with these iron lungs. Hospitals now
have backup generators for when there's a power outage. As
you can imagine, almost everything at a bedside now has
an electrical component, not so much. When my mom was
a young nurse, all i vs were regulated by hand,
no bedside monitors, et cetera. She did say that they
would if they would lose electricity with storms and such.
(39:22):
They had to pump the iron lungs with a foot
pedal to keep the bellows pumping. I did a search
on photos and came across a bunch. These were older
than the kind I worked with, but maybe not my mom.
There's a picture of a nurse holding a cigarette for
a patient in the iron lung sigh, and then she
gives a link to the photos. I'm always amazed to
(39:43):
see how far medicine has come in a relatively short time.
Early ventilators had very little that could be adjusted compared
to the ones we have now, sort of like two
tin cans in a string compared to an iPhone seven.
All I can think is that in another fifty years
we will look back on our state of the art
technology and think al barbaric. Sorry this is a bit wordy.
Don't apologize. It's great I love the wide variety of
(40:05):
interesting topics, your thoroughness, uh without overwhelming your listeners, your Sandy,
Thank you so much, Sandy. I'm gonna be honest, I
had not thought about the fact that, uh a pro
of the iron lung would be that it allowed patients
to speak and not have a tube down their throat. Yeah. Either.
But then when I first read that email, my thought
(40:27):
was like, if I were in a position to need
such a thing and have any level of say in
the matter, I would be like, iron lung, please, I
like to talk more. Uh. Yeah, I had not thought
about that at all. Um. And I can completely see
how that would be, especially with children who don't necessarily
have other means of communicating uh their own needs, that
(40:52):
being able to speak well in an iron lung could
be really really beneficial. Um And Yeah, there are lots
of pictures of polio awards that were basically rose and
rose of iron lungs with patients in them during the
hype of polio. So thank you so much for writing
to us. If you would like to write to us
about this or any other podcast or a history podcast
at how Stuff Works dot com. We're also on Facebook
(41:13):
at Facebook dot com slash miss in history and on
Twitter at miss in History. Our tumbler is missing history
dot tumbler dot com. We're on Pinterest at pinterest dot
com slash miss in history, and that's also where our
instagram is at missing history. You can come to our
parent company's website, which is how stuff works dot com
to find uh all kinds of information about just about
anything your heart desires. And you can come to our website,
(41:36):
which is missing history dot com to find show notes
on all the episodes Holly and I have ever worked
on an archive every episode ever, lots of other cool stuff,
so you can do all that and a whole lot
more at how stuff works dot com or miss in
history dot com for more on this and thousands of
(41:57):
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com dot
do
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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