Japanese American Incarceration: Difference between revisions
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|title=Stories from Below: Japanese American Incarceration | |||
|description=First-person accounts, oral histories, letters, diaries, photographs, artwork, and family memories reveal the human experience and lasting legacy of Japanese American incarceration during World War II. | |||
|keywords=Japanese American incarceration, Japanese American internment, Executive Order 9066, oral histories, stories from below, Manzanar, Minidoka, Heart Mountain, Topaz, Tule Lake, civil liberties, forced removal, redress | |||
|image=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Japanese_internment_detainees.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original | |||
|image_width=300 | |||
|image_height=200 | |||
|type=article}} | |||
[[Category:Japanese American history]] | |||
[[Category:Japanese American incarceration]] | |||
[[Category:World War II]] | |||
[[Category:Oral history]] | |||
[[Category:Stories from below]] | |||
[[Category:Civil liberties]] | |||
[[Category:Forced migration]] | |||
[[Category:Human rights]] | |||
[[Category:United States history]] | |||
[[Category:Public history]] | |||
[[File:Preserving Japanese American Incarceration Legacy.png|thumb]] | |||
[https://wikidemocracy.us/images/9/90/Inherited_Trauma_of_Japanese_American_Incarceration.m4a Audio1][https://wikidemocracy.us/images/8/8c/Pledging_Allegiance_Behind_Barbed_Wire.m4a Audio2] | |||
[https://wikidemocracy.us/images/0/05/The_Shrinking_World_The_Anatomy_of_Displacement.mp4 Video] | |||
<gallery> | <gallery> | ||
File:Hayward, California. These people of Japanese ancestry are awaiting the special bus which will take . . . - NARA - 537522.jpg | Families wait with identification tags and luggage for transportation to the Tanforan Assembly Center. | |||
File:Photograph of the Shibuya Family in Mountain View, California - NARA - 536037.jpg|Photograph of the Shibuya Family in Mountain View, California | |||
File:Japanrelocationwwii.jpg| A mother and child wait with their belongings as Japanese American families are processed for forced removal. | |||
File:Eden, Idaho. A panorama view of the Minidoka War Relocation Authority center. This view taken from . . . - NARA - 538299.jpg| Eden, Idaho. A panorama view of the Minidoka War Relocation Authority center. This view taken from the top of the water tower at the east end of the Center, shows partially completed barracks | |||
File:Japanese internment detainees.jpg|Japanese American men, women, and children appear together while confined at a temporary detention facility. | |||
File:Manzanar Baseball Ansel Adams.jpg | Baseball game at Manzanar, 1943 | File:Manzanar Baseball Ansel Adams.jpg | Baseball game at Manzanar, 1943 | ||
File: | File:Map of World War II Japanese American internment camps.jpg|Map of internment camps during the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. | ||
</gallery> | </gallery> | ||
SM: Well, just like the American folk stories, Japan had these folk stories and they were well-known and they were all wonderful. There was an interesting thing that she told, one story, this great man -- I forgot his name now, but he was, he grew up very poor and he didn't have, and the family couldn't afford any oil for lamp, and so in his ingenuity he went out and caught fireflies and oiled the paper bag and put the fireflies in there, and he studied under the light of the fireflies. When we went to Jerome we had fireflies all over, and so I said I might do that, so I oiled a paper bag and I caught the fireflies, put it in there and shut the light off, and I couldn't see a thing. [Laughs] And so I thought, oh, that must be just a story, about this great man who was so devoted to study. But someone told me that in Brazil, or South America, they put the firefly on their shoelace so they could walk through the jungle. I can't imagine that, but maybe they're huge ones and maybe there's tiny ones like we had at Rohwer, or Jerome. | |||
__NOTOC__ | |||
== Stories from Below: Japanese American Incarceration == | |||
“Stories from below” examine history through the experiences of ordinary people rather than primarily through the decisions of political leaders, military officials, and government institutions. In the history of Japanese American incarceration, this approach centers the voices of the people who were forcibly removed from their homes and confined during World War II. Oral histories, diaries, letters, photographs, artwork, newspapers, family records, and personal belongings reveal dimensions of the experience that official government reports often minimized or excluded. | |||
Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. The order enabled the military to remove people from designated areas of the western United States. Approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were eventually incarcerated, most of whom were American citizens. Families lost homes, farms, businesses, employment, possessions, education, and connections to their communities without being individually charged with crimes or given meaningful due process. | |||
Government records explain how the incarceration system was organized, but personal testimony reveals what the policy meant to the people who lived through it. These accounts describe hurried departures, identification tags, guarded transportation, crowded barracks, communal bathrooms, inadequate food, extreme weather, family separation, social conflict, resistance, resilience, and the long struggle to rebuild life after confinement. | |||
=== Forced Removal and the Loss of Home === | |||
Survivors frequently remembered the shock and uncertainty that followed the exclusion orders. Families were instructed to report to government processing centers with only the belongings they could carry. They often had just days to sell businesses, arrange for the care of farms, place possessions in storage, or abandon property altogether. Because potential buyers knew Japanese American families had little time and few alternatives, valuable property was sometimes sold for only a fraction of its worth. | |||
Photographs taken in San Francisco, Hayward, Mountain View, and other California communities show families waiting with suitcases, bundles, identification numbers, and children. Images of the Shibuya family and families waiting for buses preserve the human scale of a policy often described in administrative terms. Each numbered tag represented an individual with a home, occupation, education, neighborhood, and network of relationships. | |||
Many people were initially sent to temporary detention centers established at racetracks, fairgrounds, and other facilities. At places such as Tanforan, Santa Anita, Puyallup, and Salinas, families lived in hastily converted buildings and, in some instances, horse stalls. They endured inadequate sanitation, poor food, overcrowding, armed surveillance, and uncertainty about where they would be taken next. | |||
Survivor accounts describe long journeys aboard buses and trains with guards, closed window shades, limited food, and little information. Parents attempted to reassure children even though they did not know the destination or how long the confinement would last. These personal memories show that removal was not simply a change of residence. It was a forced rupture involving the loss of security, privacy, autonomy, and belonging. | |||
=== Life Behind Barbed Wire === | |||
Japanese Americans were transferred from temporary detention centers to more permanent camps, including Manzanar, Minidoka, Heart Mountain, Topaz, Tule Lake, Amache, Poston, Gila River, Jerome, and Rohwer. The camps were generally located in remote areas characterized by deserts, swamps, severe winters, dust storms, or intense summer heat. | |||
Families were assigned rooms in poorly insulated barracks furnished with little more than army cots, blankets, and a stove. Walls sometimes failed to reach the ceiling, allowing sound and dust to travel between family units. Toilets and showers offered little privacy. Residents ate in communal mess halls, gradually weakening customary patterns of family dining and parental authority. | |||
Food became a recurring subject in survivor testimony. Former incarcerees remembered inexpensive starches, unfamiliar dishes, shortages of milk and fresh meat, long lines, and rumors falsely claiming that camp residents received luxurious meals. Japanese American farmers and kitchen workers eventually helped improve diets by cultivating vegetables, reorganizing food preparation, and adapting available ingredients. | |||
Medical care was limited by inadequate equipment, shortages of medicine, and insufficient staffing. Japanese American physicians and nurses worked under difficult conditions and were paid far less than white employees. Personal accounts describe illness, childbirth, disability, infectious disease, psychological distress, and deaths occurring far from home. | |||
The landscape itself shaped daily experience. Survivors remembered the dust storms at Manzanar and Topaz, the cold winters at Heart Mountain and Minidoka, and the humid, mosquito-filled environment of the Arkansas camps. Photographs of barracks disappearing into clouds of dust provide a stark visual record of these conditions. | |||
=== Children, Schools, and Family Life === | |||
Children experienced incarceration at different stages of development. Some were old enough to understand that their constitutional rights had been violated, while others remembered camp as the only childhood environment they knew. Their accounts include fear, confusion, boredom, friendships, school activities, games, and efforts by parents to create a sense of normalcy. | |||
Schools were frequently opened before adequate buildings, books, supplies, or qualified teachers were available. Students studied American government and democratic ideals while surrounded by fences and armed guards. Photographs of children pledging allegiance before removal and studying geography inside Topaz capture one of the central contradictions of incarceration: American children were taught citizenship while being imprisoned because of their ancestry. | |||
Letters written by children and teenagers to San Diego librarian Clara Breed provide especially valuable evidence. Young correspondents described barracks, weather, school, shortages, loneliness, and their desire to return home. Breed sent books and supplies and maintained contact with her former library patrons. The letters preserve a child’s-eye view that is rarely visible in official records. | |||
Incarceration also altered family relationships. Communal dining separated children from regular family meals, while young people sometimes gained independence through friendships and camp organizations. Parents who had previously supported their households could no longer provide in the same way. The removal of Issei fathers by the FBI and their detention in separate Department of Justice camps created additional fear and hardship. | |||
For many families, the emotional effects were not openly discussed after the war. Former child incarcerees and their descendants have described shame, silence, anxiety, anger, and a desire to protect younger generations from painful memories. Intergenerational oral-history projects reveal how these experiences continued to influence identity and family relationships decades later. | |||
=== Work, Religion, Recreation, and Community === | |||
Although incarceration deprived residents of freedom, Japanese Americans created institutions that helped their communities survive. They established schools, religious services, newspapers, clubs, sports leagues, libraries, gardens, theater groups, and cultural activities. These efforts should not be interpreted as evidence that confinement was benign. They demonstrate how people exercised agency within an unjust system. | |||
Residents worked in hospitals, kitchens, farms, schools, offices, maintenance crews, and camp industries for extremely low wages. Their labor kept the camps functioning. Some workers protested unequal pay, inadequate food, or unsafe conditions. Others used occupational skills acquired before the war to serve their communities. | |||
Buddhist and Christian congregations provided spiritual support, funerals, social activities, and places for collective reflection. Buddhist priests and other Issei community leaders were often treated with particular suspicion and were among those arrested soon after Pearl Harbor. | |||
Recreation offered relief from confinement. Baseball, basketball, football, dances, music, theater, crafts, and outdoor activities allowed residents to maintain relationships and create moments of pleasure. An oral history describing an attempt to study by the light of fireflies at Jerome illustrates how memory can preserve humor and imagination alongside injustice and suffering. | |||
Camp newspapers recorded births, deaths, school events, sports, employment, religious services, political disagreements, and news from outside the fences. Although publications operated under administrative oversight, incarcerated journalists created detailed records of their communities and sometimes found subtle ways to address controversial subjects. | |||
=== Diaries, Letters, Photography, and Art === | |||
Creative and documentary materials offer some of the most direct stories from below. Diaries and letters capture thoughts recorded during incarceration rather than reconstructed decades later. Artwork communicates aspects of confinement that could not always be expressed safely or adequately in words. | |||
Teenager Stanley Hayami wrote about school, friendship, family, artistic ambitions, military service, and the uncertainty of life at Heart Mountain. His diary, letters, and sketches show that he remained an ordinary young person with hopes for the future even as his government imprisoned his family. He later served in the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team and was killed in Europe at age nineteen. | |||
Miné Okubo produced hundreds of drawings documenting Tanforan and Topaz. These became the basis of ''Citizen 13660'', one of the earliest published personal accounts of incarceration. Kango Takamura painted education, agriculture, barracks, and daily activities at Manzanar. Estelle Ishigo recorded life at Pomona and Heart Mountain through drawings and watercolors. | |||
Photography presents both opportunities and problems. Government photographers documented forced removal and camp life, but they worked within institutional restrictions. Photographs showing armed guards, fences, and other overt signs of imprisonment were often discouraged or suppressed. Dorothea Lange’s photographs nevertheless captured anxiety, loss, waiting, identification tags, and the dignity of families facing removal. | |||
Photographs made by incarcerees provide another perspective. Personal albums show friendships, celebrations, sports, work, and family relationships that government photography frequently overlooked. Images by photographers such as Toyo Miyatake and Jack Iwata demonstrate how incarcerated people documented their own communities rather than remaining merely the subjects of official observation. | |||
=== Resistance, Loyalty, and Military Service === | |||
Japanese Americans responded to incarceration in many different ways. Some sought release through employment or education. Some volunteered or were drafted into military service. Others protested conditions, challenged exclusion in court, refused to complete loyalty questionnaires, renounced citizenship under pressure, or resisted the draft. | |||
The government’s so-called loyalty questionnaire created confusion and division. Questions about military service and allegiance forced incarcerated people to answer under coercive conditions. Responses labeled “disloyal” could lead to transfer to the Tule Lake Segregation Center, greater surveillance, family separation, and lasting stigma. | |||
At Heart Mountain, the Fair Play Committee argued that Japanese Americans should not be compelled to serve in the military until the government restored their constitutional rights. Draft resisters such as Frank Emi, Yoshito Kuromiya, Jack Tono, and others were prosecuted and imprisoned. Their stories complicate simplified narratives that recognize military service as the only legitimate expression of courage or loyalty. | |||
At the same time, thousands of Japanese Americans served in the armed forces. Members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team fought in Europe, while Japanese American linguists in the Military Intelligence Service performed essential work in the Pacific. Many served while their parents and siblings remained incarcerated. Their testimony reveals the painful contradiction of fighting for a country that had denied their families basic rights. | |||
Legal challengers, including Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, and Mitsuye Endo, contested exclusion, curfews, and incarceration. Their cases demonstrate both the failure of wartime institutions to protect constitutional rights and the importance of individuals willing to resist government injustice. | |||
=== Leaving Camp and Rebuilding Communities === | |||
The closing of the camps did not restore what families had lost. Many departed with limited money and no secure housing or employment. Returning to the West Coast could mean encountering hostility, discriminatory restrictions, vandalized property, lost farms, or businesses that could not be recovered. | |||
Some families settled in Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, New York, and other cities outside their former West Coast communities. Oral histories from Chicago and Philadelphia describe both new opportunities and continued discrimination. Dispersal reshaped Japanese American neighborhoods, religious institutions, civic organizations, employment patterns, and family networks. | |||
Many former incarcerees avoided discussing the experience. Silence could be a means of coping, protecting children, escaping stigma, or demonstrating loyalty. However, it also left descendants with incomplete family histories and unanswered questions. Later generations began interviewing parents and grandparents, examining documents, visiting camp sites, and reconstructing stories from photographs and household objects. | |||
These postwar accounts show that incarceration did not end when the gates opened. Property loss, interrupted education, damaged careers, psychological trauma, family division, and displacement influenced Japanese American life for generations. | |||
=== Redress, Remembrance, and Pilgrimage === | |||
Beginning in the postwar decades and gaining momentum during the 1970s and 1980s, former incarcerees and their descendants organized for official recognition and reparations. Public hearings allowed survivors to describe experiences they had often kept private for nearly forty years. Their testimony transformed personal memory into historical evidence. | |||
The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 acknowledged that incarceration resulted from racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership. It provided a formal apology and payments to surviving incarcerees. Redress did not erase the harm, but it demonstrated how grassroots organizing and firsthand testimony could change public understanding and government policy. | |||
Pilgrimages to Manzanar, Tule Lake, Minidoka, Heart Mountain, Topaz, Jerome, Rohwer, and other sites have become important forms of public history. Survivors return to places of confinement, while descendants walk through landscapes previously known only through family stories. Memorial ceremonies, discussions, religious observances, and educational programs connect personal remembrance with contemporary civil-liberties concerns. | |||
The Ireichō and related memorial projects restore individual names to people whom the government frequently reduced to numbers and categories. Family members can locate relatives, correct historical records, and publicly acknowledge lives disrupted by incarceration. | |||
=== Why Stories from Below Matter === | |||
The history of Japanese American incarceration cannot be understood fully through executive orders, military directives, court opinions, or administrative reports alone. Those records explain what institutions intended and authorized. Stories from below reveal what government action did to individuals, families, and communities. | |||
Personal accounts also prevent the incarcerated population from being presented as a single, uniform group. Issei immigrants, Nisei citizens, Kibei, children, women, religious leaders, workers, artists, soldiers, draft resisters, renunciants, camp employees, and descendants experienced and interpreted incarceration differently. Their disagreements are part of the history rather than distractions from it. | |||
These stories preserve suffering, but they also record humor, creativity, friendship, love, political disagreement, resistance, and community building. Recognizing resilience should never be used to excuse the system that made resilience necessary. Instead, it demonstrates how people retained dignity and agency under coercive conditions. | |||
=== Conclusion === | |||
Japanese American incarceration was a national policy experienced one person and one family at a time. Its consequences can be seen in hurriedly packed suitcases, abandoned farms, identification tags, children’s letters, camp newspapers, handmade furniture, artwork, family photographs, military records, courtroom challenges, and oral histories recorded decades later. | |||
Bringing these materials together creates a history grounded in lived experience. It reveals the distance between official descriptions of “evacuation” and “relocation” and the reality of forced removal and incarceration. It also demonstrates why personal testimony remains essential to understanding civil liberties, racial prejudice, state power, resistance, memory, and justice. | |||
Stories from below return individuality to people whom policy attempted to classify and control. By preserving their voices, later generations gain not only a more complete account of the past but also a warning about the fragility of constitutional protections during periods of fear and political pressure. | |||
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