After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Americans expected an attack on the West Coast. This allowed the U.S. Government to round up any suspicious Japanese for internment. Many men got taken without the knowledge of their families, who would find out what had happened several years later. This government act also allowed for the freezing of bank accounts, seizure of contraband, limitation on travel, curfew and other drastic measures. However, this operation by the FBI was only the beginning. In February 1942 John L. DeWitt requested authorization from the Secretary of War to move the "Japanese and other subversive persons" from the West Coast. On February 19 Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066, this established "military areas" and excluded "any and all persons." A month later Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9120 which established the War Relocation Authority, headed by Milton Eisenhower which operated the internment camps.
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In March 1942, 77,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese origin and 43,000 older Japanese citizens were moved from California coastal areas to Washington, Oregon, Arizona or inland California. Posters started to appear that provided, "Instructions to all persons of JAPANESE ancestry" to report to "designated areas by 12 o'clock on Tuesday April 7, 1942." People being evacuated could only bring bedrolls and only as much baggage as could be carried by hand. 120,000 Japanese Americans were ultimately detained in ten permanent mass detention camps built by the government.
One of these camps was located at Tule Lake 5 miles south of Tulelake, CA. There were 18,000 people in the camp surrounded by a barbed-wire stockade. There were turrets for soldiers and machine guns in case someone tried to climb the high wiring. The outside of the building was covered in tarred paper over shiplap, which fought the low temperatures that occurred in the area. Children and babies were also kept in this camp. To get to the unheated bathrooms a person had to leave the residential shacks and walk through rain and snow. This did not change based on age or health. The living conditions were also very crowded. The Tule Lake camp was guarded by six tanks and 889 men and 31 officers (1 battalion of military police).
Some camps had electrically charged fencing which was unnecessary because most camps were invariably located in deserts or other demote desolate areas. Every camp was also equipped with searchlights which shown over the living quarters at night. During their internment dozen of people were shot and wounded. 8 were killed by guards and many were brutally beaten or seriously injured without reason. At the tule Lake camps guards would beat people with baseball bats.
Hitler's main goal was genocide, while the United States rationalized that their actions were for the country's safety. Still, it seems ironic that Americans were so appalled by what the Germans were doing to the Jewish, while they were doing similar things to the Japanese back home.
Sources:
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v02/v02p-45_Weber.html
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/internment1.html
Great post on the conditions inside the camps, Donna! I didn't know the exact details of what life was like for the Japanese, so thank you for clearing that up. I hadn't realized there were beatings in the camps. It really does remind me a bit of the cruelty of the Nazi concentration camps.
ReplyDeleteI found this page where some Japanese-Americans who were interned in the camps told their stories: http://www.tellingstories.org/internment/
I haven't looked at all of the stories yet, but it's interesting reading these firsthand accounts.
Wow, Kathy! These accounts are so extensive and really informative. I read 5 of them and couldn't help but notice that the general details of the internee's accounts were very similar (ie. we considered ourselves more American than Japanese, we were scared about what was going to happen after Pearl Harbor, etc.) It is really difficult to discern generalizations that may have influenced them over the past 50ish years and what they actually remember (as they were also very young when interned--might have skewed sense of what happened). I think it would be interesting to instead of investigating interviews, maybe find a diary or written source that was produced during that time--the events may be exaggerated because of the situation, but it might provide more insight to individual accounts, not influenced by time. I think it is awesome to read on firsthand accounts, but they may just be stories that they have heard so many times and are so widely accepted that they are not actually true to each individual. Great find!
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