| Case: | Japanese Relocation & WWII |
| Theme: | Cultural Contact and Conflict |
| Time Period: | WWII (1940-1945) |
Resident aliens and foreign nationals classified as “enemies,” “disloyals” or “subversives” faced arrest or detention throughout the Allied nations during WWII. In the United States and Canada, first-generation Japanese immigrants (Issei) and second-generation native-born citizens (Nisei) experienced forced evacuation from the Pacific Coast to relocation camps. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on 9 February 1942 authorizing the Secretary of War to designate “military areas” and exclude certain residents from occupancy. General DeWitt and the Western Defense Command subsequently proclaimed “Civilian Exclusion Orders” during the spring of 1942 that mandated residents of Japanese descent to report to one of 17 temporary “Civilian Assembly Centers”–Oregon Japanese assembled at the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Building in Portland. By the fall of 1942 the War Relocation Authority largely completed construction of the ten major inland relocation camps and oversaw the transfer of approximately 120,000 Japanese to these federal facilities. (Mass exclusion policies in Canada interned about 23,000 Nikkei in British Columbia). Originally, a small contingent of volunteers from the Portland assembly center were dispatched to help construct the Tule Lake Camp, but ultimately, the Oregon evacuees were sent to Minidoka.
Although the American Civil Liberties Union, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, The Christian Century magazine, the Japanese American Citizens League, members of the Portland YWCA, and a few western newspaper editors (Northwest Enterprise of Seattle) voiced opposition to federal relocation policy, the war exacerbated currents of anti-immigrant and anti-Japanese sentiments–particularly in Washington, Oregon and California–that supported the federal policy. While thousands of Nisei secured “leave permits” and lived with host families outside the “military areas” to attend college or find employment–most Nisei and nearly all Issie remained in the camps for the duration of the war. In Oregon, the acute farm labor shortage convinced agricultural corporations, such as the Amalgamated Sugar Company, to seek the authorization of President Roosevelt and Oregon Governor Sprague to hire Japanese laborers to cultivate and harvest their crops. Throughout the war, former Japanese internees resettled in Malheur County, thinning sugar beets and tending crops in the irrigated fields of the Western Treasure Valley.
The Tule Lake Relocation Camp, located roughly 35 miles southeast of Klamath Falls near the towns of Tulelake and Newell, CA, represents the closest camp to the state of Oregon. The Tule Lake Camp served a unique function during the war and operated more like a “prison camp” than any of its counterparts. In July 1943 the U.S. Senate passed a resolution ordering the War Relocation Authority to interrogate internees to determine their loyalty and segregate “disloyals.” Although some “disloyals” at Tule Lake had formally requested repatriation to Japan, renounced their U.S. citizenship and openly demonstrated in support of the Emperor, most “disloyals” had simply answered the two loyalty questions incorrectly because of language and cultural barriers, or had refused to participate in the interrogations to avoid separation from family members. The loyalty test revealed that Tule Lake housed the highest percentage of “disloyals”–42 percent, compared to an average of 10 percent. Consequently, the War Relocation Authority converted the camp into a “maximum security segregation facility” enclosed with barbed-wire fences, guard towers, search lights, eight tanks, and machine-gun fitted jeeps. The federal government transferred “disloyals” from the other camps to Tule Lake and by 1944 the camp housed over 18,000 residents, with only 8,500 “loyal” “old Tuleans” remaining.
The history of the Tule Lake Relocation Camp offers an opportunity for original research and even site visits for Oregon educators. The camp experienced a level of organized protest and civil disobedience that eclipsed other camps, including a “mess hall strike,” a farm workers’ strike, and a general strike. Camp administrators imported Japanese strikebreakers from other camps and housed them in adjacent Civilian Conservation Corps barracks for their protection. Several hundred strikers and dissidents were arrested and imprisoned in on-site stockades and Justice Department installations. Martial Law was enforced from 14 November 1943 to 15 January 1944 by military police to quell the general strike. The federal government also used the camp as a vehicle of Americanization and introduce organizations like the Boy Scouts to inculcate “disloyals” with American republic values. The social and class tensions between the “old Tuleans” and the “disloyals” also presents a potential area of study. The Tule Lake Relocation Camp was also the last to close on 20 March 1946. A monument commemorating the Tule Lake Relocation Center was installed along State Highway 139 in 1979. The Tule Lake Committee is currently working with other Japanese American organizations to classify the remaining Tule Lake site as a National Monument or win listing on the National Register of Historic Places for additional structures.
Following the war many Japanese returned to their pre-evacuation homes and neighborhoods in western Oregon and began rebuilding their communities. Organizations including the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center, the Tule Lake Committee, and Japanese American Citizens League have collaborated consistently since the 1970s to raise awareness about the history of relocation and seek redress and reparations from the federal government. These groups have also organized pilgrimages to camps like Minidoka and Tule Lake and have established museums and educational outreach programs designed to work with public schools.
World War II transformed the ethnocultural and racial landscape of the United States, including the migration of African Americans to West Coast cities; the urbanization and accelerated acculturation of many Native American tribes; the Braceros Program and the initiation of Mexican immigration; the enfranchisement and improved social status of Chinese Americans; and the relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps. The episode of Japanese Relocation reveals multifaceted lines of inter-cultural conflict and cooperation: from members of the Seattle African American community assisting their Japanese neighbors with the burdens of evacuation to nativist organizations like the Native Sons of the Golden West and the Western Growers Protective Association exhorting the federal government to impose full evacuation or deportation.
What were the causes of Japanese Relocation? Why were both “resident alien” Issei and native-born citizens Nisei and Sansei interned? What role did race and propaganda play in the development of federal relocation policy? What
role did fear play?
How did American propaganda portray the Japanese during WWII? How did Japanese propaganda portray America and western culture? Did legitimate military and national security concerns justify relocation? Were their Japanese
Americans engaged in espionage or sabotage during WWII?
Why did Franklin Roosevelt issue Executive Order 9066 on 19 February 1942? Why did a policy of voluntary evacuation fail? How did the federal government attempt to balance civil liberties with national security? Did anti-immigrant, anti-Japanese sentiments exist prior to Pearl Harbor? Why couldn’t first-
generation Japanese immigrants become naturalized citizens of the United States? As Trans-Pacific Asian immigrants largely residing in the metropolises and farming
communities of the American West, how had the Japanese experience acculturation and discrimination? How did Japanese Americans assert their personal agency and resist relocation? How did
Japanese families and individuals “prove” their loyalty and patriotism to the United States? Did any non-Japanese organizations or individuals criticize relocation during WWII? What elements of transnational (Japan and America) community and identity did Japanese immigrant
families cultivate? What ethnic traditions or ceremonies did Japanese-American communities preserve
and observe? Did WWII transform this process? How did the experience of forced relocation to assembly centers and relocation camps affect identity formation among Issei and Nisei? Did this experience exacerbate the generation gap?
How did internees reconstruct community and social institutions within the relocation camps?
What was the nature, condition, and experience of camp life? What happened to the internees property and businesses during their internment? Did internees return to their prewar homes, neighborhoods, and communities after WWII?
How did the internment of Japanese compare to the detainment of “enemy aliens” and “foreign nationals” from Germany, Italy, and Latin America during WWII?
What impact did the Supreme Court rulings in the relocation cases have on Constitutional Law and the history of civil rights in America: Yasui v. United States (1943), Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), ex parte Endo (1944), and Korematsu v. United States.
What term should be used to described the camps–Relocation, Internment, or Concentration? What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of each term?
A recent book by Michel Malkin titled, In Defense of Interment: The Case for “Racial Profiling” in World War II and the War on Terror, sparked a controversy about interpreting the meaning of the history of Japanese internment. Does the history of internment have a relevance for present, post-911 issues of race, immigration, civil liberties, and federal power?
Why did the federal government segregated “disloyal” and “hostile” Japanese at the Tule Lake Relocation Camp? What did it mean to be classified as “disloyal.” Were the roughly 18,000 “disloyal” Japanese different from those who explicitly requested repatriation to Japan and openly demonstrated in support of the Emperor?
Where were the temporary Assembly Centers for Oregon Japanese?
Why were some internees able to secure release from relocation camps and work as farm laborers for agricultural corporations like Amalgamated Sugar Company in small Oregon towns, including Nyssa, Vale, and Ontario?
Did Oregon Japanese internees return to the state after WWII?
IV. Resources:
Burton, Jeffrey F., Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord and Richard W. Lord. Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002.
Daniels, Roger. Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II. New York: Hill & Wang, 1993.
Dower, John. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987.
Hayashi, Brian Masaru. Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Irons, Peter. Justice at War: The Story of Japanese American Internment Cases. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Kashima, Tetsuden. Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.
Kurashige, Lon. Japanese American: Celebration and Conflict, A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival in Los Angeles, 1934-1990. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Lowman, David D. Magic: The Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and Evacuation of Japanese Residents from the West Coast During WWII. Athena Press, 2000.
Muller, Eric L. Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II (Chicago Series in Law and Society). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Murray, Alice Yang, ed. What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2000.
Okihiro, Gary Y. “Tule Lake under Martial Law: A Study in Japanese Resistance.” Journal of Ethnic Studies 5:3 (Fall 1977): 71-85.
Robinson, Greg. By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Saunders, Kay and Roger Daniels, eds. Alien Justice: Wartime Internment in Australia and North America. St. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 2000.
Stanley, Gerald. I Am an America: A True Story of Japanese Internment. Crown Books for Young Readers, 1996. [ALA Childern’s Book; Horn Book Fanfare Honor Book, School Library Journal Grades 5-10]
Stanley, Gerald. “Justice Deferred: A Fifty-Year Perspective on Japanese-Internment Historiography.” Southern California Quarterly 84:2 (Summer 1992): 181-206.
Azuma, Eiichiro. “A History of Oregon’s Issei, 1880-1952.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 94:4 (1993-1994): 315-367.
Gayne, Mary K. “Japanese Americans at the Portland YWCA.” Journal of Women’s History 15:3 (2003): 197-203.
Hoff, Derek. “Igniting Memory: Commemoration of the 1942 Japanese Bombing of Southern Oregon, 1942-1998.” Public Historian 21:2 (1999): 65-82.
Kessler, Lauren. Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese-American Family. Random House, 1993.
Kodachi, Zuigaku, Jan Heikkala and Janet Cormack. “Portland Assembly Center: Diary of Saku Tomita.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 81:2 (1980): 149-171.
McKay, Floyd J. “Charles Sprague’s Internal Wars: Civil Liberties Challenges of an Editor and Governor.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 96:4 (1995-1996): 326-361.
Olmstead, Timothy. “Nekkei Internment: The Perspective of Two Oregon Weekly Newspapers.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 85:1 (1984): 5-32.
Tamura, Linda. The Hood River Issei: Oral History and the Japanese Settlement in Hood River, Oregon. University of Illinois Press, 1993.
Takei, Barbara and Judy Tachibana. Tule Lake Revisited: A Brief History and Guide to the Tule Lake Internment Camp Site. T and T Press, 2001.
Tanaka, Stefan. “The Toledo Incident: The Deportation of the Nikkei from an Oregon Mill Town.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 69:3 (1978): 116-26.
Toll, William. “Permanent Settlement: Japanese Families in Portland in 1920.” Western Historical Quarterly 28:1 (1997): 18-43.
Houston, Jeanne and James D. Houston. Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment. Laurel Leaf, 1983.
Inada, Lawson Fusao, ed. Only What We Could Carry. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2000.
Sone, Monica. Nisei Daughter. Seattle: University of Washington Press, [1979] 1953.
Tunnell, Michael O. and George W. Chilcoat The Children of Topaz: The Story of a Japanese-American Internment Camp Based on a Classroom Diary. Holiday House, 1996. [Reading Level Ages 9-12 see review in the School Library Journal]
Uchida, Yoshiko. Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984.
Uchida, Yoshiko and Charles Robinson. Journey Home. Aladdin Books, 1992. [Reading Level Ages 9-12]
Japanese Relocation Camp Newspapers. 1942-1945. University of Oregon Microform Collections. [Collection includes 22 reels of microfilm containing publications from the following camps: Granada (Amache, CO); Jerome (Denson, AR); Minidoka (Hunt, Idaho); Heart Mountain (WY); Manzanar (CA); Rohwer (McGehee, AR); Tule Lake (Newell, CA); Poston (AZ); Gila River (Rivers, AZ); Santa Anita Assembly Center (CA); Tanforan Assembly Center (CA); Topaz (UT).
Tule Lake Relocation Camp Exhibit. Klamath County Museum. Klamath Falls, OR. [The director of the Klamath County Museum, Judith Hassen, remains committed to cultivating relationships with community partners throughout the state and fostering educational outreach programs. During spring term 2004, Judith installed this traveling exhibit interpreting the Tule Lake Internment Camp at the Central Oregon Community College (COCC) Library. The exhibit contributed to the curriculum development of the University of Oregon, Central Oregon Programs in Bend, and I specifically integrated the display into my History 476: American West Twentieth Century course. I arranged a class field trip to examine the three tri-folding panels presenting reproductions of personal correspondence, federal documents, maps, blueprints, and photographs. Judith also offered to assemble a full-scale replica of a camp barrack containing authentic furnishing and a search light.
Four Rivers Cultural Center. Located in the heart of the Western Treasure Valley in Ontario Oregon, the Four Rivers Cultural Center interprets the natural and cultural landscape of the region. Significant permanent exhibits explore the history of American Indians, Basque, European, Hispanic, Japanese residents. The Museum displays, in part, the experiences of the many Japanese internees who secured release from relocation camps and served as agricultural laborers for corporations like the Amalgamated Sugar Company in communities like Nyssa, Vale, and Ontario. The Center is currently constructing a Japanese Garden dedicated as a memorial to Japanese internees and veterans. URL: http://www.4rcc.com/
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Digital Classroom. Teaching With Documents Lesson Plan: “Documents and Photographs Related to Japanese Relocation During World War II.” [Includes digital images of federal documents, historic photographs, and maps drawn from the records of the Western Defense Command, the Office of the President, War Relocation Authority, and the Wartime Civil Control Administration] URL:http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/japanese_relocation_ww ii/japanese_relocation.html
Oregon Historical Society. The Oregon History Project. Oregon Biographies. Oregon Historical Society. Biography of Minoru Yasui. URL: http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/Oregon-Biographies-
Minoru-Yasui.cfm
Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center. (Portland, OR). The mission of the organization is the “preservation and sharing of the history and culture of the Japanese American community.” The current exhibit includes: “Oregon Nikkei: Reflections of an American Community” and “Can History Repeat?: Detained at the Portland Assembly Center,” both chronicling the lives of Oregon’s Nikkei community from nineteenth-century immigration and settlement through wartime relocation and postwar resettlement. The organization also collaborates with the Seattle Japanese American Citizen’s League (JACL), the Friends of Minidoka, and Halvsie to co-sponsor a tri-state pilgrimage to the Minidoka Internment Camp National Monument near Twin Falls, ID. URL: http://www.oregonnikkei.org
Tule Lake Committee. Former internees, students, and civil rights activists performed the first Tule Lake Camp Pilgrimage in 1974 to raise awareness and seek federal reparations. Between 1974 and 2004 the Tule Lake Committee has organized fourteen pilgrimages. The website contains historical photographs of the camp and still images documenting the pilgrimages. The organization has also established a scholarship fund to support students and public school groups who need financial assistance to attend the pilgrimage or visit the Tule Lake Camp site. URL: http://www.tulelake.org