Written by Catie Sakurai, NJAHS’ 2019 Nikkei Community Intern

Photo: Nikkei Community Interns pose with activists at the “Never Again is Now” press conference in San Francisco

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with the group of activists who traveled from across the country to demonstrate at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, an incarceration camp run by the DOJ in the 1940s, which the current administration now plans to use as a detention center for migrant children. The activists shared with me the ways in which the incarceration has affected and continues to impact their lives almost 80 years later: one explained that he feels haunted by what happened to him; another, a psychologist, spoke of the ways that anxiety is passed down between generations following a traumatic experience. Following our talks, we attended a press conference to protest child detentions. I was moved by the activists’ dedication to use their own experiences to stand up for migrant children and families, and reflected on how I might learn from them. In the previous few weeks, my colleagues with the Nikkei Community Internship and I have done much reflection on how our community ought to proceed. Unfortunately, we have come to the conclusion that apathy and lack of interest in our history and the problems facing society today present a problem going forward. I would like to encourage my fellow recent graduates to take it upon themselves to oppose injustices such as those faced by migrant families. A good first step, although certainly not the last, is learning about our history and how it applies today. Here is my interpretation.

To “protect our national security” is, at first glance, a bold and valiant concept. With no context or details, Americans from every corner of the United States can rally behind this cause and use it as a justification for political decisions. When used properly, these concepts have the potential to unite people and bring about positive change. However, it was also in the name of protecting our national security that one of the most shameful chapters in the history of modern America came to occur: the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II. No organized groups stood up for the Japanese Americans as they were demonized and forced from their homes, and political and moral leadership such as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and California Attorney General Earl Warren stood in favor of imprisoning the community for their racial background. It is clear that racist and fear-driven motivations hidden behind the façade of a deep care for protection of the country led otherwise normal, rational, and moral people to overlook what we now believe to be an obvious wrong of massive proportions.

Using broadly nationalist language such as this with little factual understanding of the complexities and consequences can be dangerous. Not only can it mask the real intentions of government action, but it can lead people to rally around a false sense of righteousness and truth and overlook groups who do not have the voice to speak up for themselves. The bold, sensationalist language used to justify the way in which immigrants and refugees are treated today easily masks its problematic and objectionable aspects and attracts a broad, uninformed base who may find that quick labeling of immigrants and refugees as “enemies” to be blocked from entering the country is easier than critical analysis of how we as Americans might be the true enemies of justice in allowing such inhumane treatment to continue. Today, the call to “protect our borders” has the same type of power as the World War II era mentality of protecting national security, and is being used with the same carelessness and questionable motivations. What are we really protecting by implementing policies that detain and separate families seeking a better future in the United States, and at what cost? With parallels between present day detention at the southern border and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II becoming ever more prominent, it is necessary to think critically about our deeper motivations and how they fail to reflect the noble attitudes presented in the surface level justification of “protecting” our borders.

This is not to say that the current humanitarian crisis at the southern border is identical to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II; in fact, the situations are quite different. However, the underlying sentiments of “otherizing” and scapegoating large groups of people by race or national origin and subjecting them to inhumane conditions is an unacceptable similarity that leads activists to question how much we have actually learned from America’s shameful incarceration history. The approach taken by the current administration of demonizing refugees and automatically treating them as enemies for their national origin uncannily reflects the sentiments against Japanese Americans expressed before, during, and after the war. The belief that “A Jap is a Jap” upheld the notion that all people of Japanese descent were the same and could not be trusted, and in doing so, erased the individual identities of Japanese Americans. Because of racist beliefs spanning back for decades and a fear of Japan that intensified after Pearl Harbor, the deeply held American value of assuming all people to be “innocent until proven guilty” was not applied to loyal Japanese American citizens and legal permanent residents, raising the question of how much the American values we supposedly hold dear truly define us.

Today, migrant families are automatically labeled as the enemy for “stealing jobs” or being “dangerous criminals” without being given a fair chance. Current rhetoric used to justify the harsh treatment of immigrants and refugees draws upon the power of scapegoating to channel unrelated frustrations with the government and economy into an aimless movement against these vulnerable groups. The unfortunate consequence is complicit attitudes toward the deplorable living conditions at detention centers and the immoral and inhumane ways that migrants are treated. Surely, we can and must do better than this. Regardless of your position on immigration, we should not need to be reminded that the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” applies to all people, and that refugees and immigrants are individuals who deserve to be treated as human beings. In addition, we must examine ourselves and how we allowed such a humanitarian crisis to occur by taking a candid look at our history.

Hidden Causes and Overlooked Facts

In the years leading up to World War II, increased tensions with Japan allowed the government and military leadership to disguise pre-existing racist sentiments as concern for national security. These sentiments were part of a long history of discrimination against Asian immigrants. In the agriculture industry, many white farmers viewed successful Japanese farmers as unwanted competition. These attitudes were reflected in law: the Chinese Exclusion act of 1882, the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907, and the Immigration Act of 1924 restricted immigration from Asian countries. In addition, immigrants from Japan and other non-white countries could not become citizens, and as a result, could not own land. Therefore, when war with Japan became a possibility, racist attitudes against Japanese Americans were strong enough to fuel the campaign that ultimately forced entire communities from their homes on the west coast to behind barbed wire. Today, similar expressions of immigrants “taking our jobs,” demonstrate a deeply held nativist sentiment that must be confronted and challenged as the current administration initiates a modern disaster of humanitarianism at the border.

In the 1940s, Facts were overlooked in favor of fear in the president’s decision to issue Executive Order 9066, which gave the Department of War authority to exclude “all persons” from designated zones, leading to the forced removal and mass incarceration of all Japanese Americans residing on the West Coast. Not only did reports from the FBI, FCC, and Office of Naval Intelligence fail to find evidence of espionage or sabotage within the Japanese American community, but Curtis Munson, a private investigator commissioned by the president, directly concluded that the Japanese American population was highly loyal to the United States and were not a threat to national security. With evidence from these reports opposing the argument of necessity in time of war, it is clear that facts were not an important element in the decision to incarcerate Japanese Americans; rather, a combination of multiple factors including racism, fear, and political expediency led to the issuing and implementation of EO9066.

Attempting to Ameliorate Past Wrongs

Although we are now in agreement that the incarceration was wrong and should never have occurred, it took decades for the country to come to terms with this reality. In 1972, Earl Warren, who was initially in support of the incarceration, stated in an interview, “I have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens… It was wrong to react so impulsively, without positive evidence of disloyalty, even though we felt we had good motive in the security of our state.” In the 1970s, the Japanese American community began to push for an investigation of the tragedy they and their families experienced during the war. This grassroots campaign led Senators Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga, as well as Congressmen Norman Mineta and Robert Matsui, to petition President Carter to form the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. The Commission’s report, Personal Justice Denied, concluded that “a grave injustice was done to American citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry” and pointed to “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership” as the cause. The Commission also made recommendations on how the United States ought to proceed, leading the government to issue an official apology to the Japanese American community, recognize their wrongdoing, and pay reparations to survivors. This reparations movement sets a clear precedent that the wartime incarceration was not motivated by noble aims and ought never to be repeated, yet it is being overlooked today as the United States chooses a path of hatred, fear, and political expediency over one of morality.

The Costs of America’s Moral Deficit

It is impossible to put into words the extent to which individuals and communities were impacted by the incarceration. However, it is important to note that the effects reach beyond those that were old enough to remember their time in camp and have manifested across generations. Donna K. Nagata concludes in her book Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment that studies of the Sansei generation, or the second generation born in America who typically have parents who experienced the incarceration, retain the effects of the injustice in their own personal lives. Nagata explains that the Sansei believe that the incarceration has impacted the pressure they feel to assimilate, decreased their self-esteem, caused them to lose elements of their Japanese American culture, and led them to question how they and their parent’s lives would have been different if the incarceration had never occurred.

With these lasting effects in mind, it is impossible not to imagine the hardships that will follow migrant children and families detained and separated at the border in the years to come. The impact of trauma following severe injustice is not limited to the Japanese American community; rather, we can and ought to view these effects as a warning that necessitates the ending of the today’s humanitarian crisis at the border. Going forward, the United States’ current administration and congressional leadership must examine the border crisis and critically scrutinize the motivations for our actions and complicity in light of the moral atrocities of the past. The so-called justification of “protecting national security” and “protecting our borders” can never rationalize injustice.