American Internment

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Citation: Vol. 23 No. 03
• Publication year: 2019

American Internment

Troy J.H. Andrade aridRyan M. Hamaguchi

Hawaii State law designates every January 30 as "Civil liberties and the Constitution Day." Enacted in 2013, this law celebrates, honors, and encourages "public education and awareness of the commitment of individuals to preserving civil liberties for Americans of Japanese ancestry[,]" particularly after Mr mass incarceration following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. Four resistors, with the help of their lawyers, fought the government's internment scheme through the judicial process. The often-forgotten stories of Mitsuye Endo, Gordon Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu, and Min Yasui highlight the importance of resisting and speaking up against wrongs.

Seventy-six years ago, following the attack on the American military in Hawai'i, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which stated that the "successful prosecution of the war require[d] every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national defense material, national-defense premises, and national defense utilities . . . ."¹ To effectuate this purpose, President Roosevelt designated and authorized military commanders on the West Coast to "prescribe military areas . . . from which any or aU persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave be subject to whatever restrictions the . . . Military Commander may impose in his discretion."²

Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, the ap-pointed Military Commander of the Western Defense Command, carried forth the President's plan. In a March 2, 1942 Public Proclamation No. 1, General DeWitt stated that the entire Pacific coast of the continental United States was "particularly subject to attack, to attempted invasion by the armed forces of nations with which the United States is now at war, and, in connection therewith, is subject to espionage and acts of sabotage, thereby requiring the adoption of military measures necessary to establish safeguards against such enemy opera-tions."³ DeWitt designated certain areas within his Western Defense Command as Military Areas and Zones thereby laying the foundation for the exclusion of any person.⁴

The President subsequently issued Executive Order 9201, which created the War Relocation Authority to

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"provide for the removal from designated areas of persons whose removal is necessary in the interests of national security."⁵ The Executive Order authorized the Director of the War Relocation Authority to "prescribe regulations necessary or desirable to promote effective execution of the pro-gram[,]"⁶ including the segregation of loyal from disloyal evacuees and the relocation of the loyal evacuees.⁷

Congress, on March 21, 1942, ratified Executive Order 9066 and made it a crime to violate the military's evacuation orders:

That whoever shall enter, remain in, leave, or commit any act in any military area of military zone prescribed, under the authority of an Executive [O]rder of the President, by the Secretary of War, or by any [M]ilitary [C] ommander designated by the Secretary of War, contrary to the restrictions applicable to any such area or zone or contrary to the order of the Secretary of War or any such [M]ili-tary [C]ommander, shall, if it appears that he knew or should have known of the existence and extent of the restrictions or order and that his act was in violation thereof, be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be liable to a fine of not to exceed $5,000 or to imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, for each offense.⁸

The next day, General DeWitt began issuing a series of Civilian Exclusion Orders, which ordered that, for example, "all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien" were prohibited "from leaving that area for any purpose until and to the extent that a future proclamation or order of [DeWitt's] headquarters shall so permit or direct."⁹ In testimony before a House subcommittee, General DeWitt made clear why he believed those of Japanese ancestry needed to be removed:

I don't want any of them (persons of Japanese ancestry) here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty. The west coast contains too many vital installations essential to the defense of the country to allow any Japanese on this coast. . . . The danger of the Japanese was, and is now—if they are permitted to come back—espionage and sabotage. It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still aJapanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty. . . . But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map. Sabotage and espionage will make problems as long as he is allowed in this area.¹⁰

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The legal structure was, as one scholar noted, "a masterpiece of political buck passing."¹¹ Indeed, the President's order was written so vaguely that the subsequent decisions of the military commanders could not be attributed to him personally. It was a scheme designed such that "no single legal pronouncement explicitly ordered relocation and internment on racial grounds."¹² Nevertheless, the effect of the laws was clear: Japanese American men, women, and children were placed in internment camps—military-style barracks heavily guarded by barbed wire and gun towers.

The process for obtaining approval to leave an internment camp was a multi-step process that required: (1) an approved application for leave clearance, which necessitated an investigation of the applicant to ascertain "the probable effect upon the war program and upon the public peace and security of issuing indefinite leave";¹³ and (2) an approved application for indefinite leave. Indefinite leave was only granted under fourteen cumbersome conditions, some of which included:

(1) where the applicant proposes to accept an employment offer or an offer of support that has been investigated and approved by the [War Relocation] Authority; or (2) where the applicant does not intend to work but has "adequate financial resources to take care of himself" and a Relocation Officer has investigated and approved "public sentiment at his proposed destination," or (3) where the applicant has made arrangements to live at a hotel or in a private home approved by a Relocation Officer while arranging for employment; or (4) where the applicant proposes to accept employment by a federal or local governmental agency; or (5) where the applicant is going to live with designated classes of rela-tives.¹⁴

Despite satisfying any one of these conditions, an internee could not leave the camp if the proposed place of residence or employment was within an area where "community sentiment is unfavorable" or in an area closed by the War Relocation Authority.¹⁵ In other words, if an internee was determined to be loyal, they could theoretically leave, but could not return to their homes within the designated militarized zones.

With this system in place, 120,000 individuals of Japanese descent—most of whom were American citizens—were required to report to detention centers bringing with them only whatever personal possessions they could carry Although some local churches provided coffee and donuts, the move was humiliating. Mary Matsuda Grue-newald, an internee at Tule Lake Segregation Center, spoke of her fear, with one man yelling at her, "Get outta here, you God damn Japs! I oughta blast your heads off"¹⁶ She also spoke of the damning silence of the community: "The other men didn't say anything, but they spat on us as we passed. Most of the crowd just stood and watched."¹⁷ The internees were then sent to assembly centers and eventually to "relocation centers"—the internment camps, which were located hundreds of miles inland. One scholar described the conditions as "terrible, with little running water, less privacy, and minimal food. . . . Temperatures went below zero in the winter evenings and over 100 degrees in the summer days."¹⁸ Masaru Kawaguchi, an internee at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah described being locked away: " [W]e were surrounded by the barbed wire fence. You couldn't just go out. You definitely knew that you were in a jail because they had the soldiers up there with the rifles. In fact, one gentleman got too close to the fence and he got killed."¹⁹

Many questioned their detention. Harry Urata, an internee at the Hono'uli'uli Internment Camp in Hawai'i, decried: "How come I gotta stay inside here? Although I am [an] American citizen, we are there under suspicion. They just suspect us."²⁰ Several chose to challenge the military orders. One man, twenty-six-year-old attorney Minoru Yasui of Portland, Oregon, who was a second lieutenant in the United States Army, went for a walk in the hopes of getting arrested. He passed a policeman, but instead of arresting him, the officer told him, "Run along home, sonny boy, or you'll get in trouble." Impatient, at 11:00 p.m., Yasui presented himself to the neighborhood police station and demanded to be booked. In Seattle, Washington, Gordon Hirabayashi similarly turned himself into the FBI.²¹

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Another man who refused to report to the required assembly center, pursuant to another exclusion order, was Fred Kore-matsu. Korematsu planned to move with his girlfriend from his home in California to Nevada. He sold his car, threw away his California license, and assumed a new identity—even getting minor surgery to change his physical appearance. Despite his efforts, Korematsu would be stopped by the police and turned over to the FBI in May 1942. The newspaper headline of Korematsu's stop read: "Jap Spy Arrested in San Leandro." After being arrested and incarcerated for two and a half months, Korematsu was released when a local attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union (" ACLU") paid his bail. Once outside of the jailhouse, Korematsu was cuffed and taken to an assembly center that held thousands of Japanese American...