THE MEANING OF CITIZENSHIP TO

AMERICANS OF JAPANESE ANCESTRY

Presented before the Organization of American Historians, San Francisco, CA, 4/18/97.

By Clifford Uyeda

Japanese immigrants began coming to the Untied States in significant number during the last decade of the 19th century. They were prohibited from becoming naturalized American citizens as confirmed by the Supreme Court case of Ozawa vs U.S., 1922. In 1924, their entrance into the U.S. was prohibited by the passage of the Asian Exclusion Act.

The children of these immigrants, although American citizens, were not considered loyal by their country. With the outbreak of World War II, the U.S. government treated all persons of Japanese ancestry as enemy aliens, removing them from their homes on the Pacific Coast to inland camps.

In January 1942, the draft eligible Japanese Americans were classified 4-C, "enemy aliens," and therefore stopped being drafted. Many in service were summarily discharged. A year later, however, in January 1943, the War Department announced plans to create an all-Japanese American combat unit, and requested volunteers. In Hawaii, where there was no mass removal and confinement, over 10,000 volunteered. On the mainland, where over 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, 70 percent of them American citizens, were held in detention camps with barbed wires and armed guards, only 1,000 volunteered from within the camps. In another year, in January 1944, the War Department announced the reinstatement of the draft for Japanese Americans in detention camps.

Eventually, 33,000 Japanese Americans served in the armed forces of the U.S., some 6,000 of them in the Pacific during World War II and the occupation of Japan. On the European front the all Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history for its size and length of service. In the Pacific campaign, the Japanese American linguists in the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) were attached to every major combat unit in the Pacific.

There were 315 Japanese Americans from all ten detention camps in the U.S. that refused induction, demanding that first the rights taken away from them be restored and their families released from incarceration in camps. All of these men were sentenced to federal penitentiary. In December 1947, President Harry Truman granted pardon to over 1,400 draft resisters, among them were the names of Japanese American who had refused induction into the Army.

The wartime leaders of the Japanese American community regarded support of the all government action as patriotic duty. Anyone not complying with their views were branded "unAmerican." The bitter schism created by the event of the 1940s continue to this day, and belies the popular view of a monolithic reaction by the Japanese American community to wartime pressures.

Most Japanese Americans were united in their view that their own country, the U.S.A., had deprived them of their rights guaranteed by our Constitution in becoming prisoners in their own land. They firmly believed that only a meaningful redress and a government acknowledgement of the wrong done to them during World War II could prevent a recurrence of similar action in the future. A national redress campaign was launched in 1978, and culminated in the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

The Japanese American incarceration during World War II was not a mere aberration in history. To do so is to ignore the enormity of what did occur in America. The American concentration camps were not like the death camps in Europe. That, however, hardly justified their existence. The inmates were held in barbed wire compounds for years, and watched from guard towers manned by armed soldiers. They were innocent of any wrongdoing and were there for only one reason--ancestry.

What happened to Japanese Americans during World War II was the end result of a century of anti-Asian sentiments in America. Pearl Harbor was not the cause, it was the excuse to remove Japanese Americans from the West Coast of America.

We now have official documentation of the fact that a deliberate governmental big lie was used by the War Department to justify the removal and confinement of Japanese Americans after the onset of World War II. The War and the Justice Departments both concealed evidence from the Supreme Court of the false charges made public against Japanese Americans to justify the incarceration.

In the military, into which Japanese Americans were being drafted, they were in segregated units. The Japanese Americans established brilliant military records. But at what cost? Their casualty rate was five times higher than that of the overall American forces.

Henry Gosho, one of the volunteers into the famed Merrill's Marauders which fought behind the enemy lines in Burma, said to me. "When I volunteered from behind the barbed wire at Minidoka camp in Idaho, I felt like a prisoner-of-war. An armed soldier sat next to me on the train all the way to the port of embarkation in San Francisco."

In the face of oppression, many victims tend to become quiet and uncomplaining. Our parents' generation and the following generation of Japanese Americans became quiet and uncomplaining. They assumed that someday the Japanese Americans will be accepted in America if they continued to work hard, study hard and never complained. It was a behavior totally inappropriate in America where the quiet American was a misunderstood American, an ignored American.

The wartime Japanese American leadership acted more like a government agent than a representative of the Japanese American community. They were more interested in presenting an acceptable cooperative image than to insist on the constitutional guarantees all Americans were entitled to even during wartime. Any member of the Japanese American community who disagreed with the leadership were labeled "disloyal" and "unAmerican," and ostracized from the community, not only during wartime but for half a century after the

war ended.

Do Americans in general know that our community leaders were so eager to please the government that they had even suggested branding all persons of Japanese ancestry in the U.S. as the Nazi did to the Jewish people in Germany? Do they know that our leaders suggested a "suicide battalion" of Japanese American soldiers to fight in the Pacific and that their parents be held as hostages to assure satisfactory performance? Do Americans in general know that our Japanese American leaders pleaded with the government that our parents be treated less tolerantly than their children because they were "enemy aliens," aliens because the U.S. law prevented them from becoming U.S. citizens?

Our leaders were absolutely intolerant toward the Nisei who insisted that their rights be restored to them before being inducted into the Armed forces. Do Americans know that our leaders turned their heads and looked the other way when some Japanese American veterans sought out the former draft resisters years years after the war was over and tried to have them fired from their jobs for having refused the draft? This was also years after these resisters had served their terms in federal penitentiary.

Japanese Americans have asked our government to look back fifty years and to admit the wrong done to Japanese Americans during World War II, apologize and to pay damage claims. A redress payment, token for individuals but meaningful as a group, was passed by Congress in 1988.

But what of the wrong committed by the well established leadership organization against its own people? Shouldn't they also acknowledge their wrong and apologize to their own people who they had grievously injured? To this day, this has not happened. They fear a loss of face. The true loss of face is in their refusal to admit a wrong done to their own people. The admission will gain respect, because Americans admire those who are not afraid to admit the mistakes when made.

Do victims gain empathy for other victims of injustice? It is not always the case. The pain of injustice is often furthered by quantifying our experience. "You didn't suffer as much," is the popular excuse given by one victim to another. To some people, the term "concentration camps" can refer only to the extermination camps in Europe during World War II. The victims are, thereby, further victimized by their own kind.

The Japanese American experience had implications beyond their own group. Theirs was an experience which ought not be repeated in America. Time may change, but the promises upon which our nation was founded remain unchanged.

Unless Japanese Americans become a dedicated force to oppose injustice in America, we had learned very little from the painful experience of our immediate past. Our hope is that Japanese Americans will join other Americans to make our Constitution a living symbol for all its people.

10/23/96