One of the little-known pages in the history of Second World War is about the racial prejudice suffered by Americans of Japanese descent. This prejudice was already growing in the United States since the 1900s, however, after the attack on the naval base of Pearl Harbor, war hysteria led the country to decree the internment of more than 100,000 citizens in different internment camps.
The camps built for the imprisonment of these people during World War II were called by the Americans as internmentcamps, which, in free translation, means “internment camps”. However, the most recurrent term in Portuguese to refer to these places is “concentration camp”.
Background and prejudice against Japanese in the US
The history of the United States from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century was marked by the arrival of a large volume of immigrants, who sought better living conditions in the country. One of the main groups of immigrants that the United States received during this period was that of japanese. These immigrants wanted to settle down, prosper and, as soon as possible, return to Japan.
The Japanese who immigrated to the United States at this time focused on the Hawaii and on CoastWest and worked mainly on local farms and in the construction of railways. As the years passed, more immigrants arrived in the country. In 1900, there were more than 10,000 Japanese in the United States|1| and, in 1910, this number was already over 70 thousand|2|.
The high growth of the Japanese population on the West Coast of the United States has led to the emergence of a strong racial prejudice against this minority. Thus, from the first decade of the twentieth century, some measures against the population of Japanese origin, mainly concentrated in the State of California, were taken.
Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, a stereotype developed that the Japanese-American citizen, that is, of origin Japanese, was not American (or was less American), as it was believed that he had no intention of being assimilated culturally. The result of this was the emergence of a law that prohibited the entry of new eastern immigrants into the States. United States, in addition to laws prohibiting Japanese descendants from owning land and obtaining nationality American.
As tensions between the United States and Japan increased, more and more discriminatory actions against the population of Japanese descent, including by influential people in American society, such as California Governor Hiram Johnson, who openly advocated a racist discourse against the Japanese Americans.
Attack on Pearl Harbor and the internment of Japanese Americans
On December 7, 1941, Japan executed the attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor, which was located in Hawaii. As this was one of the largest American naval bases, this attack was responsible for the death of more than 2,400 American soldiers. Despite the evidence that a Japanese attack would happen at any moment, the base at Pearl Harbor was totally unprepared and was surprised by the Japanese.
The attack on Pearl Harbor prompted the United States to declare war on Japan the next day. This attack shocked public opinion in the United States and caused discrimination against the population of Japanese origin in the country to grow. New stereotypes emerged, and prejudice was widespread in society both in political and media.
Shortly before the attack on Pearl Habor, an investigation led by American intelligence had been conducted by order of the president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In this investigation, it was intended to know the level of loyalty of the American population of Japanese descent. The study concluded that there was no collaboration with the enemy among Japanese citizens.
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However, even with evidence that there was no internal collaboration, driven by wartime hysteria, the American government chose to take more energetic measures against the Japanese-American population, seen at that time as an enemy internal. Thus, on February 19, 1942, the Executive Order 9066, which allowed the detention of Japanese Americans in internment camps.
Japanese American internment camps
Surveillance tower built in Manzanar internment camp
Executive Order 9066 initiated a process in which every person possessing at least 1/16 of Japanese ancestry should be evacuated and transferred to a specific location determined by the army. These people were forced to dispose of their possessions and jobs and were then sent to temporary detention centers.
The entire logistics of evacuating Japanese Americans to detention camps was organized by the colonel Karl Bendetsen. Initially, inmates were installed in makeshift camps, while internment camps were built. In all, they were ten internment camps spread over different locations in the United States: California, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, Arkansas and Colorado.
The administration of the fields was handed over to the War Relocation Authority (WRA), which in free translation into Portuguese means “War Relocation Authority”. People were transferred to the internment camps in heaps, in cramped train cars, and found a precarious structure where they were installed. These fields were fenced in with barbed wire and were monitored by tall watchtowers and heavily armed security guards.
Homes built in internment camps were not designed to withstand the harsh winter and high summer temperatures that are common in the United States. In addition, inmates shared bathing facilities and had very limited medical care. The terrible internal conditions in these places contributed to the illness of many detainees.
Japanese American citizens living in the camps soon self-developed as little structure as possible that could improve their living conditions. So they developed schools, plantations, makeshift hospitals and built furniture for their homes.
This reality of life extended to some citizens of Japanese origin until the beginning of 1946, when the last camp was definitively closed and the inmates were released. The closing of the internment camps started from the Japan's surrender in World War II, in 1945.
Reconstruction
Most of the more than 110,000 Japanese relocated to internment camps lost everything they owned. After the camps closed, they needed to rebuild their lives, as they did not receive any kind of government assistance that would promote their integration back into society. Furthermore, prejudice against Japanese Americans remained strong in American society for a long time.
Some institutions, such as the Japanese American Citizens League (League of Japanese American Citizens) and the National Coalition for Japanese American Redress (National Coalition for the Reparation of Japanese Americans), were extremely important in the struggle for greater social rights for this minority of the American population.
In the 1980s, during the government of Ronald Reagan, all survivors of the internment camps received a formal apology from the US government and, as compensation, the sum of twenty thousand dollars.
|1| PETURSSON, Erlingur Þór. Japanese American Internment: the Great Injustice. Available in: http://skemman.is/en/stream/get/1946/19305/44902/1/Japanese_American_Internment_A_Great_Injustice_-_Erlingur_%C3%9E%C3%B3r_P%C3%A9tursson.pdf
|2| ICHINASI, Yamato. Japanese in the United States: A critical study of the problems of the Japanese immigrants and their children. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1932, p. 122.
By Daniel Neves
Graduated in History
