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World War II & Japanese American internment

ES 244

April 16, 2013

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Life magazine

December 1941

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Also Time magazine, Dec 22, 1941: “How to Tell Your Friends from the Japs”

• Some Chinese are tall (average: 5 ft. 5 in.). Virtually all Japanese are short (average: 5 ft. 2-½ in.).

• Japanese are likely to be stockier and broader-hipped than short Chinese.• Japanese — except for wrestlers — are seldom fat ; they often dry up and grow lean as they

age. The Chinese often put on weight, particularly if they are prosperous (in China, with its frequent famines, being fat is esteemed as a sign of being a solid citizen).

• Chinese, not as hairy as Japanese, seldom grow an impressive mustache. • Most Chinese avoid horn-rimmed spectacles.• Although both have the typical epicanthic fold of the upper eyelid (which makes them look

almond-eyed), Japanese eyes are usually set closer together. • Those who know them best often rely on facial expression to tell them apart : the Chinese

expression is likely to be more placid, kindly, open; the Japanese more positive, dogmatic, arrogant.

• Some aristocratic Japanese have thin, aquiline noses, narrow faces and, except for their eyes, look like Caucasians.

• Japanese are hesitant, nervous in conversation, laugh loudly at the wrong time. • Japanese walk stiffly erect, hard-heeled. Chinese, more relaxed, have an easy gait,

sometimes shuffle.

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“THE QUESTION OF JAPANESE-AMERICANS”by W. H. Anderson

Perhaps the most difficult and delicate question that confronts our powers that be is the handling--the safe and proper treatment--of our American-born Japanese, our Japanese-American citizens by the accident of birth. But who are Japanese nevertheless. A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched. (LA Times, Feb. 2, 1942)

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Executive Order 9066

• President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs EO 9066 on February 19, 1942

• Authorizes military to designate areas where “any or all persons may be excluded” for the purposes of protecting against espionage or sabotage.

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Exclusion Area

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Public Proclamation No. 4March 27, 1942

Effective March 29, Japanese aliens prohibited from voluntarily leaving Military Area No. 1.

Japanese Americans are now awaiting Civilian Exclusion Orders moving them to internment camps.

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Civilian Exclusion Orders

Began March 24, 1942

108 orders in all

Exclusion from designated military zones

(a) bedding and linens (no mattresses) for each member of the family;(b) toilet articles for each member of the family;(c) extra clothing for each member of the family; (d) sufficient knives, forks, spoons, plates, bowls, and cups for each member of the family;(e) essential personal effects for each member of the family

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Assembly Centers

• 17 established in exclusion area

• Temporary locations until relocation centers were ready

• Fairgrounds, racetracks

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Relocation Centers

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The normalcy of mass incarceration of a single ethnic group

• 1943 WRA newsreel, “Japanese Relocation”

– http://www.archive.org/details/Japanese1943

• Govt perspective v. evacuee perspective: How did curfew, evacuation, and internment affect Japanese Americans?

Title:

Henry Mitarai, age 36, successful large-scale farm operator with his family on their ranch about six weeks before evacuation. This family, along with other families of Japanese ancestry, will spend the duration at War Relocation Authority centers.

Photographer: Lange, Dorothea -- Mountain View, California. 3/30/42

Contributing Institution:

The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley.

http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft1z09n73j/?brand=calisphere

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21Espiritu 143: Mealtime and restructuring the family

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• “The experiences of Issei men underscore the intersections of racism and sexism, showing how men of color live in a society that creates sex-based norms and expectations (e.g., man as breadwinner) that racism operates simultaneously to deny” (Espiritu 144).

• Effect on issei women? On Nisei? (144-5)

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27Yasui, Hirabayashi, Korematsu

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Mitsuye Endo

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Habeus Corpus (Endo)

• A fundamental constitutional principle• Persons not charged with offenses

against the law of war could not be deprived of due process of law, nor could they be denied the benefits of a trial by jury in the absence of a valid declaration of martial law

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“a loaded weapon”

• “The Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedures and of transplanting American citizens. The principle lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of urgent need.” Justice Jackson, dissenting opinion in Korematsu (1944)