West-Coast Japanese Incarceration Resources

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, lobbyist groups from western states pushed for the removal of Issei and Nisei from their states. The Department of Justice contested the constitutionality of the decision, so the U.S. Army and executive branch carried out the orders instead of Congress.

On February 19th, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which allowed the military to exclude citizens from declared military areas on the west coast. This wording legalized the incarceration of over 122,000 Japanese living in the United States. Nearly 70,000 of them were American citizens.

Roosevelt justified the order as a “military necessity” to counter espionage against the United States. While the order does not include specific ethnic groups, the orders were only targeted towards people with Japanese ancestry.

On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor, resulting in 3,435 American casualties and widespread damage to naval and military targets. The next day, the United States officially declared war on Japan, and Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on December 11th, marking a full American entrance into World War II.

Many Japanese Americans, especially Nissei, were placed in a cultural bind. They felt American but were seen as other based on their race (an idea known as perpetual foreigner) and became the subject of state-sanctioned violence and prejudice. As America entered the combat theatre, many Japanese Americans began to fear for their lives they had worked to build in the states. 

People were given identification tags and forced to leave their homes, businesses, and most of their material possessions behind. Over 120,000 Japanese-Americans were sent to prison camps built across the United States. They were mainly concentrated in the west coast and areas with higher Japanese populations. They were built quickly and were in poor condition. The camps were located in environments susceptible to dust and extreme weather that made life even more difficult for those incarcerated. 

Life in the camps was heavily restricted. Barbed wire and armed guards surrounded the area, and roll call was an ordinary part of life. Four to five families shared army style barracks without proper insulation and with the few possessions they were able to bring with them. They ate in communal dining rooms and  shared bathrooms lived with little privacy anywhere in their lives. 

The incarcerated people attempted to maintain a sense of normalcy in the camps. Children went to schools taught by incarcerated former teachers, adults setup newspapers, churches, and other hallmarks of normal life. Nisei found work as cooks, nurses, farmers, etc. They encourages arts and sports did their best to create a community in the camps. However, their actions could only mitigate their destitute situation. Their attempts were made more strenuous by the lack of resources and overcrowding plaguing the camps.

In winter of 1943, incarcerated Japanese were given a loyalty survey by the War Relocation Authority to assist with drafting individuals from camps and releasing “loyal” Japanese. Questions 27 and 28 specifically asked if Nisei men would be willing to serve in the military, and if everyone else if they would serve in other ways, and if the respondents would swear unyielding loyalty to the United States.

While many Japanese answered yes to both questions in attempts to prove their loyalty towards the United States, about 12,000 of the 78,000 respondents, generally young men, decided to reject the survey and answer no to one or both questions. This people, known as “No-No Boys,” rejected the United States on the basis of their incarceration and mistreatment by the government. No-no boys were marked as disloyal by the government and segregated from “loyal” populations at Tule Lake.

Incarceration ended on January 2nd, 1945, allowing the incarcerated Japanese Americans to return to their homes. Even with the incarceration orders lifted, people remained in camps up through 1945 as hesitancy to return home kept almost 55,000 people from leaving through April 1945.

While they were happy to return home, Japanese-Americans continued to face hardships after incarceration. Much of their property has been taken, vandalized, or neglected, making returning to “normal life” more difficult. Prejudice continued to limit opportunities in school and work. Rebuilding the Japanese community would take years, and the effects can still be felt today in generation trauma in the Japanese-American community.