Glossary term: Japanese Internment
Jesse Oler
Definition of term and background
Japanese Internment was a process in which the United States government forcibly removed Americans of Japanese descent from their communities and placed them in internment camps for the duration of the Second World War following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. On the morning of December 7th, 1941, a squadron of Japanese fighter planes conducted a bombing run on an American naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The devastating attack left 2,400 Americans dead and a thousand wounded, many of whom were civilians (History.com staff). It was a defining moment in American history, and the first foreign attack on American soil in over a hundred years. The traumatic bombardment led President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to implore Congress to declare war on Japan the following day (National Archives staff). As paranoia swept across the nation following Pearl Harbor about the potential for further attacks on American soil, plans were devised to maintain national security. Just a few months later on February 19th, 1942, Roosevelt passed Executive Order 9066, a law that forced Japanese Americans to leave their homes and relocate to internment camps outside of an designated pacific military zone. 117,000 Japanese Americans were affected by this mandate, many of whom were born on American soil (National Archives staff).
After being brought temporarily to assembly centers, Japanese Americans were sent to permanent relocation centers where they could work for minimal pay. These centers placed the Japanese Americans in dire conditions, but they attempted to create elements of normalcy in the camps with athletic and cultural activities (PBS staff). In 1944, the gradual release of interned Japanese Americans began, with individuals who were deemed loyal to the United States being released early. Eventually, in January of 1945, the remaining Japanese American internees were released from the camps, and they returned to lives ravaged by the actions of the American government (PBS staff). Many of the imprisoned returned home to unemployment and homes occupied by new tenants, with many of their personal belongings stolen or confiscated (PBS staff). In response to the financial and emotional losses suffered by the interned Japanese Americans, the United States government issued $37 million in reparations in 1948, but many felt that this compensation was insufficient (PBS staff). Years later in 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which issued an apology to the Japanese Americans who were affected by the internment policy and offered $20,000 in reparations to internees who were still alive. Pictured below, the signing of this bill symbolized an apology and an admission of fault by the American government.
Figure 3: Ronald Reagan signing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988
Relation to Politics of Health
Japanese Internment is intrinsically linked to the politics of health because it involved a harmed population seeking various forms of compensation from the state. The process of Japanese Internment can be understood through the conceptual framework of biological citizenship introduced by Adriana Petryna in her 2002 study of the Ukrainian individuals impacted by the Chernobyl disaster. Biological citizenship is defined as “forms of belonging, rights, claims, and demands for access to resources and care that are made on a biological basis such as an injury, shared genetic status, or disease state” (Mulligan). The Japanese Americans who were affected by the internment comprise a biological community based on their shared genetic identity as well as their collective claim for reparations for their financial losses during the internment period. However, as significant as their financial losses were, the community yearned more for the symbolic impact the reparations would bring (Hatamiya 48). Speaking for this group, California State Representative Norman Mineta describes the harm that the collective endured, saying, “We were robbed, just as if agents of the government had crept into our homes at night and taken our liberty, our rights and our property. There is no statute of limitations on our shame, our damaged honor or our violated rights. It has fallen on this (Congress) to set us free” (Houston). This quotation clearly outlines the demand of the Japanese American biological community for the United States government to fulfill its obligation to apologize for its actions and compensate the group for the losses they suffered during internment. Mineta and other Japanese American politicians, as well as activism groups such as the Japanese American Citizens League and the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations, led the charge to demand reparations from Congress (Hatamiya 46). Eventually, the biological community of Japanese Americans affected by internment was successful in obtaining the reparations they desired.
Additionally, the mass removal of Japanese Americans from the Pacific coast by the government can be examined through the lens of structural violence, a term used by anthropologist Paul Farmer. In his paper “Anthology on Structural Violence,” Farmer defines structural violence as “violence exerted systematically–that is, indirectly–by everyone who belongs to a certain social order… In short, the concept of structural violence is intended to inform the study of the social machinery of oppression” (Farmer 307). By leaving thousands of Japanese Americans without property and employment upon their return from relocation centers, the United States government carried out structural violence against Japanese Americans. These individuals lost material wealth, as well as the means to earn and achieve financial security for their families. Farmer notes in his paper that racial minorities are often targets of structural violence (Farmer 307). Japanese Internment relates directly to politics of health because it is an example of a government enacting structural violence on a population, and of that population as a biological community that makes claims against a state for reparations of that structural violence.
Perspectives
The internment of Japanese Americans was an extremely controversial policy, and there was debate and dissent within the government about whether or not it was justified and humane. Supporters of the policy held a strong belief that internment was necessary to maintain the security of our nation from further Japanese attacks following Pearl Harbor, and they feared that Japanese Americans might serve as spies or provide information to the Japanese government. Leading this faction was Lt. General John L. DeWitt, who remarked that he had “little confidence that the enemy aliens are law-abiding or loyal…. Particularly the Japanese” (Densho Encyclopedia). He was responsible for creating the pacific military zones, and he devised the plan to relocate both native-born Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants to designated relocation areas (Densho Encyclopedia). DeWitt was able to convince Secretary of War Henry Stimson and the President of the need for mass removal of Japanese Americans, but he was opposed by Attorney General Francis Biddle (History.com staff). Despite Biddle’s appeal to President Roosevelt that mass removal was superfluous and unnecessary, Roosevelt issued the controversial Executive Order 9066 into law (History.com staff). Public opinion on internment in the western United States was mixed. While three quarters of Southern Californians supporting the policy, only half of those surveyed in Washington and 44% of those in Northern California endorsed internment of Japanese Americans (Fried). In order to bolster public support for internment, the government circulated a great deal of propaganda to justify their policy. In the film attached below, the U.S Office of War Information claims that the removal of Japanese Americans was necessary to protect the American people from “sabotage and espionage” (U.S Office of War Information). The video portrays Japanese Americans as potential threats to United States military assets, and insinuates that any Japanese American might act against the state. The government and military are depicted as a helpful and heroic force in an effort to protect the American people from a Japanese attack, and the film portrays the Japanese as having “cooperated wholeheartedly, the many loyal among them having felt this was a sacrifice they could make in behalf of America’s war effort” (U.S Office of War Information). However, we know from personal accounts of internees that this was an inaccurate depiction, and that many internees resisted the mass removal.
At Heart Mountain Relocation Center in rural Wyoming, a group of internees formed the Fair Play Committee, a group that protested internment and encouraged internees who were drafted for the war not to serve (Kindig). Over the course of the twentieth century, the work of advocacy groups like the Japanese American Citizens League and the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations, as well as the publication of the stories of internees led to a shift in public perception (Hatamiya 46-49), and in 1976, President Gerald Ford announced that the mass removal policy had been “a national mistake” (Swift). Understanding the perspectives of those who believed that Japanese Americans needed to be imprisoned to maintain national security and those who found the policy to be inhumane and unnecessary is important in the study of Japanese Internment. Ultimately, the faction who protested Roosevelt’s executive order was successful in freeing the internees and in securing reparations in later years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK6ZtcLocaA
Figure 1: U.S Office of War Information Film on Japanese Relocation
Historical/Topical Context
The internment of Japanese Americans by the United States government is an infamous example of mass imprisonment in American history, but this policy was preceded by many other instances of internment of a racial group in the United States. During the 1830s, Andrew Jackson ordered the mass removal of Native Americans from the southeastern United States and their forced relocation to designated territories despite some of his contemporaries challenging with the morality of such a ruling. (History.com staff). This began a precedent of mass removal and incarceration that would continue throughout American history. When the United States colonized the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century, military officials created concentration camps as part of their military campaign (Pitzer). Many of the soldiers in the campaign found the tactic barbaric and one wrote, “It seems way out of the world without a sight of the sea,—in fact, more like some suburb of hell” (Pitzer). During the first World War, four internment camps were built throughout the United States to house German nationals living in America who were perceived to be a threat to national security. Before the second World War had begun, the United States government had already established a pattern of imprisoning or removing racial minorities from certain areas under the pretense of maintaining national security despite opposing concerns regarding the necessity and morality of such policies. Today, President Trump models his national security policy after President Roosevelt’s model, alarming those who regard President Roosevelt’s detention policy as archaic and inhumane (Roosevelt). The disagreement between those who find internment and mass removal abhorrent and those who believe it to be sound national security policy seems to be an inevitable dynamic in our nation, and Roosevelt comments on this, writing, “This pattern seems capable of repeating itself indefinitely. Trump supporters invoke detention and Korematsu as an example of uncompromising security policy, and others respond that it stands instead for overreaction and prejudice” (Roosevelt). Analyzing the historical pattern of the American government using mass detention and internment as a national security policy, as well as the frequent opposition to this policy, yields a deeper understanding of the conflicting perspectives at play in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two. This context helps us to understand the precedent for American government officials to value national security above the rights and wellbeing of racial and ethnic minorities, particularly during wartime. The below image displays an example of the opposition to these policies. The individuals in the image are not only protesting Trump’s policy specifically but a general fear and persecution of racial minorities, as evidenced by their signs.
Figure 2: Image of protest of Trump’s deportation policy
Works Cited
“Civil Rights: Japanese Americans.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, Sept. 2007, www.pbs.org/thewar/at_home_civil_rights_japanese_american.htm.
Farmer, Paul. “An Anthropology of Structural Violence.” Current Anthropology, vol. 45, no. 3, 2004, pp. 305–325., doi:10.1086/382250.
Fried, Amy. “Government Public Opinion Research and the Japanese-American Internment.” Pollways, 7 Feb. 2012, pollways.bangordailynews.com/2011/12/29/national/government-public-opinion-research-and-the-japanese-american-internment/.
Gallup, Inc. “Gallup Vault: WWII-Era Support for Japanese Internment.” Gallup.com, 31 Aug. 2016, news.gallup.com/vault/195257/gallup-vault-wwii-era-support-japanese-internment.aspx.
Hatamiya, Leslie T. Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and the Passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Stanford Univ. Press.
History.com Staff. “Japanese Internment Camps.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation.
History.com Staff. “Pearl Harbor.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor.
History.com Staff. “Trail of Tears.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/trail-of-tears.
Houston, Paul. “Japanese-Americans Ask Reparations.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 29 Apr. 1986, articles.latimes.com/1986-04-29/news/mn-2249_1_internment-camps.
“Japanese Relocation During World War II.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation.
Kindig, Jessie. “Northwest Antiwar History: Chapter 2.” Antiwar History: WWII, 2008, depts.washington.edu/antiwar/pnwhistory_wwii.shtml.
Mulligan, Jessica. “Biological Citizenship.” Biological Citizenship – Anthropology – Oxford Bibliographies, 23 Mar. 2018, www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766567/obo-9780199766567-0164.xml.
Niiya, Brian. “John DeWitt.” Densho Encyclopedia, Densho Encyclopedia, 29 July 2015, encyclopedia.densho.org/John_DeWitt/.
Pitzer, Andrea. “Concentration Camps Existed Long Before Auschwitz.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 2 Nov. 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/concentration-camps-existed-long-before-Auschwitz-180967049/.
Roosevelt, Kermit. “The Debate Over Japanese Internment Is Deeply Flawed.” Time, Time, 21 Nov. 2016, time.com/4578616/japanese-internment-debate/.
Wright, Steven. “The Civil Liberties Act of 1988.” Dartmouth.edu, www.dartmouth.edu/~hist32/History/S06%20-%20Civil%20Liberties%20Act%20of%201988.htm.
« Back to Glossary Index