United States: after Pearl Harbor, camps of shame for people of Japanese descent

Published on : 12/12/2021 – 12:45

On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed the US military base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The attack precipitates the decision of the United States to go to war against Japan, an ally of Germany.

Two months later, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the imprisonment of all people of Japanese origin suspected of being traitors. Within days, the FBI arrested 1,300 people, who had 48 hours to sell their homes and resign before being sent to one of the ten internment camps.

Combined with the paranoia of a nation at war, the American political and social climate plunges the country into the throes of constant suspicion. Nearly 120,000 people, including two thirds of Americans of Japanese origin, will be deported to these so-called “resettlement” camps, and thousands of families will be held behind barbed wire for one to three years.

At 7 in 45 m²

From the age of 3 until the age of 6, John Tateishi lived in the internment camp in Manzanar (California), with his three brothers, his parents and his grandfather. Seven of them lived together in a 45m² room.

When the camps closed in 1945, John returned to live in Los Angeles with his family. His fight was to recognize the damage done to thousands of families of Japanese origin.

Amy Tsubokawa, for her part, was locked up in Poston (Arizona) until she was 12 years old. Her father died in the camp and her mother was left a widow with five children. In this issue of “Return Ticket”, her daughter Patty hears her mother’s testimony for the first time, a very moving moment of sharing.

Survivors have long refused to talk about their experiences in the camps, mostly out of shame. The shame of having been humiliated, the shame of having been seen as traitors in their own country – and the shame of not having resisted.

Remedial measures

Leaving the camps was difficult for all these interned people. The children of these despoiled families resumed their lives with difficulty after their release: the Japanese-Americans were victims of racism and discrimination, were locked up in ghettos … A transgenerational trauma still present today.

Long considered hidden or forgotten, the history of Japanese camps in the United States was the subject of requests for reparations in the 1970s and entered school books in the late 1980s – internment is presented as a “racist, hysterical and regrettable measure”. The fight for redress began in 1988, when President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which awarded $ 20,000 in compensation to each survivor.

Duty of memory

If the camps were closed in 1945, following a court decision declaring illegal the unlimited imprisonment of American citizens, former internees are still mobilizing to make their memory survive, like Marlene Shigekawa. Born in the Poston camp in 1944, she tries with Barbara Darden – a volunteer architect – to restore this place of history. A difficult task without the support and funding of National Parks.

Acknowledgments: John Tateishi, Amy Tsubokawa, Patricia Biggs, Marlene Shigekawa, Barbara Darden and Susan Kemei, Manzanar National Historic Site, Poston Community Alliance, National Archives and Records Administration.