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Japanese Internment
Determined that the bombing of Pearl Harbor would not be followed by more sneak attacks, military and political leaders on the West Coast targeted persons of Japanese descent—
DOCUMENT 1
General John DeWitt, Final Recommendations of the Commanding General, Western Defense Command and Fourth Army, Submitted to the Secretary of War, 1942
Early in 1942, General John DeWitt, commander of the Western Defense Command, persuaded President Franklin Roosevelt to round up Japanese living in the United States and confine them to relocation camps for the duration of the war. DeWitt’s recommendation expressed concern for military security and appealed to racist conceptions long used to curb Asian immigration. Japanese Americans and their supporters fought the internment order in the courts as a violation of fundamental constitutional rights, an argument rejected during the war by the U.S. Supreme Court.
February 14, 1942
Memorandum for the Secretary of War
Subject: Evacuation of Japanese and Other Subversive Persons from the Pacific Coast. . .
Brief Estimate of the Situation.
1) . . . The following are possible and probable enemy activities: . . .
(a) Naval attack on shipping on coastal waters;
(b) Naval attack on coastal cities and vital installations;
(c) Air raids on vital installations, particularly within two hundred miles of the coast;
(d) Sabotage of vital installations throughout the Western Defense Command. . . .
Hostile Naval and air raids will be assisted by enemy agents signaling from the coastline and the vicinity thereof; and by supplying and otherwise assisting enemy vessels and by sabotage. . . .
In the war in which we are now engaged racial affinities are not severed by migration. The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become “Americanized,” the racial strains are undiluted. To conclude otherwise is to expect that children born of white parents on Japanese soil sever all racial affinity and become loyal Japanese subjects, ready to fight and, if necessary, to die for Japan in a war against the nation of their parents. . . .
It, therefore, follows that along the vital Pacific Coast over 112,000 potential enemies, of Japanese extraction, are at large today. There are indications that these are organized and ready for concerted action at a favorable opportunity. The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken.
Source: Final Recommendations, report by General John Lesesne DeWitt to the United States Secretary of War, February 14, 1942.
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DOCUMENT 2
Charles Kikuchi, Prison Camp Diary, 1941–
Charles Kikuchi, a student at the University of California at Berkeley, sought in his prison camp diary to make sense of the internment and to judge where it would lead.
December 7, 1941
Berkeley, California
Pearl Harbor. We are at war! Jesus Christ, the Japs bombed Hawai’i and the entire fleet has been sunk. I just can’t believe it. I don’t know what in the hell is going to happen to us, but we will all be called into the Army right away.
. . . The next five years will determine the future of the Nisei [Japanese American citizens]. They are now at the crossroads. Will they be able to take it or will they go under? If we are ever going to prove our Americanism, this is the time. The Anti-
I don’t know what to think or do. Everybody is in a daze.
April 30, 1942, Berkeley
Today is the day that we are going to get kicked out of Berkeley. It certainly is degrading. . . .
I’m supposed to see my family at Tanforan as Jack told me to give the same family number. I wonder how it is going to be living with them as I haven’t done this for years and years? I should have gone over to San Francisco and evacuated with them, but I had a last final to take. I understand that we are going to live in the horse stalls. I hope that the Army has the courtesy to remove the manure first. . . .
July 14, 1942
Marie, Ann, Mitch, Jimmy, Jack, and myself got into a long discussion about how much democracy meant to us as individuals. Mitch says that he would even go in the army and die for it, in spite of the fact that he knew he would be kept down. Marie said that although democracy was not perfect, it was the only system that offered any hope for a future, if we could fulfill its destinies. Jack was a little more skeptical. He even suggested that we [could] be in such grave danger that we would then realize that we were losing something. Where this point was he could not say. I said that this was what happened in France and they lost all. Jimmy suggested that the colored races of the world had reason to feel despair and mistrust the white man because of the past experiences. . . .
In reviewing the four months here, the chief value I got out of this forced evacuation was the strengthening of the family bonds. I never knew my family before this and this was the first chance that I have had to really get acquainted.
Source: Excerpts (pp. 43, 51, 183, 252) from The Kikuchi Diary: Chronicle from an American Concentration Camp, edited by John Modell. Copyright © 1973 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.
Questions for Analysis
Analyze the Evidence: How does Charles Kikuchi’s diary describe the meaning of internment for the detainees?
Consider the Context: What explains General DeWitt’s insistence on evacuating the Japanese after he received the report of military investigators that no acts of sabotage had occurred?
Recognize Viewpoints: How did the internment camp experience influence the detainees’ attitudes about their identity as Americans of Japanese descent?
Ask Historical Questions: How did Americans and the American government treat minority citizens during World War II?