The Japanese American Incarceration: A Case For Redress

              Japanese Americans were known for their pride in rarely having
been on welfare or locked up in prisons, but the camps relegated
them into wards of the government guarded by armed soldiers.
Fathers were no longer the family breadwinners; parents lost control of their children, and families rarely ate meals together. Many
were terrified because of the unpredictable future and the hopelessness of the situation. Many did not expect to come out alive.
Overwhelming despair caused some detainees to commit suicide. Many more died prematurely due to inadequate medical
facilities and the harsh environment.
All incoming and outgoing communications were censored, including personal letters and newspapers. All internal communications were strictly controlled by the camp administration. The
Japanese language was banned at public meetings, and the Buddhist and Shinto religions were suppressed.
While the Japanese Americans were incarcerated, and unknown
to them at the time, some members of Congress and the State
Department proposed legislation or executive action to strip all
native-born Americans of Japanese ancestry of their citizenship
and deport them to Japan after the war. Other elected officials
demanded that the imprisoned Japanese Americans be used as
reprisal targets for the mistreatment of American prisoners of war.
One member of Congress even proposed a mandatory sterilization
program. Fortunately, none of these extreme measures was taken.
However, another form of indignity was imposed on the detainees in February 1943. After being imprisoned for nearly a year,
all detainees 17 years of age and older were required to answer a
questionnaire indicating their loyalty to the United States and their
willingness to serve in the U.S. armed forces. It was an audacious
act for the government to require such an oath from people already
locked up.
Due to the insensitive wording, Japanese nationals were asked,
in effect, to renounce the only citizenship they could have (since
they were prohibited from becoming U.S. citizens) and render
themselves stateless. American citizens were asked to falsely in-
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criminate themselves by "foreswearing" an allegiance to Japan—
an allegiance they never had. Women and elderly persons were
asked to serve on "combat duty whenever ordered."
Despite all the confusion, fear, anger, bitterness and incongruity, the majority of detainees affirmatively signed the oath. This did
not mean, however, that the minority who refused to cooperate
were any less loyal or patriotic. Some highly principled individuals
felt their fundamental constitutional rights should be restored before signing. Under the circumstances of a prison camp environment, the loyalty questionnaire did not measure a person's true
loyalty.
The detainees tried to make the dreary camps halfway tolerable
by foraging scrap materials to make furniture and room partitions.
They used indigenous plants to make gardens, and surplus materials or adobe to build schools and recreation facilities. Detainees
also operated their own camp farms, and many camps became
self-supporting in food.
Detainees volunteered to relieve the critical farm labor shortage
in the Mountain Plains area and were granted seasonal work
leaves. Others were given leaves to fill labor shortage in Midwest
and East Coast factories, and college students were granted educational leaves. But these leaves were a form of parole: they were
not free to go or do anything they wanted, and had to periodically
report to government officials. During 1943 and 1944, about 33%
of the detainees, mostly young single men and women, were conditionally released on various forms of leaves or for military duty.
The other 67% remained in the camps for the duration of the war.
When the United States entered the war in 1941, there were
about 5,000 Japanese Americans in the armed forces, but many
were summarily discharged as unsuitable for service. Japanese
Americans were classified by the Selective Service System as
"enemy" nationals (4C) ineligible for service. Thousands of Japanese Americans volunteered for duty but were refused enlistment.
The armed forces, however, soon discovered the need for Japanese language specialists, and started to recruit Japanese Americans for the Military Intelligence Service and Office of Strategic
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