The Japanese American Incarceration: A Case For Redress

              DeWitt's detention orders were ostensibly for the purpose of
protecting the West Coast against sabotage and espionage, but
babies, orphans, adopted children, the infirm and bedridden elderly were also imprisoned. Children of multiple ancestry were
included if they had any Japanese ancestry at all. Colonel Karl
Bendetsen, who directly administered the program, stated: "I am
determined that if they have one drop of Japanese blood in them,
they must go to camp."
Non-Japanese spouses, adoptive parents, and orphanage directors were forced to surrender their children for incarceration or
enter the camp themselves. The only exceptions were for those
confined in prisons or asylums, and the few adults with 1/32 or
less Japanese ancestry who could prove they had no contact whatsoever with other persons of Japanese ancestry.
There were 15 temporary detention camps scattered throughout
Arizona, California, Oregon and Washington. They were mostly
county fairgrounds, race tracks, and livestock exhibition halls
hastily converted into detention camps with barbed wire fences,
search lights and guard towers. Each camp held about 5,000 detainees, except for the Santa Anita Race Track near Los Angeles
which held over 18,000 and Mayer, Arizona which held only 247.
Living quarters consisted of horse stalls, some with manure still
inside.
Japanese Americans had to leave their homes with only a few
days notice and could take only what they could carry with them.
Property had to be hurriedly sold, abandoned, given away, left in
insecure storage or unpredictable trusts. Crops were left unharvested. Many lost titles to homes, businesses and farmlands because taxes and mortgage payments became impossible to pay.
Bank accounts had already been frozen or confiscated as "enemy
assets," and there was little source of income within the camps.
The incarceration of Japanese Americans was accomplished district by district over a five month period. DeWitt methodically
issued detention orders almost daily, each applying to a new
locale. As the orders progressed through the Eastern half of California, Japanese Americans in the Eastern halves of Oregon and
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Washington fully expected their turn would be next. They stripped
their possessions down to the bare essentials that they could carry,
just as the others had been required to do. They lived day to day
unsettled under the constant threat of imminent proscription, but
the actual detention orders never came.
Government actions also encouraged private harassment: for
example, in one town outside the official expulsion area, the entire
Japanese American community was boycotted and forced to leave
town.
In June 1942 the U.S. Navy won a decisive victory at the Battle
of Midway and the tide of war shifted in favor of the United States.
Japan was no longer militarily capable of attacking the West Coast,
or even Hawaii. The U.S. government and military were aware of
this fact, but they relentlessly went ahead with plans to build
permanent mass detention facilities in the interior desert and
swamp regions.
At great cost and despite the critical shortage of materials, the
government built 10 mass detention camps in the isolated areas of
Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. The vast majority of Japanese Americans were moved from
the temporary detention camps near their hometowns to the permanent camps several hundred miles away after the threat of invasion had vanished. Each of the permanent camps held some 12,000
Japanese Americans, and a total of about 120,000 Japanese Americans were ultimately detained.
The inland camps were located in desolate areas and were surrounded by a high barbed wire fence, sometimes two such fences,
sometimes electrified. Guard towers were placed at strategic intervals, and any Japanese American leaving without permission was
shot. Dozens of detainees and internees were shot and wounded,
and eight were killed by guards (1 at Central Utah, 1 at Gila River,
2 at Manzanar, 1 at Tule Lake, 2 at Lordsburg, 1 at Fort Sill). Living
quarters were crowded and there was no privacy. Large extended
families or groups of unrelated individuals were squeezed into tiny
unpartitioned 16 x 20 feet units.
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