Infamy (21 page)

Maybe. Following President Roosevelt’s change of heart, or leading it, General Marshall, the army chief of staff, ordered the formation of a second segregated Nisei unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, on February 1, 1943. The army teams of recruiters sent to the camps quickly discovered that patriotism was one thing, but enthusiasm for service was another.

The army, distributing its questionnaires in Hawaii and in the camps in February of 1943, called for 1,500 Japanese American volunteers from Hawaii and 3,000 from the mainland. An overwhelming 10,000 men from Hawaii crowded recruitment offices on the islands, many of them racing on their bikes or just running to the army offices. The announcement was met with less enthusiasm on the mainland, where, of course, the vast majority of draft-age men of Japanese ancestry and their families were behind barbed wire. Only 1,256 volunteered from the camps during the initial call for volunteers, so the army had to change the numbers: calling for 2,900 men from Hawaii and 1,500 from the mainland.

“Last Tuesday night I went to a meeting held by the army concerning the new order opening voluntary enlistment in the army,” wrote Stanley Hayami. He reported that the event was put on by “a lieutenant, two sergeants & a Japanese-American sergeant.” The Japanese American sergeant was Ben Kuroki, the farm boy from Nebraska. The Army Air Corps hoped he could encourage more enlistments from the camps.

Hayami described the meeting.

They gave a lot of talks telling us how we would benefit if we volunteered. And answered a lot of questions. Said that the reason why they wanted to put us in a separate combat unit was for publicity.

A lot of people wanted to know if they could have some guarantees so that after the war was over, they wouldn’t have their citizenship taken away, & the lands they own taken. They answered that we would be protected by the 14th amendment in the Constitution.

Then one man says “Well the 14th also is supposed to have kept us out of camp, what about that?” The army men answered by saying that “In time of war the 14th and such do not hold & the army has control & can do practically anything.”

Then one man says “What the heck, are we going to get kicked out every time a war comes up.” Then the army man said that he agrees that a great injustice was done us when we were kicked out, but he says that the army has realized that what they did was probably wrong, and is now trying to help us to make up for it.

Hayami described how, that Wednesday and Thursday, the young men from his block gathered to discuss the recruitment. “The
Nisei
,” he wrote, “wanted to join provided that they got certain guarantees, including citizenship and the ability to own land. However the
Issei
opposed the recruitment, saying, ‘Why bother? We want to go back to Japan after the war anyway.’ The
Nisei
brought up with American ideals just naturally opposed the
Kibeis
brought up with Japanese ideals & each thought the other dumb & grew more hate between themselves.”

Most of the questions the army men heard were from young men asking why they should fight for a country that had imprisoned their parents—to say nothing of destroying family farms and businesses. Also, the thought of a segregated unit was abhorrent to many. At Topaz camp in Utah, young internees hammered away with a single question: Why couldn’t the Nisei simply serve as other Americans? Why should they be singled out when there was no all-Italian or all-German unit?

The camps were in an uproar. Babe Karasawa, interned at Poston, told his father, “Me and the guys are going to volunteer.” His father’s answer was, “That’s stupid! They put you in a place like this? And you’re going to volunteer?”

When Mitsuo Usui, whose family had been forced to sell their nursery in Los Angeles for just $1,000, told his father he planned to serve, they shouted at each other in the first argument they had ever had. “We lose everything—the property, the business, our home,” his father said. “It’s like a kick in the pants and now they’re saying come in and shine my shoes.” The old man physically kicked his son out the door. Mitsuo slept that night in a furnace room. When he woke, his mother was standing there. She said, “If you feel that strongly about your country, then you volunteer and go.… I’ll take care of Papa.”

The enlistment program was a failure in all the ten camps. Dillon Myer, the director of the War Relocation Authority, had predicted that there would be as many as 2,000 volunteers in Heart Mountain. The army fudged the results: it was announced that 3,000 had volunteered. In fact, in the end, most of the American Japanese who volunteered were from Hawaii, where there was no massive internment. The actual number at Heart Mountain was 38. The enlistment numbers from other camps were: Minidoka, 308; Poston, 236; Granada, 152; Topaz, 116; Gila River, 101; Manzanar, 100; Tule Lake, 59; Jerome, 42; and Rohwer, 40.

At Heart Mountain, the camp director, Guy Robertson, tried a harsher, more threatening tone than the army teams, writing to Nisei evacuees, “I would like to ask if the parents realize that a life-long stigma may be borne by their children who fail to recognize and live up to their responsibility.” He went on to state that their final choice on whether or not to cooperate would permanently affect not just their own lives but “the whole future of American Japanese people who wish to make their future home in America.”

Robertson told American Japanese, “Your government has asked outright that you express your loyalty.… Question 28 gives everyone the opportunity to make a definite statement regarding his loyalty or friendship. Your government has offered the citizen an opportunity to volunteer in the armed forces of the United States.”

He went on to scold the evacuees:

The response to these sentiments at Heart Mountain has been very, very disappointing. May I ask the citizen group how they expect to approach their government in asking concessions, whether it is restitution, reparation, or whatever you may ask, when you have more or less repudiated your government by failing to indicate a fair average of enlistment comparable to other relocation centers. In view of the fact that you have not offered your wholehearted support to your government’s program, you will be judged by the answer you have made and the attitude it expresses. If you have reacted favorably, you will be considered favorably. If you have reacted unfavorably, you will, in all probability, have unfavorable consideration. Surely you understand that you cannot hope to force any issue with the government of the United States.

The recruiters were frustrated, but their frustrations were minimal when compared to the outrage among many American Japanese. The loyalty questionnaires were insulting on many counts, but two questions were particularly divisive. Question 27 had rubbed salt in the wounds of young men whose parents’ lives had been ruined. Question 28 was worse: it assumed all Japanese and Japanese Americans were loyal to the emperor of Japan. The Issei, whose average age was fifty-nine and who were still considered citizens of Japan—they had been barred from applying for American citizenship since 1924—would become stateless persons if they answered yes.

More than 65,000 of the Nisei of draft age answered yes to both questions. Thirteen thousand answered no to at least one question. A total of 6,733 answered no to both questions. They were immediately called the “No-No Boys.” Others said yes, then wrote in complaints or caveats such as, “If my parents are allowed to go home.” Most of those who answered either question with a no were classified as “disloyals.”

*   *   *

James Hatsuki Wakasa was shot and killed at Topaz just before sunset on April 11, 1943, by a sentry named Gerald B. Philpott. Wakasa was in his sixties and had come to the United States in 1903, studying for two years at the University of Wisconsin. During World War I, he was a civilian cooking instructor at Camp Dodge, Iowa. The army said that he was trying to escape and that he had ignored Philpott’s warnings. According to the army report, Wakasa was shot while crawling under the camp’s outer fence. WRA employees later determined that Wakasa was inside the inner camp fence when he was shot. A postmortem examination of the entry and exit wounds also found that Wakasa was facing the soldier who shot him.

Eiichi Sato, a social worker for Block 36, where Wakasa lived, went to inspect the scene the next morning with four other prisoners. They were approaching the fence and when they were approximately thirty-five feet away an army jeep came speeding by and, upon seeing them, came to an abrupt halt. The driver stood up from his seat and grabbed the submachine gun from his companion. Sato recalled that the driver then “jumped off the jeep and came dashing to the fence pointing his gun at us and said: ‘Scatter or you’ll get the same thing as the other guy got.’” Philpott faced a court-martial two weeks later and was found not guilty.

Two days later, on April 13, General DeWitt testified before a House Naval Affairs subcommittee, saying, “You needn’t worry about the Italians at all except in certain cases. Also, the same for the Germans except in individual cases.” But when it came to the American Japanese, he said, “No Jap should come back to this coast except on a permit from my office.… We must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map.”

Once again he added, “A Jap is a Jap,” which prompted a
Washington Post
editorial response.

The general should be told that American democracy and the Constitution of the United States are too vital to be ignored and flouted by any military zealot. The panic of Pearl Harbor is now past. There has been ample time for the investigation of these people and the determination of their loyalty to this country on an individual basis. Whatever excuse there once was for evacuating and holding them indiscriminately no longer exists.

The
Post
also recognized the long-term damage the evacuation was doing to the nation itself, editorializing two months later, “The outright deprivation of civil rights which we have visited upon these helpless and for the most part, no doubt, innocent people may leave an ugly blot upon the pages of our history.”

Many WRA officials might have agreed with the
Post
’s editorial. From the top down, they realized that evacuation was not only expensive, but it was destroying people’s lives and accomplishing little that was worthwhile. Dillon Myer, director of the agency, said, “It saps the initiative, weakens the instincts of human dignity and freedom, creates doubts, misgivings and tensions.” The War Relocation Authority had two goals, often in conflict: to maintain order and to get as many of the internees back to a semblance of normal lives, in part by giving the boys furloughs to harvest crops across the Midwest and encouraging girls to apply for admission and employment at schools, offices, hospitals, and factories away from the West Coast.

Many residents were released for good, officially or unofficially, to work in the East and the middle of the country, where there were serious labor shortages. The WRA received more than ten thousand requests from Chicago firms and institutions seeking to fill jobs left open as young men went off to war, and as other Americans, men and women, moved on to higher-paying jobs in defense industries. Seabrook Farms in New Jersey, the country’s largest producer of frozen food, was actively recruiting labor at all the camps. The army, too, needed more men and some women, mainly nurses. Others had been and were being released to attend colleges that would have them. Camp administrators were also lenient about leaves because they saw that young Japanese behind the fences were being goaded and threatened by so-called pro-Axis elements. Hundreds of frustrated and angry young American loyalists were turning against camp administrations and the United States government itself.

Ted Hirasaki was on work release in a bakery in Klamath Falls, Oregon, a small city east of the Cascades, washing pots and pans nine hours a day—and walking in wonder through the straight high pines of the area. Others were happy working for the meager wages in the camps. Hisako Watanabe wrote to Miss Breed back in San Diego that she was enjoying working in the camp as secretary to the school business manager. Louise Ogawa was in the same office. They both thought about applying for work outside but worried about who would take care of their parents.

“My sister is in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband doing domestic work,” Fusa Tsumagari wrote. “My brother Yuki is working on a farm in Milwaukee but has not lost his ambition to be a doctor.” Then she added: “Yesterday I finished reading,
Lost Horizon
. The points that interested me were: (1) the isolation; (2) doing everything in moderation; (3) the feeling of wanting to go out, and on the other hand wanting to stay in this leisurely place. Some feel as Mallinson in the story the strong urge to get out—to do things—anything to get out of here.… I guess this place could be called a second Shangri-La—if you like this type of living.”

The living did not seem so bad for many teenagers; they were mostly optimistic and motivated young people. Louise Ogawa wrote about the first graduation at Poston.

The student body president was called to the stage. He was asked which he liked better, chocolate, candy, or a Coke. He happens to like a girl nicknamed “Coke” and replied “Coke.” So they brought out a bottle of Coca-Cola. Everyone screamed with surprise and hunger at the sight of a bottle of Coca-Cola. He had to get down on his knees and propose to the bottle of coke. Ben Honda, the M.C. replied, “Yes, Coke will be yours.” How we all envied him!!

Fusa Tsumagari had more teenage news for Miss Breed in another letter.

Gee, it’s hard for me to write this letter, it’s so overdue. This time I have an excuse. The day I was going to write you, my b.f. from Layton, Utah, dropped in. I was needless to say more than surprised and all agog! He is a fellow I went around with at Santa Anita … but it wasn’t very serious. But now that I’ve seen him again and realize he came all the way from Utah I feel like that song, “It Started All Over Again—the Moment I looked into his eyes,” etc.… It seems to me, “I’ve got it bad and that ain’t good.” … He’s about 5’8”, dark, got a nice-shaped head—looks like Ronald Reagan in a crude sort of way.