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This also details the relation between border policies and internment.

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Family Separation Is Being Compared to Japanese Internment. It Took Decades for the U.S. to Admit That Policy Was Wrong

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Bush compared the modern border policy to that "shameful" WWII-era plan. It took decades for the U.S. to learn the lesson of that mistake.

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Japanese Internment and Today's Border Policies

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Japanese Internment and Today's Border Policies

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This past summer, it came to light that around 2,000 children had been taken from their parents at the US-Mexico border. To some this is reminiscent of the beginnings of Japanese interment during the war.

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"Star Trek" actor George Takei has long been a vocal social activist following his childhood spent in a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II.

But Takei, 81, is today filled with "rage" watching President Trump's "zero tolerance" border policy which has separated nearly 2,000 children from their parents.

"At least during the internment, when I was just 5 years old, I was not taken from my parents," Takei wrote in an op-ed for ForeignPolicy.com. "My family was sent to a racetrack for several weeks to live in a horse stall, but at least we had each other."

"At least during the internment, we remained a family, and I credit that alone for keeping the scars of our unjust imprisonment from deepening on my soul," Takei wrote.

The Japanese-American actor echoed the sentiments made by former first lady Laura Bush, wife of Republican president George W. Bush, who penned an op-ed piece for The Washington Post after she saw pictures of children in fenced facilities away from their parents.

More: Willie Nelson, Ellen DeGeneres, Jimmy Kimmel rail against Trump's immigration policy

"These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history," Bush wrote.

Takei, who brought his interment story as the musical "Allegiance" to Broadway in 2015, said the emotional scars are deeper for innocent children left to fend for themselves.

That's why the current situation is even "worse in one core, horrifying way" than the internment, he says.

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"At least during the internment of Japanese-Americans, I and other children were not stripped from our parents. We were not pulled screaming from our mothers' arms. We were not left to change the diapers of younger children by ourselves."

"I cannot for a moment imagine what my childhood would have been like had I been thrown into a camp without my parents," he wrote. "That this is happening today fills me with both rage and grief: rage toward a failed political leadership who appear to have lost even their most basic humanity, and a profound grief for the families affected."

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George Takei slams Trump's border policy, 'worse' than Japanese internment camp

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George Takei, who spent part of his childhood in a Japanese-American internment camp, lashed out against President Trump's border policy Tuesday. "At least during the internment, when I was just 5 years old, I was not taken from my parents," he says.

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In 2010 Ken Narasaki came out with a two-part play adaptation of the book. This play was faced with controversy because the ending is much more lighthearted than want Okada chose for his novel, which many feel tarnishes the meaning of the book and is disrespectful to Okada himself, who was not alive to ever see the adaptation. This is an example of what it means to truly consider the message of a piece of art, and whether or not it's okay to reinterpret it.

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Official site for JOHN OKADA: the book & CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION: the film

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A headline first written by Frank Chin in 2010, "Don't F**k With ," captures the insistence with which audiences should reject the recent stage adaptation of John Okada's landmark novel No-No Boy.

A New York theater company is now pitching a national tour. with stops in the Midwest and West Coast, of an adaptation of No-No Boy that violates the art of John Okada by tacking on an artificially happy ending to his story.

After more than 100,000 copies sold in 17 printings over nearly 60 years, it is well-established that much of No-No Boy 's power and authenticity lies in its furiously violent and tragic ending. Okada cuts to the bone. He holds nothing back, and most importantly he tries to please no one.

After "two years in camp and two years in prison," draft resister Ichiro Yamada returns to find his Seattle hometown shattered and its people divided. Parents mourn sons lost in battle; veterans return maimed and succumb to their wounds; resisters are blamed and ostracized; a woman abandoned by her soldier husband finds comfort in Ichiro's arms; his mother goes mad when forced to admit Japan lost the war and drowns herself. Having fun yet?

At the Club Oriental (a stand-in for the Wah Mee Club in Seattle), Ichiro and fellow resister Freddie Akimoto raise their glasses in a toast to fallen friends when the angriest of the Nisei vets, a man called Bull, yanks Freddie off his stool and shoves him out to Maynard Alley. Ichiro tries to break it up and wrestles Bull to the ground, but driven by fear he slams his fist into Bull's face and draws blood. Freddie kicks Bull in the gut, but the enraged man lurches up. Freddie jumps into his car to flee, but Bull pulls open the door. Freddie clubs him with a wrench and hits the gas, shooting onto a cross street where his car is instantly struck by another and flips into the air, throwing him halfway out the open door and nearly severing him in half upon crashing. Numb with shock, Bull asks Ichiro for a drink. Ichiro brings a bottle of whiskey and Bull grabs it and drinks:

"Agggggggghh," he screamed and, with the brute strength that could only smash, hurled the whiskey bottle across the alley. Then he started to cry, not like a man in grief or a soldier in pain, but like a baby in loud, gasping, beseeching howls.

Ichiro walks slowly away from the scene, desperately searching in his mind for some kind of redemption for white racism, Pearl Harbor, and the war; the mass eviction and incarceration based solely on race; and the conscience that led to his own resistance, prison, and social ostracism.

In the stage adaptation now being shopped, this vicious climax is muted and the unsettled ending is omitted.

SPOILER ALERT: Instead, after a brief knife fight, Freddie escapes. Ichiro goes out dancing - a scene from earlier in the book, with Emi the abandoned wife and Ichiro alone on the dance floor, finding momentary acceptance in the indifference of the whites around them. And as they hold each other close on the floor, all the characters from the play, including the ghosts of those departed, REENTER the stage to offer final words, of blessing and hope for the future. Ichiro and Emi kiss. They are going to live happily ever after, doggone it.

It's a theatrical moment. It's probably very moving in performance. It's also schmaltz. And it's very wrong.

Suggesting that Ichiro is capable of romance this early in his re-entry to this world is contrary to the internal evidence we have of Okada's intent. A close reading of the text by Floyd Cheung and Bill E. Peterson of Smith College in the journal Centennial Review establishes that the social context of late 1940s America simply did not allow for a happy ending for Ichiro. Okada shows him walking away from the crowd around Freddie's death. If we can divine anything about Okada's intent, it is that "He remains an outsider," and the ideological setting surrounding Japanese American men at this time "is not yet fertile enough for Ichiro to ground his identity within it."

The problem with reading the end of No-No Boy with a strong sense of optimism, though, lies in the fact that ... the ideological setting of postwar America provides impoverished imagoes from which to choose for Japanese American men. Neither the no-no boys nor the yes-yes boys are happy... The social context of postwar Seattle influences whether individual stories of identity will have the tone and content of a comedy, tragedy, irony, romance, or some other story form.

To convey his vision of Japanese America after Pearl Harbor, the camps, combat, prison, and resettlement, Okada carefully constructs Ichiro's social context to end with tragedy. To substitute romance at the end violates Okada's story form.

This is not an issue we are eager to take up. The adaptation is done by Southern California actor and dramaturg Ken Narasaki, a former comrade from the halcyon days of Garrett Hongo's seminal Asian Exclusion Act in Seattle in 1977. We've both been inspired and mentored by writer Frank Chin, who had this exchange with Narasaki in 2010 on the original Santa Monica production of this script:

Narasaki offers his reasons for rewriting Okada's end to No-No Boy, that amount to, he's dead. I can do what I want with the dead - "We intended to show that in the end, there was hope for Ichiro ... that he would discover love and life. I'm sorry you disagreed with the ending, but I continue to believe that if John Okada were alive, he wouldn't be quite as harsh a critic, but of course, we'll never know."
It's because we'll never know, that we should not fuck with the end as written. Okada isn't the same rewritten, and Narasaki knows he's violated the work he claims inspired him. If Shakespeare had lived longer he might have rewritten a happy end for Romeo and Juliet instead of one dying after the other. Then again he might not. - Frank Chin

Chin followed a further exchange with this rebuttal: "What makes his claim offensive is he is sure that had Okada lived he would have written an ending more like Narasaki's."

We agree. John Okada isn't here to defend his work. This impulse to eschew the darkness that is the power of No-No Boy, and replace it with sentiment to leave the audience happy, is as old as Hollywood itself - a place where Mr. Narasaki has a background in writing coverage of screenplays for film producers.

We've seen this impulse in others who've held an option on Okada's book. One such ill-conceived film treatment added a full page of patriotic praise for the 442 at the funeral of the Nisei veteran Kenji and then, after Ma's funeral, we see Emi returning to the Yamada grocery in a sporty car and inviting Ichiro to go for a ride. Instead of staggering away from a Chinatown alleyway lost and alone, this movie version of Ichiro offered his final upbeat line as something like, "Say, this might be a good day after all."

As a forthcoming study of John Okada will show, he was certainly capable of comedy, satire, and upbeat endings. If he wanted No-No Boy to end on a happy note, he would have written it that way. The evidence we have on the page extends to claimed representations of his work on the stage and the screen. Accept no substitutes.

UPDATE: This essay was reprinted April 29, 2015, on the Japanese American National Museum's Discover Nikkei blog, where Mr. Narasaki also provides a response. Read our rebuttal, published here on June 26. #NoNoBoy

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Stage adaptation of "NO-NO BOY" violates John Okada's novel

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A headline first written by Frank Chin in 2010, "Don't F**k With ," captures the insistence with which audiences should reject the recent stage adaptation of John Okada's landmark novel No-No Boy. A New York theater company is now pitching a national tour.

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Fear led to racism against many groups running rampant among American during WWII. The Japanese were one of the groups faced with this to an alarming degree, obviously evidenced by their internment between 1942 and 1946. As a result, there was a lot of propaganda going around during this time, to raise "awareness." The sentiment behind this propaganda should not be ignored, as racism is still alive and well in our society today.

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The bombing of Pearl Harbor not only marked a turning point in America's role in World War II, but also helped catalyze rampant anti-Japanese sentiment across the country.

Americans ― Japanese-Americans ― bore the brunt of this xenophobia. As bold signs with bigoted slogans were erected on storefronts and stories like ″"How to Tell Japs from the Chinese" were splashed across the pages of newspapers and magazines, Americans of Japanese descent were quickly painted as "the enemy."

These racist attitudes, perpetuated by government officials, had real consequences for Japanese-Americans. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 paved the way for more than 110,000 of them to be forced from their homes and imprisoned behind barbed wire during the war. What's more, their detention received Congress' blessing.

On Thursday, the 76th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans look back on the tragedy that changed the lives of so many citizens. Against the backdrop of the Trump administration's travel ban targeting travelers from mostly Muslim-majority countries, World War II-era propaganda and signs remind us what happens when an entire group of people is scapegoated during a time of conflict.
Scroll down below to see anti-Japanese wartime propaganda.

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These Anti-Japanese Signs From World War II Are A Warning Against Bigotry Today

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The bombing of Pearl Harbor not only marked a turning point in America's role in World War II, but also helped catalyze rampant anti-Japanese sentiment across the country. Americans ― Japanese-Americans ― bore the brunt of this xenophobia.

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Very recently, No-No Boy has undergone an updated Japanese-language translation by Ryusuke Kawai, which will make it easier for contemporary readers to understand. This new version will offer insights on the experiences of some Japanese-Americans during the war to modern day Japanese.

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Official site for JOHN OKADA: the book & CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION: the film

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Review of NO-NO BOYby John Okada: Translated into Japanese by Ryusuke Kawai. Junposha Press, 352 pages. Paper, ¥2,700.
by Frank Abe
International Examiner, Vol. 44, Number 5 - March 1-14, 2017
When journalist Ryusuke Kawai first proposed the idea two years ago of writing a completely new translation of John Okada's landmark novel of postwar Seattle, I was surprised at the notion that one was needed.

"The book was out of print in Japan, and when I asked the previous publisher, Shobunsha, if they had any plans for a reprint, they said they did not," he now says. "Their translation rights had expired. I came up with a new translation by myself because for Japanese readers to be able to discuss the book and the author, they have to be able to read it in nihongo."

Kawai's new translation took him 18 months and is now published in Japan by Junposha, in time for marketing around the 75 th anniversary of the start of the Pacific War. He will speak in Seattle, mostly in Japanese, about his appreciation for the novel and his experience of translating it in a free appearance at the Nagomi Tea House, Saturday, March 11, at 1:00 pm.

Kawai, 60, is a freelance journalist and non-fiction writer from Kanagawa. A graduate of Keio University School of Law, he began his journalism career with the Mainichi Newspapers, then moved to the Daytona Beach News-Journal in Florida, covering the environment and social issues. He's written a longstanding column on music as well as more than 10 non-fiction books, most notably Yamato Colony: The Men who Left "Japan" in Florida.

Junposha is a small but established publishing house better known for books on social science than fiction. Kawai credits his long association with its president for getting a quick yes on the idea of reprinting a novel by a Japanese American. "I told Mr. Kiuchi how interesting No-No Boy is for Japanese readers. It usually takes a long time for a big company to make a decision. He understands the book's charm and significance not only as a novel but as a way to let people know the history of Japanese Americans and World War II."

Kawai praises the work of the first translator, the late Yo Nakayama, a scholar of American and English literature who translated some of Bob Dylan's lyrics into Japanese. "Mr. Nakayama is a pioneer who introduced No-No Boy to Japan in 1979, but there are sentences the modern Japanese reader cannot understand, making it difficult for them to enjoy the novel."

The slang and some profanity in Okada's book are central to his craft, and those were among the words Kawai felt needed an update. Take for example the moment where the protagonist Ichiro Yamada tells fellow draft resister Freddie Akiyama that he'd been spat upon by the belligerent Nisei veteran, Eto Minato, and Freddie dismisses Eto as a jerk. In the first edition, "that jerk" was translated as tokkan yaro, an archaic term Kawai says is no longer used; he uses aho instead. Other words are now considered too offensive to 21 st century sensibilities. In the old edition, "madman" was translated as kichigai, and "blind" was rendered as mekura - both of which are now too harsh or derogatory.

Not surprisingly, Kawai found it hardest to unpack the multiple meanings and colloquialisms in the long, swirling internal monologues Okada composed for Ichiro, in passages like, "I can go someplace and tell people that I've got an inverted stomach and that I am an American, true and blue and Hail Columbia, but the army wouldn't have me because of the stomach. That's easy and I would do that, only I've got to convince myself first and that I cannot do." One term remains unchanged: "No-no boy" is simply sounded out phonetically as noh-noh-boh-ee.

To properly frame the history of the Japanese in America, Kawai includes an afterword to explain the wartime exclusion and incarceration, and the distinction between the so-called "no-no boys" who refused to comply with the government's loyalty oath, and resisters like Ichiro who refused induction into the Army until his rights were first restored.

If the book's publicity, as loosely translated by Google, offers any clue to its appeal for the Japanese reader, it's in "The crisis of identity torn by the war into two homelands called 'Japan and the United States,' and a sharp aversion to the world where war, discrimination, and prejudice do not go away." Kawai says interest in Okada's novel is high because "Japanese can feel how Japanese Americans too had hardships during WWII, but we don' t know much about their history. Secondly, the readers feel sympathy for Ichiro's anguish as a kind of identity crisis."

Thanks to this fresh translation, a new generation overseas can now enjoy what we here already know to be a classic of the Pacific Northwest, and arguably The Great Nisei Novel.

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Review: "A NO-NO BOY For the 21st Century"

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Review of NO-NO BOYby John Okada: Translated into Japanese by Ryusuke Kawai. Junposha Press, 352 pages. Paper, ¥2,700. by Frank Abe International Examiner, Vol. 44, Number 5 - March 1-14, 2017 When journalist Ryusuke Kawai first proposed the idea two years ago of writing a completely new translation of John Okada's landmark novel of postwar Seattle, I was surprised at the notion that one was needed.

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The most prominent theme of the novel would have to be the issue of identity and its determinants. Ichiro is Japanese-American, which is such a volatile place to be in during the war. His mother raised him to be a good Japanese, and just that. Ichiro has figure out exactly what it means to be Japanese, and what it means to be American, and it might mean something different to him than to everyone else. Where should his loyalty lie, and why? What has Japan done for him, and what has America done for him? His relationship to both places is very different from his parents', meaning that it's something he can only clarify on his own.

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It's unlikely that Yamadas came out of internment--and Ichiro out of prison on top of that--without some form of PTSD. It would explain why Ichiro is so emotionally unstable especially at the beginning, why his father is an alcoholic, and why Taro is so set on enlistment. There are others, like Kenji, who were deployed and after seeing battle would undoubtedly face trauma from it.

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The effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be far-reaching and debilitating. The symptoms of PTSD can have a negative impact on your mental health, physical health, work, and relationships. You may feel isolated, have trouble maintaining a job, be unable to trust other people, and have difficulty controlling or expressing your emotions.

Problems at Work and in Relationships

People with PTSD miss more days at work and work less efficiently. Certain symptoms of PTSD, such as difficulties concentrating and problems sleeping, may make it hard for you to pay attention at work, stay organized, or make it to work on time.

Not surprisingly then, people with PTSD also have higher rates of unemployment than people without PTSD. Likewise, people with PTSD often have problems at school and are less likely to make it through high school or college.

People with PTSD are more likely to have problems in their marriages than people without PTSD. Partners of people with the condition may be faced with a number of stressors that go along with caring for and living with someone with a chronic disease. The sources of stress include financial challenges, managing the person's symptoms, dealing with crises, loss of friends, or loss of intimacy. These can have a major negative impact on a relationship.

Social isolation is a common problem with PTSD. You feel different from other people and can have problems communicating with and interacting with others. You can find it difficult to trust other people. It is hard to create or maintain relationships and you may avoid social situations.

Mental Health Problems

Physical Health Problems

It is not entirely clear as to why people with PTSD have more physical health problems. However, it may be due to the fact that the symptoms of PTSD result in the release of stress hormones that may contribute to inflammation and eventual damage to your body. This would increase your risk for certain physical health problems, including heart disease.

Having PTSD also appears to raise risks for unhealthy behaviors (for example, smoking, lack of exercise, and increased alcohol use) which may further increase the possibility of physical health problems.

The Importance of Getting Help for Your PTSD

Not only are the symptoms of PTSD difficult to cope with, but they can also have a major negative impact on different areas of your life. You don't have to face this alone, you can get treatment for PTSD.

There are a number of effective treatments for PTSD and treating PTSD can lead to improvements in other areas of your life. For example, when people successfully treat their PTSD, they often find that other disorders go away as well (although their other conditions may require specific, targeted treatments).

Unfortunately, only slightly more than a third of people with PTSD are in some kind of treatment.

You can find a mental health provider for PTSD in several ways. Ask for recommendations from your family doctor, your health insurance provider, or those you have connected with who also have PTSD. If you are a veteran, all VA Medical Centers provide PTSD care. The military has programs for its members and their families.

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Other Inaccurate Hard to Understand

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What Are the Effects of PTSD on a Person's Everyday Life?

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The effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be far-reaching and debilitating. The symptoms of PTSD can have a negative impact on your mental health, physical health, work, and relationships. You may feel isolated, have trouble maintaining a job, be unable to trust other people, and have difficulty controlling or expressing your emotions.

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Family is a strong theme in the novel. Ichiro is constantly frustrated by his father's extremely passive nature in the face of his mother's delusional imposition of her beliefs. His younger brother Taro is also frustrated with their parents, as well as Ichiro. He declares his enlistment in the armed forces as a personal atonement for Ichiro's choices, and he eventually leaves to fulfill his life. Ichiro has to come to terms with the breaking apart of his family, as his mother also commits suicide when faced with the reality of the war's outcome.
There's a lot of, "What will you do for the sake of your family?" in the story, and the confrontation of what it means to shoulder the burden of your family's expectations of you and whether or not you can even choose to do so. Ichiro has to figure himself out outside of and still within the family's context, while bearing witness to the dynamic of other families affected negatively by the war.

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The forcible relocation and internment of some 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II is a shameful episode in US history. It also provides a necessary yet unsettling primer on how separation and internment affect families' health in the long term.

In the wake of Japan's December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, president Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order that allowed the US government to establish internment camps for people of Japanese descent on the grounds of national security. As a result, entire families-most born and raised in the US-were ordered to leave their homes, take only what they could carry, and report to one of 10 internment centers dotting the western half of the US from northern California as far east as Arkansas.

Families were not separated as a matter of policy, though there were cases of individuals imprisoned for "sedition"-speaking out against internment-or other offenses, and, as a result, held separately from their families. Yet internment still profoundly disrupted family life. In addition to losing their homes, careers, and livelihoods, fathers lost their sense of identity as breadwinners. Homemaker mothers forced into barrack-style housing were stripped of control of their homes. Family meals were replaced with mess-hall dining. Camp governance displaced cultural hierarchies, placing English-speaking second generation internees in positions of authority over older generations whose English was sometimes limited.

As the horrifying reality comes to light of the thousands of children the US government has forcibly removed from their parents with no plan for reunification-more than 2,300 since early May-doctors are speaking out on the long-term health and psychological impacts of the intense trauma that can be caused by such seperation. As Quartz's Annabelle Timsit and Jenny Anderson have reported, children's prolonged exposure to stress hormones can have profound long-term consequences, from learning and behavioral problems to reduced immune functioning.

"Separation from parents is the most traumatic thing a child can experience," says Satsuki Ina, a professor emeritus of California State University-Sacramento who is now a psychotherapist based in Oakland, California. "Every day they are altering the neurology of the child."

Ina was born in an internment camp. Hers was among the families unwillingly torn apart: her father was arrested for protesting conditions at a camp and sent with other protestors to an all-male detention center run by the US Department of Justice, she says. Ina has been visiting family detention centers along the US side of the US-Mexico border and speaking out against the detainment of children there for several years now.

Trauma in children can lead to behavioral outbursts, Ina says, but it can also manifest in ways that can be mistaken for compliance: numbness, silence, a detachment from surroundings. When Ina visited one border detention center in 2016, she observed child detainees refusing to eat.

The trauma of family incarceration does not only affect and stay with the young. As a therapist, Ina has worked with many Japanese-American clients who were interned, and has seen how trauma manifests decades later as depression, strained family relationships, and a lifelong sense of undeserved guilt and fear of authority.

"It's a fear-based approach to life, the fear that we may suffer a horrible consequence for no just reason," she says. "That's part of the trauma."

There are physical consequences as well. When doctoral candidate Gwendolyn Jensen revisited survivors of the internment camps some 50 years after the end of World War II, she found that former internees of all ages had 2.1 times the rate of cardiovascular disease and premature death compared with non-interned peers. Though Jensen's work wasn't peer-reviewed, anecdotal reports support her findings of a higher rate of premature death among former internees. When, in the early 1990s, researchers interviewed nearly 500 third-generation Japanese-Americans with at least one parent incarcerated during the war, they found twice as many of the incarcerated fathers had died before age 60 compared to fathers who were not interned.

Small wonder, then, that former Japanese-American internees have been some of the most outspoken opponents of the US policy of separating and detaining families at the border.

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Japanese-American internment camps taught us what happens to the health of separated families

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We've been here before, and it doesn't end well.

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Ichiro Yamada, Japanese-American and No-no Boy

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Ichiro Yamada, Japanese-American and No-no Boy

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Ichiro is nisei--second generation, or American-born Japanese--who was given the chance to leave internment if he answered yes to questions 27 and 28 on the Application for Leave Clearance, also known as the "loyalty questionnaire." However, he answers "no" to both, which earns him and others who do the same, the title of "no-no boy." Because of this, he is ostracized by members of the community who did not resist the draft, yet he is also lauded by his mother, who raised Ichiro and his brother with intense pride for Japan in mind. This decision is the source for much of Ichiro's internal conflict throughout the novel.

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In the winter of 1943, the War Relocation Authority launched their loyalty questionnaire in an attempt to segregate the "loyal" and the "disloyal." Though the vast majority eventually answered the key loyalty questions affirmatively, a significant minority either refused to answer, gave qualified answers, or answered negatively-about 12,000 out of the 78,000 people over the age of seventeen whom the questionnaire was distributed to.

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The novel is set in Seattle, WA in 1946, not long after the end of World War II. There was strong anti-Japanese sentiment among Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor, which resulted in the internment of up to 120,000 Japanese living in the US. Most of these people were American citizens. The following article offers more information on Japanese internment:

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Executive Order 9066

On February 19, 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 with the stated intention of preventing espionage on American shores.

Military zones were created in California, Washington and Oregon-states with a large population of Japanese Americans. Then Roosevelt's executive order forcibly removed Americans of Japanese ancestry from their homes. Executive Order 9066 affected the lives about 120,000 people-the majority of whom were American citizens.

Canada soon followed suit, forcibly removing 21,000 of its residents of Japanese descent from its west coast. Mexico enacted its own version, and eventually 2,264 more people of Japanese descent were forcibly removed from Peru, Brazil, Chile and Argentina to the United States.

Anti-Japanese American Activity

Weeks before the order, the Navy removed citizens of Japanese descent from Terminal Island near the Port of Los Angeles.

On December 7, 1941, just hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the FBI rounded-up 1,291 Japanese American community and religious leaders, arresting them without evidence and freezing their assets.

In January, the arrestees were transferred to prison camps in Montana, New Mexico and North Dakota, many unable to inform their families and most remaining for the duration of the war.

Concurrently, the FBI searched the private homes of thousands of Japanese American residents on the West Coast, seizing items considered contraband.

One-third of Hawaii's population was of Japanese descent. In a panic, some politicians called for their mass incarceration. Japanese-owned fishing boats were impounded.

Some Japanese American residents were arrested and 1,500 people-one percent of the Japanese population in Hawaii-were sent to prison camps on the U.S. mainland.

Photos of Japanese American Relocation and Incarceration

John DeWitt

Lt. General John L. DeWitt, leader of the Western Defense Command, believed that the civilian population needed to be taken control of to prevent a repeat of Pearl Harbor.

To argue his case, DeWitt prepared a report filled with known falsehoods, such as examples of sabotage that were later revealed to be the result of cattle damaging power lines.

DeWitt suggested the creation of the military zones and Japanese detainment to Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Attorney General Francis Biddle. His original plan included Italians and Germans, though the idea of rounding-up Americans of European descent was not as popular.

At Congressional hearings in February 1942, a majority of the testimonies, including those from California Governor Culbert L. Olson and State Attorney General Earl Warren, declared that all Japanese should be removed.

Biddle pleaded with the president that mass incarceration of citizens was not required, preferring smaller, more targeted security measures. Regardless, Roosevelt signed the order.

War Relocation Authority

After much organizational chaos, about 15,000 Japanese Americans willingly moved out of prohibited areas. Inland state citizens were not keen for new Japanese American residents, and they were met with racist resistance.

Ten state governors voiced opposition, fearing the Japanese Americans might never leave, and demanded they be locked up if the states were forced to accept them.

A civilian organization called the War Relocation Authority was set up in March 1942 to administer the plan, with Milton S. Eisenhower from the Department of Agriculture to lead it. Eisenhower only lasted until June 1942, resigning in protest over what he characterized as incarcerating innocent citizens.

Relocation to 'Assembly Centers'

Army-directed removals began on March 24. People had six days notice to dispose of their belongings other than what they could carry.

Anyone who was at least 1/16th Japanese was evacuated, including 17,000 children under age 10, as well as several thousand elderly and disabled residents.

Japanese Americans reported to "Assembly Centers" near their homes. From there they were transported to a "Relocation Center" where they might live for months before transfer to a permanent "Wartime Residence."

Assembly Centers were located in remote areas, often reconfigured fairgrounds and racetracks featuring buildings not meant for human habitation, like horse stalls or cow sheds, that had been converted for that purpose. In Portland, Oregon, 3,000 people stayed in the livestock pavilion of the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Facilities.

The Santa Anita Assembly Center, just several miles northeast of Los Angeles, was a de-facto city with 18,000 incarcerated, 8,500 of whom lived in stables. Food shortages and substandard sanitation were prevalent in these facilities.

Life in 'Assembly Centers'

Assembly Centers offered work to prisoners with the policy that they should not be paid more than an Army private. Jobs ranged from doctors to teachers to laborers and mechanics. A couple were the sites of camouflage net factories, which provided work.

Over 1,000 incarcerated Japanese Americans were sent to other states to do seasonal farm work. Over 4,000 of the incarcerated population were allowed to leave to attend college.

Conditions in 'Relocation Centers'

There were a total of 10 prison camps, called "Relocation Centers." Typically the camps included some form of barracks with communal eating areas. Several families were housed together. Residents who were labeled as dissidents were forced to a special prison camp in Tule Lake, California.

Two prison camps in Arizona were located on Native American reservations, despite the protests of tribal councils, who were overruled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Each Relocation Center was its own "town," and included schools, post offices and work facilities, as well as farmland for growing food and keeping livestock. Each prison camp "town" was completely surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers.

Net factories offered work at several Relocation Centers. One housed a naval ship model factory. There were also factories in different Relocation Centers that manufactured items for use in other prison camps, including garments, mattresses and cabinets. Several housed agricultural processing plants.

Violence in Prison Camps

Violence occasionally occurred in the prison camps. In Lordsburg, New Mexico, prisoners were delivered by trains and forced to march two miles at night to the camp. On July 27, 1942, during a night march, two Japanese Americans, Toshio Kobata and Hirota Isomura, were shot and killed by a sentry who claimed they were attempting to escape. Japanese Americans testified later that the two elderly men were disabled and had been struggling during the march to Lordsburg. The sentry was found not guilty by the army court martial board.

On August 4, 1942, a riot broke out in the Santa Anita Assembly Center, the result of anger about insufficient rations and overcrowding. At California's Manzanar War Relocation Center, tensions resulted in the beating of Fred Tayama, a Japanese American Citizen's League (JACL) leader, by six men. JACL members were believed to be supporters of the prison camp's administration.

Fearing a riot, police tear-gassed crowds that had gathered at the police station to demand the release of Harry Ueno. Ueno had been arrested for allegedly assaulting Tayama. James Ito was killed instantly and several others were wounded. Among those injured was Jim Kanegawa, 21, who died of complications five days later.

At the Topaz Relocation Center, 63-year-old prisoner James Hatsuki Wakasa was shot and killed by military police after walking near the perimeter fence. Two months later, a couple was shot at for strolling near the fence.

In October 1943, the Army deployed tanks and soldiers to Tule Lake Segregation Center in northern California to crack down on protests. Japanese American prisoners at Tule Lake had been striking over food shortages and unsafe conditions that had led to an accidental death in October 1943. At the same camp, on May 24, 1943, James Okamoto, a 30-year-old prisoner who drove a construction truck, was shot and killed by a guard.

Fred Korematsu

In 1942, 23-year-old Japanese-American Fred Korematsu was arrested for refusing to relocate to a Japanese prison camp. His case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where his attorneys argued in Korematsu v. United States that Executive Order 9066 violated the Fifth Amendment.

Korematsu lost the case, but he went on to become a civil rights activist and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. With the creation of California's Fred Korematsu Day, the United States saw its first U.S. holiday named for an Asian American. But it took another Supreme Court decision to halt the incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Mitsuye Endo

The prison camps ended in 1945 following the Supreme Court decision, Ex parte Mitsuye Endo. In this case, justices ruled unanimously that the War Relocation Authority "has no authority to subject citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave procedure."

The case was brought on behalf of Mitsuye Endo, the daughter of Japanese immigrants from Sacramento, California. After filing a habeas corpus petition, the government offered to free her, but Endo refused, wanting her case to address the entire issue of Japanese incarceration.

One year later, the Supreme Court made the decision, but gave President Truman the chance to begin camp closures before the announcement. One day after Truman made his announcement, the Supreme Court revealed its decision.

Reparations

The last Japanese internment camp closed in March 1946. President Gerald Ford officially repealed Executive Order 9066 in 1976, and in 1988, Congress issued a formal apology and passed the Civil Liberties Act awarding $20,000 each to over 80,000 Japanese Americans as reparations for their treatment.

Sources

Japanese Relocation During World War II. National Archives.
Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. J. Burton, M. Farrell, F. Lord and R. Lord.
Lordsburg Internment POW Camp. Historical Society of New Mexico.
Smithsonian Institute.

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Japanese Internment Camps: WWII, Life & Conditions | HISTORY

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Japanese internment camps were established during World War II by President Franklin D. Roosevelt through his Executive Order 9066. From 1942 to 1945, it was the policy of the U.S. government that people of Japanese descent, including U.S. citizens, be incarcerated.

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No-No Boy follows Ichiro Yamada once he is released from imprisonment as a result of answering no when asked if he would serve in the armed forces during WWII and forswear allegiance to Japan. He's back home in Seattle, and struggling to make sense of identity as a Japanese-American, which isn't helped by his mother's nationalist rhetoric nor the internalized self-hatred he's developed from his decision. It's with the help of some friends and acquaintances that he begins to find some clarity.

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University of Washington Press - Books - No-No Boy

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John Okada was born in Seattle in 1923. He served in the U.S. Army in World War II, attended the University of Washington and Columbia University, and died of a heart attack at the age of 47. No-No Boy is his only published novel.