The Nikkei church did its best to remain calm amidst the storm. For instance, the morning after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Rev. Daisuke Kitagawa offered his services as an interpreter between the government authorities in Seattle and the Japanese Americans whose family members had been rounded up as persons of suspicion. He worked closely with the Seattle Council of Churches on these matters, but also spoke out against racial injustice.[1] Kitagawa later recalled that trying time:
The whole community was thoroughly panic-stricken; every male lived in anticipation of arrest by the FBI, and every household endured each day in fear and trembling. Most Japanese, including at least one clergyman, were so afraid of being marked by association with those who had been taken away that they hesitated to visit the wives and children of the victims. Much of that fear can be attributed to the rumors, rampant in the community, about the grounds for those arrests, about the treatment the detainees were getting, and about their probable imprisonment for the duration of the war. No rational explanation could set their minds at ease.[2]
At the outset of World War II, approximately one hundred Japanese American Christian congregations had been established[3] and the believers in those churches refused to idly sit by. Sociologist David Yoo stated that
religious institutions acted as: (1) social service agencies; (2) sources of racial-ethnic solidarity; and (3) places of meaning and faith. Churches aided Japanese Americans in making the transition to the camps in concrete ways as ministers and lay leaders helped members pack and make other necessary arrangements. Temple and church buildings became storage centers, since internees were allowed only two suitcases per person. Religion also supplied psychological and physical space for ethnic identification and solidarity and provided a means for assessing the war.[4]
In Seattle, for example,
from December of 1941 until the evacuation to temporary Assembly Centers in April of 1942, [the] Seattle Japanese churches pooled resources for the selling and storing of personal property and businesses, launched charity relief for families whose husbands and fathers were held for months by the FBI for suspected espionage, and provided spiritual guidance in the midst of injustice and tragedy. One Japanese American grocer even put his entire stock of food at the disposal of his pastor. Later in wartime sermons, letters, bible studies, and personal devotions, Japanese American Christians identified with Biblical models like Job and Esther, and found inspiration in the stories of the Exodus and Exile. Yet they also used their Christian faith to reimagine their place in the world, and to construct a spirit of optimism and opportunity in the midst of a seemingly hopeless situation. Through Christianity they were able to supersede national, regional, and denominational boundaries, and pledge allegiance to a higher law and a more powerful lawgiver at a time when their own country was betraying them.[5]
Rev. Hideo Hashimoto actively served the Japanese community as well:
The swift current of events following the outbreak of the present war has disrupted the lives of many of us. . . . I go about busily engaged in welfare work among needy families; soliciting funds and food for welfare; helping with registrations, disposal and storage of real and personal property; finding renters for houses and businesses; collecting junk; trying to preach to the being-disillusioned on the meaning of the Cross; providing nursery and recreational activities. . . . What the future holds for us is very uncertain, except for the definite knowledge that there will be untold suffering. . . . I am to be evacuated and to enter into one of these concentration camps, for that is what they really are, with double barbed fences and all. I shall probably be responsible to between three thousand and five thousand souls in one of these. . . . I am to be their pastor, the minister of the gospel. How am I to preach to them? . . . If I fail, who will undertake it? . . . I need your help and your prayers.[6]
In addition to material assistance, Nikkei Christians instinctively banded together for spiritual strength as well. Although still a child, Yasushi Wada knew the promise of Lamentations 3:22-23 to be true by experience: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Wada testified to God’s faithful preservation of his family when his parents were among the first to be arrested:
I praise God for His faithful guidance every step of the way. . . . When my parents were taken from our home by the FBI, it was necessary for me to return home to Pomona to join my brother and sister. Approximately three weeks later, we were informed on the radio that we would be able to see our father in [Tujunga] Canyon on Sunday morning. Several hundred persons waited for hours to see loved ones. Finally, after our name was called, the three of us—my brother, sister, and I—saw our father standing on the other side of a tall wire fence. We were allowed only three minutes to talk to him. My father assured us that God would watch over all of us and that we should continue to trust in Him. His display of faith and trust in Jesus Christ enabled us to do the same and carried us through the three years of separation until we were again reunited in 1944.[7]
[1] Daisuke Kitagawa, “An Open Letter to Fellow-Christians in the United States of America,” The Living Church 104, no. 16 (19 April 1942), 14-15. The Seattle Council of Churches was an ecumenical group formed in 1919.
[2] Daisuke Kitagawa, Issei and Nisei: The Internment Years (New York: Seabury Press, 1967), 41. Kitagawa (1910-1970) was born in Japan, but immigrated to the United States in 1937 for advanced religious studies at the General Theological Seminary in New York City. He was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church and served for two years at two different Japanese Americans parishes in the state of Washington prior to the war. He began his ministry in 1938 at St. Peter’s Mission in Seattle and St. Paul’s Mission in Taylor in the Diocese of Olympia. Technically an Issei, he was young enough to associate with the Nisei generation, thus serving as an effective bridge between the two and affectionately known as Father Dai.
[3] An article in The Christian Century identified eighty Japanese Protestant congregations on the West Coast with 17,500 members in total (The Christian Century 59, no. 20 [20 May 1942], 678). See Appendix Two: Nikkei Christianity prior to World War II. Depending on the region, 20-25% of Nikkei identified as Christian by the beginning of World War II (Blankenship, Social Justice, 7).
[4] David K. Yoo, Growing Up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California: 1924-1949 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 114. This was the case in both Buddhist temples and Protestant churches, although many of the Buddhist leaders had already been detained.
[5] Madeline Duntley, “Seattle, the Internment, and the Church: Inside & Outside Minidoka 1942-1948,” American Society of Church History 161 (January 1997), 3.
[6] Cited in Toru Matsumoto, Beyond Prejudice (New York: Friendship Press, 1946), 23-25.
[7] Rev. Yasushi Wada, “To God Be the Glory,” in Victor N. Okada, ed., Triumphs of Faith: Stories of Japanese American Christians During World War II (Los Angeles: Japanese American Internment Project, 1998), 153. More than 2,000 primarily Japanese American “dangerous enemy aliens” were imprisoned at Tujunga Canyon near Pasadena, California in the Tuna Canyon Detention Center from 1941-1943. Herbert Nicholson recounted how the director, Merrill H. Scott, had been a nominal Methodist before he was converted by one of the prisoners, Rev. Kenji Nakane, an Issei preacher from Coachella. When Nakane was transferred to a relocation center, Scott promised to carry on the Christian services at Tuna Canyon. He was good to his word and even invited Nicholson to preach at the Christmas meeting in 1942 (Herbert V. Nicholson, “A Friend of the American Way: An Interview with Herbert Nicholson,” in Voices Long Silent: An Oral Inquiry into the Japanese American Evacuation, eds. Arthur Hansen and Betty Mitson [Fullerton, CA: California State University, Fullerton, 1974], 125). Each week, other Japanese-speaking Quakers visited the men at Tuna Canyon “to give them first-hand news of their families and to help them with business matters” (Japanese American Relations Committee, Pasadena AFSC Information Bulletin 4 [27 April 1942]).
