Prior to World War II, pacifist groups like the Church of the Brethren, the Mennonites, the FOR (an interfaith pacifist group committed to social justice), and the Religious Society of Friends (more commonly known as Quakers[1]) had begun organizing conferences and publishing articles on Japanese American relations.[2] Seven months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the West Coast section of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) circulated a letter predicting that all Japanese Americans would be known as “‘Japs’ and . . . find it impossible to avoid the caustic backwash of war hysteria.”[3] According to Blankenship,
Protestant public relations efforts took three major forms: combating race prejudice and discrimination through print media, educating and encouraging sympathetic actions from Americans at the congregational level, and disputing negative portrayals of Nikkei in the media. Led by Clarence Gillett, the Congregational Christian Committee for Work with Japanese Evacuees wrote the largest number of pamphlets for its own congregants and the general public.[4]
Almost immediately after Pearl Harbor, some church leaders anticipated the hostility that would be directed toward Japanese Americans:
White Protestant leaders uniformly protested the government’s harsh treatment of Japanese Americans following Pearl Harbor. Two days after the bombing, the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, and the Home Missions Council of North America issued a joint statement that said: “Let us remember that many of these people are loyal, patriotic American citizens and that others, though Japanese subjects, have been utterly opposed to their nation’s acts against our nation.”[5]
Then after the evacuation order was announced, white Protestant leaders also expressed their strong disapproval:
One feature of the present regulations gives us especially grave concern. American citizens of Japanese parentage, but born and raised in this country, are being uprooted from their homes and normal occupations without hearings. . . . Such abrogation of the rights of citizens is especially unfortunate in view of the fact that, since the measures are not being applied in the same way to citizens of German and Italian lineage, the Japanese conclude that we are practicing race discrimination.[6]
During the internment, however, many church leaders and Christian organizations would acquiesce to the popular view that the Japanese American internment was a “military necessity” and the Nikkei contribution to the war effort. Rev. Vere V. Loper, minister of the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, was the principal author of the following statement: “The service you now render to America is the loss, for the duration, of your homes. We rejoice to know that many of you are facing it in the same spirit in which others are facing the possible loss of their sons, for much longer than the duration.”[7] Even those who did protest the injustice were careful not to assign blame to the U. S. government. For example, the Congregational and Christian churches stated that
Every time a majority deprives a minority of its civil rights it undermines its own liberties, and the unity and world-wide influence of the nation. Be it, therefore, resolved: That while national security justified the evacuation of Japanese residing in vital military areas on the West Coast, we deplore the fact that all persons with any Japanese blood, citizens as well as aliens, were as a group subjected to evacuation without hearings or other means of determining loyalty.[8]
Although some ministers spoke out against evacuation, the mainline denominations, as a whole, remained shamefully silent. “While numerous Protestant leaders believed the incarceration was unjust, the vast majority did not object when the government revoked the civil rights of Nikkei, one by one, after the Pearl Harbor attack. . . . Once given, few fought the eviction orders.”[9] According to Girdner and Loftis, “It took real courage to speak for the unfortunate Japanese American minority in the spring and summer of 1942.”[10] Bishops Charles Reifsnider and the Rev. George Wieland, for example, corresponded regarding the Episcopal Church’s theological and organizational ministries to Nikkei Christians. Reifsnider had been a much-respected missionary for forty years until he was forced out of Japan in 1941. He had also served as president of St. Paul’s University in Tokyo from 1912 to 1940 and had helped establish the St. Luke’s International Medical Center. Upon returning to America, he declared openly that his first task in his new role was “enlightening certain Americans as to the status of Christian Japanese born here in America.”[11] Reifsnider himself would visit many of the camps to encourage the believers in their faith.[12] Yet the Episcopal Church eventually decided to support the U.S. war effort by their silence, while serving the internees with acts in kindness.
Americans did not want to be characterized as “disloyal,” “Jap-lovers,” or “comforting the enemy,” so most of the aid given to the evacuees went unnoticed by the public. “Courageous and sympathetic acts of individual assistance coexisted with the general acceptance of the necessity for evacuation that was based on the old stereotyped attitudes about the wily, devious Oriental . . . yet [modified by] feelings of regret and humanitarian concern.”[13] The limited publicity kept the majority of America unaware of the desperate need.
[1] The Quakers were founded in 1647 by an Englishman named George Fox who taught that John 1:9 depicted the power of Christ’s Spirit in a person’s life: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” During the war years, Dr. Clarence E. Pickett served as executive director of the AFSC (founded in 1917). Pickett’s “older sister Minnie was a teacher at a Friends Girls School in Tokyo for five years. She, along with her husband, Quaker missionary Gilbert Bowles, ministered in Japan for 45 years. Through the encouragement of Minnie and their mother, Dr. Pickett also acquired a burning passion for missions work in Japan” (Tsukasa Sugimura, Quiet Heroes: A Century of Love and Help from the American Quakers for the Japanese and Japanese Americans [Altadena, CA: Intentional Productions, 2014], 41).
[2] The Mennonites were mainly silent during the evacuation, although one of their preachers cautioned them against fanning the flames of hate: “The sad fact is that this evil spirit of hate, once it has possession of people, will paralyze to a great extent their good sense, their normal judgement and moral vision. It will not limit itself to Nazis and Japanese living beyond the oceans, but it will poison and defile the individual’s whole outlook upon his fellow men. The ones so possessed will be hating many other people, even many who are living in their own country. They will freely hate Japanese Americans, German-speaking Americans, Jews, Negroes, and all who happen to differ from themselves in race, color, opinions, and manner of life” (Edward Yoder, “Fanning the Fires of Hate,” The Gospel Herald [18 June 1942], 271. They also aided Japanese Americans in isolated cases such as in Reedley, California (Charles R. Lord, “The Response of the Historic Peace Churches to the Internment of the Japanese Americans During World War II” [M.A. thesis, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, 1981], 44-56).
[3] “Friends and the Japanese Americans” (May 1941), Box 1/Fld 42, Floyd Wilfred Schmoe Papers, UW.
[4] Blankenship, Social Justice, 80.
[5] Federal Council of Churches, “Church Leaders Urge Christian Attitude Toward Japanese in U.S.” (9 December 1941), ABHMS Archives, 116-2. This statement was issued by G. Pitt Beers, executive secretary of ABHMS and president of the Home Mission Council of North America, John W. Thomas representing the ABHMS, and Marlin D. Farnum, a returned Japan missionary representing the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society.
[6] Brian Masaru Hayashi, For the Sake of Our Japanese Brethren: Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism Among the Japanese of Los Angeles, 1895-1942 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 138, citing Matsumoto, Beyond Prejudice, 10; Taylor, “Fellow-Feelers,” 123; Letter to the U.S. President (29 April 1942) from Luther A. Weigle, president of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, G. Pitt Beers, and Alman R. Pepper, chairman of the Commission on Aliens and Prisoners of War, cited in Matsumoto, Beyond Prejudice, 50. In 1941, these three organizations had formed the Inter-Council Committee on Japanese Christian Work in the United States.
[7] “A Statement to Japanese Friends and Fellow Americans” (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Fellowship of Churches and First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 14 April 1942).
[8] Minutes, Sixth General Council of the Congregational and Christian Churches of the United States (Durham, NH: 18 June 1942), item #44.
[9] Blankenship, Social Justice, 37. “Catholic bishops, the Federal Council of Churches (FCC), mainline Protestant pastors, the Quaker American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), foreign and domestic missionaries, and Pacific Coast ecumenical councils vouched for the loyalty of Nikkei after the attack on Pearl Harbor and reminded citizens of Christian and American principles of fair play. Articles in The Christian Century condemned boycotts of Nikkei shops and widespread layoffs. . . . These injustices challenged Christian leaders and Japanese Christians as Americans and as people of faith. Despite initial support, nearly all Christians fell silent once the decree to incarcerate everyone of Japanese descent living on the West Coast became known. Only Quakers and a few individuals explicitly opposed the government’s decision” (Anne M. Blankenship, “Religion and the Japanese American Incarceration,” Religion Compass 8, no. 10 [2014], 318).
[10] Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis, The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of the Japanese Americans During World War II (London: The Macmillan Company, 1969), 126.
[11] Charles Reifsnider, The Living Church 104, no. 8 (25 February 1942), 14.
[12] “For the rest of 1942, Reifsnider traveled vast distances by train to celebrate the eucharist at remote internment locations, and to smooth interdenominational ruffles in the camps—for example, over Episcopal use of its own (rather than union Protestant) Sunday school materials. Equally, Anglican insistence on its own sacraments was an irritant in the forced ecumenism of the camps. Yet for the hundred or so St. Mary’s parishioners displaced in the Gila, Arizona camp, regular Episcopal worship was a foundational link with home and normality” (Joanna B. Gillespie, “Japanese-American Episcopalians During World War II: The Congregation of St. Mary’s Los Angeles, 1941-1945,” Anglican and Episcopal History 69, no. 2 [June 2000], 150).
[13] Sandra C. Taylor, “Fellow-Feelers with the Afflicted: The Christian Churches and the Relocation of the Japanese During World War II” in Relocation to Redress, 123.
