During the war, as Japanese Americans began to resettle in various parts of the country, they still faced considerable prejudice.
New groups like the No Japs Inc. joined the traditional Yellow Peril establishment in criticizing federal authorities. The Home Front Commandos sponsored a “Slap the Jap” campaign, urging supporters to “keep the Jap rats out of your hair.” The California congressional delegation voted unanimously to oppose any return of Nikkei to the West Coast.[1]
Earl Warren, then governor of California, held fast to his view that if the Nikkei left the camps, “No one will be able to tell a saboteur from any other Jap. We don’t want to have another Pearl Harbor in California.”[2] General DeWitt also insisted that no persons of Japanese ancestry should return to the West Coast during wartime. He told newspapers, “A Jap’s a Jap,” and testified before the House Naval Affairs Committee:
I don’t want any of them here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty. . . . It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty. . . . You needn’t worry about the Italians at all except in certain cases. Also, the same for the Germans except in individual cases. But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map. Sabotage and espionage will make problems as long as he is allowed in this area—problems which I don’t want to have to worry about.[3]
The Los Angeles Times reported that 74 percent of Los Angeles County residents supported deportation of all Japanese citizens from the United States after the war[4] and the Los Angeles Herald trumpeted, “California does not want any Japs ever returned. . . . Let us keep the Japs out forever.”[5] The California Farm Bureau Federation adopted a resolution declaring that “no Japanese, whether native born or alien, should be allowed during the period of war to reside in California except under military surveillance.”[6] Congressman Alfred Elliott (D – Tulare) insisted from the floor of the House in mid-1943 that “the only good Jap is a dead Jap” and prophesied that this would be the fate of “every one of them that is sent back” to California.[7] Even after resettlement rights were granted, representative Harry Sheppard declared freedom for the Issei a “grievous error,” adding, “I trust the military people who are handling the destiny of the West Coast have not made a mistake they will later regret.”[8]
In Seattle, the Remember Pearl Harbor League (RPHL) chastened “misguided” ministers on the “menace” Nikkei posed to the nation: “Surely, you gentlemen of the cloth, know that every Japanese American you seem to favor has been indoctrinated with sadistic philosophy emperor worship.”[9] “Governor Mon Wallgren, Mayor William Devin, and Congressmen Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson and Warren Magnusen were among the public officials who initially spoke out against allowing Seattle’s Japanese American residents to return to the area.”[10] “The president of Kent, Washington’s Remember Pearl Harbor League vowed that his five hundred members would not sell, lease, or rent farmland, homes, or storefronts to returning nikkei.”[11]
Many would make good on their threats against the Nikkei. The American Council on Race Relations reported 124 cases of harassment and violence involving “persons of Japanese ancestry” on the West Coast between December 1944 and October 1945.[12] Girdner and Loftis calculated that seventy instances of terrorism and nineteen shootings took place in California during the first six months of 1945.[13]
The first Japanese to return to Placer County were the Doi family, who had sons in the armed forces. . . . An attempt was made to burn a packing shed on their ranch. Two days later, January 19, 1945, shots were fired into their home and an attempted dynamiting occurred. . . . Similarly, in rural Fresno County, one Levi Multanen of Parlier fired four blasts from a double-barreled shotgun into the farmhouse of Charles Iwasaki, while Iwasaki, his wife, three children, and a grandparent were inside. Happily, the blasts hit no one.[14]
In San Jose, California, on March 6, 1945, the Takeda family was awakened suddenly to the smell of gasoline. The house was consumed in flames soon after they escaped and their assailants fired three shots from a fleeting car. Joe Takeda expressed his concern: “We expected something unpleasant, but we didn’t expect this. We have no bitterness. We realize we are the victims of circumstance. We have always wanted to help the war effort and have sent word to the farmers of the valley we would be glad to help on the farms where needed, especially those farms where sons are in service.”[15] Even Nikkei veterans who had fought in the war experienced discrimination. War hero and U.S. Senator, Daniel Inouye (D – Hawaii), recounted in his autobiography how he was refused a haircut in Oakland, California:
There I stood, in full uniform, the new captain’s bars bright on my shoulders, four rows of ribbon on my chest, the combat infantry badge, the distinguished unit citations —and a hook where my hand was supposed to be. And he didn’t cut Jap hair. To think that I had gone through the war to save his skin—and he didn’t cut Jap hair. I said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry for you and the likes of you.” And I went back to my ship.[16]
These are but a handful of the public expressions of racism against the Nikkei before and during World War II. Many more injustices were committed on a personal level, but as Rev. Max M. Morrison of the Westminster Presbyterian Church stated,
We cannot sit idly by and see any minority group like the Japanese Americans persecuted or deprived of their just rights as citizens, if we hope to maintain our democracy or profess to adhere to the Bill of Rights. Let us not forget the lesson of Germany. When the Nazis began their persecution of the Jews, the Catholics and Protestants did not actively protest. After all, they no doubt argued, it isn’t our group. . . . But see what happened. . . . As long as one group of citizens in a democracy is treated unfairly, all other groups in that democracy are endangered, and democracy itself is in danger of collapsing.[17]
[1] Shidler, “Fair Play Committee,” 81. One “Slap the Jap” pamphlet asked, “Do you want them in your back yard . . . to poison your water, kill your cattle, destroy your orchards?”
[2] Ed Cray, Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 157-58. Alfred Lundberg of the Fair Play Committee would chastise his friend in a letter dated July 13, 1943. Warren, a member of the Oakland N.S.G.W Parlor, would never publicly retract his statements (Bernard Schwartz, Super Chief: Earl Warren and His Court [New York: New York University Press, 1983], 16). He did, however, write in his memoirs published postmortem, “I have since deeply regretted that removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens.” He said he was “conscience stricken” when he thought of “the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends, and congenial surroundings. It was wrong to react so impulsively without positive evidence of disloyalty, even though we felt we had a good motive in the security of our state” (Earl Warren, The Memoirs of Earl Warren [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977], 148-49 cited in Wollenberg, “Dear Earl,” 55). Also, during a 1971 oral history interview, he became so emotional while talking about the effect of internment on Japanese American children that he had to pause the interview for several minutes (Schwartz, Super Chief, 17).
[3] John L. Dewitt, Testimony Before House Naval Affairs Subcommittee to Investigate Congested Areas (13 April 1943), NARS, RG 338 (CWRIC 1725-1728). Transcripts of DeWitt’s telephone conversations during that period have since revealed his personal motives.
[4] Los Angeles Times (2 October 1944).
[5] Los Angeles Herald Express (15 November 1944).
[6] “Farm Bureau Opposed to Return of Japs,” Hanford Sentinel, 22 November 1944.
[7] Cited in Daniels, Concentration Camps, 159.
[8] Los Angeles Times, 18 December 1944.
[9] Remember Pearl Harbor League, Inc., open letter to all ministerial associations (11 May 1945), Box 1/Fld 22, Ring Family Papers (4241-2), UW. “Boycotts, vandalism, storefronts reading ‘No Japs Allowed,’ severe unemployment, and housing shortages barraged Nikkei as well. Most discrimination was not violent, but vandals destroyed or stole around a quarter of the property left behind by Seattle’s Nikkei” (Blankenship, Social Justice, 190). The RPHL and the Japanese Exclusion League were primarily made up of anti-Japanese businessmen and farmers who viewed resettling Nikkei as a threat to their economic well-being.
[10] Jennifer Speidel, “After Internment: Seattle’s Debate Over Japanese Americans’ Right to Return Home,” The Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project (University of Washington), accessed at http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/after_internment.htm.
[11] Pearson, Eagles, 281.
[12] American Council on Race Relations, “West Coast Incidents Involving People of Japanese Descent” (San Francisco: American Council on Race Relations, 1945). One leader in the Placer County Citizens Anti-Japanese League brazenly declared, “If we must do something for [the Japanese], let us sterilized them” (Sacramento Bee [1 January 1945]). In another incident, a group of young people tried to dynamite and burn down buildings on a Japanese-owned farm near Auburn (Sacramento Bee [1 February 1945]).
[13] Girdner and Loftis, The Great Betrayal, 383-406.
[14] Daniels, Concentration Camps, 159. See “Shig Doi” in Tateishi, Justice for All, 157-67.
[15] “Night Riders Attack Returned Evacuee Family on San Jose Farm with Fire, Gunshots,” Pacific Citizen, 10 March 1945. The Pacific Citizen was the JACL’s newspaper out of Salt Lake City. See https://www.pacificcitizen.org/digital-archives.
[16] Daniel K. Inouye, Journey to Washington (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1967), 207-208.
[17] Cited in Japanese American Relations Committee, Pasadena AFSC Information Bulletin 12 [2 January 1944].
