In the previous post, we considered the natural human response of Nikkei internees unjustly incarcerated. Christians, on the other hand, found solace in their faith and some even expressed how they were no longer “resentful for being pushed into camp, not bitter, nor discouraged, but happy, strengthened . . . through Christ.”[1] They likened their unjust treatment to Israel’s oppression by the wicked in Micah 2:2, “They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them away; they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance.” America too had become a nation divided, separating the Nikkei both from God and from their fellow man. Other Christians recalled the Romans’ unjust handling of Paul though he was a legal citizen: “But when they had stretched him out for the whips, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, ‘Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned?’” (Acts 22:25). Like Paul, two-thirds of the Nikkei were U.S. citizens, but their personal livelihood had been seized by their own countrymen.
Despite this injustice, followers of Christ clung to the hope expressed in Romans 8:18-19, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.” Believers persevered with joy because of their hope in God’s glorious future. Paul Nagano recounts that even “the train ride to Poston, Arizona, though filled with anxiety, was transformed into times of joy as we sang Christian choruses and fellowshiped with one another in our common suffering.”[2] Unlike the stoic endurance practiced in Japanese culture, Christians were characterized by joyful endurance and encouraged each other by gathering regularly as the body of Christ. According to WRA official policy, published in a guidebook for residents,
The right of freedom of religious worship in relocation centers is recognized and shall be respected.[3] Like all the other residents of the United States, evacuees at relocation centers are free to worship as they please and to conduct any type of religious service of a non-political nature. Because of the critical shortage of building materials, it now seems unlikely that WRA will be able to provide church buildings at relocation centers as originally intended. Space for all denominations, however, will continue to be made available in the recreation halls. Religious workers among the evacuee residents may carry on their religious activities. . . . Religious leaders from the outside will be admitted within the centers only on the invitation of church groups among the residents.[4]
Among the Protestants, great efforts were made to establish an ecumenical church in each relocation center. In addition to sharing worship facilities, denominations tempered their distinctive practices and doctrinal viewpoints in order to minimize unnecessary conflict. All the churches mutually agreed to leave the eventual choice of denominational affiliation and mode of baptism to the individual when they left the camps. One camp’s confession of faith, for example, expressed a generic theology accepted by the mainline denominations:
- I believe in God the Almighty, who is the creator and Father of mankind.
- I believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of the living God and as the Saviour of mankind.
- I believe in the Holy Spirit.
- I believe in the Holy catholic [universal] church.
- I believe in the Bible as the canon of the church and standard of our faith.[5]
Ministry in the relocation centers held the advantage of stability over the temporary assembly centers. Even though the relocation centers were not permanent either, internees were expected to treat them as home during their detainment. Churches helped to stabilize their social and spiritual lives. Some did depart from the faith while in the camps, but many began to follow Christ more seriously during relocation once they had added time on their hands to consider spiritual matters. As Blankenship summarized,
Religious beliefs and practices helped thousands of Nikkei endure the incarceration. Faith gave some incarcerees the strength to survive the travails of incarceration. Resurrected prewar religious groups fostered a sense of normalcy and continuity with their former lives. Like the prewar ethnic churches, religious organizations in the camps provided a place for Nikkei leadership and autonomy apart from systemic discrimination.[6]
Prayer meetings were well-attended and the Christians generally more fervent. Although not all ministers had advanced theological training, they labored faithfully with whatever skills they possessed. Evangelism, the work of winning people to Christ and to his church, was practiced daily and not only during the special missions conferences. Although it took time for ministers to acquaint themselves with new believers who hailed from different cities, home visitation was more efficient within the enclosed areas of the centers than in the pre-camp parishes where church members had lived more spread out. The hospital ministry also provided many opportunities to visit the sick, especially in the isolation and tuberculosis wards. Rev. Lester Suzuki described some other added benefits:
Many of the members of our West Coast churches who remember the Camp days, recall that they had more opportunity to sing Christian hymns and study the Bible on a regular basis. They recall with glee how much they learned to sing old and new hymns. For the Japanese members, a concise one-volume hymn book was specially made for them and they used it very extensively. As for Bible study there was more of it due to the availability of ministers and then when special Christian Mission speakers came, that was in addition to the regular diet of weekly Bible studies.[7]
Non-Japanese Christians also contributed to soul care in the relocation centers. In October 1942, the FCC and the Home Missions Council appointed Gordon K. Chapman, a former Presbyterian missionary, to be executive secretary of “the Protestant Church Commission [PCC] for Japanese Services to coordinate worship in the incarceration camps and the Committee on Resettlement of Japanese Americans.”[8] Chapman, who would operate as a “matchmaker” between each camp’s interfaith community and visiting Caucasian missionaries, stated,
There is every assurance that [the problems facing Japanese Americans] can be solved as His people go forward in a spirit of Christian unity. . . . Our highest ideals are at stake in this enterprise, and thus there is presented a magnificent opportunity to solve these problems and thus to win a great victory for American democracy and vital Christianity.[9]
Eager volunteers came by unexpected means. On August 25, 1942, almost half of the 1,400 passengers returning from Japan on the Swedish ship MS Gripsholm were Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries relieved of duty.[10] Many of them, despite just being released from prisoner of war camps, desired to use their language abilities and cultural training to minister among the Japanese American internees. After visiting several camps in March 1943, missionary Elizabeth Evans wrote a letter to her supporters insisting that the wholesale deportation of the Nikkei population into prison camps constituted “one of the biggest opportunities we have in America for expanding the Kingdom, strengthening and comforting these people who are facing these problems.”[11] Many of the most faithful volunteers were former missionaries to Japan.
Outside Christians also provided most of the materials and resources for church ministry within the camps.
The American Bible Society (ABS), an evangelical publishing group, planned its distribution of Bibles to the camps before the eviction concluded. . . . The ABS sent Christian literature to every incarceration camp and resettlement community. . . . By the end of the war, the ABS had supplied over 15,000 copies of an abridged New Testament in Japanese. . . . The society also reprinted religious tracts for incarcerated Nikkei, including several written by Japanese Christians.[12]
The AFSC repeatedly called on its constituents to continue ministering through acts of kindness in the name of Jesus.
The unfailing testimony of Friends in a suffering world has ever been that the knowledge of a need gives birth to a concern, and wherever a true concern is born the persons and the means are forthcoming to meet that need, however overpowering it may seem. And so, as we place the problems of these evacuees before you, along with the opportunity for resettlement and rehabilitation—we are leaving their destiny in your hands, knowing you will not fail them. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me [Matthew 25:34-40].”[13]
Outside denominations also supported Nikkei pastors financially because the WRA refused to pay them a salary for religious work (claiming the separation of church and state).[14] The WRA also prohibited the interned church from collecting tithes and offerings, thus cutting off the normal source of pastoral income. Ministers would often work a second job while volunteering for their religious duties. Despite many struggles, the Japanese American church continued to flower like blossoms in the desert. The following stories will describe the ministry of both Nikkei Christians and their non-Japanese friends in each of the various relocation centers.
[1] Gordon Chapman, Annual Report (1943), Box 18/Fld 8, RG 93, Presbyterian Historical Society. Blankenship described how many fell back upon their religious foundations: “Each of the ten incarceration centers modeled a small town surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers. In vast housing blocks, each family moved into a single tiny room furnished only with army cots. The barracks, flimsy wooden structures covered in tar paper, baked inhabitants throughout the summer and allowed cold winds to enter in winter. In addition to losing their civil rights and living in wretched conditions, shifts in traditional social hierarchies caused further stress and frustrations. Incarcerated Christians and Buddhists turned to their faith to reconcile their loss of civil rights” (Blankenship, “Religion and the Japanese American Incarceration,” 317).
[2] Paul M. Nagano, “United States Concentration Camps,” American Baptist Quarterly 13, no. 1 (March 1994), 59.
[3] WRA Administrative Instruction Number 32 (24 August 1942), Box 1/Fld 12, Kaoru Ichihara Papers (1839-1), UW.
[4] War Relocation Authority, The Relocation Program: A Guidebook for the Residents of Relocation Centers (Washington, D.C.: War Relocation Authority, 1943), 13.
[5] Blankenship, Social Justice, 111-113.
[6] Blankenship, “Religion and the Japanese American Incarceration,” 321-22.
[7] Suzuki, Ministry, 328.
[8] Blankenship, Social Justice, 60-61. Unlike the Buddhist Church, the Protestants had fostered good relationships with Caucasians prior to the war and would invite many outside speakers to preach in the centers.
[9] Gordon K. Chapman, Report of the Protestant Church Commission for Japanese Service (December 1943),Box 1/Fld 16, RG 315, The Papers of the Rev. Daisuke Kitagawa, 1923-2009, The Archives of theEpiscopal Church (Austin, TX).
[10] Approximately seventy missionaries who would serve in the internment camps had returned on the August 1942 or the December 1943 prisoner exchange on board the Gripsholm (David Miller, Mercy Ships [London, New York: Continuum, 2008]. One such woman, Laura Bodenhamer, wrote . . . that she and her husband were “anxious to finish [their] days with these brethren in the Camps (Blankenship, Social Justice, 62). Only a few volunteers were denied access to the camps because they would not comply with the WRA’s policy against unsolicited evangelism or because they had not been involved in prewar ministry to the Japanese.
[11] Letter from Elizabeth Evans to Dear Friends (19 March 1943), Box 18/Fld 8, RG 93, UPCUSA BFM Papers.
[12] Blankenship, Social Justice, 74.
[13] Japanese American Relations Committee, Pasadena AFSC Information Bulletin 7 (15 September 1942).
[14] After much wrangling and bureaucracy, “denominations agreed to pay their ministers $19 per month with a $3.50 incidentals allowance. Clergy wives would receive $12 and a $3 monthly incidentals allowance so that they would not have to work extra jobs. Families also received $2.50 in monthly incidental allowances for children between the ages of thirteen and seventeen and $1.50 for children under the age of thirteen” (Hessel, “Conscience,” 197-98, citing Minutes of the Protestant Commission for Japanese Service (14 October 1942), Box 17/Fld 8, RG 93 UPCUSA BFM Papers; and Minutes of the Meeting of the Protestant Church Commission for Japanese Service (2 December 1942), Box 17/Fld 8, RG 93, UPCUSA BFM Papers).
