Topaz Oral History Project research files: News reports and articles (1942-1943)

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AMERICANS IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS-----5 not last another two weeks--thq.ugh the soldiers were not told this. On March 29 came the Army's order on the west coast, reversing ita previous orders and forbidding further voluntary evacuation. Members o£ General DeWitt's staff gave as a reason his fear lest the evacuees suffer phy­sical violence on account of the strong hostility to them in many com­munities east of the First Military Area. Events on Bataan soon made clear why this fear developed at that particular moment. By April 10 several thousand sick and starving American prisoners were in Japanese hands--and several times that number of Filipino prisoners. If General Dellitt 's idea was really to protect Japanese-Ameri­cans from their white fellow-citizens, he must be given duecredit. It must be noted, however, that this laudable impulse does not seem to have developed until it became certain that the Japanese would soon have thou­sands of American prisoners in their hands--upon whom reprisals might be taken. The lynchings of yellow American would be no light matter if it were countered by shootings of white American prisoners by the Japanese. Japanese-Americans had to be protected--not for their own sakes, but for the protection of American soldiers in Japanese hands. The Japanese now had American hostages for our good behavior. There was, indeed, another way out. The government, with its thousands of official censors and propagandists, could have clamped down on the Hitler-like racial fury of the anti-Japanese press could have given wide circulation to the facts regarding Pearl Harbor and the splen­did loyalty of most Americans of Japanese descent, could have emphasized Secretary Hull's official ~tatement that he expected the Japanese reply to his note of November 26 to be "war, 11 could have strssed the fact that Washington had notified Hawaii on November 27 that negotiations with Ja­pan "had ended" and that an attack was to be expected at any time. But this would have gone counter to the official propaganda about uJap tra­chary,' and might not have helped war morale. So, instead, we slapped the ~Japs• into concentration camps--for the protection of American sol­diers in Japanese hands. So our Army also got some ••prisoners"--and hostages. FILTH AND SQUALOR If the Army's aim was the protection of Japanese-Americans, this aim seems to have been forgotten as soon as the evacuees were got into the pleasantly named "reception centers" and ttassembly centers." They were treated as dangerous aliens, and their accommodation was of 'the worst. The Army \v.as in charge, and it was almost impossible to obtain permits to leave; the Army accused evacuees of "trying to escape {from "protection ) Ten thousand or more persons would be confin d to an area of less than a square miles, sometimes surrounded by barbed wire and always by armed guards. At Manzanar and some other centers the guards would not permit parcel~--soap, clothing, shoes, baby things--to be brought into the camp. For a long time such urgent necessities as goggles--to keep dust from the eyes in windy and semi-desert centers--could not be brought in.