The Longest Night:
History of the American Concentration Camp
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On December 7, 1941, Japan launched a vicious attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, killing 2,403 people—68 of whom were regular civilians. Grief and terror swept the nation, leaving Americans outraged and profoundly disturbed. It was the first attack on US soil since 1918. Immediately following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the country descended into a frenzy of racism and prejudice against all Japanese, despite the fact that Japanese Americans were among those struggling to cope with the shock of the event.
Believing that those of Japanese ancestry were predisposed to treason, the FBI began detaining Issei (first-generation Japanese American) community leaders within 24 hours of the attack. Religious leaders, teachers, and organization heads were deemed potential threats without real evidence or the benefit of a fair trial. The FBI also forcibly searched the homes of Japanese American citizens, confiscating cameras, radios, books, newspapers, and other generally innocuous items that were suspected as modes of communication with the Japanese-national government, or media to spread Japanese propaganda. The federal government also insisted that schools teaching the language and culture of Japan instilled in students an allegiance to the foreign Japanese government. These institutions had been heavily attended by Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans) as a means of connecting with the heritage of their forebears. Those who weren’t detained weren't spared found themselves jobless. Companies, and even unions, would banish Japanese workers from their organizations, and the military either discharged Japanese soldiers or assigned them inconsequential and “harmless” work.
The Suppressed Munson Report
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The hysteria surrounding the bombing led President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to ask his friend and journalist John Franklin Carter to conduct a thorough investigation of Japanese Americans living along the West Coast. Carter, in turn, hired Curtis B. Munson, a businessman who had done some intelligence work for the president before, albeit without formal training. The final Munson Report said that Japanese Americans had a “remarkable, even extraordinary degree of loyalty” to the American government, and that Issei loyalties to their country of origin were hindered by their choice to make a home for themselves and their children in the United States. “They expect to die here,” said the report, in no uncertain terms. Munson concluded that Nisei are “universally estimated from 90 to 98 percent loyal to the United States,” and that they are even “pathetically eager to show their loyalty. They are not Japanese in culture. They are foreigners to Japan.”
The Munson Report's final analysis?
“There is no Japanese problem on the Coast. There will be no armed uprising of Japanese.”
“There is no Japanese ‘problem’ on the Coast.”
Carter, however—whether earnestly or deliberately—misinterpreted Munson’s report to the President, highlighting irrelevant points and summarizing the findings in a way that rendered the original report unrecognizable. He claimed that, regardless of their purported loyalty, there would always be “the odd case of…sabotage by some Japanese ‘crackpot.’” He also stated, pointedly, that Munson had been “horrified” by the many unguarded bridges, power stations and other key infrastructure centers across the country. This was, in fact, a misinterpretation and an overstatement. Munson only suggested that future incursions on American soil could be avoided if such areas were properly guarded.
Carter’s hysterical version of Munson’s report further panicked the President, ultimately leading him to carry out the unthinkable.
The Birth of the American Concentration Camp
On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, the unprecedented law allowing the federal government to forcibly remove people of Japanese ancestry from their homes, regardless of their citizenship. Under the guise of “military necessity,” more than 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans were placed in “internment” camps by May of that same year. Two-thirds of the incarcerees were American, while the rest were Japanese nationals considered “aliens ineligible for citizenship.”
The living conditions at these concentration camps—euphemized by the federal government as “relocation centers" or "internment" camps—were grim beyond imagination. While the environment surrounding the camps were, in some cases, beautiful due to their remoteness, the weather was typically severe. Depending on the location, summers were sweltering and the winters cold and biting. Of the countless locations housing incarcerated Japanese, ten were formally designated concentration camps of the War Relocation Authority (WRA)—a federal agency created for this sole purpose. Manzanar, located at the foot of the breathtaking Sierra Nevada mountain range, is known for its dry, windswept desert landscape. A second California camp in Tule Lake had similarly hot summers and long, freezing winters. Tule Lake also had the dubious distinction of being the most controversial camp due to overcrowding and the violent security measures regularly taken by its administration. Summer temperatures in Arizona’s Gila River and Poston camps consistently exceed 100ºF, often accompanied by dust storms. In Colorado, incarcerees at the Amache concentration camp also endured extreme summer dust storms, along with freezing winters.
Summers in Heart Mountain (Wyoming), Topaz (Utah), and Minidoka (Idaho) could reach temperatures well exceeding 100ºF, with winter temperatures as low as—or lower than— -30ºF. Residents of Minidoka also had to navigate the knee-deep mud that followed the extreme rainy season. Unlike the other dry, desert camps, Arkansas’ Jerome and Rohwer were located in the swamplands, where winters were cold and wet and the summers sweltering and humid. The surrounding swamps were infested with poisonous snakes.
The camps themselves were equally hazardous. Built hastily on old, unused race tracks or fairgrounds, they were enclosed by barbed-wire fences punctuated by guard towers, where armed soldiers kept watch, 24/7. Conditions inside the camps were unsanitary: poorly insulated barracks, no running water, and no personal bathrooms or kitchens. Most troubling, perhaps, was the lack of access to proper health care. Exacerbated by overcrowding, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, smallpox, whooping cough, flu, and diphtheria ran rampant. 1,862 people died from medical problems in the camps, and even more were hospitalized for illness. At Topaz, 3,973 hospital admissions were recorded during the camp’s tenure: nearly 50% of all its residents in the span of only 36 months.
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Japanese Americans were not the only group
treated like outsiders by their own government...
But Japanese Americans were not the only group to be treated like outsiders by their own federal government. Against the wishes of various indigenous communities, many of the camps were built on tribal land, including Poston (Mohave and Nüwüwü land) and Gila River (Gila River Indian Reservation). The Colorado River Indian Community specifically advised the WRA against building the Poston facility on their land, but the WRA persisted unabashedly. The WRA also began construction of camps on Gila River Indian Community land (GRIC) without permission from the rightful owners. When the GRIC expressed their opposition, the WRA ignored their admonitions and continued to build. When the GRIC eventually conceded, it was only after the WRA and Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) threatened to take away their valuable rental income. The OIA insisted the GRIC would be all the better for it, promising the indigenous community that incarcerees would provide infrastructure and develop the land. But after the war, the WRA sold all materials of value from the camps and bulldozed what was left, leaving only rubble behind. The building of concentration camps on indigenous land served to underscore the government’s past incursions against people of color. The absurdity of these circumstances was not lost to history: During WWII, the administration had furthered its “othering” of both Japanese and indigenous Americans on land that did not belong to the government—land that had, in fact, been protected by lawful treaties for centuries.
Gaman: Enduring With Patience
Despite their mistreatment, few people spoke out against the government. The incarcerated did not want to appear unpatriotic and risk accusations of treachery. Most complied with government orders while making the most out of their new circumstances. They established gardens, choirs, newspapers, and schools to create some semblance of a normal life. Many took up hobbies to bring some semblance of meaning to such an incomprehensible experience. Already a prominent artist, Hisako Hibi’s portraits of her incarcerated children would become some of her best-known work. Since cameras were banned, she relied on her art to capture her experiences at Topaz.
Photos were rare, but they do exist. One rare photographic collection of incarceree life comes from Toyo Miyatake, a professional photographer who smuggled a camera lens into Manzanar immediately upon his evacuation from his Little Tokyo studio. This short documentary from the Japanese American National Museum chronicles his life and art. Separately, famed photographers Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams were both allowed access to the camps. Although opposed to incarceration, Dorothea Lange accepted a federal commission to document the events following the president’s Executive Order 9066—with the personal goal of providing an unadulterated view of Japanese American life behind barbed wire. Ultimately, however, the military seized and impounded her photographs for telling a story that was contrary to the accepted American narrative. Acclaimed landscape photographer Ansel Adams’ photos of Manzanar were compiled into an exhibition titled “Born Free and Equal.” It remains one of the most well-known collections of the incarceration experience. This fascinating National Public Radio piece chronicles three very different visual perspectives of the concentration camps through the lenses of these distinct artists. Seen side-by-side and in contrast, Lange’s images appear gritty and Adams’ uplifting, while Miyatake provides an intimate view only accessible to an incarcerated artist.
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Many young men fought for their right to serve
on behalf of the very country that imprisoned them.
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Ansel Adams’ arguably heartening photographs, however, are not falsehoods. Incarcerees participated in volleyball, soccer, basketball, and, of course, baseball. Many of the younger incarcerees re-created beloved school activities such as prom and student council; still others finished out their final years of school inside the camps. These same boys and men would fight in World War II immediately upon graduation. When refused by the military, many of these young men fought with the government for their right to serve on behalf of the very country that imprisoned them.
Purple Hearts, Bronze Stars, Silver Stars
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The 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Infantry Battalion were military units composed of almost entirely Hawaiiborn Nisei. Two-thirds of the 442nd were from the state, and the 100th was mainly composed of Hawaii National Guard members. Together, they remain some of the most decorated units in American military history. The 442nd accumulated a whopping 14,000 awards—including 4,000 Purple Hearts; 4,000 Bronze Stars; 560 Silver Stars; 21 Medals of Honor; and 7 Presidential Unit Citations. Tragically, The 442nd also suffered a total of 9,486 casualties, with 600 dead out of a total of 18,000 men.
The 100th fought six campaigns in Italy and France, while the 442nd fought in various battles in Italy, France, and Germany. The 442nd is known for saving the “lost battalion,” or Texas’s 141st Regiment Battalion. Essentially signing on for a suicide mission, the 442nd broke through German defenses and rescued more than 200 out of 275 soldiers of the 141st Regiment. Arguably one of the most critical missions of the 442nd was the The Liberation of Dachau. It was April 29, 1945, and the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion (a unit under the 442nd) were traveling through the small town of Lager Lechfeld. The group stumbled upon a sub-camp of Dacahu called Kaufering IV Hurlach. For some, it was a first personal encounter with the Holocaust. All were horrified by the discovery. Ichiro Imamura, technician fourth grade, recounts:
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When the gates swung open, we got our first good look at the prisoners. Many of them were Jews. They were wearing striped prison suits and round caps. It was cold, and the snow was two feet deep in some places. There were no German guards. The prisoners struggled to their feet…They shuffled weakly out of the compound. They were like skeletons—all skin and bones…
About a month later on May 2, 1945, the 442nd were scouting an area near Waakirchen, Germany when they stumbled on an open field. In the field were prisoners wandering aimlessly or lying dead in the snow. The 442nd had discovered prisoners from Dachau marching toward the Austrian Border, commonly known as the Dachau Death March. The Nazi soldiers accompanying the prisoners had abandoned them upon discovering that the 442nd was closing in. The Japanese American soldiers spent three days carrying the surviving prisoners to nearby barns and houses, providing food, water, and blankets before medical personnel arrived.
Today, the soldiers of the 442nd and 100th are celebrated for their bravery and honor. Among them are veterans Frank Harry Ono, Yukio Okutsu, and Daniel Inouye. Frank Harry Ono was a Private First Class who single-handedly defended his position in a battle near Castellina Marittima, Italy. Even when his platoon evacuated, he descended the hill in stages while shooting at the enemy to ensure his comrades’ safety. For his bravery, Ono was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second highest decoration. Yukio Okutsu, a technical sergeant in the US Army, was also a recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross. In a battle on Mount Belvedere in Italy, Okutsu destroyed three enemy machine guns on his own. He continued to charge at the enemy with a submachine gun, forcing them to withdraw.
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Even as Inouye's arm was blown off, he picked
up his submachine gun with his good arm and
continued to shoot at German soldiers.
Perhaps the most famous veteran of the 442nd, Daniel Inouye served nine terms as a United States Senator representing the state of Hawaii. During an assault on a German-held ridge near the village of San Terenzo, enemy machine guns opened fire, striking Inouye in the torso. He continued to advance, throwing grenades at the enemy. Even as Inouye’s arm was blown off, he picked up his submachine gun with his good arm and continued to shoot at German soldiers. He was conferred multiple awards, including the Distinguished Service Cross and the Purple Heart with Cluster. In 2000, all three men were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton, with the late Frank Harry Ono’s family accepting on his behalf. Daniel Inouye would continue a life-long fight against racism faced by Japanese Americans and was a major figure in the campaign for reparations.
Battle for Justice on the Home Front
That fight began long before Inouye’s election to the Senate, however. Not all members of the Japanese American community were reticent in their belief that they had been wronged by their own government. During the war, Nisei were more likely to speak out than their first-generation parents. Mitsuye Endo was a Nisei chosen by Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) lawyers to take the government to court over the constitutionality of the incarceration. Lawyers considered her the ideal candidate due to her sheer “Americanness”: she had never visited Japan, did not speak Japanese, had been raised Methodist rather than Buddhist or Shinto, and had a brother serving in the US Army. The JACL claimed that Endo had been denied the right to work due to her unlawful incarceration as a citizen of the United States. Though offered freedom in 1942 in exchange for dropping the case, Endo refused and remained in the camps for another two years, determined to see the case through.
In 1942, another Nisei by the name of Gordon Hirabayashi went to a local FBI office instead of reporting to his designated camp, with the goal of testing the limits of the exclusion order. He was charged with violating his curfew and the exclusion order itself and was sent summarily to jail. He appealed his conviction to his case, but the Supreme Court declined to rule on the exclusion order violation and upheld the curfew order. On March 28, 1942, fellow Japanese American Yasui Minori challenged the curfew order by walking into a police station and demanding to be arrested after deliberately going out past curfew. The desk sergeant obliged, and Yasui became the first Japanese American to challenge Army orders. He attempted twice to appeal his sentence. The first time he lost. After hearing Hirabayashi’s case, the Supreme Court returned to Yasui’s case to resentence him. He served nine months in prison before being sent to the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho.
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Korematsu changed his name to Clyde Sarah
and sought plastic surgery on his eyes, claiming
to be of Hawaiian and Spanish descent.
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The most well-known case regarding the refusal to comply with FDR’s Executive Order 9066 was Korematsu v. The United States. Fred Korematsu, a former shipyard welder turned civil rights activist, lost his job when his union expelled all Japanese American members from its ranks, allowing his employer to quickly and easily fire him. Korematsu resisted incarceration by changing his name to Clyde Sarah and sought plastic surgery on his eyes, claiming to be of Hawaiian and Spanish descent. He was arrested on May 30th, 1942 for violating the exclusion order. Korematsu went to court and was sent to an “assembly center” in San Bruno, California. Korematsu’s attorneys attempted to appeal his case, and it was ruled that the detention was a necessity. Then, on December 18, 1944—nine months before Japan surrendered, signaling the end of WWII—the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Mitsuye Endo.
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The concentration camps were officially shuttered.
Librarians, Lawyers, Police Officers, and Friends
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Japanese Americans had never been alone in their battle for freedom. Like the photographer Dorothea Lange, many non-Japanese Americans fought against incarceration. Clara Breed was a librarian in San Diego, California prior to the war. Noting that the most diligent readers at her library were Japanese American children, she became fond of her young charges. When they were shipped off to the camps, Breed sent hundreds of gifts and letters to her former readers in an attempt to ease their burden and help them adjust to their frightening new surroundings. Former police officer John Burns also adamantly defended the community during the war and helped recruit Japanese Americans into the 442nd and 100th. He eventually advocated for Hawaiian statehood and became its first elected governor in 1962. Lawyer Wayne Collins represented Fred Korematsu, along with Iva Ikuko Toguri, an American DJ and radio personality who was accused of treason.
“None of us should have had to go.”
Finally, Ralph Lazo—a Spanish and Irish American who grew up in Los Angeles with friends of diverse ethnicities—demonstrated an astonishing act of loyalty during the war. Lazo was 17 years old when he followed his friends to Manzanar to be incarcerated along with them. He didn’t leave until he was drafted. When asked why he went to live in a concentration camp when he didn’t have to, Lazo replied: “None of us should have had to go.”
Reparations and Apologies: The Legacy of Incarceration
When the incarcerated were finally released from the camps after Mitsuye Endo’s case prevailed, they received a meager $25 and a train ticket home. But upon returning to their previous residences, many realized they had no homes. Neither could they claim their belongings, jobs, or the businesses that they’d built from the ground up. Everything they’d held dear had either been sold at a great loss, seized by the government, or stolen by neighbors. Americans maintained their belief that Japanese Americans were inclined to sabotage the US government, making it hard for newly released incarcerees to rebuild their lives, even after the war was over. Some were lucky enough to find work: Nisei were able to take domestic jobs, but many Issei were forced to live on the streets. And even those who were gainfully employed did not make nearly enough to return to the lifestyle they had enjoyed before the war.
In 1979, the National Council for Japanese American Redress (NCJAR) was formed, with the goal of seeking restitution for incarcerees and their families. The NCJAR filed a lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of all the formerly incarcerated. In 1980, with the encouragement of Senator Daniel Inouye and Congressmen Robert Matsui, Spark Matsunaga, and Norman Mineta, Congress established a committee to study the effects of the incarceration on Japanese Americans. They wanted to see if the impact of the incarceration was significant enough to cause a redress: an apology from Congress and $20,000 in compensation to those who suffered from the exclusion and detention. The committee found that the reasoning for the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II was based on “Race, prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership,” which led to the legislative passage of the bill. The last vote required to pass the resolution was that of President Ronald Reagan. The president's conservative ideologies led many to believe the bill would be rejected by the executive branch.
But Ronald Reagan had something else in mind.
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During a battle in World War II, a young Nisei sergeant in the 442nd named Kazuo Masuda had passed away in battle. When Masuda’s family returned to their home in Santa Ana, California after the war, they were harassed by racists and were told to move elsewhere. In response to this and similar troubling incidents, the War Department took steps to prosecute racial offenders, advocate for Japanese Americans on the public stage, and loudly condemn acts of violence. The WRA and War Department recruited a general to present the Distinguished Service Cross to Masuda’s family on the steps of their farmhouse. Later, at a “United America Day” rally nearby, a young actor and Army Captain addressed his audience: “Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world, the only country not founded on race, but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of, but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way. Mr. and Mrs. Masuda, just as one member of the family of Americans, speaking to another member, I want to say: for what your son Kazuo did—Thanks.”
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That actor was future President Ronald Reagan. Before signing, the president recounted this story, and ended by addressing congress: “Thank you, and God bless you. And now let me sign H.R. 442, so fittingly named in honor of the 442nd.”
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“We can never fully right the wrongs of the past.
But we can take a clear stand for justice.”
President George H.W. Bush
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Two years later, Reagan’s successor President George H.W. Bush signed an official apology, and US Attorney General Dick Thorborough presented reparation checks to nine elderly Issei as a means of launching the reparation effort at long last. In addition to the redress payments, the following letter from the president was presented to approximately 60,000 survivors:
A monetary sum and words alone cannot restore lost years or erase painful memories; neither can they fully convey our Nation's resolve to rectify injustice and to uphold the rights of individuals. We can never fully right the wrongs of the past. But we can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World War II. In enacting a law calling for restitution and offering a sincere apology, your fellow Americans have, in a very real sense, renewed their traditional commitment to the ideals of freedom, equality, and justice.​​
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