The news of the bloody riot which exploded in Manzanar on the eve of the first "Pearl Harbor" anniversary, December 7, 1942, reached us at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. I read a long account in the Minneapolis Star-Journal. Fred Tayama, who had returned to Manzanar with me from Salt Lake City only a few days before, had been beaten up.
Military guards had moved into the concentration camp and already bursts of machine gun fire had caused casualties among evacuees. The few extremists among the small number of pro-Japanese militarists who capitalized on the Caucasian administration's bungling and bullying in camp and upon the raw bitterness of the uprooted people, had been removed from Manzanar. On the other hand, those who had spoken out against Japanese militarism and fascism, and/or for the America of democratic traditions, were also removed.
A few days later, I received a letter from my wife, Taeko, and I was surprised to learn that she had remained in Manzanar. She wrote that in mid-day a masked gang had broken into Tayama's barracks room and attacked him with clubs. His daughter, who was alone with him at the time, yelled for help and finally scared the men away. Shortly thereafter, the pro-militarist leaders mobilized a gang which they led to ransack the hospital in search of Tayama. They combed the hospital, but a doctor had hidden Tayama skillfully.
When I met Tayama months later he said the mob brushed past his hiding place.
An armored ambulance from the nearby military police camp rushed into Manzanar to pick up Tayama. He was a victim of the pre-evacuation rumors that the leaders of the Japanese American Citizens League had been instrumental in bringing about the evacuation. Nothing was further from the truth, but in the hysteria-filled atmosphere and mass suffering and injustice, men like Tayama became scapegoats. The white racists and vested interests on the outside that caused our exile, had actually won the day.
Taeko's letter said that when one of the top pro-militarist leaders was picked up by the police, his colleagues led a mob to the police station in demanding the former's release. Numerous evacuees tagged along to observe the demonstration. The military guards fired into the mob, killing a Nisei and wounding others; Another Nisei died in the hospital. The mob pushed toward the administration building to take down the Stars and Stripes. At that moment, Nisei Boy Scouts gathered around the flagpole and challenged the angry demonstrators. The mob was stunned, lost momentum and gradually moved away.
"Manzanar after the riot, is like a camp of the dead," Taeko's letter said. "Almost no one saunters out and the streets are practically empty. Some people are mourning the dead, some are wondering what had happened. The great majority had not) taken part in the riot. They are remorseful and bitter that this has happened and has brought a mantle of sorrow and shame to this community."
She wrote she was glad that I had left, for on the night of the riot a mass meeting was held in our block, where most of the pro-militarist ringleaders lived. A speaker shouted "get so-and-so," and Taeko heard my name mentioned. She ran into the barracks and locked the door.
Period of Doubt and Waiting
I felt strongly that Taeko should leave the camp but she had nowhere to go. She informed me that we were going to have a child.
From Fort Snelling I moved to nearby Camp Savage which was a Military Intelligence Service Language School. Practically all the students were Japanese Americans, being trained for duty in the Pacific and Asiatic war theaters.
We had Hawaiian-born Nisei who had volunteered for intelligence service from the 100th Infantry Battalion which was then stationed at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. After the War Department had decided to use Nisei ground troops in Europe against Germans and Italians rather than against Japanese, the unit was shipped to the Mainland. The men waited around, performed repeat maneuvers and months slipped by. Some doubted they would be sent overseas, those at Camp Savage told us, so they had volunteered for intelligence service.
Hawaiian Nisei Answered Back at "Jap" Baiting
At Camp Savage, I saw the difference between Nisei brought up in different environments. For example, the Hawaiian-Nisei would not stand "Jap" baiting. Shortly after they arrived at Camp Savage, some of the cocky and prejudiced white defense workers who had been calling the Mainland Nisei names without comeback in the restaurants in the town of Savage were forced to change their manners. One of the Hawaiian-Nisei spoke with his fists and they were surprisingly eloquent and convincing to the defense workers. After that, they respected all Nisei.
We heard stories that the Hawaiian-Nisei at Camp McCoy occasionally tangled with Texans who had a grudge against them because the Japanese troops had captured or killed Texans at Corregidor and Bataan. The Hawaiians showed the Texans through the "hard way" that they too, were Americans in uniform.
Learned To Fight Better Through Organized Efforts
On the other hand, the West Coast Nisei were generally less aggressive and outspoken and would not throw their fists when the white men called them "dirty Japs." They had a reserve about them which I felt was basically akin to the attitude of the Negroes in the deep South who are conditioned by pressure, intimidation and brutality of the white supremacists to know "their place." Unlike the Hawaiian-Nisei, who had enjoyed more freedom, they had been discriminated against and oppressed on the West Coast to a far greater extent. Comparatively, the Hawaiian-Nisei were more like Negroes in the Northern states.
The Mainland Nisei, particularly their leaders, struggle through political action for equality under the Constitution. They have become, during and after the war, better organized and more experienced to fight against discrimination and are spearheading the fight for naturalization rights for all aliens now barred by the government. Among the Hawaiian-Nisei, such concerted struggle is absent.
We All Took Studies Seriously
At Camp Savage, we studied Japanese from seven in the morning till four in the afternoon, with an hour's break at noon. Classroom competition was intense and the study load heavy. After supper we studied from seven until nine, but the classrooms did not empty until the lights went out at eleven. Quite a number of us went to the latrine after this and spent another hour or two with books wide open on our laps, sitting on toilet bowls. When inspecting officers made their rounds, we pretended the books were incidental and that we were there for legitimate reasons. I had a friend who studied in his bunk after lights went out. Under cover of his blanket, he used a flashlight.
Almost every student took his studies with deep seriousness. We realized that a useful intelligence operator would be one who could interrogate Japanese prisoners or translate captured documents all by himself. For those with little language background the going was rugged.
The Meaning of the War Was Clear
As for me, I appreciated this opportunity to participate in the struggle against militarism and fascism, for I had come to understand more clearly what they were through my evacuation experiences. There was not only fascism abroad but its counterpart within our own country—a movement which poisons people's minds to hate and persecute, breaking out in jim crow, anti-Semitism, anti-Orientalism, attacks against militant trade unions, red-baiting, white supremacy, subjugation of American Indians and the like. I was fortunate that I knew what I was fighting for. Fascism abroad was a greater threat but when the war was over, the struggle against native fascism had to go on.
I believe I spent more time than any student at Camp Savage on studies during our six-month term. For this diligence the student body voted at the end of the term that I had made the most progress and I won a prize. I believed in the war and that made me apply myself to the utmost in my studies.
Segregation at Camp Savage of the Whites and Nisei
A few elderly white officers studied with us. These were repatriates from Japan who had returned aboard the Grippsholm. The commandant of Camp Savage had taken them into the army immediately and made them majors and captains. Their aptitude for Japanese was far from impressive to deplorable, considering they had lived in Japan 10 to 15 years. For example, when students were reshuffled after the first six weeks, a major was demoted five grades and a captain two grades. These white officers were to supervise us when we were assigned to duty after graduation. Usually 10 Nisei constituted a team, with a white officer leading it.
As time went on, white students who had studied six months of Japanese at the University of Michigan came to Camp Savage. They were called "cadets" and after the short period of training at the camp, they were to become officers. Nisei who studied with them, in the same classrooms, under the same instructors, and who covered the same subjects, were to be assigned under them and were not made officers the same as the white cadets, upon graduation.
Jim Crow Extended To Another American Minority
The cadets were concentrated in lower classes since their knowledge of Japanese was limited. They lived in new and better barracks and ate in the officers' mess. This was segregation along the color line and it was jim crow extended to another American minority. It was a slice of the ugly bigotry and prejudice that bars Negroes from schools attended by whites in the South, that limits students of Asian and Jewish ancestries from professional training in our universities and discriminates more harshly against Negroes in the same fields of endeavor.
I felt that these young men trained for the officer caste at Camp Savage because of color would have preferred to be with us, and among us. Their freedom was restricted, for they had no chance to compete with us equally and stand on their merits. Some of them who were less gifted became the butt of Nisei jokes. You would hear remarks like: "Look at that officer material!"
When One Is Discriminated Against, No One Is Free
In a limited and in a broader sense, when one people is discriminated against or oppressed, there is no freedom and genuine happiness even for the privileged. Thus it was at Camp Savage, where the whole school depended on Nisei language specialists Thus it was at military camps where I saw Negro soldiers segregated in barracks areas, in recreation and even in military assignment. They were fighting the same foreign enemy as the others, and more intensely, for democratic rights at home to give full meaning to the Constitution.
In late January, the War Department announced it would activate a special combat team of Japanese Americans. In the barracks, the Nisei debated whether this was a forward step. It was, by the sheer fact that mass enlistment was reinstituted. But why the segregation? Why not throw open all the services to Japanese Americans, the navy and the marines included? Some argued that a separate unit would afford the Nisei a better chance to prove their loyalty more conclusively.
As Others Looked At Us
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose speeches agitated the colonial and semi-colonial people in faraway lands to strive for liberation from foreign imperialism arid oppressive landlords at) home and made them look to the U. S. as a nation which was on their side because our country had the proud democratic tradition of the spirit of 1776 said, as he approved the War Department proposal for a Nisei combat unit: "... Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry."
As expected, the professional anti-Oriental racists on the West Coast immediately protested this forward step. Nothing would please them more than Nisei ignominy. And public officials of the jim crow South joined in the attempt to sabotage the plan. Rep. John E. Rankin of Mississippi, well known for his services on the House un-American Activities Committee, advocated in Congress our deportation after the war, with the government purchasing our property. In the meantime, he wanted us to be used in labor battalions. Like Sen. Albert B. Chandler of Kentucky, he said the South would ally with the West Coast on white racial ties to combat the Japanese American menace.
The racists lost a round. In Hawaii, 10,000 volunteers answered the call for 2,500 Japanese Americans.
In Order To Take a Deep Sounding . . .
Response from the 10 relocation centers was not as impressive. In order to take a deep sounding of this poorer response, it requires a sympathetic understanding of the hardships, sorrow and bitterness of the evacuees. And to further rub salt into the wound, the government passed out questionnaires in camps during the recruitment, to be answered by all aliens and citizens over 17 years of age.
Question No. 28 asked: "Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese Emperor, or any other foreign government, power or organization?"
The Need To Awaken Democratic Consciousness
The alien Japanese whom discriminatory U. S. laws bar from naturalization, could not answer in the affirmative. They would be people without a country if they forswore allegiance to Japan. America was not offering them an alternative of citizenship. After the war, Japan would remain. She was their country. What mattered was that Japan should be democratic and no longer militaristic. And in this country the aliens should be given the right to naturalization. But this is still being fought for by certain Asian and Pacific peoples, today.