How American Families Survived During World War Ii
Top Image: President Ronald Reagan Signs The Reparations Bill for Japanese Americans with Pete Wilson Spark Matsunaga, Norman Mineta, Robert Masui, and Beak Lowrey. The National Archives, photo no. 75856233.
Amy Iwasaki Mass was only a daughter when her family was imprisoned in a camp built at the foot of an upside-downwards mountain in northwest Wyoming during World State of war 2. Comprised of limestone that is several hundred million years old, Heart Mountain stands upon much younger rocks. Over 300 1000000 years agone, northwest Wyoming was a tropical sea layered with limestone and aboriginal dolomite and granite. Heart Mount formed when the ancient rocks were raised and upended, causing a massive sail of limestone to split up and slide southeast. The sheet splintered into hunks and rested upon rocks that are about 55 million years former.
Originally office of the Apsáalooke (Crow) tribe'south homelands, the Heart Mountain Relocation Middle was i of 10 camps that incarcerated 120,000 Japanese Americans in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. The first incarcerees arrived on August 12, 1942 to drafty billet furnished with an overhead calorie-free, stove, and army cots. The Iwasakis arrived during the outset week of September 1942.
"My family bought army camp chairs with colorful lined seats on them because they were things we could fold upwardly and carry," said Mass to her grandson in the Museum'southward 2021 Electronic Field Trip, Japanese American Experiences in Earth State of war II. "It gave me the thought that camp was going to be a rustic, repose, at-home place to go to. Well, it wasn't. Information technology turned out to be there was no leaf. It was all tumbleweeds and a lot of dust flight around. And our house was 1 room with six cots and a potbelly stove that we could use to keep us warm."
Since there was no insulation or privacy, incarcerees blimp cracks with newspaper and rags and strung upwardly sheets to keep the harsh weather out. Noise traveled easily within the barracks considering the partitions did non touch the ceiling. Mass learned the concept of gaman in military camp, which she described as "the fashion Japanese were known for being very stoic and resilient and brave in the face of hardship."
"If nosotros wanted to be good children, nosotros were non allowed to have a tantrum or kick and scream and act nasty to our parents or anything like that because everybody could hear us next door. And the favorite social action in camp was gossip then that would hateful if you are acting bad everybody would detect out nigh it," Mass said.
While gaman helped instill good behavior in the young incarcerees, making friends with children their own age helped them get through daily life. Former US Secretary of Transportation and Congressman Norman Mineta and quondam Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson describe how they met during a Boy Lookout man jamboree at Eye Mountain in oral history interviews with The National WWII Museum.
"So this kid and I built a neat moat around our tent and he said, 'There'south a kid from my troop in that tent below usa. I don't really care for him. Would you mind if we cut the water to go out that manner?' It was no pare off my nose. So I said, 'Sure' Nosotros cut the water to exit that style," said Norman Mineta in his oral history.
"We set up a tent and did our tent piece of work, and then we got bullied by this guy, and we got above him in a kind of a topography at that place and it began to rain and we directed our overflow water to his tent," said Alan Simpson in his oral history.
"Went to the tent below us. Tent pegs pulled upward on that tent. Tent came down. The child in my tent [was] going, hee hee hee. Haw haw haw. Ho ho ho. Just laughing," said Mineta. "It was a wonderful thing, and he said that I cackled. I recall that's not true. I may have chuckled. But anyway, both of us, it was funny as hell," said Simpson.
Heart Mount closed on Nov 10, 1945. Every bit veterans returned from the war, the US government held iii lotteries for prospective homesteaders from 1947 to 1949. Wyoming homesteaders moved into the Heart Mountain barracks, living at the quondam prison camp until they were assigned homestead backdrop and sold a barrack for a dollar. Barracks were cut into halves or thirds and used as sheds, storage units, or homes. Although they were repurposed, Japanese Americans did not forget their years spent in them. For many, their wartime experiences affected them years after they were costless of barbed wire.
Mass'southward experiences led her to become a clinical social worker and participate in the redress move that culminated with the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. This police force gave surviving Japanese Americans $xx,000 in reparations and a formal amends by President Reagan for their incarceration during World War II. But its passage did not happen overnight. It took years to turn the redress movement into legislation.
In 1978, the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) formed the Redress Committee and appointed John Tateishi as its chair. The JACL and Tateishi went to the Hill to meet with California Representatives Mineta and Robert Matsui, equally well as Senators Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga. Similar Inouye, Matsunaga was a WWII veteran. He fought in the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. They began their political careers together when they were elected to the Hawaii Territorial Firm of Representatives in 1954. The JACL Redress Committee assumed the congressmen would agree with their idea for reparations. Inouye convinced them to switch from pursuing monetary compensation to creating a federal commission to investigate the causes and consequences of the incarceration.
Jimmy Carter signs the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Citizens Act into law. Courtesy of the Ron Ikejiri Drove, Densho Encyclopedia.
On August 2, 1979, Inouye and Matsunaga introduced Senate bill 1647 to institute the Committee on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC). In 1980, Congress and President Carter signed that bill into police force. The CWRIC gathered archival sources, scholarship, and personal papers that explained the government's decision and process for incarceration. The Committee too held 20 days of hearings. Over 750 policy makers and incarcerees in Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, New York, and Boston shared their experiences from July to December 1981. But not everyone supported the Commission.
The National Council for Japanese American Redress (NCJAR) formed in 1979 and challenged the JACL redress leadership by supporting a bill that demanded $15,000 in reparations and $15 for each day of incarceration. When the bill died in Congress, NCJAR filed a lawsuit in 1983 that demanded $220,000 in reparations. When the US Supreme Court heard it in 1986, they recommended that the case be heard by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. When it was dismissed in that court, the US Supreme Courtroom declined to reconsider it and NCJAR's redress efforts ended in 1988.
The National Coalition for Redress/ Reparations (NCRR) was a Sansei (the children of children born to ethnic Japanese in a new state of residence)-led grassroots effort for inclusion in the Commission hearings. Afraid that the hearings would be restricted to the JACL community, they encouraged working class and non-English language speaking incarcerees to evidence. Their efforts culminated in an evening hearing in Los Angeles and translators at the Los Angeles and San Francisco hearings. Mass testified at the Los Angeles hearings every bit a member of a mental wellness panel on August 6, 1981.
"It was interesting because it was not something that was popular among everybody. And I gauge the fact that I had been talking to my students, to my patients, and reading about other people's experiences with camp, I knew what a profound issue information technology had on all of us and and so I knew that was important to talk about even though it wasn't pop to talk most," Mass said.
To prepare, she attended the Los Angeles hearings days before her testimony.
"Lillian Bakery, who is very anti-Japanese, was at that meeting. And although I didn't come to the meetings until after she left, information technology was the day when she got so upset by some man who was giving a spoken language, she ran up to him and grabbed his papers. The sheriff had to come and take her away. I didn't see her, but when I went equally part of my preparation, I sat side by side to the women who were supporting her. When you see the hatred of somebody directed at you—and I was sitting very close to them—I thought to myself, information technology's that kind of dedicated hatred that got us into the army camp."
Officers assistance Jim Kawaminami to stop Lillian Baker from trying to take his papers and the redress hearings, 1981, Los Angeles, California. Courtesy of Densho Encyclopedia.
On February 24, 1983 the CWRIC issued its study Personal Justice Denied. It concluded that Executive Gild 9066 "was not justified by military necessity, and the decisions which followed from it—detention, catastrophe detention and ending exclusion—were not driven by analysis of military conditions. The broad historical causes which shaped these decisions were race prejudice, war hysteria, and failure of political leadership."
On June xvi, 1983, the CWRIC published its recommendations. It proposed an apology from the federal government, presidential pardons for those convicted of curfew and exclusion violations, a asking that federal agencies review applications for restitution related to incarceration, and recommended that the authorities establish a foundation for research and public educational activity on WWII incarceration.
The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was signed into law on August 10, 1988, and implemented the recommendations of the CWRIC. Throughout his time in part, Senator Matsunaga supported civil rights for Asian Americans and was the primary advocate for the Civil Liberties Human action. He personally talked to each of his colleagues in the Senate about how their support could help address the unjustness of the incarceration. His feel every bit a veteran, good-natured personality, and strong work ethic all helped him garner 75 cosponsors for the human action. According to Leslie T. Hatamiya in Righting a Incorrect: Japanese Americans and the Passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 "Matsunaga's efforts cannot be overemphasized."
In an oral history interview with The National WWII Museum, Mineta recalls how he and Simpson worked with Democrats and Republicans to get the Civil Liberties Act passed:
"I call up for the Japanese American customs, they shouldered the yoke of the evacuation and internment in 1942. And I think that yoke was finally lifted," said Mineta most that day 33 years ago.
Today, Mass, Mineta, and Simpson are on the Advisory Council of the Middle Mountain Wyoming Foundation. The Foundation preserves the personal stories, visual histories, and artifacts of Heart Mountain incarcerees. Information technology also preserves the original site of the camp and hosts annual pilgrimages. Mass has returned to Heart Mountain several times since the stop of World War 2. When she returned for the showtime time, she was on the way to Yellowstone National Park for vacation with her married man and young children.
"I didn't miss the fact that the camp was non there. I didn't miss the barracks not being at that place. Just I was very moved by the fact that Middle Mountain was nonetheless in that location. That this mountain, this very large, strong mountain was still there."In recent years, she'due south returned to Heart Mount for the almanac pilgrimages. "It made me feel really good that this was an opportunity for my family to learn and grow and really understand their history."
Run across the Writer
Helen Yoshida is a consultant, oral historian, and writer. She received her Main'due south degree in History from California State University Fullerton (CSUF) and her Bachelor'south degree in English from the University of California Irvine (UCI). She is currently the Oral History Interviewer and Research Assistant for the Documenting the Experiences of Mexican, Filipina, and Chicana Women in California Agronomics oral history project at CSUF's Lawrence de Graaf Eye for Oral and Public History (COPH). Previously, she worked for the National Instruction Association, Education Week, and the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation in Washington DC. Her writing has appeared inThe Atlantic, Education Week, Kokoro Kara, NEA Today, The Oral History Review, Oral History Review Blog, COPH Biennial Report, and the UCI School of Humanities, among others. She currently lives in Southern California.
Source: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/redress-and-reparations-japanese-american-incarceration
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