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7. The United States–Japanese War and Tenrikyo Ministers in America
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7 The United States–Japanese War and Tenrikyo Ministers in America Akihiro Yamakura In the period leading up to the U.S.-Japanese war (World War II), the U.S. government had been increasingly suspicious of Japanese religions practiced in Hawaii and the mainland. A 1941 report compiled by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the intelligence unit of the U.S. Navy, depicted Japanese in the United States as “inherently a religious race” who “depend upon the authority, the ritual, and the doctrines of Shintōism or Buddhism, or both religions, to act as moral factors to guide their personal conduct and to aid their spiritual well being, both in life and hereafter.” The report further explained that the priests of both religions were held “in high regard” and “looked upon” as “leaders in the communities”; the “anti-American and possibly subversive elements” it discovered in the Japanese communities were traced “almost invariably” to these priests. Their existence and influence within the ordinary Japanese immigrant community was a source of alarm: “Because of these priests, the nationalistic, Emperor-worshiping doctrines of Shintoism were kept alive among those Japanese whose tendencies were toward pro-Japanism and the fancied mission of the Yamato people. In the same way, certain priests and believers in Buddhism allowed the original meaning of their creed to become adulterated by the desire for Japanese expansion and the philosophy of Japanese supremacy over the other people of the earth.”1 Tenrikyo2 was one of the Japanese religions regarded as particularly suspect by the U.S. government before and during World War II. In a “History of Provost Marshal’s Office,” prepared by G-2, the Intelligence Office of the U.S. Army, Tenrikyo was mentioned along with six other Shintō sects of Izumo Taisha, Kotchira [Kompira] Jinsha, Daijingū [Hawaii Daijingū], Inari Jinsha, Katō Jinsha, and Maui Jinsha, and one Buddhist sect of Nichiren as dangerous religions. Membership in those sects, the document argues, “should be con- 142 akihiro yamakura sidered an adverse point” in any evaluation of subversive or disloyal activity.3 Many Tenrikyo ministers in mainland United States and in the territory of Hawaii were arrested and interned during the war. Historian Bob Kumamoto argues that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) classified Shintō priests in the United States “potentially dangerous” for believing “that their bodies belong to their god and sovereign, the Emperor of Japan.” Citing newspapers in San Francisco, he claims that “[t]he Konko and Tenrikyo Churches in San Francisco were of particular interest,” because the priests of these faiths “were reportedly receiving secret military instructions from Japan.”4 During the wartime incarceration of the Japanese Americans, it seems that Tenrikyo was particularly conspicuous, as much so as other major Japanese religions (Buddhism, Japanese Protestantism, and Catholicism) despite the miniscule proportion of the incarcerated population who subscribed to this faith. The War Relocation Authority (WRA), a civilian organization created in 1942 to oversee the detention of Japanese Americans, categorized the inmates according to their religions: Buddhist, Protestant, Catholic, “Tenri-kyo and similar sects” (meaning “sects of popular Shintō”), and Seichō no Iye, even though Tenrikyo followers comprised only 0.4 percent of the total inmate population in the WRA custody.5 The bishop of the Tenrikyo North American mission during the war received extraordinarily harsh treatment from the U.S. government. He was left at large for the first two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, then was interned in five different internment facilities in California, North Dakota, New Mexico, Texas, and New Jersey. He remained incarcerated until April 1947, a year and eight months after the surrender of Japan, longer than most other Japanese internees. Typically Tenrikyo ministers, including its North American bishop, carefully avoided politics, especially anti-American or antiadministration activities , both before the war and during the internment. Why, then, were these Tenrikyo ministers arrested and the bishop kept in internment so long after the war? What about their faith and behavior provoked such intense suspicions on the part of the U.S. government? How did the bishop respond to the incarceration and perceive how he and his compatriots were treated? These are the themes of this chapter. It should be noted that what caused the arrest and internment of Tenrikyo ministers also applies to almost every Japanese religious sect and denomination that was doing missionary work in the United States before World War II. Although Tenrikyo especially aroused the U.S. government’s suspicions—for example, Tenrikyo’s collaboration...