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Chapter 2: To Undo a Mistake is Always Harder Than Not to Create One Originally
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Chapter 2 To Undo a Mistake is Always Harder Than Not to Create One Originally Eleanor Roosevelt nhiS essay is a draft ofan article that had been written for Collier's Magazine by Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt visited the Gila River Relocation Center in Arizona in 1943 in response to charges that the Japanese American evacuees there were being "coddled" (Figures 2.1 and2.2). The manuscript, courtesy ifthe Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (Hyde Park, New York), waspublishedin a revisedform October 10, 1943. Itis reproduced herefrom the original draft with only minor editorial changes. We are at war with Japan, and yet we have American citizens, born and brought up in this country whose parents are Japanese. This is the essential problem. A good deal has already been written about it. One phase, however, I do not think as yet has been adequately stressed. To really cover it, we must get the background straight first. In this nation of over one hundred and thirty million, we have 127,500 Japanese or Japanese Americans. Those who have lived for a 19 long time in the Midwest or in the east and who have had their records checked by the FBI, have been allowed to go on about their business, whatever it may be, unmolested. The recent order removing aliens from strategic areas, of course, affects those who were not citizens, just as it affects other citizens, however. 112,000 Japanese of the total 127,500 lived on the West Coast. Originally they were much needed on ranches, and on large truck and fruit farms, but as they came in greater numbers, people began to discover that they were not only convenient workers, they were competitors in the labor field, and the people of California began to be afraid oftheir own importation, so the Exclusion Act was passed in 1917. No people of the Oriental race could become citizens of the United States, and no quota was given to the Oriental nations in the Pacific. They were marked as different from other races and they were not treated on an equal basis. This happened because in one part of our country they were feared as competitors, and the rest of our country knew them so little and cared so little about them that they did not even think about the principle that we in this country believe in - that of equal rights for all human beings. We granted no citizenship to Orientals, so now we have a group of people, some ofwhom have been here as long as fifty years who have not been able to become citizens under our laws. Long before the war, an oldJapanese man told me that he had great grand-children born in this country and that he had never been back to Japan, all that he cared about was here on the soil ofthe United States, and yet he could not become a citizen. The children of the Japanese born in this country, however, were undue emphasis upon the control ofthe older members ofthe family, or the respect and obedience that is due to mere age. This large group ofJapanese on the West Coast preserved those family traditions, because since they were feared they were also discriminated against. Japanese were not always welcome buyers ofreal estate. They were not always welcome neighbors, or participators in community undertakings. As always happens with groups that are discriminated against, they gather together and live among their own racial group. The younger ones made friends in school and college and became a part of the community life, and prejudices lessened against them. Their elders were not always sympathetic to the changes thus brought about in manners and customs. citizens automatically and now we have about 42,500 native born Japanese who are known as Issei, and about 85,000 native born Japanese American citizens, known as Nisei. Some of these Japanese Americans have gone to our American schools and colleges and have never known any other country or any other life than the life here in the United States. Sometimes their parents have brought them up, as far as family life is concerned , in the old Japanese family tradition. Age has its privileges and the respect that is due the elders in a family is strongly emphasized in Oriental life. So for a youngJapanese American to go against his parents is more serious than for other children. As a rule in the United States we do not lay Figure 2...