Judgment without Trial

Contents [Includes List of Abbreviations]

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Preface and Acknowledgments

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pp. ix-xi

My mother once told me that she placed a packed suitcase next to the living room sofa soon after December 7, 1941. My father believed that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation would eventually come to take him to jail, although he didn’t know when it would happen—thus, the suitcase parked in the living room. ...

1. The Imprisonment Process

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pp. 3-13

After sundown on December 10, 1941, a midsize tuna-fishing boat cruised northward from Mexican waters toward the San Pedro harbor to unload its catch at the Franco-American Cannery. A U.S. Navy ship intercepted the vessel and escorted it up the coast. ...

2. Pre–World War II Preparations

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pp. 14-42

Decades before 1941, certain governmental agencies considered the possibility of, and then actively prepared for, the country’s entry into a future war. Immigrant nationals of potential enemy nations and their American-citizen children were of special concern to these agencies. ...

3. The Internment Process of the Justice and War Departments

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pp. 43-66

No one knew when the United States would enter the war, but many in the government believed the country was inevitably going to join in the fighting. By 1940, even though the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt had begun to aid its potential European allies, full-scale assistance efforts were constrained by the nation’s isolationist sentiments.¹ ...

4. The Territory of Hawaii

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pp. 67-87

The number of Japanese Americans living outside the contiguous forty-eight states, within the territory of Hawaii, was slightly larger than the population residing on the mainland. The very dissimilar treatment accorded these Issei and Nisei stands in stark contrast to the wartime experiences of the similar mainland population. ...

5. The Territory of Alaska and Latin America

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pp. 88-103

The wartime imprisonment process also affected people of Japanese descent in places far from the U.S. mainland, although it did so in different forms. This chapter will explore two of these areas. ...

6. Justice Department and Army Camps

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pp. 104-126

The Tuna Canyon Detention Station in Southern California, formerly an old Civilian Conservation Corps camp, was used as a temporary center to hold enemy aliens by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Justice. ...

7. The Arbitrary Process of Control

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pp. 127-159

The internment of the Issei, some Nisei, and other foreign nationals by the U.S. Department of Justice described in the previous chapters did not physically affect the vast majority of Nikkei in the continental United States.¹ Then, early in 1942, the Western Defense Command (WDC), through its Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA),...

8. Segregation Centers and Other Camps

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pp. 160-182

The War Relocation Authority (WRA) not only played a central role in incarcerating most of the Nikkei on the mainland but was responsible for imprisoning other types of inmates in separate centers as well. This chapter continues the discussion started in the previous chapter and begins with the government’s attempt to identify...

9. Abuses, Protests, and the Geneva Convention

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pp. 183-210

In their public relations pronouncements, government officials stressed the benevolence and humaneness of their treatment of World War II internees and inmates. For example, in 1944, the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Earl G. Harrison, said about the alien internment program:...

10. Imprisonment and Stigma

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pp. 211-222

During and after World War II, the U.S. government imprisoned nearly 120,000 Nikkei, the majority of whom were American citizens. They were detained in imprisonment centers without being charged with the commission of crimes, deprived of legal counsel and trials, and incarcerated, in most instances, for no stated justifiable reason or specified duration. ...

Notes

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pp. 223-290

Bibliography

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pp. 291-303

Index

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pp. 305-316