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5 The T erritory of Alaska and Latin America T he 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. The first is in the extreme north—the territory of Alaska, where after the declaration of war, the U.S. Army quickly took command of the inhabitants. The discussion here addresses the rationalization and justification by which almost all persons of Japanese ancestry were removed from the territory and shipped to lower mainland states. It will become apparent that when the military first took control, the process in Alaska was similar to that in Hawaii. Later, however, the situation changed, and arrests of Issei and removal of all persons of Japanese ancestry became identical to procedures on the West Coast. A second area discussed in this chapter is south of the U.S. border, in certain Latin American countries. There, designated persons were arrested, brought against their will to the United States, and interned in Justice Department camps. This intriguing segment of a broader American story demonstrates the pervasiveness of the U.S. government’s political influence and power, which enabled it to become involved in the affairs of foreign governments in this hemisphere. the territory of alaska Only a few people of Japanese descent lived in the territory of Alaska in 1940. There were about 240 foreign nationals and citizens of Japanese ancestry living there, out of a total population of 72,524. Their presence was almost unnoticed by other residents, since Alaska encompasses a large land area and its population has always been sparse and widely dispersed, yet this minority was not entirely ignored . The eventual exclusion of Japanese nationals from Alaska was part of the prewar plan of March 11, 1941—the same plan that affected Nikkei in the contiguous states.1 In prewar meetings, representatives of the War and Justice Departments discussed Alaska’s “dangerous” persons. Soon after, agents for the fbi in Juneau began to compile a custodial detention list, and by May 5, they had a roster of sixty foreign nationals of unspecified designations ready for possible arrest. Within this group, the fbi identified only eight individuals as dangerous; the re- mainder were placed in the“potentially dangerous”category.2 On December 5, fbi director John Edgar Hoover instructed the Juneau agents to hold discussions with representatives of the Office of Naval Intelligence and the army’s Military Intelligence Division to formulate plans for the “immediate apprehension of Japanese aliens . . . who have been recommended [for] custodial detention.”3 Two days later, on December 7, 1941, the commanding general of the Alaska Defense Command, Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., received a priority telegram from the provost marshal general in Washington, D.C., instructing him to contact the U.S. attorney in Juneau. He was to provide facilities for the internment of eleven supposedly dangerous foreign nationals as specified by the Justice Department.4 The fbi arrested the eleven men and handed them over to the ins, which in turn sent the internees to Fort Richardson, nine miles north of Anchorage , for detention.5 Although their ethnicity is not specified, the eleven were most likely nine Japanese nationals and two German nationals.6 On December 8, another telegram ordered the commander to place German and Italian nationals in an enemy alien category.7 From December 10, however, it was not clear which government agency was responsible for the enemy aliens, and weeks elapsed before the issue was resolved. On December 10, fbi director Hoover told his Juneau agents that the army had instructed the Alaska Defense commanding general to assume responsibility for all matters concerning foreign nationals. Hoover interpreted this instruction to mean that“all arrests and detention of such persons will be handled by them.”Moreover, the fbi would “have no responsibility or duty to perform incident to the foreign national enemy arrest administration and internment” except to give the army whatever information it had on file concerning the enemy aliens.8 The next day, the Juneau agents reported to the fbi that seven foreign nationals, all Issei, were in custody. The army then told the fbi that it wanted only partial jurisdiction over the territory —namely, the Alaska Peninsula and the adjoining Aleutian, Pribilof, and Kodiak Islands.9 Hoover certainly knew of the prewar agreement between the Justice and War Departments establishing their...

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