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12 Camp Dharma Japanese-American Buddhist Identity and the Internment Experience of World War II Duncan Ryūken Williams February 18, 1942, early morning, still in our nightclothes and huddled by the heater, we listened grimly to the news over the radio. There was a loud rapping on the back door. Three men stood there. They were the FBI. “We came to arrest Rev. Matsuura,” said one, as they came through the door. . . . I was instructed to pack a change of clothing for my husband. Hurriedly, I put his underwear and toiletries in a bag. Separately, I wrapped his koromo and kesa, seiten and Kanmuryojukyo sutra. Shinobu Matsuura1 introduction: targeting buddhists Buddhist priests, classified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as the most potentially dangerous of Japanese aliens, were among the first people arrested by government officials beginning in December 1941, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.2 Shinobu Matsuura’s husband, Reverend Issei Matsuura, was one of the first Buddhist priests taken by the FBI, in the early hours of the morning, not knowing whether he would ever see his family again. Sent to the U.S. Justice Department’s “alien enemy” camps, such as those in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Crystal City, Texas, Japanese -American Buddhist priests of all denominations, along with Shinto priests, were targeted by the government. Unlike Japanese-American Christian priests and ministers, U.S. government officials closely associated Buddhists with Japan and thus with potentially subversive activity. As Bob Kumamoto has noted, “The ‘peculiarity’ of Eastern languages, religions , customs, and physical appearance had always separated the Japanese from the mainstream of American society. Once considered inferior and insignificant, these ethnic distinctions were now considered by the government as anti-American, potentially subversive and somehow threatening to American security.” This perception that Buddhists, in con191 trast to Christians, were more “Japanese” than “American” was held not only by the FBI and the Wartime Relocation Authority (WRA), but also by the public at large and by some members of the Japanese-American community . The history of Buddhism in the internment camps, as well as the subsequent development of Japanese-American Buddhism, centers around this question of identity, both ethnic and religious. The first Japanese Buddhist priests arrived in Hawaii and the United States mainland in the 1890s to minister to the first-generation immigrants , most of whom were Buddhist, who initially moved to Hawaii to work on the plantations and to the mainland as contract laborers for railroad , lumber, mining, and cannery companies, as well as on farms. By 1900, the Japanese immigrant population within the United States and Hawaii had risen to 24,326 people. Most of these were transient men. However , by 1930 the Japanese-American population had grown to 138,834, and consisted largely of families with stable jobs and even small businesses .3 By the eve of World War II, Buddhist temples functioned simultaneously as religious and community centers in all areas where there was a high concentration of Japanese-Americans, especially in California. Buddhist priests of the Jōdo, Jōdo Shin, Nichiren, Shingon, and Sōtō Zen sects were sent by their respective headquarters temples in Japan to serve as missionaries in the United States. That the FBI targeted these Buddhist priests as potential subversives had little to do with the fact that Buddhist temples, especially those of the Jōdo Shin tradition, had participated in fund-raising campaigns for the Japanese Imperial Army in Manchuria.4 Japanese-American Buddhist ties to the Japanese military or intelligence agencies, according to FBI surveillance records, were fairly tenuous. Alan Hynd’s 1943 “exposé” of the JapaneseGerman spy network in the years immediately preceding the war, titled Betrayal from the East: The Inside Story of Japanese Spies in America, could only cite one incident.5 The FBI apparently suspected that the Los Angeles Kōyasan Buddhist Temple held spy meetings involving members of the Japanese consulate, Sachiko Furusawa (an advisor to the temple’s women’s society and the wife of a doctor who apparently had ties to Germanspies),andotherunidentifiedfigures.Atoneparticularmeeting,the FBI suspected that these people discussed detonation devices to be placed on the American naval fleet. In reality, the FBI only had unsupported notions that Buddhist priests were more “pro-Japan” than other members of the Japanese-American community. Nevertheless, the FBI classified priests as “known dangerous Group A suspects,” along with members of the Japanese consulate, fishermen, and influential businessmen...

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