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43 3. Japantown Born and Reborn Comparing the Resettlement Experience of Issei and Nisei in Detroit, New York, and Los Angeles The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the unleashing of World War II in the Pacific wiped out the thriving Japanese communities on the Pacific coast of the United States. In the weeks that followed the onset of war, military officials on the West Coast became increasingly terrified of a Japanese invasion. They proceeded to single out the region’s Japanese American population as potential spies and saboteurs on the basis of their ancestry, and called for the mass “evacuation” of both Issei and Nisei from the West Coast.1 The movement was further fomented and abetted by white nativist organizations and agricultural and commercial groups, who saw an opportunity to rid themselves of their long-despised economic competitors, and by opportunistic politicians. The fact that there was no documented case of any disloyal activity by any person of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast, and that two-thirds of the community’s members, the Nisei, were American citizens did not ease the fears of their panicked neighbors. Rather, as West Coast defense commander General John DeWitt stated, the very absence of evidence only proved that a concentrated campaign of subversion had been prepared for the future. Anyway, DeWitt insisted, it was impossible to tell a loyal Japanese American from a disloyal one. “A Jap is a Jap,” he told his War Department superiors , Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. McCloy and Stimson soon overcame their initial doubts about the necessity and constitutionality of mass removal of Japanese Americans , and brought the matter into the White House.2 In response to the pressure from the military and West Coast political leaders, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (who had his own prejudices against ethnic Japanese) signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. Under authority of this order, the army forcibly expelled all residents of Japanese 44 / Resettlement and New Lives ancestry from the West Coast during the months that followed. In the process, the vast majority of families lost their property or were forced to sell it at fire sale prices. Once removed from their homes, the Japanese Americans were placed in a network of “Assembly Centers,” stockades in disused fairgrounds and racetracks where the Japanese Americans were housed in converted horse stalls and animal pens and treated by army administrators as prisoners. After several weeks or months, they were then transported under guard to a network of ten government-run “relocation centers” in remote desert areas or swamplands in the interior, where they sweltered in summer and often froze in winter. The inmates lived in hastily constructed tar-paper barracks, one room to a family. Health and sanitary facilities in the camps, particularly at the outset, were primitive. The War Relocation Authority, the government agency created to supervise the camps, deliberately kept food and salaries for all inmate workers at levels below that of the lowest-paid American soldier.3 Although War Department chiefs privately conceded as early as 1943 that there was no military necessity for continued confinement of the mass of the inmates, West Coast military commanders, under pressure from antiJapanese American politicians and media barons, long refused to reopen the excluded areas to people of Japanese ancestry. Furthermore, the government ’s mass removal policy convinced important elements of public opinion nationwide that the inmates represented a danger. There was therefore significant opposition to resettlement, and no strong wave of sentiment in their favor. The WRA gradually developed a parole system of sorts, to permit inmates to leave camp without mobilizing hostile public opinion against them. After filling out a compulsory “loyalty questionnaire” and being adjudged “loyal” by a joint military board, individuals were eligible to obtain “leave permits” to resettle outside the West Coast excluded area. The process remained slow and cumbersome—not only did candidates have to have offers of jobs and housing, but the WRA had to ensure that local public opinion was favorable to entry of Japanese Americans. The majority of Japanese Americans, unable to return home and unwilling or unable to resettle elsewhere, remained confined in the camps for the balance of the war. Nevertheless, approximately one-fourth of the confined Issei and Nisei did gain official permission to leave camp during these years and settle outside the West Coast. This first wave of resettlers was composed mostly of Nisei in their...

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