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Two The Making of the 100th
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
19 ON DECEMBER 7, 1941, 158,000 persons of Japanese ancestry lived in the Hawaiian Islands1 and 127,000 in the continental United States. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor horrified not just a majority of these people but almost every one of them, whether they had emigrated from Japan or had been born American citizens. Few, if any, could foresee how profoundly their lives would be changed as a consequence of this single day in history. The AJAs,2 both of Hawaii and the Mainland, became suspect of disloyalty by many other Americans, some in high positions in the government. However, the treatment of the ethnic Japanese in the Territory of Hawaii differed radically from that administered to their counterparts in the States, where most of them lived on the West Coast. Most residents of Hawaii accepted their AJA neighbors as loyal subjects of the country in which they lived, and both civilian and military leaders knew how much the economy of Hawaii depended upon this largest of the racial groups there.3 Such was not the case with the very vocal special interest organizations , primarily in California, who had long sought to expel all Orientals from their society. They whipped up antagonism against all the Issei ( Japanese immigrants) and Nisei (American-born children of Japanese immigrants), drowning out the voices of a small minority who called for fair treatment under the law. On the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, more than fifteen hundred Nisei were serving in the army in Hawaii, most of them in the two infantry regiments of the National Guard,4 which had become a part of the regular army in 1940. In December of 1940, selective service boards began to process inductees; in the twelve months before the war began, of the three thousand called up, about fifteen hundred were Nisei, many of them volunteers. In addition, AJA students had joined ROTC units T W O The Making of the 100th 20 COMBAT CHAPLAIN of Oahu schools and of the University of Hawaii. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, infantrymen were posted on the beaches to repel the expected invasion; many of these defenders were Nisei. Before long, questions were raised in Honolulu about the advisability of having in the U.S. Army men who looked like our Pacific enemies . In particular, navy brass protested the presence of AJAs. In January of 1942, the 317 Nisei soldiers of the Hawaii Territorial Guard were discharged without explanation. Some of these dischargees petitioned the military governor to accept their services in whatever way he saw fit to use them; within a month 150 of them, almost all University of Hawaii graduates, became a labor contingent under the Army Corps of Engineers. By the evening of the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, 370 Japanese had been arrested because they were Buddhist or Shinto priests, or Japanese-language school officials, or commercial fishermen, or Kibei (American-born Japanese who had spent some time in Japan attending school), not because of any acts of sabotage or disloyalty.5 Eventually only 981 aliens and citizens of Japanese background were sent to the Mainland for relocation as under suspicion, but not for committing any illegal acts. The great majority of the persons of Japanese ancestry in the Territory (40,000 of them were aliens) remained there and, like other Americans, threw all their resources into the national effort against a common enemy. Rumors notwithstanding, not one single act of sabotage was ever performed by any Japanese American in Hawaii. Indeed, after long investigation on the Mainland, the verdict was the same there: no act of sabotage by any AJA on the West Coast. Induction of Nisei was discontinued by the end of March, both in the Islands and on the Mainland. During April, troop replacements (from the West Coast) displaced the AJAs who had been guarding Hawaii. In May, the War Department ordered the formation of an allNisei battalion from Hawaii to be transferred to the continental United States. Staffing of this segregated unit was left in the hands of the Hawaiian Department of the Army. The commanding officer of the infantry regiment in which the AJAs were assembled recommended an officer of his choice as the CO of the new battalion. His executive officer, Lt. Col. Farrant L. Turner, objected and insisted that he wanted the position. The chief of staff had the final say; he appointed Turner, who then selected James A. Lovell as his plans and...