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2 Wartime Columns and Editorials Th e a r t ic l es in t h is sec t ion cover Larry Tajiri’s central role in Japanese American journalism and collective life as editor of the Paciἀc Citizen during the years of World War II. As mentioned in the introduction, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the coming of war, Tajiri’s job and happy life in New York disappeared. (The impact of the attack on the New York community is detailed in the first two selections reproduced here, one a dispatch for Nichi Bei that was rapidly filed but remained unpublished for three weeks, and the other an editorial for the inaugural issue of the new JACD Newsletter.) Larry and Guyo then returned to the West Coast, where Larry struggled to avert mass removal of West Coast Japanese Americans. His speech at the February 19, 1942, United Citizens Federation meeting, preserved in co-convener Togo Tanaka’s diary, is reproduced here for the first time. When removal proved unstoppable, the Tajiris accepted the JACL’s offer to transform the Paciἀc Citizen into a full-fledged newspaper. The selections that follow illustrate Tajiri’s multisided wartime mission to his community. First, it was his task to defend and vindicate the loyalty of the Japanese Americans. Tajiri pointed to the contributions of Japanese Americans to the war effort as proof of patriotism, and he eagerly reprinted expressions of support by non-Japanese. Tajiri campaigned for the reopening of military service to Nisei volunteers, and he trumpeted tirelessly the exploits of soldiers of the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team, both from the mainland and Hawaii (the Paciἀc Citizen’s stance irritated some Hawaiian Nisei soldiers, who felt that their particular contribution was being appropriated as a weapon by mainland interests). Meanwhile, he denounced with considerable fluency the opportunists who sought to make political capital out of anti-Japanese sentiment. In essays such as “Malice in Wonderland,” “Mr. District Attorney,” and “The Jap Questionnaire,” he scored anti-Nisei hostility in Congress and on the West Coast as a product of propaganda by race-baiters and opportunistic politicians, to whom he ascribed responsibility for fomenting mass removal. In accordance with his platform of loyalty and good citizenship, Tajiri strongly pushed resettlement of loyal inmates and the participation of Nisei in the larger society. His article “Relocation,” written at the invitation of the editors of the distinctive Topaz camp literary revue, Trek (and originally illustrated with drawings by Miné Okubo), is a plea for action as well as a sensitive piece of reporting. Its qualities as literature led the editors of the well-known 1991Asian American anthology The Big Aiiieeeee! to select it for inclusion. In “Mrs. Roosevelt Investigates,” he approvingly cites the First Lady’s assertion that confinement resulted from the growth of “inbred racial communities” (a charge that sounded to more than one Nisei like blaming them for their predicament) and endorses nationwide dispersal of inmates and restricted immigration. Conversely—and especially in the wake of mass unrest in late 1942 at Poston and Manzanar (described in chapter 3), during which JACL activists were derided as informers and targeted for beatings by factions of radical inmates—Tajiri actively favored segregation of all inmates whose patriotism seemed uncertain. As “Segregating the Disloyal” shows, he considered all dissident inmates to be pro-Axis thugs and troublemakers. His advocacy, added to that of congressional conservatives and the army, ultimately pushed an unwilling WRA to enact a full-scale segregation policy . Inmates were forced to submit to a “loyalty examination” and fill out a form made up of poorly drafted and largely irrelevant questions. The results were disastrous, as families and communities were divided over the proper responses. Those who gave the “wrong” answers were arbitrarily deemed “disloyal,” barred from release, and banished to a dismal “segregation center” at Tule Lake, while the “loyal” majority nevertheless remained confined. As mentioned, Tajiri likewise took an uncompromisingly negative stance toward the Nisei draft resisters of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee, as “The Bitter Harvest” and “The Rocky Shimpo” demonstrate, and he called for exemplary punishment. Even as he defended the Nisei, Tajiri urged them to join fully in the larger struggle against Nazism and Japanese militarism. He denounced Japan as barbaric and called for total victory. In articles such as those on Jack Shirai and on his prewar visit to Harbin, China, he consciously sought historical models for antifascist efforts by...

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