Common Ground: The Japanese American National Museum and the Culture of Collaborations

8. Coming to Terms: America’s Concentration Camps

COMING TO TERMS 101 8 8 Coming to Terms Karen L. Ishizuka DURING WORLD WAR II, WHILE THE UNITED STATES FOUGHT for freedom and liberty abroad, at home it quietly rounded up men, women, and children from the West Coast, Hawai‘i, Alaska, and even South America and put them in what historians, social commentators, and government officials called “concentration camps.”2 Although the United States was at war with Italy and Germany as well as Japan, only those of Japanese ancestry—both immigrant residents who were at AMERICA’S CONCENTRATION CAMPS Thanks to Art Hansen, Irene Hirano, and Lloyd Inui for reading and commenting on this chapter. This chapter is adapted from Reclaiming America’s Concentration Camps: Community as Curator, to be published by the University of Illinois Press. Versions of it were presented at “Confronting the Past: Memory, Identity, and Society: A Comparative and Cross-Cultural Conference,” sponsored by the “1939” Club Holocaust Memorial Fund and the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies, February 4, 2001, Los Angeles; and at the American Association of State and Local History Annual Meeting, November 2002, Portland , Oregon. Has the Gestapo come to America? Have we not risen in righteous anger at Hitler’s mistreatment of Jews? Then, is it not incongruous that citizen Americans of Japanese descent should be similarly mistreated and persecuted? —JAMES OMURA, testimony before U.S. Congress Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, February 23, 19421 KAREN L. ISHIZUKA 102 that time not allowed to become naturalized citizens and their American-born children—were uprooted en masse from their homes and placed in barbed wire compounds surrounded by armed guards. By the end of the war 120,313 Japanese Americans had spent a few months to three years confined in these camps. In a country where one is innocent until proven guilty, these thousands of American residents and citizens were sentenced without charges, jury trials, or any manner of due process of law. Although they were incarcerated for allegedly posing a threat to national security, there was no evidence—then or since—to support the allegation. This little-known chapter is among the darkest in the history of a country dedicated to the principles of democracy and whose citizens are supposedly protected by the U.S. Constitution. Whereas many Americans are not aware that such an abrogation of constitutional rights even occurred, generations of Americans of Japanese ancestry have struggled and continue to struggle with its memory and meaning. In 1994 I curated the exhibition America’s Concentration Camps: Remembering the Japanese American Experience, which opened at the Japanese American National Museum (National Museum) in Los Angeles and was designed by the award-winning team of Ralph Appelbaum Associates, led by Melanie Ide and T. Kevin Sayama. A traveling version has since been exhibited at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, the process of which is the focal point of this chap8 .1 Mass Transfer—inmates held at the Heart Mountain Concentration Camp inWyoming duringWorldWar II who answered “no” to a controversial “loyalty questionnaire” were segregated at theTule Lake camp in California in 1943. Seen here on September 27, 1943, the inmates await their transfer at the Heart Mountain campgrounds. Over 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced into concentration camps duringWorldWar II, many losing their homes and businesses . Almost five decades later, some but not all of the surviving former inmates of the camps received an apology and redress from the United States government for this unconstitutional act. The mass incarceration was spotlighted in the Japanese American National Museum’s highly acclaimed exhibition, America’s Concentration Camps: Remembering the Japanese American Experience, which opened at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York on April 3, 1998. Gift ofYoshiko Hosoi Sakurai, Japanese American National Museum [98.110.5]. COMING TO TERMS 103 ter, as well as the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta, Georgia; the California Historical Society in San Francisco, California; and the Little Rock Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock, Arkansas.3 Steven Briganti, executive director of the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation , invited the National Museum to display the exhibition at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York’s harbor in August 1995. The invitation to present the exhibition at such a national and international landmark as Ellis Island was a welcome opportunity to increase public awareness, especially because Ellis Island functioned as a little-known detention center for so-called enemy...