Editor’s note: This story contains racial slurs in a historical context. 

“Japs live like rats, breed like rats, and act like rats. We don’t want them permanently located in our state.” –Chase Clark, Idaho Governor 1941-1943.

“Down in our hearts we cried and cursed this government every time when we showered with sand. We slept in the dust; we breathed the dust; we ate the dust.” -Joseph Kurihara, an internee at the Manzanar internment camp in California.

“If we were put there for our protection, why were the guns at the guard towers pointed inward, instead of outward?” –Anonymous Internee.

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The treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II is a story whose moral lesson warns American society today. 

In the aftermath of the Empire of Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, the United States was thrust into World War II. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which forcibly relocated people of Japanese ancestry to 10 desolate internment camps across California, Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Arkansas. In addition, a number of ethnic Germans, Italians and Aleuts were also interned by the United States government. There was no due process or any legal means of recourse for those interned.  

About 120,000 people of Japanese origin — most of them American citizens — were forced to quickly sell their homes, businesses, and possessions, often at deflated prices, and relocate to these camps. Conditions were far from comfortable: internees lived in uninsulated barracks, used common bathroom facilities, and had limited hot water. In footage of life in the camps, internees are shown being forced to construct their own prisons. While not the norm, violence did occur at times in the camps — there were cases of guards shooting internees and tear gassing rioters. 

Despite these hardships, Japanese Americans established communities within the camps and ran schools, hospitals, places of worship, farms, and newspapers. Children were educated, albeit in overcrowded schools, and played sports. Japanese Americans turned to the Zen Buddhist ideal of gaman, a Japanese word meaning to “bear the seemingly unbearable with dignity and patience.” They made art out of scraps for comfort and emotional survival. 

The government’s stated intention behind Japanese internment was to prevent Japanese espionage — but there were also deep-seated motivations of racism. 

Wartime propaganda at the time portrayed the Japanese as a buck-toothed race that were less than animals. A cartoon by Dr. Seuss depicted a line of racially caricatured Japanese Americans lining up to receive bombs to commit terrorism against the United States. Satirical “Japanese hunting licenses” were produced and sold as novelty items. 

Economic interests were at play as well in the government’s decision to relocate the Japanese population. In Hawaii, Japanese people were not interned in part because they served as essential field workers to the island’s sugar and pineapple plantations. On the other hand, in California white farmers pushed for Japanese internment so they could take over market share from Japanese farmers. 

“If all of the Japs were removed tomorrow, we’d never miss them… because the white farmers can take over and produce everything the Jap grows. And we don’t want them back when the war ends, either.” – Head of the California Grower-Shipper Vegetable Association 

In spite of widespread prejudice, Japanese Americans stepped up to serve their country in World War II. 

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was composed entirely of Japanese Americans and is the most decorated military unit in American history. They fought bravely in Europe against the Nazis and were even made honorary Texans after the war for their heroic rescue of a surrounded Texan National Guard unit in the mountains of southern France. The 442nd liberated French cities and even fought together with the African-American 92nd Infantry Division to push the Germans out of northern Italy.

The 442nd’s motto was “Go For Broke,” a phrase derived from Hawaiian gambler slang meaning to put everything on the line in an effort to win it all. Their motivations for fighting were complex; many Japanese Americans were incredibly patriotic and determined to serve their country. At the same time, many also felt that if they served their country well, their families would be released from the internment camps. 

While most of the American public favored Japanese internment during World War II, there were also voices that spoke out against discrimination. Military service members fighting on the frontlines urged the public to treat Japanese Americans fairly on the grounds of American ideals. 

“As a U.S. Marine, I am not in the habit of begging anyone for anything, but there is one thing I will beg for. I beg my fellow citizens to give the loyal Japanese Americans their God-given right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that, I sincerely hope, is guaranteed by our Constitution.” – Anonymous veteran of the Guadalcanal campaign in “Time” magazine, 1943

“I am one of the fortunate Marines who have recently returned to this country after serving in the offensive against the Japanese on Guadalcanal … We find … a condition behind our backs that stuns us. We find that our American citizens, those of Japanese ancestry, are being persecuted, yes, persecuted as though Adolf Hitler himself were in charge … We find that the California American Legion is promoting a racial purge.

I’m putting it mildly when I say it makes our blood boil … We shall fight this injustice, intolerance, and un-Americanism at home! We will not break faith with those who died … We have fought the Japanese and are recuperating to fight again. We can endure the hell of battle, but we are resolved not to be sold out at home.” – PFC Robert Borcher in “Time” Magazine, 1943

On the civil liberties front, Japanese Americans tried to argue against the constitutionality of the government’s policies ranging from internment to curfews. Four cases went to the Supreme Court: Korematsu v. United States, Hirabayashi v. United States, Yasui v. United States, and Endo v. United States. Out of these, only Endo was successful. 

In the most famous of these cases, Korematsu v. United States, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit against the government alleging that Japanese internment violated the constitutional rights of Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American who was arrested for failing to report to a relocation site. The case went to the Supreme Court, where a 6-3 decision upheld the constitutionality of internment under the justification of national security. Today, the court’s decision is considered one of the worst in American history by both conservatives and liberals alike.

On the other hand, the Supreme Court sided with Endo in her case against the government in 1944. Mitsuye Endo was a Japanese American woman whose successful habeas corpus petition, represented by lawyer James Purcell, led to the lifting of Japanese exclusion from the West Coast and the gradual end of internment.

With the success of the Endo case and the tide of war fully turned against Japan, the U.S. government announced that internment would end in 1945. World War II ended in the fall of 1945 with the surrender of Japan; the last internment camp closed in 1946. 

However, Japanese Americans faced discrimination as they sought to integrate back into American society after the end of internment. In California specifically, “terrorists fired shots into the homes of no fewer than fifteen Japanese American families, and arsonists and vandals destroyed property belonging to at least fifty other families.” 

In one case, the Doi family had shots fired at their house from passing cars and an attempted arson of their packing shed. Four men were arrested for this crime, and despite one of them incriminating his accomplice in court, the jury decided to acquit the men on their lawyer’s defense that “[this was] a white man’s country.” 

Japanese Americans also faced great difficulty finding housing after the war. 

Because they had been forced to sell their homes and businesses, many had nowhere to go after internment. In addition, restrictive covenants and alien land laws banned Japanese Americans from returning to their farms. As a result, Japanese Americans who couldn’t return home sought housing in cheap hotels, Buddhist temples, army barracks, and trailers that were described by a historian as “isolated ghettos that perpetuated the hardships of incarceration.”

In one tragic, but moving, love story, an interracial couple that was interned struggled to find a suitable place to live after being released from their camp. Estelle and Arthur Ishigo moved from trailer to trailer but were never able to escape poverty or the mental scars from internment.

“The Ishigos, like so many others, were trapped in an endless cycle. Their fates were entangled in an incomprehensible web of state and federal agencies. Their trailers were located too far from the city to find reliable work. The meager earnings they could scrape together were barely enough for rent and food.” –The National WWII Museum 

Some Japanese American soldiers also faced discrimination when they returned home from the front. Daniel Inouye, the future Democratic senator who lost his arm and won the medal of honor for his one man assault on German positions in Italy, was refused service by a San Francisco barber who refused to cut his “Jap hair.” 

Fortunately, the stellar service of Japanese American soldiers largely helped to quell public hostility in the aftermath of World War II. Reportedly, even President Harry Truman was ashamed of Japanese internment and presented a citation to a U.S. Army Japanese American regiment in which he stated: 

“You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice – and you have won. Keep up that fight, and we will continue to win – to make this great Republic stand for just what the Constitution says it stands for: the welfare of all the people all the time.” – Harry Truman

In recent times, most across the political aisle have come to view Japanese American internment as a terrible injustice. In 1988, Republican President Ronald Reagan formally apologized for internment and offered reparations of $20,000 for each living survivor. In 2000, Democrat President Bill Clinton moved to preserve internment camp sites as a testament to a dark chapter in American history. Both conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and progressive commentator Cenk Uygur are on record condemning internment as morally wrong. 

However, in the wake of 9/11, authors such as Michelle Malkin have claimed that internment was justified on the grounds of national security. She points to instances of subversion, such as the infamous Niihau incident in which several Japanese Americans helped a downed Japanese pilot shortly after Pearl Harbor, as evidence that most Japanese Americans constituted a legitimate threat. In addition, she posits that American decryptions of Japanese diplomatic messages, known as MAGIC cables, reveal that the threat of Japanese American espionage was substantial enough to warrant mass relocation. 

To be clear, Japanese American internment was unjustified even on national security grounds. The Niihau incident was a one-off — most federal agencies had agreed prior to mass internment that Japanese Americans posed little threat. J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI assured the Attorney General in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor that suspects warranting internment had already been detained and that full-scale internment of all Japanese people was not necessary. 

In addition, the government suppressed the Ringle Report, an intelligence document by the Navy’s leading specialist on Japanese Americans at the time that stated that most Japanese Americans were loyal and that disloyal Japanese were either already known or in custody. 

According to a 2011 report by Former Solicitor General Neal Katyal, when Korematsu v. United States and Hirabayashi v. United States came up in 1944 and 1943 respectively, the Solicitor General at the time, Charles Fahy, “did not inform the Court of the [Ringle Report], despite warnings from Department of Justice attorneys that failing to alert the Court ‘might approximate the suppression of evidence.’” 

With regards to the MAGIC cables, while the transcripts do reveal the Empire of Japan’s aspirations to use Japanese Americans as a fifth column, they do not reflect the actual security threat that Japanese Americans posed, which was minimal as stated previously. Moreover, it is not realistic to assume that the series of decisions that comprised Japanese internment were founded on the substance of the MAGIC cables. As Dr. Eric Muller states in his piece refuting contemporary defenses of Japanese internment: 

“To take just one example, the government’s decision in April 1942 to institute indefinite incarceration (rather than relocation and settlement outside the West Coast, as originally planned) was prompted by the refusal of Western state governors to allow settlement by Japanese Americans (whom Idaho Governor Clark called “rats”) in their states. These governors were not privy to information from the MAGIC cables.” 

Key decision makers of internment – such as General DeWitt, who was in charge of defending the Western United States – did not have access to these cables and made cases for internment based on faulty “evidence.” DeWitt “prepared a report filled with known falsehoods, such as examples of sabotage that were later revealed to be the result of cattle damaging power lines.” He also seemed overtaken by confirmation bias – DeWitt is quoted as saying: “The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken.”

Overall, no contemporary evidence suggests that the Niihau incident nor the MAGIC cables influenced FDR or any other person’s decision to intern Japanese Americans. Ultimately, it was a combination of wartime hysteria and racism that allowed internment to take place. 

There’s also a twist of irony in contemporary conservative defenses of internment. Michelle Malkin, an “America First” conservative, is likely now eating her words; one could justify the mass internment and surveillance of all Republicans today based solely on the events of January 6th through the similar logic of national security that she used to defend Japanese internment.

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Today, hatred in our country still abounds when it comes to international affairs.

In 2016, former President Trump cited Japanese American internment as legal precedent for his travel ban on people coming from several Muslim-majority countries. 

During the Covid pandemic, hate crimes against Asian Americans increased, including violent attacks against elderly people. 

At the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there were instances of Russophobia in the U.S. such as vandalism against Russian businesses and churches. 

Since the Israel-Hamas conflict began in October of 2023, antisemitic incidents in the U.S., including harassment, vandalism, and assault, have increased by 400%. At the same time, Islamophobic attacks have also spiked. A Palestinian boy was recently stabbed and killed in an attack in Illinois; the killer is reported to have said “You Muslims must die.”

We live in a globally uncertain present where conflict rages in the Middle East and Ukraine — and where the threat of war lingers with China. Now and in the coming years, the story of World War II Japanese Americans should teach our nation to be more humane in the way that we treat innocent people whose countries of origin we happen to be at war with. 

To fight injustice abroad while inflicting injustice at home is a contradiction that must never be tolerated. The United States is a great nation that has made many terrible mistakes; in order to fully live up to our ideals, we must remember the past to avoid repeating it.

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“If you have the feeling that something is wrong, don’t be afraid to speak up.” – Fred Korematsu