Et tu Brute? The Ugly Face of Racism and the Betrayal of Japanese Americans During WWII

 

First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

A Poem by Martin Niemöller  

Et tu Brute? And you Brutus?  Is what Caesar is alleged to have said when he was stabbed in the back by his good friend Brutus in 44 BC.  The annals of betrayals are filled with many examples.  I’ve always been fascinated with such great injustices like the atrocious decision of President Franklin D. Roosevelt after the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, to arrest and imprison 110,000 innocent, loyal American citizens, and immigrants of Japanese origin. This screams out loud of racism, prejudice, and wonton lawlessness.  Remember that not one, not one case, was ever brought against any of the Japanese Americans that were interned in what they called “relocation camps.”  When I first wrote on this subject in another post on this blog, I called these camps Concentration Camps; my sister-in-law read it and reminded me that they were called “relocation camps” not concentration camps.  They were concentration camps, without the ovens or the killing of the Hitler camps. I’ve read three books on this subject trying to wrap my mind around the atrocities.  The latest one, is a book first published in the early 1970s called “Farewell to Manzanar” by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and her husband James D. Houston.  This book is a personal account by Wakatsuki, who was at Manzanar as a young child.   

The history of this brazen racism goes back to the middle 19^th century.  It heated up in the early 20^th century when racism against Asians rose to a fever pitch, leading to laws that put in stone such racism.  In 1911 the US Bureau of Immigration declared that Japanese Americans born in Japan could not become citizens.  In 1913 the Alien Land Bill prevented Japanese aliens from owning land in California.  The Immigration Act of 1924 severely restricted immigration even from Europe.  A quota was initiated giving Southern Europeans a tiny quota compared to northern Europeans.  Italians, for example, and others were limited to 2% of the Italian American and other Southern European population of 1890.  For Japanese Americans, it was more severe:  Japanese Americans were no longer allowed to immigrate to America.  Prior to WWII Japanese Americans were not allowed to have a fishing license in California, thereby preventing fishermen from practicing their trade.  The act was an insult to the Japanese and other European governments of which they protested vigorously. 

Eugenics is believed to have been a driving force for the rampant racial discrimination.  Sir Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin and collaborator was the father of Eugenics.  From 1880 up until the mid 1950s Eugenics was popular among the U.S. and world Intelligentsia, scientists, corporate leaders, politicians such as Winston Churchill, and even presidents such as Woodrow Wilson.  As many as 31 states had Eugenics laws on the books.  The famous Eugenics U.S. Supreme Court case of Buck vs Bell (1927) is one example, where a young woman, Carrie Buck, as well as her child, were accused of being  “imbeciles” or “feeble minded” without any proof.   She was forced to be sterilized.  The child she had prior to sterilization ranked at the top of her class.  Carrie lived a normal life, married, and survived two husbands.  The accusation was patently false and without merit.  It is no coincidence that racial discrimination had a strong connection to Eugenics.  Many other women were sterilized without their knowledge.  As many as 70,000 women were sterilized without their knowledge. Click here.

Racism and prejudice in general have no rhyme nor reason; it goes against any rhyme or reason; it is counter intuitive and evil because it leads to great injustices.  Asians, and Japanese Americans, in my estimation, and I think it is correct, are some of the best citizens any country could have.  They are self-reliant, industrious, law-abiding, and productive people that contribute to any culture or civilization.  Besides the cruelty of imprisoning innocent people and all that follows from it, the incarceration of entire families was mentally and psychologically abusive.  The dignity of the person was taken away and the result was traumatic and permanently life changing for most, especially men and fathers.  Here is where you see how important human dignity is to the individual; without it you emasculate the person; you suck the soul out of the individual. Wakatsuki’s father who was born in Japan, for instance, was a proud man, a successful farmer and family man.  When they deprived him of his role as a husband and a father, he suffered immeasurable physical and psychological harm.  This is something that cannot be fixed or repaired.  He was first arrested and removed from his family and sent to a camp in Jerome, Arkansas for nine months.  In an emotional reunion when he was reunited with his family at Manzanar, he gets off the bus upon arrival and his family is there to greet him.  Both him and his family are frozen in place for a long time just looking at each other, unable to hug each other.  The pain that was going on with him and his family was palpable.  This was psychological abuse of the worst kind to innocent people.  Psychological terrorism. 

I don’t know if this evil perpetrated against these innocent good citizens was pre-meditated but consider this:  Many of the places where the “relocation camps” were installed were some of the worst places for anyone to live.  Manzanar, for example, was at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in the Owens Valley desert of California.  An unforgiving place.  The summers are brutally hot and the winters brutally cold with gale force winds.  On top of that, the ramshackle buildings the Army put up were of primitive construction.  Wood slats that had openings for the dust to get in making the winters unbearable.  In “Farewell to Manzanar” Wakatsuki describes an episode where they were covered with a half inch of dust in their beds during a windstorm.  I personally visited Manzanar in 2019 in the month of July; the temperature was 105 and the wind was so strong I could not stay outside of my car.  At Heart Mountain, in Wyoming it was brutally cold as well in the winter.  Click here for a fine documentary made years ago by David Ono, a TV anchor on the ABC Channel 7 in Los Angeles.  I highly recommend you watch this. 

In 1945 the camps were closed, and the people released on their own recognizance with no financial aid. Many had lost everything, house, business, and personal property.  They had no job nor anyone willing to hire them due to the heavy prejudice that existed at the time.  Wakatsuki and her family relocated to Long Beach, California and found a place to live on the westside in a communal barracks boarding house.  Racism was still raging unabated. Wakatsuki managed to befriend a Caucasian girl her age. When she asked if she could join the girl scouts with her, the answer was no.  In a powerful example of the racism, they had to endure, she recalls this story about what happened one day when she and her sister were traveling: “We were sitting on a bus stop bench in Long Beach, when an old, embittered woman stopped and said, “Why don’t all you dirty Japs go back to Japan?” She spit at us and passed on.  We said nothing at the time.  After she stalked off down the sidewalk, we did not look at each other.” 

In another black eye for America, there is the United States Supreme Court case of Korematsu vs United States in 1944.  The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, approved of what FDR did with Executive Order 9066 imprisoning innocent American citizens and alien immigrants without due process.  So much for innocent until proven guilty; so much for Stare Decisis.

Recommended Reading:

1.     Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston

2.    Infamy; The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II; Richard Reeves

3.    The Eagles of Heart Mountain, A true Story of Football, Incarceration and Resistance in World War II America, Bradford Pearson

         My previous Blog post: The Rape of Japanese Americans in World War II 

Three Examples of Man's Inhumanity to Man

In the sad story of man's inhumanity to man, there are many examples.  For this piece I will concentrate on three such examples:  The Jewish holocaust of World War II and related Jewish oppression, the oppression of blacks in the United States and the outrageous incarceration of Japanese-Americansd by FDR in World War II.

There is no denying that Jews have been one of the most oppressed and brutulized people in our world.  You need look no farther than the Nazi holocaust, in which more than six million of our brothers and sisters were murdered simply for having a religion different than ours.  To put it in perspective, that would be the equivalent of, say, us rounding up all Baptists, or all Catholics in America and sending them to a death camp.  There can be no rationalization of what the Nazis did. The rational person, looking at history, would have to conclude that Jews were and are some of the best citizens any country can have.  They are self-reliant, law-abiding and successful people any country can have.  Look at industry, art and music.  There you will find that Jews are dominant.  Many have considered this as a reason to discriminate against them, but that would be just jealousy and envy.   There are so many examples.  The Spanish Inquisition of the 15th Century was one of them.  Many Jews were forced out of their homes and country just for being Jewish.  In my small little home town of Geraci Siculo, Sicily, it is estimated that during the Spanish Inquisition there were 53 Jewish households in a town of about 2,500 people.  They were all ordered deported by the Spanish authorities of the day.  The result being a loss for the country that ejected them. 

Blacks in the United States were legally discriminated against from the beginning of slavery until recent times.  If you were black you could not attend the same church, the same restaurant, the same hotel, the same bathroom, etc. This is akin to, say, doing the same to all people with red hair, or all people that are darker in skin color than you; its so preposterous that it takes your breath away.  Most societies have their own social ladder and  to a certain extent, discrimination.  So, in Italy, for example, the Sicilian is considered lower than the northerner.  This about as equal as saying that your neighbor across the street is lower than you because he/she livers across he street and all who live across the street are not as good as you. Insanity. In England, for example, if you're Catholic you can't be the Prime Minister to this day.  In the United States, up to 1960, if you're Catholic you could not be elected to high political office or belong to a certain country club.  In the academy, if you don't follow Darwinian evolution, you cannot teach there, to this day.  Now, I just heard the other day in the news that unless you have a "woke" world view you cannot apply to a college job.  I know, I know, that this sounds crazy; it is.  Click here for the story.

The third example is the incarceration of innocent Japanese-Americans in World War II by Franklin Roosevelt.  These were the country's best citizens; successful, law abiding, industrious and self sufficient.  How many Japanese Americans are in your state prisons?  Not that many.  How many Japanese Americans are on welfare?  Not that many.  Upon signing of Executive Order 9066, over 110,000 innocent Japanese Americans were rounded up like common criminals, and put in concentration camps. The camps were in the worst part of the country, such as Manzanar in in the cold/hot windy California desert.  I know, I know, relocation camps they called them.  Well that is akin to calling Guantanamo Prison in Cuba a nursery.  In July 2021  I visited Manzanar; the temperature was 105 and the wind so strong I could not stay outside of my car.  Heart Mountain in Wyoming was in the cold, freezing and unforgiving part of the state. Be sure to watch the video documentary of Heart Mountain by David Ono. Most, if not all, lost their house, their business and all they owned.  Very little was returned to them.  President Reagan in the 1980s, over 45 years later, apologized and gave the survivors $20,000 in compensation, a pittance to what most had lost.

The Rape of Japanese Americans in World War II

World War II stands out as an example of man's inhumanity to man as no conflict in human history.  There are too many to describe here but here are a few examples that stand out:  The murder of over six million Jews by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis; The Rape of Nan king, China by the Japanese Army; the Soviet Dictator,  Josef Stalin's  murder of over 1.2 million of his own citizens during the "Great Purge" of 1936-38.  In the siege of Stalingrad, the German Sixth Army was destroyed by the Russian Army and Hitler's refusal to see the futility of the operation.  When his Field Marshal, Friedrich Paulus, relayed the hopelessness of his situation Hitler refused to let him withdraw, thus leaving over 500, 000 soldiers to die, either in battle, from the brutal winter weather (many froze to death) or capture.  The Soviets captured over 100,000 German soldiers, all but 6,000 lived to return home.

In the United States, one of the most tragic and appalling act was the forced internment of over 100,000 Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast of the United Sates.  After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt ordered the arrest and deportation, to what can only be described as concentration camps, of all American citizens or resident aliens of Japanese ancestry.  What makes this a most despicable act is the fact that this was done with no proof of any threat by these innocent people. No due process, no trial.  Their only crime was to be of Japanese ancestry.

Just imagine, if you will, you're an African-American, for instance,  the U.S. is attacked by an African country and all African-Americans are arrested and driven to prisons surrounded by soldiers. Would you say that this was a rational thing to do?

Did any Americans who were not Japanese complain?  There is no record of any demonstrations in support of the Japanese Americans.  In fact, a hysteria of hate toward the "Japs" was unleashed on innocent and loyal Americans.  Today, we're attacked by radical Muslims and the President will not even call them what they are:  terrorists.  This was the insanity of what President Roosevelt did.

Now, you might ask, how did the courts react to this insane act by President Roosevelt?  Good question.  Read the U.S. Supreme court case of Korematsu vs. The United States:  The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling sided with President Roosevelt.  This heinous act was "constitutional." 

Now, you might think that this act by an American President would diminish his status in history.  You would be wrong.  Roosevelt is still revered to this day as the ideal Democrat.  Some survivors of this era still call themselves "Roosevelt Democrats." Some even regard Franklin D. Roosevelt as one of the greatest presidents of all time. No one ever mentions the rape of the Japanese Americans by FDR whenever they speak of him.  Historical amnesia is rampant; especially among the left. It was not until 1988 when President Ronald Reagan apologized for this most heinous act.

To add insult to injury the Japanese Americans lost most of their property, personal and real estate.  Some, very few, were successful in getting neighbors to look after their farm, for instance, but the majority, lost everything, farms, houses, personal belongings.  At the end of the war the U.S. Government made a feeble attempt to reimburse these people but very few got very much.

A few years ago, David Ono, a news anchor for the local news at KABC Channel 7 in Los Angeles presented a compelling documentary on one concentration camp, Heart Mountain, outside of Cody, Wyoming.  Click here to check it out.  This is great film-making.