A unique tale of WWII resistance / Japanese American internees refused draft
Annie Nakao, Chronicle Staff Writer Published 4:00 am, Friday, October 26, 2001
Heart Mountain resisters pose in prison-issued suits on July 14, 1946, the day of their release from McNeil Island. Yosh Kuromiya stands in the back row, second from the left. Photo Courtesy Yosh Kuromiya.
In the AFTERMATH of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II has become a notorious cautionary tale about civil liberties, loyalty and patriotism in times of national crisis.
Less known is the story of some 326 Japanese American internees who refused to be drafted into the U.S. Army from internment camps until the government restored their constitutional rights.
"Those guys were more American than I was," said Robert "Scotty" Walker, 78,
of Seattle, a WWII conscientious objector who was imprisoned with some of the Japanese American draft resisters at McNeil Federal Penitentiary in Puget Sound.
Their story of unique resistance is told by University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill law professor Eric L. Muller in his new book, "Free to Die for Their Country, the Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II," which was released this month.
Muller, who will be a guest on KQED-FM's "Forum" tomorrow morning, said the recent events have given the resisters' story a pointed relevance, as Arab Americans and those perceived to be Middle Eastern report being targets of law enforcement, airline pilots and even their own neighbors.
In turn, the lessons of the internment give a shell-shocked nation a place to explore difficult issues in fearful times, he said.
"Trying to have a debate about civil liberties right now is a very hard thing to do because people are terrified," Muller said. "And yet this is precisely the time . . . you can do some real work with history right now. There's some safety in talking about what happened 60 years ago and connecting it up to the situation right now."
Linkages are on 79-year-old Jimi Yamaichi's mind.
"Back then, the government was out to get Japanese kids," said Yamaichi, a San Jose resident who in the summer of 1944 was one of 26 young internees who resisted the draft at Northern California's Tule Lake internment camp. "I'd hate to see something like that happen again. But it is happening. Since Sept. 11, it's been an undeclared war."
He was referring to the arrests or detention of more than 900 people since Sept. 11 by U.S. authorities.
Yamaichi was a carpenter from San Jose when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Within months, the government had forced 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens like Yamaichi, from their West Coast homes and into inland camps surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers.
With no political friends and the full force of the federal government upon them, Japanese Americans, with a few exceptions, did what they were told. The only functioning community organization at the time -- the Japanese American Citizens League -- exhorted them to prove their loyalty by cooperating to the fullest.
A handful of nisei, or first-generation, American-born Japanese, did legally challenge the evacuation and curfew orders, but the courts upheld those actions.
Forty years later, the federal courts ruled the evacuation was unjust. In 1988, internees won a presidential apology and reparations.
The years also made less muted the voices of dissent. In camp, there were demonstrations over food and living conditions. Others protested having to prove their allegiance to America by answering a government-issued questionnaire in camp.
But perhaps the most striking dissent was the refusal of young nisei to be drafted in January 1944 -- unless their civil liberties were restored.
Frank Emi, 85, of San Gabriel, who led some 85 resisters at the Heart Mountain, Wyo., internment camp, explained why.
"When they forced us out of our homes, we went quietly," he said. "When we got put in the camps, we went quietly. But when they wanted to draft us, as if we were free citizens, that really was the straw that broke the camel's back. At that point, we felt we had to say, 'That's enough.' "
The Tule Lake resisters were acquitted by a sympathetic judge, but some 300 nisei were convicted of draft evasion and imprisoned.
The nisei weren't alone. In World War II, some 6,000 other draft resisters were jailed. There were also 12,000 conscientious objectors in the country, according to the Center on Conscience & War in Washington, D.C.
Most objectors were Quakers, Mennonites or Jehovah's Witnesses. Some were imprisoned with the nisei.
"We got to be pretty close friends," said Tak Hoshizaki, 76, of Los Angeles.
"We used to have little seminars and readings. I remember reading 'War and Peace.' "
The resisters were pardoned in 1947 -- but all of them faced years of enmity from the JACL and many nisei veterans. Some 33,000 nisei served in the war and their valor diminished anti-Japanese racism. Those rifts are just beginning to heal.
Muller called it "tragic" that a community was forced to choose between perceived patriotism and dissent.
"There's no question that the choice they made was a patriotic one," he said.A unique tale of WWII resistance / Japanese American internees refused draft - SFGate:
Center shatters myth of 'quiet' Japanese Americans imprisoned in camps | UCLA - http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/center-shatters-myth-of-quiet-japanese-americans-imprisoned-in-camps