Title

A Profile

Why were Japanese Americans interned during World War II? German-Americans weren't. Italian-Americans weren't. There is no doubt that the constitutional and civil rights of this one group of Americans - citizens and alien immigrants alike - were violated. Why? Justifications at the time ranged from protecting the Japanese themselves from reprisals after Pearl Harbor and possible future attacks or acts of sabotage to the defense of the country from a massive fifth column of enemy subversives. Simply put - and in contemporary terms - Japanese Americans were racially profiled.

Many of the materials in this unit provide a sense of the profile. In the example and the exercises that follow you will explore specific aspects of the portrait that many Americans, particularly those on the west coast, held. You will examine opinions expressed at the time in public documents and Congressional testimony within the context of census-like information gathered by the War relocation Authority (WRA) from the nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans who were interned.

"The area lying to the west of Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountains in Washington, Oregon and California, is highly critical not only because the lines of communication and supply in the Pacific theater pass through it, but also because of the vital industrial production therein, particularly aircraft. In the war in which we are now engaged racial affiliations are not severed by migration. The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become "Americanized," the racial strains are undiluted. To conclude otherwise is to expect that children born of white parents on Japanese soil sever all racial affinity and become loyal Japanese subjects, ready to fight and, if necessary, to die for Japan in a war against the nation of their parents. That Japan is allied with Germany and Italy in this struggle is no ground for assuming that any Japanese, barred from assimilation by convention as he is, though born and raised in the United States, will not turn against this nation, when the final test of loyalty comes. It, therefore, follows that along the vital Pacific Coast over 112,000 potential enemies, of Japanese extraction, are at large today. There are indications that these are organized and ready for concerted action at a favorable opportunity. The very fact that no sabotage has taken place is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken.1"
The passage above comes from a report on the evacuation of Japanese Americans prepared by General John DeWitt, commander of the Western Theater of Operations in San Francisco at the start of World War II. Clearly, General DeWitt was concerned by the threat of "Americanized" Nisei, second generation Japanese Americans. By implication, though, the Issei, or first generation immigrants, also posed a serious threat and it is on this group that we will focus our attention in this example.

Load your GIS software and the Internment project file. The most important feature of this file is the data base of information contained in the WRA Census layer. Select this layer and zoom in on California The information is a random sample of the nearly 110,000 records collected by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) from every individual interned during the war. The dots on the map represent the California communities of the approximately 2500 individuals in the sample. A complete list of the categories of information in the data base is included in the Profile worksheet.

General DeWitt's concerns focused on the degree of loyalty the Japanese Americans felt for their mother country. He made inferences from information such as:

  • Birth place
  • Total length of time in Japan
  • Number of times in Japan
  • Language

Do the data support the General’s conclusions? What was the percentage of the Japanese born Issei among the California immigrant population, for example? Let's select all indivuals from the sample who were born in Japan.


My World
ArcGIS

• Click to Analyze the data By Value and complete the form as indicated below:

• Click Selection >> Select by Attributes.

• Complete the selection rule as pictured below. You will need to double click on the field heading PLACEBIRTH to make it part of the rule and single click on the Like button. Note the use of the % sign after the word Japan. It is called a wild card and stands in place of anything that might appear in the PLACEBIRTH field after the word Japan. That is, the rule selects any record that begins with the word Japan in the BIRTHPLACE field.


Check the table of selected records and note that 857 of 2485 Japanese in the California sample (35%) were born in Japan. Carrying the example further you can examine what percentage of these individuals were not able to read or write English by extending your selection rule.

My World
ArcGIS

• Click to add to your selection rule. In addition to finding the individuals who were born in Japan also find those who could not read or write English:

• Click on the Apply button and Close the window.

• Click Selection >> Select by Attributes.

• Add to the selection rule as indicated below:

• Notice the use of the wildcard both before and after the word ENGLISH. You are now looking for any record that does not include spoken or written fluency in English so the rule selects any record that includes the word



459 of the 855 Issei (or 54%) were not fluent in English. Bring up the table of these individuals and explore the data. Scroll over to their YEARBIRTH and sort the values. The information was collected in 1942 so numbers lower than 42 indicate that the person was born in the 20th century (e.g. - 6 means born in 1906). Numbers higher than 42 mean that the year of birth was in the 19th century (e.g. - 89 means born in 1889). The results are more dramatic in a graph like the one below.

My World
ArcGIS

• Make sure that the selection consists of those born in Japan who are not fluent in English.

• Click on the Graph icon ( ).

• Create a bar graph for the YEARBIRTH field.

• Click Apply button and Close the window.

• Click on the YEARBIRTH field heading to change the sort.

• Right click on the YEARBIRTH field heading and select Statistics... to make a graph.

 

Notice that the majority of the Issei who were not fluent in English were born between 1870 and 1900.

 

To Start You Thinking -

  • 1) How old were the group of Issei who were not fluent in English?

    2) Continue to explore the information about the Issei looking particularly at the data related to Total Length of Time in Japan, Number of Times in Japan, and Age at Time in Japan. What does this information suggest about the degree of loyalty these people might have felt towards Japan?

    3) What other information in the data base could give you a sense of the loyalty of the individuals involved from General DeWitt's point of view? Explain.

     

  • 4) Assess the threat posed by this group of Japanese immigrants.

  • 5) Complete the Profile worksheet.


1 from Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942, Headquarters Western Defense Command and Fourth Army, Office of the Commanding General, Presidio of San Francisco, California, (Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Office, 1943) as found at The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco.
Last modified in July, 2008 by Rick Thomas