Infamy

by Richard Reeves

  Norm Mineta became mayor of San Jose, California, then a United States congressman, and finally served in the cabinets of two presidents, as secretary of commerce and secretary of transportation. A member of a Boy Scout troop, Troop 379 at Heart Mountain, he shared a tent with a local Scout from Troop 250 in Cody named Alan Simpson. Their friendship lasted in Washington, when Simpson was elected to the United States Senate from Wyoming and served eighteen years.

  Curtis B. Munson returned to his businesses and investments after the war, traveling with his wife, Edith Cummings, a golfer who was the first woman athlete to appear on the cover of Time magazine. She was also the model for Jordan Baker in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

  Dillon Myer, a favorite of the Japanese American Citizens League and a champion of assimilation, became director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He died in 1982.

  Isamu Noguchi continued sculpting after the war and also gained recognition designing public gardens, including one at Yale University and another at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1987. He died in 1988.

  Louise Ogawa returned to San Diego and worked as a clerk in city government. She married another San Diego evacuee, Richard Watanabe.

  Paul Ohtaki, the newspaper reporter from Bainbridge Island, served as an army MIS translator in the Pacific Theater.

  Governor Culbert Olson, after his defeat by Earl Warren in 1942, practiced law and became president of the United Secularists of America until he died in 1962.

  Colonel Charles Pence, commander of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, served thirty years in the army. After retiring he became a development officer for Augustana College in Moline, Illinois. He died in 2009.

  Ezio Pinza rejoined the Metropolitan Opera and then was cast in the hugely popular Broadway musical South Pacific. He died in 1957.

  Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Ringle commanded the USS Wasatch, an amphibious landing command ship in the Pacific during the war. He retired from the navy in 1953 as a rear admiral. In later years, he felt that his intelligence work in California and Hawaii retarded his career, preventing him from becoming an admiral. He died in 1963.

  James Rowe served in several federal positions during the Truman presidency, then practiced law in Washington, D.C., after 1952. He died in 1984.

  General Joseph Stilwell, a talented strategist who often had trouble getting along with allies, “Vinegar Joe,” as he was called, commanded the Sixth Army in China. He lost that command because he made clear that he thought the commander of the America-backed Kuomintang, Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, was simply a corrupt warlord fighting not the Japanese but his great rival the Communist Mao Tse-tung. In the end, Washington sided with Chiang and Stilwell was recalled. He died in 1946.

  Theresa Takayoshi, who was half-Irish and had run an ice-cream parlor in Seattle, moved to Indianapolis from Minidoka with her husband and children after the war, then returned to Seattle twenty-five years later. Her husband worked as an accountant in Indianapolis. “During the years we were in Indiana, we met many, many nice people,” she said. “They were all Caucasians and they all accepted us as one of them. And not one of them knew about the evacuation, not one. When I would tell them about it, they were aghast.” The government paid the family $100 as redress for losing the ice-cream parlor. She died in 1984.

  George Takei, a child at Rohwer, became a successful actor, best known as Lieutenant Sulu in the Star Trek television series. He has written and directed plays and has been active in California Democratic politics and Japanese American causes for forty years.

  Katherine Tasaki became a librarian in Chula Vista, California. She married another San Diego evacuee, Ben Segawa, who served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War.

  Fusa Tsumagari worked as a secretary for the publisher McGraw-Hill in Chicago, then married Tom Higashioka, an engineer, and moved to San Mateo, California. Her brother, Yukio, became a doctor and practiced in Wyoming.

  Yoshiko Uchida wrote more than a dozen books for children. She told her own story in one of them, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family. She died in 1992.

  Edison Uno worked for the JACL and other Japanese American organizations and was one of the first activists to argue that Japanese Americans should receive redress or compensation for their lost property and lost earnings. He died in 1975.

  Minoru Yasui practiced law in Denver and became the chairman of the city’s Human Rights Commission. He died in 1986.

  NOTES

  The page numbers for the notes that appeared in the print version of this title are not in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for the relevant passages documented or discussed.

  Please note some of the links referenced in this work are no longer active

  ABBREVIATIONS

  BOH:

  Berkeley Oral History

  DENSHO:

  Denshō.org

  DOH:

  Denshō Oral History

  HAY:

  Stanley Kunio Hayami and Joanne Oppenheim, Stanley Hayami, Nisei Son: His Diary, Letters, & Story from an American Concentration Camp to Battlefield, 1942–1945

  HOS:

  Bill Hosokawa, Nisei: The Quiet Americans

  JAH:

  Brian Niiya, Japanese American History: An A-to-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present

  PJ:

  United States, Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians

  INTRODUCTION

  “The House I Live In”: Joanne Oppenheim, Dear Miss Breed: True Stories of the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II and a Librarian Who Made a Difference (New York: Scholastic, Inc., 2006), p. 29. The song itself had an ironic history, a surprising backstory. The records and sheet music stated that it was written by Lewis Allan. But there was no Lewis Allan. The writer was actually Abel Meeropol, a teacher at DeWitt Clinton High School in New York City for twenty-seven years. He was a member of the American Communist Party. He and his wife were the couple who adopted the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after the Rosenbergs were executed as traitors for passing secrets of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Meeropol was known for writing the lyrics of “Strange Fruit,” a song about the lynching of black Americans made famous by the singer Billie Holiday. Part of the story of “The House I Live In” was that it lived on as a patriotic anthem, sung by Frank Sinatra at the second inauguration of President Ronald Reagan in 1985 and the rededication of the Statue of Liberty in 1986.

  CHAPTER 1

  Pearl Harbor: John Modell, The Kikuchi Diary: Chronicle from an American Concentration Camp (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1973), p. 42.

  “I felt that the world I had known”: A Time to Fear, directed by Sue Williams, DVD (PBS, 2004).

  Soon after hearing: Brian Niiya, DENSHO, “Saburo Kido.” Web, accessed December 7, 2013, http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Saburo_Kido/.

  Rafu Shimpo: The government forced Rafu Shimpo to cease publication on April 4, 1942.

  In Nebraska: Shiho Imai, DENSHO, “Mike Masaoka.” Web, accessed December 8, 2013.

  Less than twenty-four hours after: Jay Feldman, Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America (New York: Pantheon Books, 2011), p. 164.

  A few hours later: Stephen C. Fox, “General John DeWitt and the Proposed Internment of German and Italian Aliens During World War II,” JSTOR.org, June 19, 2011.

  There were, however: Carey McWilliams, Prejudice: Japanese-Americans, Symbol of Racial Intolerance (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1944), p. 66.

  When Yoshiko: Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), p. 46.

  To the north: Mary Matsuda Gruenewald, Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese-American Internment Ca
mps (Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press, 2005), p. 23.

  In Petaluma, California: Megan Asaka, Irene Najima Interview Segment 13, DOH, August 4, 2008. Web, accessed December 1, 2010.

  Another “dangerous” person: Megan Asaka, DENSHO, Grace F. Oshita Interview Segment 8, DOH, June 4, 2008. Web, accessed November 30, 2010.

  In Hood River Valley: Linda Tamura, Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence: Coming Home to Hood River (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012), p. 36.

  Barry Saiki: Roger Daniels, Sandra C. Taylor, and Harry H. L. Kitano, Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986), p. 15.

  The FBI roundup: Feldman, Hysteria, p. 160.

  In Hood River Valley: Tamura, Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence, p. 28.

  The FBI arrest lists: Brian Niiya, DENSHO, “Kenneth Ringle,” March 19, 2013. Web, accessed June 13, 2013, http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Kenneth%20Ringle/.

  Another “A” list: Michael L. Cooper, Fighting for Honor: Japanese Americans and World War II (New York: Clarion Books, 2000), p. 1.

  Lieutenant Commander Ringle, whose: Roger Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), p. 23.

  “The entire ‘Japanese problem’”: K. D. Ringle, Ringle Report on Japanese Internment, Navy Department Library, January 26, 1942. Web, accessed June 13, 2013.

  One of FDR’s private: Brian Niiya, DENSHO, “Munson Report,” March 19, 2013. Web, accessed June 13, 2013, http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Munson_Report/.

  For about two weeks: Morton Grodzins, Americans Betrayed: Politics and the Japanese Evacuation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 380.

  There were some: Yoon Pak, “‘Dear Teacher’: Letters on the Eve of the Japanese American Imprisonment.” NCSS Online Teachers’ Library: U.S. History Collection, September 2001. Web, accessed September 2010.

  “I was at the bus stop”: Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 116.

  The president of the: McWilliams, Prejudice, p. 160.

  The leader of one: Frank J. Taylor, “The People Nobody Wants,” Saturday Evening Post, May 9, 1942.

  Assistant Attorney General: Miriam Feingold, Japanese American Oral History Project, Calisphere, Berkeley, California, University of California, The Bankcroft Library, September 8, 1975. Web, accessed June 7, 2011.

  The second-ranked: Joseph W. Stilwell, The Stilwell Papers (New York: William Sloane Associates, Inc., 1948), pp. 2–11.

  The FBI officials: Tamura, Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence, p. 38.

  “There is a monstrous fifth”: Ronald Bishop, To Protect and Serve: The “Guard Dog” Function of Journalism in Coverage of the Japanese-American Internment (Columbia, SC: Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 2000), p. 70.

  At the same time, General DeWitt: Fox, “General John DeWitt.”

  The confusion and fear: Oppenheim, Dear Miss Breed, p. 22.

  CHAPTER 2

  Then the governor gave: Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial, p. 42.

  The president, in: Richard Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), p. 259 et al.

  Stories like that: Leo Katcher, Earl Warren: A Political Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967), p. 138.

  California’s capital: Wikipedia, “Florin, California,” May 1, 2010. Web, accessed June 13, 2010. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florin,_California.

  And as early as February: McWilliams, Prejudice, p. 107.

  The papers were joined: Katcher, Earl Warren, p. 145.

  To the south: Aljean Harmetz, Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II (New York: Hyperion, 1992).

  “The necessity for mass”: Katcher, Earl Warren, p.147.

  General DeWitt: PJ, p. 73.

  Despite what he had: McWilliams, Prejudice, p. 116.

  Enraged by the: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, “Document 4: Memorandum to the President from Attorney General Francis Biddle, February 17, 1942.”

  At the same time: Katcher, Earl Warren, p. 145.

  CHAPTER 3

  As the islanders were frantically: John Allen, Hikoji Takeuchi Interview Segment 5, DOH, November 7, 2002. Web, accessed April 10, 2011.

  In the end, the DiMaggios: Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial, p. 51. Joe DiMaggio enlisted in the army in February of 1943. He was assigned to Special Services and spent most of his time on the mainland and in Hawaii playing baseball for the Seventh Army Air Force team with several Yankee teammates. He returned to the Yankees in September of 1945. His brothers, Vincent and Dominic, both major league players, for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Boston Red Sox, also enlisted.

  In Monterey, an Issei: McWilliams, Prejudice, p. 133.

  With West Coast: Robinson, By Order of the President, p. 248.

  On March 24: DENSHO, Civilian Exclusion Order No. 1, March 25, 1942. Web, accessed April 10, 2011.

  “You trying to sell”: Allen, Hikoji Takeuchi Interview Segment 5, DOH.

  Thirteen of the marchers: Bainbridge Island Review, March 28, 1942, p. 1.

  The Matsudas: Gruenewald, Looking Like the Enemy, p. 44.

  Frank Emi: Frank Abe, Frank Emi Interview Segment 1, DOH, March 20, 1994. Web, accessed December 22, 2010.

  The Najimas of Petaluma: Megan Asaka, Irene Najima Interview Segment 13, DOH, August 4, 2008. Web, accessed June 20, 2011. www.denshovh-nirene-01-segment13.com.

  In Sacramento, a state: Stephen Magagnini, “Japanese Americans Celebrate Hero Who Saved Their Farms,” Sacramento Bee, February 13, 2010. Web, accessed June 5, 2010.

  When the war ended: “Bob Fletcher Dies at 101; Saved Farms of Interned Japanese Americans,” Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2013. Web, accessed June 8, 2013.

  The same kind of thing: Robert B. Cozzens, BOH, p. 45.

  Another eleven-year-old, Ben Tateishi: Cooper, Fighting for Honor, p. 10.

  Yoshimi Matsura was about: Tom Ikeda, Yoshimi Matsura Interview Segment 12, DOH, June 17, 2009. Web, accessed December 3, 2010.

  Hideo Hoshide and his girlfriend: Tom Ikeda, Hideo Hoshide Interview 1 Segment 36, DOH, January 26, 2006. Web, accessed December 3, 2010.

  One Washington State strawberry: Deborah Kent, The Tragic History of the Japanese-American Internment Camps (Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, Inc., 2008), p. 47.

  Hirabayashi, a senior: American Friends Service Committee, Gordon Hirabayashi’s Statement Against the U.S. Internment of Japanese Americans, January 6, 2012.

  CHAPTER 4

  The governor of Arizona: McWilliams, Prejudice, p. 67.

  In Lone Pine, a: Jessie A. Garrett and Ronald C. Larsons, Camp and Community: Manzanar and the Owens Valley (Fullerton: California State University, Japanese American Oral History Project, 1977).

  Estelle Ishigo: Robinson, By Order of the President, p. 258.

  After they arrived: Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973).

  The end of the trail: PJ, p. 151.

  “There is going to be”: Matthew T. Estes and Donald H. Estes, “Hot Enough to Melt Iron: The San Diego Nikkei Experience 1942–1946,” Journal of San Diego History 42, no. 3 (Summer 1996): 2. Web, accessed June 27, 2013.

  The peaceful endurance: JAH, p. 143. See also Delphine Hirasuna, The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps 1942–1946 (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2005).

  Jeanne Wakatsuki: Houston and Houston, Farewell to Manzanar.

  While the overwhelming: Ibid.

  Returning to the camps: Estes and Estes, “Hot Enough to Melt Iron.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “Soon barracks only”: Uchida, Desert Exile, p. 119.

  “I was the first Jap”: Larry Dane Brimner, Voices from the Camps: In
ternment of Japanese Americans During World War II (New York: Franklin Watts, 1994), p. 50.

  “The earth around Poston”: Estes and Estes, “Hot Enough to Melt Iron.”

  Isamu Noguchi arrived: Masayo Duus, The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey Without Borders (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 162.

  By mid-summer Isamu: Ibid., p. 170.

  Fathers dug foxholes: George Hirahara interview.

  Charles Hamasaki, who: Brimner, Voices from the Camps, p. 50.

  Frank Emi, the: Frank Abe, Frank Emi Interview II Segment 5, DOH, January 30, 1998. Web, accessed December 10, 2010.

  At the beginning: Oppenheim, Dear Miss Breed, p. 140.

  Ever cheerful, Louise: Estes and Estes, “Hot Enough to Melt Iron.”

  On December 8, 1942: Ralph G. Martin, Boy from Nebraska: The Story of Ben Kuroki (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946), p. 73.

  As the first Christmas: Oppenheim, Dear Miss Breed, p. 145.

  The Japanese American: Ibid., p. 146.

  “Yesterday night I got”: HAY, p. 30.

  “Dec. 25, 1942”: Ibid.

  By the end of 1942: Klancy Clark De Nevers, The Colonel and the Pacifist: Karl Bendetsen, Perry Saito, and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2004), p. 177.

  At the same time, Governor: Tamura, Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence, p. 44.

  CHAPTER 6

  At the beginning: JAH, p. 60.

  Bill Hosokawa: HOS, p. 414.

  The first instructor: Joseph D. Harrington, Yankee Samurai: The Secret Role of Nisei in America’s Pacific Victory (Detroit, MI: Pettigrew Enterprises, 1979), p. 9; James C. McNaughton, Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service During World War II (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army 2006), p. 91.

  “No American”: Harrington, Yankee Samurai, pp. 9, 15.

  The work of: McNaughton, Nisei Linguists, p. 159 et al.