Revisiting internment camps of WWII

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[SandRat]

Scouting a Family Magazine
November-December 1999

Scouting in World War II Detention Camps

Japanese-American Scouts were fiercely loyal to the U.S.A. despite being forced to live in relocation centers.

During the Second World War, hundreds of Boy Scouts from the West Coast set a camp attendance record that will never be challenged. They were Japanese-American Scouts who were sent with their families to detention camps well inland from the coast soon after the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Some Scouts spent three years in camp.

More than 110,000 people—two-thirds of them American citizens—were herded into 10 detention camps in seven states: two in California, Arizona, and Arkansas, and one each in Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. They lived in hastily constructed barracks surrounded by barbed wire fences and guard towers.

Scouting in every camp

Scouting flourished at all 10 detention camps. The most flourishing program was at the Heart Mountain camp near Cody, Wyo. Its seven troops and four Cub Scout packs made up a separate district in the Central Wyoming Council.

William Shishima was a member of three of the troops in his three years at Heart Mountain with his family. At 12 he joined Troop 145, chartered to the Maryknoll School in his native Los Angeles. Later he joined Troop 333 of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Los Angeles. Still later, he became a Life Scout in Troop 379 of the Koyasan Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles. (After the war, back home in Los Angeles, he reached Eagle rank.)

"We had very active troops [in the detention camps]," Bill Shishima said. "We played baseball and basketball games, and we went camping along the Shoshone River" just outside the camp. Before the war ended and the camp closed in 1945, he went to summer camp with Troop 379 at Yellowstone National Park.

Advancement was a problem. Cooking equipment and supplies were hard to get. The required 14-mile hike for First Class rank was difficult unless the Scout wanted to get shot for leaving the detention camp.

Swimming tests were hard to pass until the Heart Mountain Scouts made their own pool. In two and a half months, with only shovels and other hand tools, the Scouts dug out a pool 150 by 300 feet and 15-feet deep at its deepest. During the cold Wyoming winters, the pool doubled as a skating rink.

'We were very loyal...'

Junichi Asakura, who was an 18-year-old assistant Scoutmaster of Troop 379 when his family was interned, recalled that the troop sometimes camped inside the fence at Heart Mountain, although never out of sight of the barracks. "Every day we raised and lowered the American flag at the camp headquarters," he said. "We were very loyal to the United States."

Like nearly all the Japanese-American Scouts in the camps, Asakura was a Nisei (American-born sons of Japanese parents, who were called Issei. By law, Issei could not become naturalized citizens).

Weren't the boys and parents resentful of being relocated without cause? "Actually, our leaders seemed to handle us well to the point that we never thought about it," Asakura said. "In fact, our Scoutmaster, who was an American veteran of World War I—we all looked up to him—he didn't seem resentful at all. Somehow he carried us through the crisis."

Another member of Troop 379, Albert Ibaraki, recalled, "My parents were Issei, and they told me to be loyal to the United States because it was my country."

Francis Kikuchi, 74, was 16 when he was interned at the Manzanar Relocation Center in eastern California. "My children say something to the effect that we should have been bitter," he said. "But in those days, my generation was a lot more docile. We followed our parents' advice and we obeyed the law. If the law said you have to move into a camp, we did."

Bruce Kaji agreed. He was also at Manzanar as a 16-year-old former Scout. "We accepted the situation as the government had ordered us," he remembered. "There was no discussion as to choices, why we were there, or when we were going to be released."

Scouts defend the flag

At Manzanar, on the eve of the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the most noteworthy incident involving Scouts in the detention camps occurred.

The tensions between pro-American and pro-Japanese internees overflowed. A thousand protesters gathered at the administration building; one started for the flagpole, to tear down the U.S. flag.

"The Boy Scouts surrounded the base of the flagpole," the center's director, Ralph P. Merritt, told the Associated Press. "They had armed themselves with stones the size of baseballs [and] defied the agitators or the whole mob to touch the flag. And the flag was not hauled down."

The incident did not, however, end the riot. Military police opened fire when internees began throwing stones. One man was killed, another fatally injured, and seven others wounded.

A legacy of racism

The official explanation for interning Japanese aliens and American citizens of Japanese ancestry was a fear that they might aid an invading force from Japan. But not a single case of sabotage was ever proven against a person of Japanese ancestry.

In fact, a major cause was racism, buttressed by economic interest. Thousands of interned Japanese, citizens and aliens alike, had to sell their farms and businesses at bargain-basement prices.

And yet the overwhelming majority of Japanese citizens were devoutly loyal to the U.S.A. About 26,000 Nisei served in the American military, some volunteering from the detention camps.

The all-Nisei 442nd Regiment Combat Team, which fought in Italy, became the most decorated unit of its size in the Army.

More than four decades after World War II ended, Ronald Reagan signed into law the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. It acknowledged and apologized for the injustice of the wartime evacuation, relocation, and internment and authorized a redress payment of $20,000 each to an estimated 60,000 persons still living who were affected by the evacuation.

Robert Peterson is the author of The Boy Scouts: An American Adventure.

[docbnj]

I had a friend who was a kid during WWII, living with his parents in NJ. Their surname sounded plausibly Japanese, but was really Hungarian. They were viewed with suspicion, and to allay this, they voluntarily allowed some FBI agents to board in their home during the war. My friend remembers his talks with the agents, and their showing him their guns. He was the envy of the neighborhood, because read G-men lived in his house.

It is a strange story, for my friend was blond and blue-eyed, and not at all Japanese-looking. Such, I guess, is the irrationality which suspicion engenders.

[scab4faa]

LIved there for a year.. miserable place.

[Sivad]

Depending on their status (resident aliens or citizens) many
folks of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast had the option
of moving to the interior. Given the attitude of most
Americans at the time, the internment option was the safe
choice.

On the other hand, I have a few acquaintances who were civ-
ilian prisoners of the Japanese in the Philippines. They
were starved and beaten for three and one-half years and
have never even received an apology, let alone, compensa-
tion, for their trouble.

[investigateworld]

You are correct, starting in 1943, these options became available. Your friends are correct, that why I explored the idea of FDR doing a swap for US citizen in Jap- hands.
Every thing I've learned about the internments was that it was counterproductive to the war effort, but there were winners. Where your friends at Santo Tomas University in the P.I.?

[decimon]

What you have just written is bullsh*t. NO German-Americans or Italian-Americans were "interned." A few hundred of them were imprisoned on specific, individual charges. But NONE were rounded up for "having at least one Japanese (alien) grandparent."

Arthur Jacobs, for one, was a German-American who was interred and deported.

Under that criterion, 110,000 Japanese-Americans were interned.

Whatever they were, the Relocation camps were not internment camps.

Get your facts straight.

And you.

[Congressman Billybob]

What you refer to as "Relocation" camps were called "Concentration" camps in the official Army correspondence at the beginning of the war. They changed the name when they found out what the Germans were doing under that label.

My co-author and I had wartime correspondence declassified in the process of working on our book. That's the source of my knowledge on what happened. What, pray tell, is the source of your knowledge? Enlighten us.

Billybob

[rcocean]

Funny how the whole thing was put in place by Liberal democrats - but somehow that's never mentioned.

I've read the whole interment come about because of the liberal AG Biddle. Hoover wanted to treat west coast JA just like those in Hawaii. Investigate and intern the security risks. Biddle objected that would violate "civil liberties". So FDR decided to relocate everyone.

[Congressman Billybob]

Former Senator Alan Simpson met former Representative Norm Mineta in a Scout meeting in the camp in Cody, Wyoming. Forty years later when I met Mineta, he was surprised that I knew that story. But I did, 'cause I had done my homework.

Billybob

[investigateworld]

You are correct-a-mondo. The J-A's were growing approx 25% of the Coast's fruits and veggies.
Must of been in control of some series acreage. BTW, go over to Amazon and see what they're charging for Congressman Billybob's used books.

[winker]

FEMA is what we are talking about here and there is every reason to expect that some form of internment facilities will figure in as time proceeds. Many people flatly refuse to acknowledge their existence but there seems to be valid proof of their being scattered around and you don't have to be fitted wit a "TIN FOIL HAT" to read between the lines. There is a "BLACK OPS BUDGET" for FEMA in the military and access is not open for just anyone to amble around.

Whether you view them as simple detention centers at former military facilities or whatever your mind can conjure up they apparently form a pattern for warehousing large numbers of dissidents who are citizens and TERRORISTS. Dissidents comprise those who the government "SUSPECTS" of being dis loyal to what is perceived as a One World Order of business. TERRORISTS are agents of opportunity not aligned with any country and as a result do not fall under the Geneva Conventions that apply to "Prisoners of War" who are identified with a particular country or nation state. Once again historical parallels apply when you consider who you are locking up. There are reasons not clearly spelled out when you follow the path in this twisted maze.

[sailor4321]

And it's awfully hard for saboteurs to destroy an entire aircraft manufacturing facility anyway.

Especially if the sabateur is in a relocation center 200 miles (or more) away from the facility...

[decimon]

What you refer to as "Relocation" camps were called "Concentration" camps in the official Army correspondence at the beginning of the war. They changed the name when they found out what the Germans were doing under that label.

Yes, I know. But the US camps were not death camps so what's the point?

I years ago came across something called Una Storia Segreta, now on the web, which said that Italians/Italian-Americans had been subject to internment, relocation and exclusion. That peaked my interest in the subject as everything I'd previously encountered said otherwise. The first reference to Una Storia Segreta was in New York Newsday.

I found the website of retired USAF Major, Arthur Jacobs. I was skepitical but but went looking further. I read the "oral histories" of Stephen J. Fox, a retired history professor and apparent Liberal.

I discovered that the US Gov. has become more forthcoming with info on the subject. There is the WARTIME VIOLATION OF ITALIAN AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES ACT and similar, pending legislation for German-Americans. The US Parks Service now mentions Euro-Americans in camps and otherwise messed with.

I've learned that the detentions we call "internment" are common and legal both in the US and internationally. The real damage done to J-As was in the Relocation program so I don't like seeing you, Eric Muller or any other use the terms interchangeably

I haven't read Malkin's book but I gather she's gone too far with her assertions. So do you.