Blog # 9: Japanese Internment

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, America declared war on Japan. All the Japanese immigrants living in the U.S. at the time became suspect as people who could aid and abet the enemy or even become enemy combatants.

On February 19, 1942, soon after the beginning of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which ordered the round-up and relocation of 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage to one of 10 internment camps, officially called “relocation centers,” in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. More than two-thirds of the Japanese who were interned were citizens of the United States.

The U.S. internment camps were overcrowded and provided poor living conditions. According to a 1943 report published by the War Relocation Authority, Japanese Americans were housed in "tarpaper-covered barracks of simple frame construction without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind."

One of the thousands of internees was Ruth Asawa, the creator and artist of the Japanese Internment Memorial in San Jose. Asawa was 16 when she was forced into the camps with her family. She and her family were placed in the horse stalls of the Santa Anita racetrack. In her mural, an image of the horses being removed from the stalls and hundreds of people filing in, stands out, among others.

For many, the upheaval of losing everything, most importantly their right to freedom and a private, family life caused irreparable harm. For Asawa, the internment was the first step on a journey to a world of art that profoundly changed who she was and what she thought was possible in life.

In 1994, when she was 68 years old, she reflected on the experience: "I hold no hostilities for what happened; I blame no one. Sometimes good comes through adversity. I would not be who I am today had it not been for the Internment, and I like who I am."

The memorial created by Asawa is a two-sided panel that sits in front of the federal courthouse in San Jose. The piece depicts scenes of immigration, internment during World War II and the current Japanese-American community.

San Jose was a significant location during the Japanese Internment. San Jose was a huge farming community, and had a very large Japanese population. It was one of the first stops when the government ordered the gathering of people of Japanese heritage. San Jose State’s Uchida Hall was once a transfer point for Japanese Americans to internment camps.

I think that Asawa really connected the memorial to San Jose by including the family crests of the residents interned from Santa Clara County.

Her images and recreated scenes tell the story of the Japanese immigrants from their arrival in the U.S. to the end of the internment period.

There are stories of closed shops, burned belongings, and lost loved ones. Barbed wire surrounds Asawa’s pictures much like the Japanese were surrounded in their camps. There are large guard towers shown in the center of the memorial and the cramped and uncomfortable living conditions can also be seen.

I believe this country has overcome much of its racial and ethnic bias that would trigger interning a whole group of people based on their ethnicity, although certain groups still face discrimination. After 9-11 Middle Eastern people were discriminated against unfairly and some even lost their jobs or were shunned in their communities. This shows, that as a country, although we have overcome some bias, we haven’t overcome it all, and some people never will.