Importance Of Loyalty In Ww2

Degrees of Loyalty

Loyalty was a major issue in the United States during World War II and the subsequent years following. This was especially true in California, where Japanese Americans were held in internment camps during the war because many felt that their loyalty was to Japan and not the United States. This caused many problems for the Japanese American citizens, as they were subjected to loyalty tests and forced draft programs into the armed forces. Those who opposed the American Government and their tactics were sent to work camps and their families were broken apart. This also raised issues as to how our government operates. Since the Army was now able to arrest and punish these people, it took away power from our more diplomatic
areas of the government. The actions taken by our government are one that are inexcusable but they are ones that are constantly being repeated, like the Patriot Act. From 1900 until 1908, as many as 55,000 Japanese immigrants came to America’s Pacific coast to start a new life.
Many of these immigrants landed in California and remained there. These people had begun to start to create a culture and lifestyle for themselves that was uniquely Japanese, but had some American values. This all changed in June of 1941 when the Japanese government bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii which was a major American military base. The immediate affect of this on the Japanese Americans was that there assets were frozen and many community leaders were rounded up and taken away from their families. This war hysteria continued and in February of 1942, the military was designated and assigned the task of setting up “military areas from which any or all persons may be excluded.” General John L. Dewitt, leader of the Western Defense mandated in March that all enemy races, Germans and Italians and Japanese alike, were to be removed from the coasts in the US. An excerpt from Sucheng Chan’s Major Problems in California History says “enemy aliens of German, Italian and Japanese ancestry as well as all persons of Japanese Ancestry should prepare to remove themselves.” (Chan 338) This quote is from Dewitt’s mandate to “ensure the freedom and liberties of the American
people. The new prisoners were brought to these camps, after all of their possessions were either taken away or sold, and they still were facing indignity and terrible treatment.
The Japanese were subjected to loyalty tests when they got to the camps, and this caused many problems for their heritage. The government was giving them an ultimatum: either reject your Japanese ancestry and become a true American, or go to jail. This was a problem because they are asking these prisoners weather or not they want to become a loyal member of a country that is imprisoning them, and this would also diminish their Japanese heritage. Question 27 of the questionnaire asked “Are you willing to serve in the Armed Forces of the United States, on combat duty, wherever ordered?” In other words, its asking if they would go fight in a war that is against their own people, since we were still at war with Japan. This eventually led to mandatory drafting within the camps and those who resisted or refused to go to war were sent to Tuli Lake, which was a very harsh work camp that claimed many
lives. During this internment period, the conditions of the camps were very harsh, unsanitary and uncomfortable. Many of the camps did not have adequate facilities for the prisoners. For example in John Tateshi’s And Justice for All, there is a man, Tom Watanabe, who is with his pregnant wife and she comes to term in the camp but she and the babies die during birth. However, he is only told that they are all dead, he is not allowed to see the bodies, there is no funeral, no death or birth certificates and no way of knowing what happened to his family. “I don’t know. And that’s the part that haunts me.” (Tateshi p. 96) He later goes on to say that he as in a state of shock for more than one month and that it is something that he will never recover from because he has no sense of closure from the incident. His family was torn apart by this camp and many others were feeling as though they were being treated unfairly, so Watanabe gives us an account of a riot that occurs because food is being taken away from the camps by the truckload.
Some people didn’t riot and tried to escape from these camps and go back to the real world, taking any and all measures to ensure they won’t be discovered. For example Fred Korematsu refused to leave his home and go to the internment cam and was later arrested by the army after he was discovered to have gotten plastic surgery to hide his Japanese features. In his court case, the army was given the authority to arrest any person of Japanese ancestry they saw. This was problematic since it took away the power of local governments and Supreme Court Justice Fred Murphy said that it was the “legalization of slavery.” However, this comment came too little, too late because Korematsu’s hearing wasn’t until 1944 and the internment camps ended in September of 1945.
The issue of loyalty was the reason for the subjugation and discrimination against Japanese American citizens after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1944. The Japanese were taken from their homes and many families were separated during this process either through different locations or death due to insufficient facilities. The actions taken by the government were nearsighted, ignorant and unnecessary. The United States Army was given absolute power to do what they wanted and took power and individual rights away from people that had done nothing to deserve such treatment. An account from Yoshiye Tagasake in Tateshi’s work says “it’s the same old story: when power whips up hysteria, power generally gets what it wants, and they got it.” (Tateshi p. 225) The government knew exactly what it was doing, using fear in order to get the American people to do what they wanted and it worked. This cycle continues today, after the events of September 11th, 2001 we were introduced to the Patriot Act and we accepted it because we were frightened. But it begs me to ask the question, when will our loyalty be called into question?