Below is a transcript of our conversation with Hanako Wakatsuki-Chong:
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. This month CMU welcomed Hanako Wakatsuki-Chong as part of the Dr. Harold Abel Endowed Lecture Series in the Study of Dictatorship, Democracy and Genocide. Hanako is Director of the Japanese American Museum in Oregon. Many in her family were held in the concentration camps created by President Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, resulting in the detention of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War 2, including many who were American born citizens…
Why such little opposition when there was so much geared towards the threat of Nazi Germany, the treatment of the Jewish people in those concentration camps? Why do you think there was so little opposition here?
Hanako Wakatsuki-Chong:
Uhm, well, I think a lot of it has to do with the anti-Japanese sentiment that existed. You know, later on in 1988, there was a congressional study that was done and it said that it was due to war hysteria, racism and the failure of political leadership that led to it. So, I think in situations when we are at war, sometimes a lot of people feel threatened. And yes, there's one aspect or that they're thinking about national security, but then they're also kind of praying upon people's fears to get the things that they wanted done. So, on the West Coast, because of the affluent nature of the Japanese American communities there or how it was perceived, a lot of people wanted to kind of contain the so-called Japanese American issues and a lot of that was land ownership and whatnot. And what this exclusion order was used for, you know, ended up targeting Japanese Americans, even though in the language it isn't actually targeting any particular community. But the military ended up using that to prescribe these military zones on the West Coast of the United States to exclude Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals.
DN:
You mentioned specifically 1988. That was the year that the US issued the formal apology for the practice, and it also involved reparations to the families who were affected by this in World War II. Two paths I think to look at it. One is the broad question as to why it took that long and secondly wondering if there was any evolution or time passed, healing wounds, whatever lens you would want to use, looking at that as to the attitude and the relation, relationship to Japanese Americans following the end of the war.
HW-C:
Yeah, you know, that's a great question because a lot of it comes down to trauma, right? The reason why it took so long was the generation that were, like older adults that were sent to camp. So that first-generation immigrants who are barred by law, they suffered a lot because not only were there ineligible for citizens. The (the) way, then the communities were then structured within the camp system was that those first generation immigrants could not hold any power. So, it actually created this weird dynamic within the sites where they couldn't, you know, speak Japanese because there's language restrictions. They couldn't work at times because of potential suspicions or whatever, or if they're older, they couldn't actually, physically do the labor and then yet they're no longer like the head of households. So, there was a whole bunch of depression amongst that generation, especially after the war. And then you have the second-generation American born kids, depending on their age. It was very different too, because if they were older adults, as in like. You know, they had families that they had to deal with. They're just struggling to survive. The coming-of-age kids like, especially if they're like teenagers to young adults, sometimes they had a different experience in camp because they saw the struggles. And this perception of not being American enough, but also trying to figure out how could they, you know show loyalty or not, show loyalty or whatever where they're like, they just want to live as whether it's students or whatnot, because especially, you know, we're on a college campus. A lot of these kids got kicked out of school because they're going to school on the West Coast. So, a lot of them ended up losing their future potential of the career that they wanted to go down to, but they were unable to finish their education. And then the younger of that second-generation American born kids, you know, a lot of them had a different experience because their parents were trying to shield them from what was actually going on. So, the kids were just left to be kids. So sometimes you hear these younger groups saying, oh, I had fun in camp. And it took a while after the war for people to start to talk about it again, because they'll be like references to camp. But, you know, if it's out of context, maybe the third-generation children are, like, what's camp, what's going on? And when they try to bring it up, people don't want to talk about it.
DN:
More on the legacy of the Japanese Americans next week on Central Focus.
