The Legacy of Japanese American Incarceration Following the Attacks on Pearl Harbor
By Alexander Filippides
Imagine, for a moment, the year is 1941, you’re an American citizen, as are your parents, but your grandparents, who have passed away, were born in the Japanese Empire more than half a century ago. Following the December 7th attacks on Pearl Harbor your life is flipped on its head. Neighbors who greeted you with kindness now refuse to look at you, the news and radio refer to you using racial slurs, and soon you’ll be forcibly imprisoned by the American government because of your race.
Over 100,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, experienced this treatment after President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19th, 1942. The infamous order authorized the forced removal of those who, in the eyes of the Secretary of War and later the War Relocation Authority, were a threat to national security. While this did include a limited number of Italians and Germans, the order was overwhelming used to prosecute those of Japanese ethnicity. Racism against the Japanese, and Asians at large, was nothing new for the United States; a myriad of ordinances had already been put in place to explicitly discriminate against Chinese, Japanese, and other East Asians; but this was something different. This wasn’t the government restricting immigration or enacting unjust employment, housing and education laws— instead the Federal government was imprisoning American citizens due to their ethnicity.
The reactions of those unjustly imprisoned varied widely. Some would never fully recover from the mental anguish; evidence suggests that those incarcerated would suffer disproportionately from a variety of mental health issues, including higher suicide and drug usage rates. Children and youth, who were early in their development, were likely also deeply impacted by the imprisonment. The average age of Nisei, or first generation of Japanese Americans born in the US, at the time of Executive Order 9066 was 18. Despite the extraordinarily oppressive, disruptive, and traumatic nature of the incarceration, some were able to overcome impossible odds and build incredible lives both during and after the Second World War.
Miné Okubo
One of the most celebrated figures in the Japanese American community to arise out of this period was Miné Okubo, an artist, activist, and author who would establish herself during incarceration as one of the greatest activist-artists of her era. Okubo continued to live in New York after incarceration and had a unique connection to Westport, designing annual Christmas cards for the Robert Duffus, a celebrated writer and editor who would call Westport home for many years.
Originally born in Riverside, California, in 1912, Okubo was seemingly destined for a career in illustration well-before Order 9066 was signed by FDR. In fact, Okubo was on an art fellowship in Europe when the Germans crossed the Polish border. At first, the artist fled to neutral Switzerland to await permission to gather her belongings in Paris, but upon being informed that her mother was seriously ill she took what she had on hand and boarded one of the last ships leaving Bordeaux, France.1
Once Japan attacked the United States in 1941, Okubo became acutely aware of the rising anti-Japanese racism that gripped newspapers, radio, and in the American public more broadly. Concerning fears of so-called “evacuation” to prison camps, Okubo would write:
We had not believed at first that evacuation would affect the Nisei, American citizens of Japanese ancestry, but thought perhaps the Issei, Japanese-born mothers and fathers who were denied naturalization by American law, would be interned in case of war between Japan and the United States. It was a real blow when everyone, regardless of citizenship, was ordered to evacuate.
While detained at these camps, those of Japanese descent were not allowed to document their experiences using cameras or audio recordings. Undeterred, Okubo would produce around 200 line-drawings that depicted daily life during incarceration between 1942 and 1944. Okubo was granted permission to depart for New York in 1944 where she would go to work as an illustrator for Fortune magazine. The incarceration-era art created by Miné Okubo would be first published in 1946, when anti-Japanese sentiment remained high even after the recent nuclear bombings, and subsequent surrender, of Japan in August 1945. Citizen 13660, the book that would combine Okubo’s sketches with her musings, memories, and observations, remains perhaps the best firsthand account of life in an American concentration camp.
Minnie Negoro
Okubo, however, wasn’t the only notable artist who would settle in the Northeast after bearing witness to Japanese and Japanese American incarceration. Minnie Negoro was another Japanese American artist who would find her early career defined by imprisonment. A skilled ceramic artist who specialized in crafting pots, Negoro’s art later be held in many major institutions, such as the Smithsonian, was a vital member of the artistic community in Connecticut. In the Spring of 1942, she founded the ceramics department at the University of Connecticut. While interred, Negoro used her craft as an escape from camp conditions, created beauty and utility during a dark and desolate chapter of American history. Negoro remembered incarceration:
It was a frightening place, with guard towers and MPs who were told to shoot anyone going outside or over the gate. It was a concentration camp. I just wanted to get the heck out of there and to get as far away from the West Coast as possible.
Negoro didn’t only create pottery for her own sake, but helped teach classes to allow a reprieve for her fellow prisoners. In 1944, she was finally able to leave Heart Mountain, Wyoming, where she had been held, to attend Alfred University as a graduate student on the recommendation of her mentor Daniel Rhodes, a notable ceramic potter himself. Not only would Minne Negoro finish her education with a Master of Arts, but she would also go on to found her own ceramics program at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.
Gene Takahashi
No story of Japanese incarceration touches Westport more closely than that of Gene Takahashi. Raised in El Centro, California, Takahashi would call Westport home for many, many, years later in life. Takahashi was only fourteen at the time Order 9066 was issued. Despite his young age, Gene later recalled his emotions while entering Poston Relocation Center with clarity saying “It was quite a shock to us, getting off the two-and-a-half-ton truck to see there were actually guards, barbed wire, and we were actually in a prison.”
The young Gene Takahashi was, at last, permitted to leave camp with his family in 1944. Settling down in Cleveland, Ohio, the now-sixteen-year-old Takahashi could not escape the feeling of wanting to prove himself a “loyal American.” To this end, he enlisted in the American army, inspired by the all-Japanese American regiment the 442nd, at the ripe age of seventeen, requiring his parents’ permission to enlist.
Joining at the very tail-end of World War II, Takahashi would be stationed in Korea as part of the American force occupying Japan and former Japanese colonial territories. Despite the utility of speaking Japanese in Korea, a country which had suppressed the Korean language since Japanese entry in 1910, he felt unfairly targeted by his commanding officer due to his youth and Japanese ethnicity. However, Takahashi remembers this period fondly, stating that the intense scrutiny he was under contributed positively to his development at such a young age.
After completing his contract, Takahashi returned home but agreed to stay in the army reserve. Upon returning to Cleveland, he married his fiancé Violette and began a family before receiving an unexpected letter from President Truman, asking him to return to Korea to fight in the escalating Korean War. Now intimately familiar with Korea, Takahashi was a vital part of the slow desegregation of the American Armed Forces, being placed as the lieutenant of an all-black troop.
As the Chinese joined the conflict, Takahashi found himself narrowly evading capture, and likely execution, after his unit was overrun. The lieutenant would rally his troops again to slow the Chinese onslaught approaching Seoul, an action which would win Lt. Takahashi the Combat Infantry Badge and the Purple Heart. Soon after this, however, he would be shot by a Chinese machine gun and forced to return home. Takahashi would go on to have a large family and became a key figure in IBM’s litigation team, before finally settling in Westport as he approached the twilight of his career.
Could This Happen Again?
Takahashi’s legacy, like those of Negoro and Okubo, is profoundly influenced by the trials and tribulations presented by the unjust incarceration of so many Japanese and Japanese Americans. It is impossible to read the stories of these figures without wondering how different things may have been if, instead of spending multiple foundational years of life in a concertation camp, they had been permitted the same opportunities and rights of their non-Japanese counterparts. If these people, who undoubtably led exceptional lives, had been born White, would their names be more widely remembered? Its undeniable racism against Asians and Japanese Americans didn’t end with the end of incarceration, nor would it end with the Japanese surrender and occupation. Okubo would reflect in the intro of the 1983 edition of Citizen 13660:
I am often asked why I am not bitter and could this happen again? I am a realist with a creative mind, interested in people, so my thoughts are constructive. I am not bitter. I hope things can be learned from this tragic episode, for I believe it could happen again.
Could this happen again? The recent election win of President-elect Donald Trump has put question marks over the heads of undocumented immigrants nationwide. Stephen Miller, a Trump advisor, has proposed building “mass deportation camps” as part of a goal to, as a separate campaign spokesperson stated, “marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation in American history.” Unfortunately, this is no new practice in modern American politics. Since the Obama administration, there has been a massive increase in family detention camps in a similar effort to curb illegal immigration. However, the blatantly hostile rhetoric towards immigrants by the incoming administration means that the nation may be looking at a situation that could quickly spiral out of control.
What is the legacy of Japanese and Japanese American incarceration? Is it the legacy the 442nd, the legendary Japanese American regiment that fought in Europe, and, later, Gene Takahashi? Is it the artists, like Okubo and Negoro, who’s art would capture this horrifying chapter of American history with powerful memories of oppression and elegant moments of escape? Perhaps, even, it is the tens of thousands whose stories remain untold; those who suffered not just in the camps but for a lifetime afterwards in silence.
The most sobering legacy must be the continual acceptance of anti-Asian racism in our country. One must look no further than the rise in anti-Asian hate crime that followed the outbreak of the COVID pandemic to see how, even with reparations and time, lessons are not learned if they are not remembered.
Offline materials:
- Okubo, Miné. Citizen 13660 (Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 1946).