S. HRG. 98-1304

RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSION ON WARTIME INTERNMENT AND RELOCATION OF CITIZENS


HEARINGS

BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CIVIL SERVICE,
POST OFFICE, AND GENERAL SERVICES
OF THE

COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE

NINETY-EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON

S. 2116

TO ACCEPT THE FINDINGS AND TO IMPLEMENT THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSION ON WARTIME INTERNMENT AND RELOCATION OF CITIZENS

AUGUST 16, 1984 -- LOS ANGELES, CA
AUGUST 29, 1984 -- ANCHORAGE, AK

Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 1986
64-273 O

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office
U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402

64-273 O-86--1

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

WILLIAM V. ROTH, JR., Delaware, Chairman
CHARLES H. PERCY, Illinois
THOMAS F. EAGLETON, Missouri
TED STEVENS, Alaska
LAWTON CHILES, Florida
CHARLES McC. MATHIAS, JR., Maryland
SAM NUNN, Georgia
WILLIAM S. COHEN, Maine
JOHN GLENN, Ohio
DAVID DURENBERGER, Minnesota
JIM SASSER, Tennessee
WARREN B. RUDMAN, New Hampshire
CARL LEVIN, Michigan
JOHN C. DANFORTH, Missouri
JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi
DAVID PRYOR, Arkansas
WILLIAM L. ARMSTRONG, Colorado

JOHN M. DUNCAN, Staff Director
IRA S. SHAPIRO, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
TERRY JOLLY, Chief Clerk
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CIVIL SERVICE, POST OFFICE, AND GENERAL SERVICES
TED STEVENS, Alaska, Chairman
CHARLES McC. MATHIAS, JR., Maryland
JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico
WILLIAM L. ARMSTRONG, Colorado
JIM SASSER, Tennessee
WAYNE A. SCHLEY, Staff Director
EDWIN S. JAYNE, Minority Staff Director
PAT PHILLIPS, Chief Clerk


NOTE: [Bracketed] text in original. This excerpt starts from page 35 of the record.

Senator STEVENS. We will now hear from the Honorable Samuel Hayakawa, former Senator from California.

TESTIMONY OF SAMUEL I. HAYAKAWA,
FORMER SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Mr. HAYAKAWA. Good morning, Senator Stevens.

Senator STEVENS. Good morning, Senator.

Mr. HAYAKAWA. First, let me thank you for the opportunity of giving testimony on this occasion. It is a real privilege.

I want to take a point of view this morning, Mr. Chairman -- this has not been taken by anyone else to my knowledge -- I want to look at the wartime relocation of Japanese-Americans from a strictly Japanese point of view, that is, the way it was seen by the Issei, or the immigrant generation.

Let me explain, therefore, something about the Japanese ethical and moral systems.

Every Japanese is born into a system of obligations -- to his Emperor, to his feudal Lord, to his parents. These are known as "on" -- O-n -- or the obligations he must fulfill throughout his life.

As an immigrant from another country, he may or may not continue to revere the Emperor, but as long as he is in another country, he has "on" toward the government of that country.

President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, required that Japanese, both U.S. citizens and noncitizens, be removed from designated military zones, which were the three coastal States and a part of northern Arizona. The Japanese hastened to comply with the order, despite tremendous difficulties of preparation for travel, disposition of businesses and property, arrangements for transportation, thus showing themselves to be, by Japanese standards of "on," men and women of honor.

Of course, to be uprooted from one's home and business and moved to strange surroundings under military orders was a painful and humiliating experience, but another Japanese moral imperative takes over, and that is "giri to one's name," which means "self-respect," or what Germans call "die Ehre," comes into effect. "Giri" does not permit one, when deeply distressed, to weep, scream, to make a scene or create a disturbance. One has to do what one has to do quietly and with dignity.

My wife and I were living in Chicago when all this was happening. We followed with intense interest what was happening to the Japanese in California. We read accounts in newspapers and weekly -- particularly pictorial weeklies like Life Magazine. We saw newsreels. What impressed us again and again was the dignity, the grace and realism of Japanese behavior under these difficult and humiliating circumstances. They kept their dignity.

Now, the gap between the Issei who went to camp, and the Sansei -- their grandchildren -- who are now pressing for redress, is revealed by the contempt shown by the latter for the former. A statement issued by the Seattle chapter of the Japanese-American Citizens League says that the Issei went to camp without a struggle because they had been brainwashed by white racism into believing in their own racial inferiority.

Mr. Chairman, what incredible rubbish.

The younger Japanese-Americans, having learned to analyze the world in the trendy language of Black Panther ideology, have no idea what gave backbone and courage and character to their parents and grandparents in times of stress.

Among those whose lives were seriously disrupted by the relocation order were the students attending colleges and universities in California. Washington, and Oregon.

John H. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, requested Clarence Pickett of the America Friends Service Committee in May 1942 to start planning a program of student relocation that would enable young people to continue their studies. Distinguished educators from west coast universities and other institutions from elsewhere, plus the Japanese-American Citizens League, Government agencies and church groups and so on, began to form within a few short weeks a National Student Relocation Council. The problem was not only to relocate students already in college, but to place students in college as they graduated from high schools in the relocation centers. A further problem was to raise scholarship money to enable students to pay for their education.

The efforts of the Student Relocation Council were supported by the Staff of the War Relocation Authority as well as by the internees themselves.

In 1941, according to a study by Robert O'Brian entitled "The College Nisei," there were 271 Nisei students in colleges and universities east of the Rockies. Then, because of the combined efforts of everyone concerned, including especially the America Friends Service Committee, from 1942 to the end of the war, almost 4,300 students were relocated in all parts of the United States outside the west coast.

Among the many institutions that had never had Nisei students before, but received them during the relocation, were Illinois Institute of Technology, fashionable schools like Bryn Mawr, Carleton, Kenyon, Louisiana State University, University of Texas, Rutgers, Antioch, Oberlin, Haverford, Mount Holyoke, and Purdue University and so on.

In most places, Nisei were alone or virtually alone in a white society, but they soon found themselves among friends in their classmates and their professors, who received them warmly. Many Nisei distinguished themselves scholastically, others distinguished themselves in sports, and some in both. But all found themselves at home in a larger America than they had ever known before.

Their basic learning was summed up by a girl who attended an eastern school, who is quoted by O'Brian. She said,
I've always wanted to be looked upon as an American. I have found it here. They treat me as an American. They do not treat me as a Japanese-American.
Now, whatever the heartbreaks and losses created by the wartime relocation, there were unforeseen benefits. Through the adventure of relocation, almost all Nisei and many Issei were thrown out of their ghettoized Japan-town existence into the mainstream of American life -- and learned to converse, joke, quarrel, bargain, or pray with their fellow Americans without racial self-consciousness. They learned to be at home in their own country.

Professor Thomas Sowell, the economist, has accurately described what happened:
In short, the internment of Japanese-Americans... eventually worked to their advantage. It gave the group greater occupational and residential mobility, it released the young and ambitious native-born Japanese-Americans from the strict control of their parents. It decisively broke the back of the anti-Japanese prejudice and discrimination which had held them back for decades. Despite irreparable personal and financial damage to individuals, Japanese-Americans as a group prospered more after they returned from the internment camps than before. The Japanese-Americans did not put their main emphasis on trying to get justice, but rather on trying to get ahead. And they did.
This is from Race and Economics, published in 1975.

Mr. Chairman, it was a great humiliation for the Nisei of the 100th Battalion of the Hawaii National Guard to be sent to Camp McCoy, WI, where they were trained with wooden guns. Mr. Chairman, that is a degree to which they were distrusted, despite the fact that they were wearing American uniforms. But most seriously this distrust was an affront to these young men. America was saying to them, "You are not to be trusted. We doubt your loyalty."

Our distinguished colleague, the Honorable Spark Matsunaga, now a U.S. Senator from Hawaii, was in that unit. He has written as follows:
We wrote home of our great desire for combat duty to prove our loyalty to the United States. It was not known to us then that our letters were being censored by higher authority. We learned subsequently that because of the tenor of our letters, the War Department decided to give us a chance. Our guns were returned to us and we were told that we were going to be prepared for combat duty -- grown men leaped with joy.
Well, you know the story after that. On January 28, 1943, the War Department announced that Niseis would be accepted as a special combat unit. They volunteered in the thousands both from Hawaii and from the relocation centers. They were united with the 100th Battalion as the 442d Regimental Combat Team at Camp Shelby, MI.

The 100th Battalion first saw action in Salerno, Italy, in September 1943, and took heavy casualties. The 442d landed in Italy in June 1944, and at once gained a reputation as an assault force, and accomplished the famous rescue of the "Lost Battalion" of the 36th Texas Division, at an enormous cost in blood. Fighting in seven major campaigns, the men of the 442d suffered 9,486 casualties and won more than 18,000 individual decorations for valor.

Another 3,700 Niseis served in combat areas in the Pacific as translators and interpreters. The Japanese military, believing the Japanese language was too difficult for foreigners to master, were unbelievably careless about security. They did not count on Nisei on every battlefront reading captured documents and passing information on to Allied commanders. Kibei -- that is, Nisei who are born in America but educated in Japan and were therefore the object of special suspicion and distrust -- the Kibei turned out to be especially helpful in this respect, in assisting the American Armed Forces.

In short, the Nisei covered themselves with honor and made life in America better for themselves, and their parents -- who a few years after the war won the right to be naturalized -- and their children.

I remember vividly the returning Nisei veterans I saw in Chicago soon after VE Day. They came home from Europe. Short of stature as they were, they walked proudly down Randolph Street, with infantry combat citations on their chests, conscious that they were home -- home in their own country. And, Chicago, known throughout the war for its hospitality to servicemen, outdid itself when the Nisei returned. The Nisei had really earned that welcome.

I do not believe, Mr. Chairman, that it suffices to say as an explanation, to say that the Nisei troops were brave. What was driving them was a profoundly Japanese motivation, namely "giri to one's name." I didn't know the word myself, but I knew I had it, and I know many other Nisei who have it, but they weren't told about it in those words.

Since they had been suspected of disloyalty, they had to prove themselves loyal beyond all questions, beyond all doubt.

This is the basic reason the Nisei volunteered in such numbers. This is the reason they fought so well. More than 33,000 Niseis served in the war -- a remarkable number out of a total Japanese-American population -- Hawaii and mainland combined -- of something like 200,000. They had a fierce pride in their reputation as a group.

And, Mr. Chairman, the Issei were also motivated by "giri to one's name." Those who found jobs outside the camps, as a result of the efforts of the War Relocation Authority, proved to be exemplary workers, as if to prove something not only about themselves, but about their entire group. Japanese-Americans, young and old alike, accepted the mass relocation with dignity and maturity making the best of a humiliating and unjust situation. In so doing, they exhibited the finest resources of their ancient background culture.

To me as a Japanese-American, I find myself both awed and humbled by Japanese-American behavior during World War II.

First, I was deeply impressed by the ability of the Issei, the immigrant generation, to draw upon their moral resources and their ethical traditions to accept the discomforts and the agonies of relocation with stoicism and dignity. Thrown into ugly barracks in the desert, they made bearable the unbearable with patience and humor. And to relieve the emptiness of camp life, they drew again upon the resources of their own culture. They started to work on painting, sculptures, flower arranging; they recalled much of it from memory: Kabuki music, the ancient art form of Kabuki drama, the recitatives of nagauta, which is long narrative poems that the Japanese like to recite. They would sit around bridge tables reciting nagauta to each other, or quoting each other passages from Kabuki drama and responding to each other, taking all parts. This was one of their amusements in camp. Again, the Japanese culture was a defense and the resource in times of trouble.

The Nisei as servicemen, both in the Pacific Theater and the 442d in Europe, also make me proud to be a Japanese-American. Their determination to prove themselves, their sense of giri that led them to reckless deeds of heroism and also to record casualty rates, proved over and over again their high sense of honor -- both as Americans and as Japanese.

Now, perhaps I have made clear why I object so profoundly to the idea of monetary redress for the anguish and the injustices of the relocation. The Japanese-Americans, both Issei and Nisei, acted like men and women of honor, fulfilling their obligations of "on," protecting "giri to their names," both as individuals and as a group -- and in the course of all this, they proved themselves to be good Americans, as well as good Japanese.

Do they have to be paid for being men and women of honor?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator STEVENS. Thank you, Senator. I appreciate your coming to testify. Good to be with you.
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