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Bartered Lives: Book proposal

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Bartered Lives: Book proposal

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ProQuest Information and Learning
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Copyright 2002
BARTERED LIVES
BOOK PROPOSAL
by
Julie Small
A Professional Project Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements of the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
JOURNALISM
(PRINT JOURNALISM)
May 10,2002
Julie Small
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UM I Number: 1411807
Copyright 2002 by
Small, Julie A.
All rights reserved.
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UNIVERSITY O F SO U TH ER N CALIFORNIA
TH E GRADUATE SCH O O L
UNIVERSITY RARK
LOS ANGELES. CALIFO RNIA 8 0 0 0 7
T his thesis, w ritten by
J u l i e , S m c i U ________________________
under the direction o f hex. Thesis C om m ittee,
and ap p ro ved by a ll its m em bers, has been p re
sented to and accepted by the D ean of The
G raduate School, in partial fu lfillm en t of the
requirem ents fo r the degree o f
Mksf-er- of- A rts
D ate. . 10 , 2002
THESIS. COMMITTEE
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DEDICATION
For Yoshinari Honda whose career as a journalist was cut short by the hand of the
US government when he was taken from his home in Lima Peru and imprisoned in
Crystal City camp in Texas. Yoshinari “Dynamite” Honda sold flowers on Wall
Street, Los Angeles for the rest of his working life, but was always generous with his
time and never bitter about the past. Yoshinari passed away November 8, 1998.
May he rest in peace.
For Carmen Mochizuki whose compassion and kindness kept me motivated to keep
telling her story.
For Fred Okrand (1917-2002) who worked all his life to right the injustices of the
internment. He was an example to follow.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
iii
Many thanks to my thesis committee: Ed Cray, Ed Guthman and Jack Langguth, for
encouraging and supporting this project Thanks also to graduate advisor Debbie
Blake for her tireless commitment to the students of the Annenberg Communication
School. This project would not have been possible without the work of Grace
Shimizu, Director of the Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project whose inexhaustible
dedication to educating the public about the Japanese Peruvian internment during
World War II brought this injustice to light.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
iv
Dedication ii
Acknowledgments iii
Abstract v
Body 1-45
Bibliography 46-47
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V
Julie Small Professor Ed Cray
ABSTRACT
BARTERED LIVES
During World War II the U.S. State Department seized 2,264 people of
Japanese ancestry from Latin America and interned them in Immigration and
Naturalization Service camps in the United States. Betrayed by governments that felt
no allegiance to these immigrants, they were used as hostages to exchange for
American civilians caught in war zones controlled by the Axis nations. The story of
Japanese Latin American internment is one of the lost stories of World War II and
one that still resonates today. In times of war, immigrants in any country are
vulnerable to misuse and betrayal, having as they do, loyalties and ties to two
countries. Bartered Lives tells how the American and Latin American governments
exploited racial prejudice and wartime paranoia, manipulated laws to commit grave
violations of human rights, international law and the U. S. Constitution—violations
that provide important lessons for us today.
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I
Human Barter
The sight of the policeman standing in her classroom struck terror in
11-year-old Carmen Higa’s heart. The teacher instructed her to take the policeman
to her father at their house in Callao—a city on the West Coast of Peru. Carmen’s
father Kamado had been hiding from the Peruvian authorities for over a year—ever
since the bombing of Pearl Harbor when his name appeared on the blacklist of
Japanese the United States government considered dangerous. Whenever an
American ship appeared in the port of Callao, Carmen’s father fled to a friend’s vast
banana plantation where he could easily hide from the authorities for weeks at a
time. But on this day, Carmen’s father was at home. Wearing a hat pulled over his
eyes and his collar turned up high, he had sneaked into the house the night before to
be with his family and Carmen feared she would now become the instrument of his
betrayal.1
1 Carmen Mochizuki, interviewed by the author, 20 March 2002, Los Angeles.
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On the long walk home, Carmen chattered casually, all the while trying to
think of some plan to warn her father. She tried to act calm, as if she had no idea that
the policeman was going to arrest her daddy.
When they arrived at the house, she told the policeman to wait for her at the
front door while she went around the backside of the house to let him in. While the
trusting policeman stood in the front yard, Carmen rushed to warn her father. She
found him sitting just inside the door and told him about the policeman. Kamado,
slipped out the back window, scampered onto the neighbor’s roof and disappeared.
Once he was gone, Carmen dutifully opened the front door and watched as the
policeman rifled through the contents of the house.
Kamado Higa’s freedom was short lived. Within a year the Peruvian
government threatened Carmen’s father with lifetime imprisonment and no contact
with his family unless he turned himself in. In February of 1944, Kamado went to
the police station, where he was arrested and sent him to the dank stone jail in Lima.
The Peruvian government seized the family farm and all their savings.
On March 1, police rounded up Carmen, her mother and her eight siblings.
They were allowed to bring just one precious suitcase each stuffed with clothing.
Photographs and heirlooms had to be left behind.
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3
In the port of Callao the authorities deported the Higa family to United States
military personnel who herded them onto a battle gray destroyer— the USAT Cuba—
armed with anti-aircraft artillery, like the many others they had seen dock there since
the outbreak of war.
Carmen, her mother, a sister and other women and children were locked in
cabins above, while Carmen’s father and brothers joined hundreds of other men and
teenage boys below deck.
Among those boys, 13-year-old Arturo Shibayama of Lima lay in his canvas
berth wondered why Peruvian authorities had forced his family to leave their home
and possessions behind. The only thing the Peruvians told them was that they were
being deported “by order of the U.S. government.” 2
These two children uprooted and brought together by the forces of war would
unite fifty years later as adults in a fight for restitution from the United States
government. Their story is a story of betrayal shared by thousands of ethnic Japanese
in Latin America during the war. Caught between governments that felt no
allegiance to these Japanese immigrants, they became human barter—uprooted from
their homes and traded in exchange for U.S. civilians caught in war zones controlled
by the Axis nations. Their story is one of the lost stories of World War H and one
that still resonates today.
2 Art Shibayama, interview by author, 17 February 2002, San Jose.
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4
In times of war, immigrants in any country are vulnerable to misuse and
betrayal, having as they do, loyalties and ties to two countries. During such
uncertain times, fear and retribution are often directed at those people in the weakest
social, political and economic situation: the newcomers, the minority.
Bartered lives is the story of how governments manipulated the laws to
commit a grave injustice against a group of ethnic Japanese and later swept up the
tracks, effectively burying an injustice for over half a century.
Although Peru wasn’t at war with the United States, nor had it declared war
on Japan, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, American authorities, with the blessing
of the Peruvian government, seized over 1800 immigrant Japanese from that country.
The United States successfully pressured another twelve Latin American nations to
“deport” residents of Japanese ancestry— ostensibly to rid the hemisphere of
“potentially dangerous” enemy aliens-the catch being not a shred of evidence was
ever produced against them. Although were in fact citizens or legal residents of
Latin America, they were given no trials, charged with no crimes and paid no
recompense for the loss of businesses, properties and education.
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5
Loaded onto ships or airplanes they were delivered to prison camps in the
United States. The State Department, which orchestrated and financed the operation,
ordered American consulates not to issue visas to the deportees, and en route to the
United States, military personnel confiscated the prisoners’ passports and legal
identity documents.3
The US government detained them as “illegal aliens” to be traded for
Americans civilians held by Axis nations. Later they faced decades of grueling work
to re-establish their lives in hostile conditions in foreign lands.
Arturo Shibayama still vividly recalls the arduous journey from Peru to the
United States. For 21 days, his father, younger brother and the other Japanese men
from Peru slept on canvas bunks so close together you could hardly walk between
them. During the day they played chess, checkers and Monopoly to pass the time.
Twice a day the guards allowed the men on deck to breathe fresh air and stretch their
legs. Desperate smokers lit three cigarettes at once just to get enough nicotine to see
them through to the next break. While on deck Arturo could see six destroyers in the
waters surrounding them and he was told there were also two submarines guarding
the ship as it traveled north along the west coast of South America to Panama.4
3 Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians Report. Personal Justice D enied
^Washington DC: GPO 1982, 1983), Appendix D, 308.
4 Art Shibayama interview.
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6
In Panama, more prisoners boarded the ship with tales of being forced at
gunpoint to hack through the thick jungle underbrush with machetes under blazing
sun. These men, 39 Germans and 29 Japanese had been transported by boat from
Peru in January and spent 41 days at a remote detention camp run by the U.S. Army,
where they were forced to labor without payment, adequate food or medicine. 5
To avoid enemy submarines, the ship next passed through the Panama Canal
to the Caribbean, around Cuba-with a short stop in Guantanamo Bay- then up
through the rough seas of the Gulf of Mexico where most of the passengers became
ill, until the ship reached the Mississippi River and docked at the port of New
Orleans.6
From the deck Arturo could see they were in an industrial area of
warehouses. After the prisoners disembarked they were escorted to a room where
Immigration and Naturalization Service agents seated at tables asked each person for
their passport and visa.
5 C. Harvey Gardiner, Pawns in a Triangle o f H ate: the Peruvian Japanese and the U nited States
(Seattle: University of Washington Press 1981), 88-89.
6 Ibid., 92; Art Shibayama, interview.
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7
The prisoners with growing despair listened as Immigration and
Naturalization Service agents told each person in turn, “You have entered the United
States illegally. You have broken U.S. immigration laws” or simply, “You are under
arrest.” Thus, the Immigration and Naturalization Service abused U.S. immigration
laws to intern the Latin Japanese, and with legal impunity deport them as needed.7
Carmen, along with the other women and children, was ushered to a large
warehouse, ordered to strip and sprayed with pesticide. They were next sent to
shower and dress and wait for the men and boys to do the same.8
From there the prisoners were taken to a train and boarded according to last
name. The Shibayama family shared a car with the Suzukis, Shimabokuros, and
others. They traveled two days to reach their destination: Crystal City, Texas. There
they were driven to a collection of dusty buildings hemmed in by chain link fences,
barbed wire and guard towers known as Crystal City Camp.9 There were other
Japanese, Germans and Italians at the place—thousands from the United States, and
thousands like the Higas and the Shibayamas from Latin America.
1 Personal Justice Denied, 308.
8 Carmen Mochizuki, interview.
9 Art Shibayama, interview.
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8
Crystal City was just one o f an undisclosed number of Immigration and
Naturalization Service detention centers where the Department of Justice housed
these “enemy aliens” separate from the 12 euphemistically named “War Relocation
Camps” where over 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were interned during
the war. 1 0
Nearly 50 years would pass before Arturo, who by then was a United States
citizen and whose friends called him “Art,” and Carmen, who by then had married an
American citizen named Mochizuki, learned the reason why their family had been
abruptly imprisoned behind barbed wire fences in a land so far from home.
Even before the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the
State Department sought to unify the governments of Central and South America in a
hemispheric security agreement. To achieve this, the United States had to break the
substantial economic links between Latin America and the Axis nations. The
government took a special interest in Peru with its significant natural resources—
minerals, coal and metal in particular- and its large community of Japanese
immigrants.1 1
1 0 Michi Weglyn Years o f Infam y: the U ntold Story o f A m erica's Concentration Camps. New York:
Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1976) Appendix 3, 176-177.
tl John K. Emmerson, The Japanese Thread (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1978), 126;
Personal Justice Denied, 307.
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9
The United States wanted to hold these prisoners as barter to negotiate for the
exchange of more than 10,000 U.S. nationals living in overrun countries controlled
by the Japanese. Removing the Japanese from Peru not only would provide hostages
for exchange, but, some believed, would also eliminate a fifth column threat to
Peru’s vital industries and to United States national security.
Common belief in United States government circles and beyond held that
there was no way to prove the loyalty or disloyalty of Japanese immigrants to their
adopted homeland and to the Allied cause. The same level of suspicion was not so
uniformly applied to German and Italian immigrants, however. 1 2
To get the hostages it needed, the U.S. State Department coaxed Peru and
eleven other Latin American countries to participate in the round up and deportation
of their residents of Japanese ancestry. Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, the
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua
and Panama collectively expelled more than 400 people during the war. By war’s
end, the State department had imprisoned a total o f2,264 Latin Americans of
Japanese descent, the majority— more than 1800— from Peru, in Immigration and
Naturalization camps in Idaho, Montana, Texas, and New Mexico.1 3
1 2 A growing body of research, however, suggests that both groups were subject to far graver
violations than previously believed, including unlawful harassment, curfews, unlawful arrest and
imprisonment in both the United States and in Latin America. See generally Timothy Holian, “The
German Americans and W orld War II: an Ethnic Experience ” New German American Studies Vol. 6
(New York: Peter Lang) 1996.
1 3 Personal Justice Denied, 305-307.
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10
Despite their adoption of U.S. recommendations for security in the
hemisphere, Latin American governments enforced those recommendations with
irregularity—much to the consternation of U.S. officials. In part because of this lax
enforcement, the State Department applied extraordinary pressure on Latin American
governments to get them to intern and then deport these civilians to the United
States.1 4 The government used comparatively public methods of “persuasion”
including diplomatic meetings, negotiations, financial incentives, and the covert
methods of spying, bribing, political agitation, propaganda and censorship.
A classified document from the Foreign Service of the United States to the
American embassy in Peru dated April 18, 1942 urged spreading word of the danger
posed by immigrant Japanese.
“Peruvians are apathetic toward the situation. Although they do not like the
Japanese there appears to be little realization of the actual danger and a reluctance on
the part of the government to take positive measures.” The documents’ author
suggested that, “indirect measures should be made to encourage propaganda
intended to call the attention of the Peruvians to the Japanese danger.”1 3
1 4 Years o f Infam y, 57.
1 5 Department of State Embassy of the United States, Peru, Henry Norweb to the Secretary of State,
RG407, National Archives.
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11
Where propaganda failed to sway, the persuasive power of money finally
succeeded. Peruvian President Manuel Prado traveled to the United States in 1942.
Shortly thereafter the United States established an airfield in Talara in northern Peru
for which it paid its host $29 million in armaments and munitions —the largest
payment of the war to a Latin American nation.1 6
Shortly thereafter President Prado became exceedingly cooperative. In a July
20, 1942 memo to Secretary of State Sumner Welles, Ambassador Henry Norweb
writes:
President Prado is still glowing with the cordiality and enthusiasm of his visit
to the States... (and) is very mush interested in the possibility of getting rid of
the Japanese in Peru. He would like to settle this problem permanently,
which means that he is thinking in terms of repatriating thousands of
Japanese.1 7
In less than a year the Peruvian government’s stance changed from one of
begrudging tolerance to enthusiastic purging.
The United States considered but did not implement Prado’s plan for
wholesale removal of the Peruvian Japanese—the State Department was concerned
about the implications of urging Peru to commit such a blatant breach of
international law and it also lacked adequate facilities for transporting and housing
the internees.1 8
1 6 Personal Justice Denied, 307
1 7 Department of State, RG497, National Archives.
1 8 Personal Justice Denied, 308.
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12
The Japanese Peru Connection
Like tens of thousands of other Japanese, Arturo’s father Yuzo Shibayama
and Carmen’s father Kamado Higa, emigrated from Japan in the early years of the
20th century to establish a better life. Social stratification and economic depression
in the wake of the Sino-Japanese war made advancement nearly impossible in Japan.
Many immigrants came as contract laborers while others were “called over” by
relatives with established businesses.
The first Japanese immigrants arrived in Peru in 1899. The government
actively sought skilled manual laborers to emigrate because Peru had more natural
resources than labor. By the I920’s 17,000 farmers and laborers had emigrated to
Peru.1 9 By 1940 a census projected their numbers at 25,888.2 0
The Peruvian Japanese dominated certain small business areas: barber shops,
cafes and bazaars; and controlled a sizable slice of Peru’s agricultural industry
including dairy and vegetable farming. They produced nearly half of Peru’s cotton-
one of the country’s main exports— and were heavily invested in manufacturing of
machines, engines and rubber products. Local Peruvians complained they were being
undersold because they could not produce indigenous goods as cheap as goods being
imported from Japan.2 1
1 9 The Japanese Thread, 130-131.
2 0 Ibid., 131.
2 1 Ibid., 132-133.
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13
For 30 years Shibayama imported textiles from Europe and Japan and
manufactured dress shirts, which he sold wholesale in Lima. He prospered and
eventually with his wife, Tatsue raised six children in their large house in the capital
city of Lima.
Kamado Higa, a farmer who immigrated to Peru in the 1920s, became a
successful businessman and a leader in the community. He and his wife Rensuke
raised nine children in Callao, Peru.
The success of Japanese immigrants became the focus of envy and racial
hatred when the economy declined in the Depression of the 1930’s. Hard working
and industrious, many Japanese profited, while the Peruvians suffered a fall in their
standard of living.
The situation was exacerbated by the Japanese tendency to insulate from
Peruvian society. Few intermarried with Peruvians. Their children attended private,
Japanese-run schools and customarily they sent their children to study in Japan for
two years to reinforce Japanese identity. They formed societies to stay in touch with
home, and vocational clubs to protect and promote their businesses. Many Peruvians
interpreted the sum of these acts as a rejection of their culture and a sign of growing
Japanese imperialism.
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14
Japan’s invasion o f Manchuria in 1931 deepened fears among Peruvians that
their country was destined to become another subject of the Japanese Empire, if not
physically, then through economic dominance. But the Peruvian attitude towards the
Japanese was split between poorer, small merchants who suffered economic hardship
from their presence and wealthier Peruvians who wanted the investment dollars the
Japanese immigrants had to offer.
Even as Japan expanded its war of aggression into China proper in 1937,
inspiring greater apprehension about the Japanese expansion, trade between Peru and
Japan continued to grow.
The resentment Peruvians harbored toward the Japanese erupted on May 13,
1940. Rumors swept the country that Peruvian authorities had discovered 25,000
rifles at a Japanese farm, 8000 machine guns cached in a Japanese florist shop, and a
crate containing an unassembled airplane in the large city of Callao. Caches of
weapons and ammunition were reported hidden in a number of smaller towns.2 2
Several hundred Peruvians youths stood outside the offices of a Japanese
steamship company shouting “Down with Japan, Viva El Peru!” Crowds roamed
the cobblestone ways and boulevards of Lima and Callao, breaking into Japanese
businesses, schools and homes with battering rams, bats and sticks— shattering
windows, ransacking furniture and looting merchandise.2 3
2 2 The Japanese Thread, 134.
“ Ibid.
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15
Teachers at the Japanese elementary school in Callao got a call from the
Japanese consulate warning that rioters had destroyed hundreds of businesses. Lock
the school gate immediately, they cautioned, and send women and children home.
The few men who stayed behind to protect the property said rioters destroyed the
gate in a minute and hundreds of university students, boys and local people rushed
inside. Brandishing metal bars, they let loose their fury in the faculty room, breaking
tables, an organ and smashing up clocks.2 4
Meanwhile rioters grabbed Japanese off the street and beat them senseless.
Some threatened to shoot any Japanese they could seize. When the violence abated
two days later hundreds—mostly Peruvians- were injured and 600 businesses lay in
2 5
ruins.
Despite the controversy, Peru’s cotton exports to Japan jumped 200 percent
that year. By 1941 trade o f commodities between the two nations reached record
highs—in part because Japan’s domestic production fell and the country needed to
import food, cotton, minerals and scrap metal. Trade between Japan and all of Latin
America grew dramatically in this period.2 6
2 4 Sato Hokumura, unpublished autobiography.
2 5 The Japanese Threat, 134.
2 6 C. Harvey Gardiner, The Japanese and Peru, 1873-1973. (Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 1975), 81.
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16
Crafting a Plan for Hostage Exchange
Unlike Japanese immigrants in the United States, Latin American Japanese
enjoyed a considerable base of political support. By the late 1930’s a significant
group within the Peruvian military leadership favored the Axis nations and made
efforts to distance themselves from the United States. At the same time a group of
military elite in Chile and Argentina was also leaning in the same direction.
A nervous State Department had been keeping an eye on Latin America’s
relationship with the Axis nations. Some officials feared that the Axis powers could
invade the United States through South America—either by nations of central and
South America declaring war on the United States~or through the swift defeat of
their ill prepared defense forces.2 7
Consequently, the U.S. government began to pressure South American
countries to distance themselves politically from Axis countries. In 1940 President
Franklin Roosevelt expanded the powers of the FBI to include non-military
intelligence in Latin America and established the Special Intelligence Service to spy
on Axis immigrant communities there.2 8
2 7 Personal Justice Denied, 305.
2 8 Ibid., 306.
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17
The agency scattered its agents throughout Latin America, often attached to
embassies as “legal attaches.” FBI agents also sought to promote pro-American and
anti-Axis public opinion.2 9
U.S. government agents, few who spoke Spanish and none of whom spoke
Japanese relied almost exclusively on local informants who, more often than not
leveled their accusations against people they resented or whose property they
coveted.
According to a subsequent FBI review of the program these agents failed to
verify the truth of accusations and often relied on flimsy evidence and obviously
unreliable sources. Agents tended to “make out a case” against an individual and
some of their suspicions bordered on the ridiculous. One agent accused a man who
owned a restaurant of being a spy because he found a wire in the bottom of his cup
that looked like the numeral four.
2 9 Edward N. Barnhart, “Japanese Internees from Peru,” Pacific H istorical Review, Vol. 31. (May
1962): Japanese Internees From Peru, 170.
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18
Thus the compiled lists of “potentially dangerous persons” reflected no
evidence of foul play but merely the perceived potential for an individual to
influence others. If the person was wealthy, lived near the coast, worked in an
industry important to the war effort, was a teacher, journalist, priest, business owner,
or held an office in a Japanese social or business club, then that person was deemed a
threat to U.S. national security. At least that was the State Department’s rationale for
abducting Latin American civilians.3 0
The Round ups
In October 1941, months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the U.S.
government secured an oral agreement with the government of Panama to intern its
Japanese immigrants should war spread. The United States would pay all expenses
and assume all responsibility for the internees.3 1
On December 7,1941, just hours after the bombing occurred, Panama began
rounding up its Japanese. By May of 1942, the Panamanian government transferred
these prisoners to the United States for safekeeping.3 2 This arrangement became the
model for other Latin American governments.3 3
3 0 The Japanese Thread, 139.
3 1 Years o f Infam y, 58.
3 2 The Japanese and Peru, 142-143; Personal Justice Denied, 307.
3 3 Ibid., 58.
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19
In January 1942 the United States convened the conference of Pan American
ministers of foreign affairs in Rio de Janeiro and urged countries to adopt its 21
recommendations for the prevention of subversive activities in the Western
Hemisphere, including a purge of Japanese.3 4
Among the suggestions, the United States recommended restricting the
granting of citizenship and, if necessary, nullifying the citizenship of a “dangerous”
person.3 5
The United States also advocated the detainment of all Japanese, and offered
to finance imprisonment, or transportation of any Latin Americans to the United
States for safekeeping.
Peru, even though it did not formally adopt these recommendations until
1943, began to implement them immediately. In early 1942 authorities shut down all
Japanese newspapers, schools, and associations. They removed phones and short
wave radios from Japanese Peruvian homes and confiscated driving, fishing and
hunting licenses.3 6
The government also embargoed any person or company appearing on the
United States Proclaimed List of Blocked Nationals—the State Department’s
euphemism for the blacklist FBI agents and embassy staff had been busy compiling.
3 4 The Japanese Thread, 137.* Japanese Internees From Peru, 171.
3 5 Ibid.
3 6 The Japanese Thread, 137.
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20
Making it on to the dreaded list ensured hardship and harassment and
eventual expulsion. Peruvian authorities seized the assets of anyone or any company
listed, while Peruvian associates broke off contact for fear of being condemned with
the accused.
The first list of Japanese names appeared on December 9,1941, and shortly
afterwards the government began accelerated its seizure of Japanese Peruvians.3 7
Many of the men taken in the early sweeps had direct ties with Japan; they
were either Japanese citizens working for consulates or major Japanese trading
companies.3 8 Over time, however, the criteria used for expulsion became looser and
the program more haphazardly executed.
Increasingly, Peruvian authorities ignored the United States lists and simply
seized anyone whose assets might be forfeit, or anyone who lacked the resources to
bribe himself out of jail.
In some cases, wealthy Japanese were able to pay Peruvian officials to take
someone in their stead. Thus 21-year-old Arturo Shinei Yakabi was awakened by
police as he slept in his quarters behind the bakery where he worked and hauled off
to jail. He was no community leader, but a substitute for his employer.3 9
3 7 Pawns, 14.
3 8 Personal Justice Denied, 308.
3 9 Pawns, 72-73.
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As the deportations mounted, word spread quickly through the Japanese
community whenever another U.S. ship docked at the main port in Callao, and
increasing numbers of men went into hiding. So it was that Arturo Shibayama’s
father, and many other Japanese Peruvians evaded arrest for years. Eventually,
authorities resorted to more aggressive tactics. Police arrested and jailed Yuzo
Shibayama’s wife, compelling him to turn himself in.4 0
On February 28,1944, Peruvian police drove the Shibayama family to Callao
where the U. S. A. T . Cuba was docked in the harbor. The Peruvian officials
“deported” the family into the hands of waiting U.S. military personnel, who
escorted them on deck.
The Cuba, which departed for the United States on March 1, was one of the
last transports of Japanese Latin Americans. Nervous over the legal implications of
detaining citizen of another country without evidence or trial, the Justice Department
had begun to resist the State Department’s hostage exchange program.4 1
4 0 Art Shibayama, interview.
4 1 Pawns, 106-107.
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By 1944, the majority of deportees were wives and children of men already
interned in the United States. Justice allowed these deportations to the United States
because the State Department labeled them ‘‘voluntary” but these were clearly
deportations under duress. Families, threatened with permanent separation from
loved ones, were told the only way to reunite was to join them in prison in the United
States.4 2
Muddy Waters
Twice during the war the United States and Japan exchanged prisoners. The
U.S. chartered the Swedish ship Gripsholm to transport Latin Japanese, American
Japanese and German and Italians to Japan and Europe respectively. The first
exchange took place in 1942, and the second the following year. Both countries
drew up lists of citizens they wanted returned but the United States withheld any
Japanese it thought might aid Japan’s war effort. When the Japanese government
discovered that the people on the ships were not the same as those on the lists—that
in fact, many of the prisoners were not even Japanese citizens but Latin Americans
o f Japanese ancestry— Japan halted the exchanges.
4 2 Yoshinara Honda, interview by author, 28 May 1996, Los Angeles.
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That did not stop the State Department from continuing to transfer hundreds
of Latin Japanese to the prison camps in the United States. Only a shortage of
shipping and housing facilities, coupled with the Justice Department’s realization
that many of the internees were the wrong people, eventually slowed the roundups
up in Peru and the rest of Latin America.
Internal Struggles
From the outset, Attorney General Francis Biddle wanted to ensure that the
internment program conformed to legal norms. In a December 1 ,1942, memo to the
Department of State he questioned, “whether the Department of Justice should
undertake to receive such people if it cannot accord them the same privileges with
regard to hearings...that it accords enemy aliens taken into custody in the United
States.” 4 3
The State Department, however, resisted any form of hearings for the
internees and continued to bring Latin Americans to the United States by the
hundreds on suspicion alone.4 4
4 3 Pawns, 64.
4 4 Ibid., 70.
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The Immigration and Naturalization Service officers responsible for housing
and caring for the prisoners initially knew little of the methods o f their apprehension,
but over time— hearing accounts of the seizures from the intemees-officials began to
fret over the tenuous legality of detaining them.
By January of 1943, Biddle was more insistent. In a memo to the Secretary of
State Cordell Hull, the Attorney General wrote that it was obvious that in most cases
the prisoner posed no threat to national security and that their arrests seemed to be
“mistakes.” Biddle insisted on sending a representative to review the cases of
internees before they were deported from their homes—although he acquiesced to
State Department demands that prisoners not be given hearings.4 5
In early 1943, Raymond W. Ickes of the Justice Department’s Enemy Alien
Control Unit— traveled to Peru to monitor the deportations. One evacuation in
particular prompted an official change in policy. Ickes discovered that of 119 men
Peruvian officials delivered for deportation only IS were on the American list of
dangerous people. Thereafter, Ickes demanded proof of the alleged threat of
deportees, such as holding an office in a Japanese society, or paying a visit to
embassies and legations of other enemy countries.4 6
4 5 Ibid., 70.
4 6 Ibid., 70-73.
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After Ickes’ visit the number of deportations dropped dramatically, however,
the State Department continued to seize dozens of men and the families of those
already interned in the United States. These deportations continued until October 11,
1944.4 7
The friction between the departments of State and of Justice carried on even
after the end of the war. Once hostilities ceased, the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, eager to be rid of its charge sought to return the prisoners to their countries.
The State Department however saw an opportunity to permanently rid the
hemisphere of Japanese, German and Italian economic influence and thereby
increase American influence in the region. The more enemy aliens that could be
repatriated to Japan, Germany and Italy the greater the void for America to fill with
its products and its politics.4 8
The State Department wrested control of the internment program from the
Immigration and Naturalization Service through a proclamation signed by President
Harry Truman on September 8,1945, that effectively gave the State Department the
right to deport all internees from Latin American republics, if they were “within the
territory of the United States without admission under the immigration laws.”4 9
4 7 Ibid., 107.
4 8 Ibid, 114-115.
4 9 President, Proclamation, “Removal of Alien Enemies, Proclamation 2662.” Federal Register 11635.
September8, 1945.
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Thus while the Immigration and Naturalization Service had concluded that
many of the roughly 1800 internees still in the camps were neither dangerous nor had
they entered unlawfully, the State Department exploited their accorded status as
“illegal aliens” to deport 900 more internees to Japan.
Prisoners without a country
Only 100 of the Japanese Latin Americans imprisoned in the United States
during World War II made it home again.
The 1100 exchanged during the war faced Allied aerial bombing campaigns,
some died as civilians in the burning of Tokyo, the bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, or during the invasion o f Okinawa. Others were drafted into the Japanese
army and perished. Those who lived, faced poverty, starvation, and a long, slow
recovery of economic stability.
The Japanese Latin Americans left in the camps at war’s end hoped to return
to their homes, but in the rush to gather hostages, the United States had secured few
agreements as to what would become of them when the war ended. Initially Peru
refused to take back any Japanese, but eventually allowed approximately 80 citizens
or people married to Peruvian citizens to return.
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Faced with indefinite imprisonment, some of the remaining Latin Americans,
“elected” to go to Japan. Attorney Wayne Collins of the American Civil Liberties
Union, who later advocated for the Japanese Peruvians, argued these deportations
were not voluntary, as the threat of indefinite imprisonment was a form of duress.
Those who would not agree to go, The State Department simply forced on to
ships bound for Japan.
Some internees didn’t believe that Japan had lost the war, but when they
sailed into the country’s bombed out harbors, and saw the magnitude of the damage
they knew many hardships lay ahead.
Those who went to live with relatives became a burden to families facing
food shortages and starvation. Carmen Higa’s uncle in Japan took the family in, but
his wife resented their presence. Carmen’s parents had to trade a dress and a pair of
shoes for something to eat. For one full year the only nourishment they could buy
was sweet potatoes. It was a long way from the life they had led in Peru where the
family had lived on a hacienda with servants. It was a life it took them decades to
build up and only days for the U.S. government to tear down. 5 0
5 0 Carmen Mochizuki, interview.
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Eventually the Immigration and Naturalization Service intervened in the
deportations, insisting that the State Department could not legally force internees to
go to Japan against their will. By then just S O O Japanese Peruvians remained in the
United States. With hopes of returning to their homes or of being allowed to stay in
the United States this group refused to go to Japan and that choice brought its own
set of hardships.
The State Department intent on their deportation initially refused to release
the prisoners. Then in spring o f 1946 while visiting a Japanese American client in
Crystal City camp, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union o f Northern
California was approached by a representative of the Japanese Peruvians for help.
Wayne Collins, who was one o f the leading challengers of the internment of
Japanese Americans, became an advocate for the Peruvian Japanese as well. He and
his partner attorney Ernest Besig secured court orders staying the deportations and in
June 1946 arranged with the government to release the prisoners to work.5 1
In August, Collins brokered a deal with Seabrook Farms, a large frozen food
plant in New Jersey to employ the Japanese Peruvians. The State Department
released 365 prisoners under “relaxed internment” or “parole” to work at Seabrook
or to leave the camp under economic sponsorship of a relative, friend or church
group. 3 2
5 1 Pawns, 143.
5 2 Ibid., 149-155
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The work at Seabrook was grueling and low paying. Living conditions were
worse than in the camps. Families lived in communal barracks and at peak season,
employees worked 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. Still, they had a difficult time
saving up enough money to move. Eventually they would scatter wherever friends
or family could help them, mostly to Chicago, Illinois, Portland, Oregon and San
Francisco and Los Angeles, California/3
For years the Japanese Peruvians in the United States had to report monthly
to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. They worked and paid taxes all the
while faced with the constant threat of deportation. This continuing legal limbo
prevented many Japanese Peruvians from attending college or pursuing professional
careers.
Although the U.S. government considered the Japanese Peruvians stateless
and denied them citizenship, it drafted Art Shibayama and other Japanese Peruvian
men his age to serve in the Korean W ar/4 When they returned from military service,
they found themselves fighting deportation.
A change in U.S. immigration law in 1954 finally allowed the Japanese
Peruvians to obtain legal residency/5
5 3 Ibid., 157-159
5 4 Art Shibayama, Interview; Yoshinara Honda, Interview.
5 1 Japanese Internees From P ent, 176.
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The Immigration and Naturalization Service instructed many of them to re
enter the country “legally”. Art Shibayama dutifully went to Canada and re-entered
the United States. It turned out to be an action that would haunt him years later
when he applied for relief under a U.S. law providing redress to persons of Japanese
ancestry whose constitutional rights were violated during World War n .
The government rejected Shibayama’s claim asserting that he was not legally here at
the time of his internment.5 6
The full magnitude of these actions was unknown to the United States public
until 1996 when Carmen (Higa) Mochizuki and two other former intemees sued the
United States government for apology and compensation.5 7 Despite extensive media
coverage of the civil lawsuit Mochizuki vs. the US and a rigorous, national public
awareness campaign, the story of the Japanese Latin American internment is still a
shocking revelation to the vast majority of Americans.
3 6 Art Shibayama interview.
3 7M ochizuki v. the U.S., 43 Fed. Cl. 97.
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Breaking the Silence
Historians have questioned what possible threat Latin American Japanese
posed to U.S. national security during World War II.
Edward Barnhart, a member of the Department of Speech at UC Berkeley in
the 1962, asserted that “the program of arrests and deportation by Peru and
internment in the United States as alien enemies has never been substantiated as a
reasonable or necessary wartime security measure.”5 8
In part, the detention of these Latin American residents resulted from the
same fears and prejudice which prompted the internment of Japanese Americans, but
it was also a result of their vulnerable position as immigrants in countries with little
respect for judicial process or rule of law.
The third secretary of the United States consulate in Peru, John K.
Emmerson, who transferred from the U.S. consulate in Japan after diplomatic efforts
to avert a war failed, was the only official in Latin America who spoke and wrote
Japanese. He recounts in his published memoir “The Japanese Thread” the
disappointment of Peruvian colleagues when an official, imperial-looking letter they
intercepted turned out to be a wedding invitation. Although Emmerson initially
regarded the Japanese in Peru as dangerous and urged their expulsion, he quickly
recognized the folly in his suspicions and deplored how Peruvian officials were
exploiting the wartime situation.
3 8 Japanese Internees from Peru, 177.
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Emmerson recalled surveying a group of deportees while they waited to
board ship. He wrote, “I looked into the faces of these humble, bewildered people—
shop keepers, farmers, carpenters, barbers and fishermen—starting out on a voyage
to an unknown future. These were not spies, saboteurs, bomb throwers or plotters
against the state.”5 9
But in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, few officials— U. S. or
Peruvian— questioned or cared about the rights of suspect Axis immigrants. The
people that might have cared did not know of the Japanese Latin Americans’ plight.
The U.S. government, aware that the hostage exchange program violated a host of
international and domestic laws, censored the existence of the internees under the
auspices of national security.6 0 In so doing, the government effectively hid one of the
gravest of its wartime violations from the American public for over 50 years.
When the prisoners arrived in the United States, the government gave orders
that no publicity should be given to the event. A handful of newspapers wrote about
their presence—but these leaks were quickly stopped.
5 9 The Japanese Thread, 144.
6 0 Years o f Infam y, 57.
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On April 9,1942 the Picayune Times in New Orleans reported the arrival of
enemy alien wives and children. The following day the Department o f Justice
District Director in New Orleans wrote to the Deputy Commissioner in charge of the
Field Service Immigration and Naturalization Service to account for the slip up. The
memo states:
Receipt is acknowledged o f your instructions to the effect that no publicity
whatever be given to the arrival at New Orleans on the S. S. Acadia of the
aliens being transferred to the United States for detention; also that the same
policy should be followed in the cases of all such arrivals.
Thus, few Americans -even Japanese Americans— knew about the Japanese
Latin American hostage exchange program.
State Department documents at the National Archives reveal that General
George Marshall coordinated the hostage exchange program and that efforts were
made not only to censor coverage o f its existence but to also cover up the role of the
United States in promulgating the program. An anonymous 1943 State Department
memo from the Division of American Republics stated, “It is undesirable for the
written record to show that the initiative for the roundup came from us.”
Notably, U.S. government officials involved in the prisoner exchange
program, such as Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, J. Edgar
Hoover, Chief of Staff General George Marshall, were strangely silent about the
episode in their department reports and writings.
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Indeed, the United States and Peru never made a formal written agreement to
cooperate in the prisoner exchange program.
The issue of who initiated the program remained a sticking point when
survivors asked the U.S. government to redress the wrong.
In the 1980s when Japanese Americans began to formally lobby for a
government apology and compensation for their internment during World War II,
several Japanese Peruvian former internees testified at congressional hearings and
expected to be included in any redress legislation. But according to a principal
lobbyist involved in the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 that provided each
surviving intemee or heir $20,000 and a letter of apology, including the Latin
Japanese internees in the bill’s coverage were considered a liability to winning
redress.
At the time the majority of members of Congress still believed that the
internment was justified during the war. The profound loyalty demonstrated by
Japanese American soldiers in the 442n d regiment who fought for their country even
while their families were imprisoned in camps was a major factor in changing that
attitude. But convincing Congress to atone for a group of prisoners from other
countries labeled “enemy aliens” many of whom went to Japan during the war, albeit
involuntarily, was expected to cost crucial votes.
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Thus while Japanese American activists supported redress for Japanese Latin
Americans, the authors of the bill worded the act so that only people who were legal
residents or citizens of the United States at the time of internment could apply.
Japanese Latin Americans having been erroneously labeled illegal entrants
were denied, except for roughly 189 whose attorneys had applied for legal residency
dating back to their entry into the country.
In 1996 Japanese Latin Americans challenge the exclusion by suing the U.S.
government.6 1 Despite agreement among government representatives that an
injustice had occurred, officials repeatedly exhibited a reluctance to set the record
straight.
Immigration and Naturalization Service records labeling the Latin Japanese
as “illegal aliens” when they entered the United States in the 1940s were never
corrected. In a 1998 meeting with then Immigration and Naturalization Service
Commissioner Doris Meiisner attorneys for the Japanese Latin Americans asked the
agency to change the status of the internees from illegal entrants to legal entrants to
make them eligible for redress. The Immigration and Naturalization Service stated
that to do so would open the doors to other groups seeking rights to welfare
programs. This raised the unanswered question were there similar groups o f people
forcibly brought to the United States, or might there be in the future?
6 1 M ochizuki v. US
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In oral arguments in Mochizuki v the U.S. at the US Court of Federal Claims
in Washington DC on February 13, 1998, Department O f Justice attorney Kathryn
Ray argued that legal status was not awarded automatically but that the government
could confer whatever status it deemed appropriate for the intemees. Chief Judge
Loren Smith stated that it was absurd to argue that people forcibly brought to the
United States by the government could be considered illegal entrants. “There is a
little bit of a sham, a Catch-22 in this,” he said.
Judge Smith also questioned the government’s argument that allowing
Japanese Latin Americans redress might adversely effect current government policy
and open the door to other groups seeking benefits from the United States. Judge
Smith jokingly quipped, “I hope there are not too many other cases where we’ve
taken people involuntarily from their country and brought them to the United States.”
The Mochizuki lawsuit was eventually settled on June 12, 1998 for a modest
sum of $5000 for each surviving internee or heir and a presidential letter of apology.
The settlement did not provide for an admission of guilt or responsibility though
President Bill Clinton’s statement issued at the time was the first official
acknowledgment of U.S. duplicity:
I am pleased that the Department of Justice has reached a settlement that will
compensate Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry for their wrongful
internment during World War n. The United States Government forcibly
brought these individuals to the United States from their homes in Latin
America during the war, and interned them with U.S. citizens and permanent
residents of Japanese Ancestry.
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The Department of Justice shrank from that responsibility, however, in its
press release of the same day, stating that the United States accepted the prisoners
during World War II as a favor to Latin American governments that could not afford
to keep them in prison camps.
As of this writing a few Japanese Peruvians living in the United States have
not applied for citizenship, in part for fear they might be deported.
Shadows
Americans have compared the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Towers and the Pentagon to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. While the Japanese
bombed a military target, however, the terrorists responsible for the attacks in New
York and Washington DC targeted civilians. Still these two moments in history
wrought a similar sense of shock and terror among Americans. The fallout from
these events bears some similarity as well. After Pearl Harbor Japanese quickly
became the focus of American fear and rage. So too following Septembers’ terrorist
attacks some Americans targeted Arab and Middle Eastern Americans and
immigrants. Civil rights advocates reported a spike in hate crimes that included
verbal and physical assaults and murder.
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The Civil Liberties Act o f 1988, in which Congress apologized on behalf of
the nation for the forced relocation and imprisonment of over 120,000 people of
Japanese ancestry during World War II, faults the combined folly of “racial
prejudice, wartime hysteria, and the failure of political leadership.” 6 2
In my three years as a spokesperson for Campaign for Justice—Redress Now
for Japanese Latin Americans! I adopted this assessment and was quick to scoff at
the notion that the U.S. decision to intern Japanese was motivated by threats to
national security.
While prejudice and panic were certainly catalysts, having now experienced
the shock of being attacked in the United States by an undetected enemy I give more
credence to the notion that some members of government believed that they acted
out of self defense—whether or not a real danger existed. Hindsight shows us that
fear was fomented by racism and resulted in gross violation of the rights of people
American leaders deemed second class citizens. Similarly, the fallout from the
events of September 11th now threatens our civil rights as Americans shift from a
defense of constitutional rights, to a defense of the nation.
6 2 Public Law 100-383, August 10, 1988 102 STAT 903-904.
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Since the attacks American legislators have allowed the Justice Department
to erode fundamental constitutional rights, including the right to freedom of speech,
and access to judicial review. I wonder would Americans so willingly relinquish
these freedoms if the suspected terrorists were Caucasian Christians?
America has witnessed how an act of war fuels the desire to close all
vulnerabilities whatever the cost to individual justice. Eerie parallels abound. The
ACLU of Southern California reported that after September 11th the FBI interrogated
American citizens of Middle Eastern and Arab descent at their jobs. The questions
agents asked have a familiar ring. “Are you a United States citizen? Do you consider
yourself loyal to the United States?”6 3
It seems that once again race has become a reason to suspect the worst and to
violate fundamental rights.
As of this writing, the U.S. government had questioned over 5,000 people
mostly of Middle Eastern, Arab descent or Muslim faith. The Immigration and
Naturalization Service had detained approximately 1100 of those individuals for
minor violations of immigration laws. Nearly 800 of these were hastily tried in
secret courts, with secret evidence and deported.
6 3 Ramona Ripston, Executive Director ACLU o f Southern California, Interview by author, October 8,
2001, Los Angeles.
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These detainees, according to an Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman,
“accepted voluntary departure orders or were deported.” Over 300 were still in
prison, without charge.6 4
The indefinite detention of prisoners suspected o f being A 1 Qaeda members
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, also raises serious questions about U.S. willingness to
respect international law. No one knew who the prisoners were. They were being
denied access to legal counsel and to government representation. The U.S. decision
to relocate them from Afghanistan to a country outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts
has rendered them stateless—an action that is also alarmingly familiar.
The United States has always strove to uphold due process, fair trial,
individual and minority representation and freedom. Ideally, this country is a place
where suspicion or fear is not a prelude to exile, imprisonment, oppression,
censorship or murder. Our legal system is what sets America apart from any other
nation. The very notion o f checks and balances was designed to counter swift
injustice spurred by the political passions of the time. Bartered Lives looks
backward to a similar time in history when legal and political violations wrecked
people’s lives in the hopes that history may enlighten and perhaps temper the
decisions we make today.
6 4 Associated Press “ 326Are H eld in Sept. I I Q uestioning” February 24, 2002
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A Personal Odyssey
I first found out about the Japanese Latin American internment by chance. I
joined my boyfriend’s family to celebrate Christmas. A buffet dinner included a
Peruvian snack called pappas rellenos—a deep-fried, potato bread filled with ground
beef and raisons. Hiroshi Honda, the head of the family urged me to try this delicacy
he had prepared saying, “I’m Peruvian, you know.”
I thought he was joking. The Hiro I knew worked as an electrician for the
City of Los Angeles, had a wife and three grown children who got together Friday
nights for happy hour. He like to shoot pool with his sons, and place bets on college
sports. He spoke the odd word of Spanish, but so do most people in Los Angeles. I
grinned and punched him in the arm. “Sure!” I said.
But he insisted, “I’m Peruvian. The U.S. government kidnapped my family
and threw us in a concentration camp.”
This seemingly simple statement, blurted out in a moment of frivolity and
delivered with a grin triggered a change of direction in my life that would take me to
Washington, DC, Texas, Hawaii, Peru and Japan for answers to questions—
questions that grew in number over time.
Hiro Honda didn’t elaborate much that night on the events that had changed
his destiny from that o f the son of a chicken farmer in Mira Flores, to that of an
American living in Los Angeles. What soon became apparent was that he didn’t
know the answers to my questions.
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In fact, few of the Latin Japanese understood the reasons behind their
imprisonment. Many of the survivors were children at the time and their parents,
who wanted to put the experience behind them didn’t talk about it.
In 1995 there was little scholarly analysis of the Japanese Latin American
internment. C. Harvey Gardiner, was the sole historian to address the subject in a full
length book called Pawns in a Triangle o f Hate which was out of print at the time I
first started to research the topic. I managed to track down a copy at a used
bookstore. The University of Washington Press has since re-published it—largely
due to interest in the topic generated by the Japanese Latin American former
internees’ efforts to win redress from the U.S. government. The book, however, is so
dense with minutia that it is difficult for the reader to penetrate its chapters for a
clear understanding of the big story.
The only other in-depth treatment of the subject is an autobiographical
account by Japanese Peruvian Seiichi Higashide, “Adios to Tears.” This book was
also out of print in 1996. Elsa Kudo, the author’s daughter and original publisher,
encouraged by scholars to seek a publisher for a second edition, succeeded in
winning a contract from the University o f Washington Press, which re-published the
book in 1999. As then co-chair of Campaign for Justice, I contributed an epilogue
analyzing the Japanese Latin American redress effort to this second edition.
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The Japanese translation of the book has not been republished. Efforts to
translate the book into Spanish stalled because of a lack o f financial resources—but
interest in the topic exists as evidenced by the current race between several
prominent scholars in Peru to publish on the subject.
Although the book is an important historical document—being the only
published autobiographical account of a Japanese Peruvian internee- it lacks a firm
narrative structure and thorough historical framework. Nor does it, by design,
provide the full range o f experience of internees that have come to light through
recent research.
These seminal works on the Japanese Latin American internment were both
written prior to the passage of the Civil Liberties Act in 1988. Since that time, the
government has published Personal Justice Denied, the 1983 report of the
Congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, and
declassified a substantial body of records relating to the internment and to the
prisoner exchange program.
The Campaign for Justice—Redress Now for Japanese Latin Americans!
(formed in 1996 to provide educational and lobbying support to the Mochizuki
lawsuit), the Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project and the National Japanese
American Historical Society have collectively produced a large body of research,
documentation, and analysis that was previously non-existent.
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As Co-Chair of Campaign for Justice-Redress Now for Japanese Latin
Americans! I coordinated media coverage, lobbying and community and educational
outreach and was privy to the intricate details o f the redress effort. I met with top
government officials ffom the Administration, Justice, National Security Council,
and Congress. Through a federal grant from the Civil Liberties Public Education
Fund in 1997,1 worked for one year as an educational coordinator for the Japanese
Peruvian Oral History Project—a non profit organization in San Francisco. Twenty
new interviews of Japanese Peruvian former internees, and their translation into
English comprised the bulk of the work under the grant. This is new research that
has yet to be incorporated, analyzed or synthesized into any public forum. During
the one-year grant I lectured extensively, participating in over 70 public
presentations in the United States, Okinawa, Japan and Peru. My work under the
grant and through the campaign placed put me at the nexus o f community educators,
historians, lawyers and Japanese Peruvian survivors in the United States, Japan and
Peru.
My present work as deputy foreign editor for public radio’s award winning
business news program, Marketplace, allows me to enrich my account of the
Japanese Latin American internment experience through the analysis of
contemporary events.
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Winning a settlement from the United States Justice Department brought a
bittersweet sense of achievement. The token compensation of $5,000 for each
survivor or for the family of the deceased, insulted many Japanese Latin American
former internees who believed they deserved the same $20,000 payment accorded to
Japanese Americans imprisoned in the camps during World War II.
None-the-less, while this token redress fell far short of justice, it has paid a
historical dividend. Redress efforts won national attention to the issue, largely
through the press’ enthusiastic coverage. Never before has the subject been
documented so extensively in mainstream periodicals.
Front-section articles appeared in the Los Angeles Times and The New York
Times, The Washington Post carried three editorials. NBC’s Dateline produced a
10-minute documentary account. This brief spotlight was a catalyst to research and
coordination among scholars, historians and activists and contributed to a deepening
of understanding of U.S. foreign policy. Press accounts also created a valuable
legacy: a permanent paper trail for scholars and researchers to follow. However,
without the benefit of a larger non-fiction work synthesizing this vast new body of
research and oral testimony of survivors what was gained will likely ebb back into
oblivion. It is time for a new book culling the fruits of this labor—and it is critical
that the task be accomplished before the remaining survivors pass away.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
46
Bibliography
Barnhart, Edward N. “Japanese Internees from Peru.” Pacific Historical Review,
Vol. 31. May 1962.
Civil Liberties Act of 1988, Public Law 100-383 August 10, 1988 100th Congress (H.
R. 442 102- STAT 903-904).
Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice
Denied: the Report o f the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment o f
Civilians. Jointly published by the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund and the
University of Washington Press, 1997. Washington DC: GPO 1982, 1983.
Department of State, Embassy of the United States, Peru, Henry Norweb to the
Secretary of State. April 18, 1942. RG407. National Archives.
Department of State, memo to Secretary of State Sumner Welles from Ambassador
Henry Norweb. July 20 1942. RG 497. National Archives.
Emmerson, John K., The Japanese Thread: A Life in US Foreign Service. New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978.
Gardiner, C. Harvey, The Japanese and Peru, 1873-1973. Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 1975.
Gardiner, C. Harvey. Pawns in a Triangle o f Hate: the Peruvian Japanese and the
United States. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981.
Gardiner, C. Harvey. “The Latin American Japanese and World War II.” In Japanese
Americans: from Relocation to Redress. Revised edition ed. Roger Darnels, Sandra
Taylor and Harry Kitano, pp. 142-145 Salt Lake City: Universit of Utah Press, 1986.
Higashide, Seiichi. Adios to Tears: Memoirs o f a Japanese-Peruvian Internee in U.S.
Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.
Holian, Timothy J. Tolzmann. The German-Americans and WWII: An Ethnic
Experience. Ed. Don Heinrich. New German American Studies, Vol. 6., by. New
York: Peter Lang, 1996
Hokumura, Sato. Unpublished autobiography. Undated.
Honda, Yoshinara, interview by author, 28 May 1996, Los Angeles.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
47
Mochizuki v. the U.S., 43 Fed. Cl. 1997.
Mochizuki, Carmen, interview by author, 20 March 2002, Los Angeles.
Peru. Biblioteque Nationale del Peru. “La Lista Proclamada De Ciertos Nacionales
Bloquedos” {The Proclaimed List o f Blocked Nationals), Revision No. 8. Special
collections. Lima, (September 13, 1944).
Ripston, Ramona, Executive Director of the ACLU of Southern California, interview
by author, 9 October 2001, Los Angeles.
Shibayama, Art, interview by author, 17 February 2002, San Jose.
Small, Julie. Epilogue to Adios to Tears: Memoirs o f a Japanese-Peruvian Internee
in U.S. Concentration Camps by Seiichi Higashide, Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2000.
Ten Broek, Jacobus, Edward Barnhart and Floyd W. Matson. Prejudice, War and the
Constitution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.
“Three Hundred Twenty-Six are Held in Sept. 11 Questioning” Associated Press,
February 24, 2002.
U.S. President. Proclamation, “Removal of Alien Enemies, Proclamation 2662.”
Federal Register 11635. (September 8, 1945).
Weglyn, Michi. Years o f Infamy: The Untold Story o f America's Concentration
Camps. New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1976.
Whitehead, Don. The FBI Story. Toronto: Random House 1956.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Small, Julie A. (author)

Core Title Bartered Lives: Book proposal

School Graduate School

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Print Journalism

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag History, modern,history, United States,OAI-PMH Harvest,sociology, ethnic and racial studies

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Cray, Edward (committee chair), Guthman, Edwin (committee member), Langguth, A. Jack (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-296105

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Identifier 1411807.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-296105 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 1411807.pdf

Dmrecord 296105

Document Type Thesis

Rights Small, Julie A.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA