Mass Hysteria and A Demand For Incarceration
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, mass hysteria arose in the U.S. People of Japanese ancestry were targeted by the public and their government. The military began dismissing Japanese American soldiers, West Coast Nisei began losing their jobs, and the government stopped drafting Japanese-American men and labeled them as "enemy aliens."
"Herd 'em, pack 'em off and give 'em the inside room in the badlands. Let 'em be pinched, hurt, hungry and dead up against it... Personally, I hate the Japanese. And that goes for all of them."
Henry McLemore, 1942 |
"I'm for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska, and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps...Damn them! Let's get rid of them now!"
-Congressman John Rankin, Congressional Record, December 15, 1941 |
Japanese Americans became the racial target by the American public almost immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. "No Japs" signs began appearing on many Caucasian-owned businesses, and many Japanese Americans began losing their jobs.
"Restricted areas were prescribed and many arrests and detentions of enemy aliens took place. ..Contraband, such as cameras, binoculars, short-wave radios, and firearms had to be turned over to the local police." -Mine Okubo, Citizen 13660 |
"The Japanese-language newspaper reported daily that Japanese who lived all over [the West Coast] were being taken by the FBI."
-from Henry Sugimoto's diaries
Without question, Japanese businessmen and community members would be taken from their homes to be interrogated by federal agents. They were not informed of the crime(s) they were accused of, nor were they given a trial to fight their case.
"Executives of Japanese business firms, shipping lines, and banks, men active in local Japanese associations, teachers of Japanese language schools, virtually ever leader of the Japanese American community along the West Coast had been seized almost immediately."
-Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family
-from Henry Sugimoto's diaries
Without question, Japanese businessmen and community members would be taken from their homes to be interrogated by federal agents. They were not informed of the crime(s) they were accused of, nor were they given a trial to fight their case.
"Executives of Japanese business firms, shipping lines, and banks, men active in local Japanese associations, teachers of Japanese language schools, virtually ever leader of the Japanese American community along the West Coast had been seized almost immediately."
-Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family
As the U.S. plunged further into the war against Japan, anti-Japanese sentiment grew among the public. With Japan as the nation's primary enemy, propaganda characterizing Hirohito (Japan's emperor) and the Japanese started to spread across the nation.
World War II posters relating to the Japanese