 |
|
Neighborhoods: The Hidden Cities of San Francisco: The
Fillmore:
Article: Japanese-American Internment |
Singled Out Because of Race:
Japanese-American Internment in The Fillmore Neighborhood and in the West
Japanese Americans living in San Francisco's Fillmore neighborhood had enjoyed decades of prosperity after immigrating to the United States. Their children and grandchildren were born in this country, they opened successful shops and businesses, and they were finally adjusting to life as Americans -- complete with the liberties that citizenship afforded. Then, in December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
Following that fateful and costly battle, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, opening the door for the U.S. Military to override the Constitutional rights of American citizens in order to protect the defense of America. Influenced by continuous lobbying by white businessmen and farmers -- who resented the economic competition by Japanese Americans -- Roosevelt and the U.S. military made plans to round up and relocate over 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans, many of whom lived in the Western United States, in neighborhoods like the Fillmore. According to the government, the Japanese American population could harbor spies and saboteurs. But many of the citizens removed for reasons of 'national security' were school-age children, infants and young adults.
Roosevelt authorized the mass evacuation on February 19, 1942. Over the next 2 months, children were removed from classrooms. Merchants were forced to sell their businesses. Thriving Japanese neighborhoods in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles became ghost towns almost overnight.
The internment was no hidden government conspiracy. For example, The San Francisco News, for the first six months of 1942, carried almost daily reports of FBI and police sweeps, and the various proclamations issued by such figures as Lieutenant-General John L. DeWitt at the Presidio of San Francisco. At the same time, San Francisco business and government leaders began planning to physically clear the Japanese community from the Fillmore and Western Addition neighborhoods by declaring it a "slum area." This planning began one month before the last Japanese residents were forced from the so-called "Little Tokyo," or Japantown, district.
Nearly 30 Japanese-American internment camps were opened in the western portion of the United States, including California (14), Arizona (4), Utah (2), Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Wyoming and Washington state. Even major cities like Portland, Sacramento and Sante Fe housed these facilities. When Japanese Americans were "relocated," family members in some cases were separated and put into different camps. They were often stripped of basic human and political rights. Even Roosevelt himself referred to them as "concentration camps." Some Japanese Americans died in the camps due to inadequate medical care and the emotional stresses they encountered. Several were killed by military guards -- allegedly for resisting orders.
A year later, Roosevelt reversed the order allowing Japanese Americans to serve in the armed forces during the war -- but mostly because the United States needed fresh bodies for WWII. Like African Americans, Japanese Americans were restricted to serving in mostly self-contained military units, segregated from the whites. The Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit comprised almost entirely of Japanese-American soldiers, achieved well-publicized heroics in European battles, helping dull some hostility directed toward Japanese Americans back home. When World War II ended and non-military Japanese Americans returned from the internment camps, they faced a loss of their property, assets, and most importantly, their pride and dignity. In San Francisco, Japanese Americans returned to the Fillmore to find their property occupied and businesses gone. But a lack of jobs and widespread hostility kept many from returning home. Even after the war, Japanese Americans faced discrimination, hatred and distrust -- and many tried to put the war behind them, swearing off their Japanese culture and redoubling their effort to join mainstream America.
Fifty years later, the indignity of the wartime internment still stings as Japanese Americans endure more subtle discrimination blocking Japanese Americans from feeling accepted as "real" Americans. However in 1982, a federal commission concluded the internment was "motivated largely by racial prejudice and wartime hysteria." And in 1988, President Reagan signed legislation offering an apology and a $20,000 redress check to every former internee.
Today, San Francisco's Japantown, is a vibrant business center and remains the symbolic heart of the Japanese American cultural community, although the majority of the region's Japanese American residents no longer live there.
|
|
|
