By RICHARD KATSUDA
Forty-five years ago, the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations (NCRR) was formed to fight for redress and reparations for Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II.
NCRR was led largely by Sansei who grew up after WWII and were shaped by the 40 years of hush in the Nikkei community about that experience. Their parents had been deeply traumatized by the agonizing betrayal by their U.S. government. After Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were called “The Enemy.” The government declared that there were many spies and saboteurs in their midst.
Nikkei were proclaimed guilty of being potential traitors to our nation. They were not “innocent until proven guilty,” which is a promise made by our democratic society. And they had to carry that burden of guilt during their brutal incarceration — and long after the war. They were a beaten-down people. The entire community suffered from a devastating collective trauma that it tried mightily to hide but may never be able to fully recover from.
After the war, Nikkei did their very best to pick up the pieces of their lives. They were warriors through their utter determination to protect and build their families. They felt compelled to “prove” that they were worthy Americans. But to do so, they had to push down and repress all of their feelings of self-doubt and even self-hatred — and righteous anger and bitterness. They just sucked it up and carried on for their families.
They felt they needed to somehow protect their children from all of the abuses and suffering they had had to endure. So they told their children to study hard, keep their nose clean, and not question the government or make waves. They taught their children essentially to defer to whites so that whites would like them for that behavior.
Their children — the Sansei — learned that their way toward getting by and “succeeding” was to become the “model minority.” Although Sansei were subject to the ongoing racism toward all peoples of color, they were taught to “rise above” the racism and to please whites while largely rejecting other communities of color.
However, many Sansei learned from African Americans who had fought for civil rights in the ’60s. These Sansei participated in protests in the ’70s against the Vietnam War — protests made up of everyday, grassroots people from all walks of life. They helped organize the Asian American movement in the ’70s and the early pilgrimages to Manzanar and Tule Lake.
Those who started NCRR “learned” from those experiences that everyday, regular folks are the “makers of history.” These NCRR founders thus felt they needed to work closely with the grassroots Nikkei community to give Issei and Nisei encouragement to openly talk about their stories of the WWII incarceration and to testify at the 1981 hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC).
The hearings of the CWRIC were a watershed moment for the Nikkei community. Listening to Issei and Nisei tell their stories of suffering and violations of their rights and dignity, I remember thinking to myself: “I wish every Japanese American could be here to listen to these passionate and painful stories from our Issei and Nisei forebears, who had to endure such suffering and have so much to teach us Sansei.”
For Sansei, those hearings were indeed a powerful learning experience, and one could feel the growing unity among Issei, Nisei, and Sansei, which countered the efforts of the government to tear the community apart during WWII. NCRR held countless meetings and outreach presentations to reach the grassroots community and activate people to push for redress and reparations.
The community thus joined together to stand up and fight for redress and reparations, which resulted in the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. The former incarcerees were finally able to rightfully place the burden of guilt that they had unjustly carried for 40 years onto the shoulders of the U.S. government.
Most former incarcerees felt a deep sense of redemption. They felt the beginnings of catharsis from the repressed emotions they had held for 40 years. The U.S. government had finally apologized for the overall incarceration and compensated former incarcerees with a concrete measure of justice in the form of $20,000 to each person deprived of liberty during WWII.
However, the Civil Liberties Act did nothing to heal the deep, deep wounds the Nikkei community had suffered from what could be called “ethnic cleansing” that the government forced the community to go through. When Nikkei were called The Enemy after Pearl Harbor, the government stated that they were “inassimilable.” Gen. John DeWitt, in command of the military that removed Nikkei from the West Coast, asserted that “a Jap is a Jap.” The government delivered a clear message: You cannot be both Japanese and American.
What were Nikkei to do? They were denied the possibility of being both American and Japanese. Nisei, who had grown up going to school with whites and wanted so much to be accepted as Americans, knew they couldn’t change their Japanese faces. They felt they had to prove they were totally American on the inside and were thus forced to “cleanse” themselves of their Japaneseness.
Nisei were desperately trying to show how loyal and patriotic the Nikkei community was and felt the Issei and Kibei were sabotaging those attempts by making Nikkei look un-American and “unpatriotic” overall. Tensions grew as many Nisei felt that they needed to push back against their Issei parents and Kibei, who were proudly and unapologetically Japanese — of course, Japan was the home of their childhood.
The Issei and Kibei were not disloyal, but they naturally felt affinity and loyalty to Japan as well as to America. Why couldn’t they be loyal to both countries and not be forced to choose between the two?
Well, this was America during WWII. Japanese Americans were forced to choose. For Issei and Kibei, it was the unforgiving and unforgivable choice between the Japan of their childhood and the America that had put them behind barbed wire. What a choice.
For the Nisei, they were forced to “erase” any and all sense of pride and joy in their Japanese cultural roots. Those roots became only a source of pain.
One might ask: What’s the big deal about “erasing” and “cleansing” of Japaneseness during WWII? Some might say it was just what was called for to demonstrate loyalty to the U.S. Others may say, “Hey, all minority peoples become part of the ‘melting pot’ of America.”
However, we should ask ourselves: What price do we put on our freedom to be proud of who we are? Isn’t this kind of “erasure” a result of ongoing dominance of white supremacy and denigrating the beauty and dignity of non-whites in our country?
How many young Nikkei even know that Japanese Americans during WWII were robbed of their right to exist as free people who could proudly display their ethnic heritage or decide to become more Americanized or come up with their “own” blend of options? This utterly tragic and devastating crime has been largely erased from Japanese American consciousness.
Most young Nikkei only hear about the heroism and sacrifices of the Nisei soldiers or perhaps of the controversial role that the young Nisei of the JACL played. Those young people often hear that Nikkei were not bitter about the camps and that Nikkei put all of that behind them. They are not told about all of the churning of hurt and angry feelings that lurked beneath the surface within the older generations.
But those same young people also often feel a sense of loss and intergenerational trauma. They feel that something is wrong and missing from the narrative they have been told about the WWII incarceration.
Japanese Americans need to know about the ethnic cleansing that brutally subverted the sanctity of cultural heritage. Nikkei must know how Issei and Kibei were thrown under the bus during WWII. That is a critical piece toward truly understanding the full, crushing impact of the WWII incarceration. We need to uphold their dignity and recognize their losses as being just as important as what the Nisei had to endure.
All of this is part of the proper redress and healing that our Nikkei community still needs to pursue in order to become whole again, to truly understand and take in everything that our community had to live through during and after WWII.