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Nikkei Loyalty and Resistance in Canada and the United States, 1942-1947

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Stephanie Bangarth
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Because the overwhelming majority of us are innocent, we protest against restrictions based on our racial ancestry; we protest against the fine technical distinctions of word and deed to cloak the facts; we protest against the arbitrary judgments on our loyalties; we protest against the indifference to and disallowance of our human qualities … all because we happen to be of Japanese descent.

“Racialism is a Disease,” Nisei Affairs (January 1946)

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Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , e26
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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Copyright © The Authors 2008

References

Notes

[1]. Space does not permit a full discussion of this aspect of Nisei resistance. For further information see, for example, Stephanie Bangarth, Voices Raised in Protest: Defending North American Citizens of Japanese Ancestry, 1942-1949 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2008), chap. 4; Peter Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); and Ross Lambertson, Repression and Resistance: Canadian Human Rights Activists, 1930-1960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), chap. 3.

[2]. Representative works on the wartime treatment of the Nikkei include: Ken Adachi, The Enemy That Never Was: A History of Japanese Canadians Rev. ed. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1991); Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1981); Tetsuden Kashima, Judgment Without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003); Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); Patricia E. Roy, J.L. Granatstein, Masako Iino, and Hiroko Takamura, eds., Mutual Hostages: Canadians and Japanese during the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990); Robert Shaffer, “Cracks in the Consensus: Defending the Rights of Japanese Americans during World War II,” Radical History Review 72 (1998): 84-120; Ann Gomer Sunahara, The Politics of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1981).

[3]. NMEG to Austin Taylor, British Columbia Security Commission (BCSC), 15 April 1942, Library and Archives Canada [LAC], RG 36/27, vol. 3, series 27, file 66.

[4]. Ibid. Roy Miki devotes an entire chapter to the NMEG struggle in Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2004), chap. 3.

[5]. For full details regarding the Heart Mountain resisters, see Daniels, Concentration Camps: North America (Florida: Krieger Publishing Company, 1993), 118-29. For a description of the Tule Lake resistance, see Dorothy S. Thomas and Richard S. Nishimoto, The Spoilage (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1946), and Gary Y. Okihiro, “Tule Lake under Martial Law: A Study in Japanese Resistance,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 5, 3 (Fall 1977): 71-85. For differing accounts of the Manzanar riot, see Thomas and Nishimoto, The Spoilage, 49-52; Allan Bosworth, America's Concentration Camps (New York: W.W. Norton Press, 1967), 157-62; Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis, The Great Betrayal (New York: Macmillan Press, 1969), 263-66; and Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps, rev. ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 121-33.

[6]. Daniels, Concentration Camps: North America, 24-25.

[7]. Saburo Kido, “US Nisei Must Raise Funds to Fight Threats to Civil Liberties,” Pacific Citizen 15, 6 (9 July 1942).

[8]. United States Congress, House Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, Hearings before the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, 77th Congress, 2nd Sess. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1942), p. 29, 11266-67. With the support of the ACLU, Lincoln Seiichi Kanai filed a writ of habeas corpus on the grounds that imprisonment would deny him due process and equal protection of the law, and that compliance with the evacuation orders would be a negation of his citizenship status. Eventually charged with violation of military orders, he was sentenced to six months in prison. The federal district judge in the case described him as a “full blooded Japanese.” The ACLU did not appeal. “Memorandum on the Court Cases Contesting the Evacuation of American Citizens of Japanese Ancestry,” January 1943, Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, MC 005, Roger N. Baldwin Papers, box 18, folder 9; Besig to Baldwin, 1 August 1942, Princeton University, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library [Mudd Library], ACLU Papers, vol. 2397. James Omura's testimony can be found in United States Congress, Hearings, 11229-32. See also Paul Spickard, “The Nisei Assume Power: The Japanese American Citizens League, 1941-1942,” Pacific Historical Review 52, 2 (May 1983): 162-64.

[9]. JCCD Brief in the Matter of the War Services Elector's Bill (#135 of 1944) Section 5 regarding Certain Amendment to Section 14 ss. 2 of the Dominion Elections Act, 1938 and in the Matter of the Proposed Disfranchisement of British Subjects and Canadian Citizens in Canada [JCCD Brief], 24 June 1944, 2, LAC, MG 28 V7, vol. 1, file 23.

[10]. “We Must Fight Deportation,” New Canadian, 10 November 1945; Japanese of Lemon Creek to Mrs. Hugh MacMillan, 29 October 1945, LAC, MG 28 V7, vol. 1, file 6; Slocan Valley Nisei Organization to Margaret Foster, 16 March 1946, LAC, MG 30 C69, Margaret Foster Papers; CCJC News Bulletin 4, 15 March 1945, CCJC-MAC, folder 10.

[11]. JCCD, Minutes, 21 December 1945, 31 January 1946, LAC, MG 28 V7, vol. 1, file 7; Nisei Affairs 1, 6 (19 January 1946); Peter Nunoda, “A Community in Transition and Conflict: The Japanese Canadians, 1935-1951.” PhD diss., (University of Manitoba, 1991), 249-50; Fowke, They Made Democracy Work, 19-20, LAC, MG 28, series 6, vol. 2, file 13.

[12]. Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943), Brief, Japanese American Citizens League, amicus curiae; “JACL Brief in Evacuation Raised Cases Opposes Race Issue by Government Attorney,” Pacific Citizen 16, 19 (13 May 1943); Irons, Justice at War, 192-93; ACLU national board, Minutes, 18 December 1944, Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, ACLU Papers, vol. 2584.

[13]. “World Capital,” Pacific Citizen 22, 2 (12 January 1946); Editorial, Nisei Affairs 1, 2 (28 August 1945), and editorial, 1, 4 (31 October 1945); “Deportations a Violation of Human Rights,” New Canadian, 3 November 1945.

[14]. JCCD executive, Minutes, 26 February 1946, LAC, MG 28 V7, microfilm reel C12818, file 1-7.

[15]. Quoted in Kitagawa, This is My Own, 260.

[16]. JCCD Annual Secretariat Report, 1 November 1946, LAC, MG 28 V7, microfilm reel C12818, file 1-8. As of 2 April, the Issei were allowed to join the JCCD; as of the date of this report, 150 had done so.

[17]. Toru Matsumoto, Committee on Resettlement of Japanese Americans, “To the Delegates,” 7 December 1945, Mudd Library, Princeton University, ACLU Papers, vol. 2664; Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act, 50 U.S.C. App. s. 1981 et seq., s. 1981(a).

[18]. United States, Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, rev. ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 118-19; Roger Daniels, Prisoners without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (1993; rev. ed., New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), 88-90.

[19]. “Statement to Claimants Re: Origin, Nature and Work of the Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians, April 1950,” 3-15, McMaster University Archives, CCJC Papers, folder 13; F.A. Brewin, “A Review of Property Claims,” New Canadian, 20 October 1948, LAC, RG 36/27, vol. 34, file 2202. For more on the Toronto Claims Committee dissent, see Nunoda, “A Community in Transition and Conflict,” chap. 9.

[20]. G. Tanaka to Louis St. Laurent, 23 September 1950, LAC, MG 28 V7, microfilm reel C12818; St. Laurent quoted in Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 159-60.

[21]. George Tanaka, “For the Protection of Human Rights,” 26 January 1950, LAC, MG 28 V7, National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association Papers, microfilm reel C12830 Nisei Affairs 2, 1 (January 1947); Nisei Affairs 2, 3 (April 1947); Nisei Affairs 2, 4 (June 1947); Kitagawa, This Is My Own, 236-41; Ross Lambertson, Repression and Resistance: Canadian Human Rights Activists, 1930-1960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), chaps. 5 and 8.

[22]. Japanese American Citizens League, Antidiscrimination Committee, “National Legislative Program-1949,” Princeton University, Mudd Library, MC 005, Roger N. Baldwin Papers, box 1056.

[23]. For more on this discussion, see Greg Robinson and Toni Robinson, “Korematsu and Beyond: Japanese Americans and the Origins of Strict Scrutiny,” Law and Contemporary Problems 68, 29 (September 2005): 29-49.

[24]. Ibid.

[25]. David Cole, “Manzanar Redux?” Los Angeles Times, 16 June 2006; “Amicus Brief Ties Internment to 9/11 Cases,” Rafu Shimpo Online, 9 April 2007, www.rafu.com/amicus.html; Lydia Lin, “Following in their fathers' footsteps,” Pacific Citizen, 20 April 2007.

[26]. Columnist Rod Mickleburgh covered the Save Joy Kogawa House campaign in the Toronto Globe and Mail (“Donations needed to save a landmark,” 21 April 2007, and “Firm helps buy B.C. landmark,” 1 June), as did Camille Bains in “Kogawa's childhood home to be saved,” 29 April 2007.

[27]. Edith Fowke, They Made Democracy Work: The Story of the Cooperative Committee on Japanese Canadians (Toronto: Cooperative Committee on Japanese Canadians, 1951).