Japanese-American internment camps: ‘It cannot be helped’

Near Coolidge, Ariz., lie the well-preserved remains of the Hohokam civilization, a culture that thrived and then virtually disappeared nearly six centuries ago. That is where the “big house,” Casa Grande, rises from the middle of a field, with parts of other structures surrounding it.

And yet, all that remains of a community of 13,000 people, founded 69 years ago barely 10 miles northeast of the center of Maricopa, are a few old shards of glass, parts of what appear to be rusted cooking utensils, and a few desert-worn portions of concrete walls and foundations.

The native Americans who tended their crops, raised families, worked, played and worshiped at what is now the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument are considered to be part of the first successful attempt by a civilized people to subsist by conquering the forces of extreme heat, arid weather and drought typical of the Arizona desert.

The people who inhabited the two camps in what was called Rivers, Arizona — near today’s intersection of Casa Blanca Road and I-10 — were virtual prisoners. They were Japanese-Americans who were forced by politics, prejudice and paranoia to move to and live in barracks built by the U.S. government on the Gila River Indian Reservation.

The internees began arriving here in 1942 by bus and train from their homes in California and other parts of the West Coast, with only their clothing and a few possessions. They quickly organized a form of government, built furniture and decorated their new homes, fought the harsh desert conditions and raised crops and animals for their own consumption, attended classes and played a lot of baseball. The last residents left in 1946, when the local camps — Butte and Canal — were finally closed.

Many of the men old enough to enlist in the U.S. Army served honorably in World War II, and 23 of them died in combat. Their names were inscribed on a monument at the camps after the war, raised to commemorate their service. That edifice was eventually vandalized and now resembles a war-torn structure from part of the Middle East.

Most of the people who lived and worked at Butte and Canal returned to their homes and lived out their lives in relative peace. Others remained in Arizona, and some of their descendants are here, too. But serious and repeated attempts to arrange interviews with any of them proved fruitless. Perhaps many chose to forget the “relocation” program.

Others may be embarrassed to focus on one of our nation’s darkest responses to war panic and exaggerated fear, an episode that was eventually criticized publicly by former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. In 1988, President Reagan signed a law that offered a formal apology to Japanese-Americans and admitted that government actions during the war were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” Words were backed up with reparations in the form of $20,000 payments to each of the camp survivors and their heirs.

But the mood was different at the onset of WWII.

WAR FEVER
In 1942 — just a few months after the attack on Pearl Harbor — the atmosphere was charged with anxieties that caused American politicians and the population at large to justify placing more than 120,000 people — two-thirds of them American citizens — in what amounted to imprisonment in 10 camps built in seven western states. Fears that those of Japanese descent might be involved in espionage and sabotage were fueled by editorials in the press and by political and military leaders of the day.

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES EDITORIALIZED
“A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched. So, a Japanese American born of Japanese parents, nurtured upon Japanese traditions, living in a transplanted Japanese atmosphere…notwithstanding his nominal brand of accidental citizenship almost inevitably and with the rarest exceptions grows up to be a Japanese, and not an American. Thus, while it might cause some injustice to a few to treat them all as potential enemies, I cannot escape the conclusion that such treatment should be accorded to each and all of them while we are at war with their race.”

One particularly vitriolic columnist, Henry McLemore, reflected growing public sentiment at the time by writing:

“I am for the immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior. I don’t mean a nice part of the interior either. Herd ‘em up, pack ‘em off and give ‘em the inside room in the badlands. Personally, I hate the Japanese. And that goes for all of them.”

In a 1942 issue of the Saturday Evening Post, Austin F. Anson, managing secretary of the Salinas Vegetable Grower-Shipper Association, was quoted:

“We’re charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for selfish reasons. We do. It’s a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown man. They came into this valley to work, and they stayed to take over. If all the Japs were removed tomorrow, we’d never miss them in two weeks, because the white farmers can take over and produce everything the Jap grows. And we do not want them back when the war ends, either.”

Lt. General John L. DeWitt, who administered the internment program, repeatedly told newspapers that “A Jap’s a Jap” and testified to Congress:  “I don’t want any of them here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty. It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty, but we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map.”

All of this gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt the political cover he needed to sign Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, a document that allowed the military to round up persons of Japanese descent and house them in internment camps, or “relocation centers,” as they were euphemistically termed at the time.  In a government propaganda film of the era, “A Challenge to Democracy,” produced by the War Relocation Authority, scenes of Japanese-Americans leaving trains and buses, en route to the camps, are accompanied by a narration that describes them as “….not under suspicion. They are not prisoners. They are not internees. They are merely dislocated people, the unwounded casualties of war.”

MR. MIYAGI TALKS ABOUT THE ‘RELOCATION’
One of the more candid of these “dislocated people” was Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, the Arnold of TV’s “Happy Days” and the Mr. Miyagi of the series of “Karate Kid” films.” Other internees who later became famous included Pat Suzuki (“Flower Drum Song”) and George Takei (“Star Trek”).

Morita’s parents — Japanese immigrants — were itinerant farm workers, so, unlike many of their compatriots, they lost no property. They owned no business interests or land.

Morita, born in 1932 in Isleton, Calif., participated in a series of filmed interviews for the Archive of American Television in 2000, five years before he died. During one segment, he talked about the internment of his family and other Japanese on the West Coast. “They were forced to divest themselves of all their property. They were allowed to carry what was on their backs and what they could fill two suitcases with and then (were) simply herded off, with all of their rights obliterated.”

Morita added that his “people are very resilient by nature, having spent centuries on an island. They had to learn how to develop a great sense of community.”

It was that sense of community that allowed camp residents to make the best of difficult circumstances and establish peaceful, productive communities in barracks that were thrown up overnight by Del Webb Corporation, later famed for developing Sun City tracts in Arizona, California, Texas and Nevada.

Resigned to their fate, many camp residents adopted the plaintive philosophic theme: “Shikata ga nai” (it cannot be helped). 

OVERCROWDING AND TOP-NOTCH BASEBALL 
The Gila River camps, built on the reservation over the objections of the tribe, were designed for a maximum of 10,000 people, but actually housed more than 13,000 residents. There was no barbed wire or guard tower, merely a single sentry on duty. After all, how far would an internee get in the Sonoran Desert without a sustainable source of food and water?

Residents raised their own livestock and crops. Since many, like Morita’s parents, were expert farmers, the Gila River complex eventually supplied much of the food for other camps in Arizona and elsewhere. By August of 1942, barely seven months after it was built, Gila River camp residents were growing acres of beets, carrots, celery, radishes and other vegetables. They also produced 150 acres of flax, cotton and castor beans. They began raising hogs, cows and chickens in May, 1943, and by the end of that year, there were 1,377 cattle, 1,106 hogs and 8,584 chickens, the latter raised in double-roofed structures, with special ventilation to protect them from the summer’s heat.

Cultural, civic and religious activities flourished in the camps. Recreation buildings and barracks were used for churches, meeting rooms, libraries and other community services.  There were Boy Scout troops, an American Legion post and other typically American organizations.

Butte Camp was known to have had the War Relocation Authority’s finest baseball field. Designed by pro player Kenichi Zenimura, it had dugouts and bleachers and could seat up to 6,000 fans. The residents built an outdoor theater from scrap lumber for talent shows, plays and movies. The evacuees designed and built elaborate gardens and planted trees to add an aesthetic touch to their daily lives. They also built numerous ponds in interesting shapes near or under barracks that also helped to cool the structures, all of which had evaporative coolers.

In January, 1945, eight months before the war with Japan ended, internees were allowed to leave the camps to rebuild their lives at home, although the camps remained open for those who were not ready to make the move back.

Freed residents were given $25 each and a train ticket to their former homes.

In November, 1945, the Gila River camps were officially closed. 

Within a year, the only visible reminders that a virtual city had existed in the desert near Maricopa were piles of scrap lumber and abandoned household items.

Artifacts from the Pinal County camps still exist and are housed at the Huhugam Cultural Center at Maricopa Road and Queen Creek Rd. A visitor was told recently, however, that the artifacts are being “stored” and are not available for inspection.