There has been much debate about the terminology that the government used when discussing the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. For the purposes of maintaining individual contributors’ voices, we preserved the terminology that they themselves used, which often reflected the times and the labels that the public was taught to use over the decades during and following the War.
Sometimes these terms will appear in quotation marks, indicating an ironic tone on the part of the author. Other contributors will come right out and call Topaz a concentration camp. You will therefore see a variety of terms used.
Following is a partial list of such terms:
“Relocation”: What happened to the Japanese American community in the spring of 1942 was an unconstitutional, government-sanctioned uprooting and forced removal of innocent families–not a move to a new location for convenience, e.g., accompanying a job change.
“Evacuation”: What disaster, natural or man-made, occurred, that an entire ethnic group needed to be moved for their own safety–to remote locations behind barbed wire–while the rest of the population was allowed to stay?
“Internment”: “Internment” refers to the incarceration of enemy aliens; however, two-thirds of those Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII were U.S. citizens. The rest were non-citizens who were denied the right to become naturalized citizens. We feel “incarceration” more accurately describes what happened to us; however, “internment” is still a widely used term, so we reluctantly used it in tagging our posts.
“Assembly center”: This was the benign label given to detention centers where Japanese American families were initially brought and housed, sometimes in horse stalls. Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, CA was one such place. Most of the Japanese Americans forcibly removed from their homes in the San Francisco Bay Area were incarcerated there while more “permanent” camps were being built at remote inland locations. The typical “stay” there was six months–from April through September 1942–at which time most incarcerees at Tanforan were transported to Topaz.
These short but poignant stories show the spirit and character of the Issei and their family legacy.
They are must reads for anyone who wants to feel what history tells us about living in America today from their JA perspective. Thankyou Ruth and all who shared. hugs to you.
I look forward to more.
Thanks, Barbara! It’s our honor to showcase these stories. We’ll be adding more on a weekly basis (we hope) through the summer.