Infamy (48 page)

Yasui, Masuo

Yasui, Minoru

conviction and appeals of

Yatabe, Tom

Yatsu, Lawrence

Years of Infamy
(Weglyn)

Yoneda, Elaine Black

Yoneda, Karl

Yoneda, Tommy

Yoshimura, Akiji

Young Men and Young Women’s National Defense Association

Zanuck, Darryl F.

After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt addressed Congress: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date that will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

Within forty-eight hours of the attacks, FBI agents searched the homes of thousands of “Suspect Enemy Aliens.” More than twelve hundred men were arrested without charges. The evidence against them ranged from membership in civic organizations to possession of any written materials with Japanese characters, including Bibles and knitting manuals.

Hysterical rumors of invasion and sabotage swept the West Coast. Soon guides were printed on how to tell Japanese “enemies” from Chinese “friends.” This cartoon by Milton Caniff was published in hundreds of newspapers in early 1942.

On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the incarceration of 120,000 West Coast American Japanese. Assembly notices were posted and American Japanese were registered for evacuation.

Like all evacuees, the Mochida children wore identification tags while they waited for their evacuation bus. War Relocation Authority (WRA) leaders removed anyone with “a single drop of Japanese blood.”

Residents of Bainbridge Island, Washington, were among the first to be evacuated. The islanders were marched to a ferry and when they docked in Seattle, men waiting with shotguns spat on them.

At Santa Anita racetrack, the largest of the assembly centers where American Japanese were held while the concentration camps were being built, lines of soldiers faced off against the evacuees arriving by train.

While residents at Santa Anita joked they lived in the stall of the great Seabiscuit, evacuees suffered the filth, unsafe water, and persistent sickness typical of assembly centers, as shown here at Tanforan.

Lieutenant General John DeWitt insisted on sending the American Japanese to camps because there was no way to tell the difference between the loyal and disloyal, saying “A Jap is a Jap.”