A Northwest internment story that still stuns the imagination
In "Camp Harmony," Seattle historian Louis Fiset tells how local Japanese Americans were sent to an internment camp, now the grounds for the Puyallup Fair, in the early months of World War II.
Seattle P-I Collection, Museum of History & Industry
On a summer afternoon at the Puyallup Fair, it's hard to believe that our state fairgrounds were a bleak internment camp not so long ago. Thousands of Puget Sound residents, charged with no crimes, had been rounded up and herded behind fences by their own government. The story makes the fears of people who hide from 2010 Census workers, along with the opposition of NRA members to forced weapons registration, seem positively rational.
Seattle historian Louis Fiset, author of Camp Harmony: Seattle's Japanese Americans and the Puyallup Assembly Center, said in an interview last week that what he learned from writing the book had challenged his faith in the justice of his government. “I know now that our lives as American citizens can change on a dime” — and not only from injuries inflicted by external forces. It pains him to recall that after 9/11 our own officials arrested Arab students for interrogation and suspended due process to enable illegal wiretapping. After the start of World War II, all it took was an executive order signed by President Roosevelt, on Feb. 19, 1942, to turn the lives of Seattle's Japanese Americans upside down.
For at least two generations, Seattle's industrious, family-centered society of “Japantown” had for the most part peacefully co-existed with its neighbors. Fiset's book describes how Seattle Japanese responded to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor by forming their own Emergency Defense Council, desiring, as they put it, “to express our loyalty by deeds not words.” They collected $7,300 for Seattle's “Buy a Boeing Bomber” campaign and more than $1,300 for the Red Cross. They bought war bonds and stamps, stitched and knitted clothing to meet various war needs, and wrapped surgical dressings to be sent to Fort Lewis and Fort Lawton.
Such efforts were considered meaningless elsewhere in Seattle, as Camp Harmony makes clear. Post-Intelligencer editors contended that “the real test of the degree of loyalty within the Japanese community … is to be found in the extent to which its members cooperate with the authorities in efforts to locate and round up the enemies of this country” supposedly living among them.
Even the ongoing enlistments of Japanese soldiers in America's armed forces were used to support the idea of incarcerating everyone of Japanese descent. A Seattle Times article, “Seize all West Coast Japs,” argued that since Japanese soldiers fighting for America were willing to sacrifice their lives, Japanese at home should be willing to sacrifice their freedom by volunteering to be imprisoned along with their families. A young Japanese architect who had worked in Seattle before the war expressed the frustrations of many who were later interned: “We're on [America's] side and we want to help. Why won't America let us?”
In mid-April of 1942, residents of Japantown received two weeks' notice that they would be evacuated to a temporary holding pen in Puyallup, an assembly center later dubbed Camp Harmony. It was one of 16 centers the Army ran while permanent internment camps were built throughout the American West. Said Fiset, “Suddenly, just because of your ethnicity, you're behind barbed wire with 7,000 other people. You left everything back in Seattle — your job, your house. Your kids are crying because they had to abandon their pets with nobody to take care of them.” The environmental cues reminding evacuees of their former freedom were particularly cruel. Camp Harmony was located within Puyallup city limits, and so, Fiset said, “standing at the Camp Harmony fence, you looked out at people living their normal lives, just as you had lived your own life a few weeks before. It stuns the imagination.”
Yet Fiset the objective historian has written Camp Harmony dispassionately. There is no need for him to underscore the story’s many ironies, such as the Orwellian nickname of the camp or the many times when government and military authorities were frustrated by the outcomes of their own decisions.
Early on it was believed that moving whole communities intact would foster an atmosphere of calm and possibly even boost morale, so the entire population of Japantown was evacuated at once. But large evacuations required a degree of cooperation from Japanese leaders, which later led to scapegoating and dissension among other members of the community, and the sudden wholesale incarceration of Puget Sound's Japanese farmers and agricultural workers made wartime food shortages worse for all Americans in the region.
Internment procedures were chilling in their efficiency. Each Japanese family received tags with an identification number that all had to wear and affix to their luggage. Japanese living on Bainbridge Island were quietly evacuated first, to California, in efforts to protect the channel leading to the naval shipyards in Bremerton. In order to make room for 8,000 individuals at Camp Harmony, the barracks were designed to allow each person precisely 50 square feet of space. Kitchen space was restricted to camp mess halls that fed 500 individuals at a time, eliminating the ritually important family meals that had held parents and children together. Fearing subversion, authorities isolated community leaders who led too actively and too well, and sent them to separate camps. Civilian Exclusion Orders deliberately lumped Japanese immigrants and Japanese-American citizens together in the phrase “aliens and non-aliens” to mask the violation of the citizens' civil rights.
On a good day Fiset can imagine that Seattle’s citizens might be more willing, now, to band together in wartime and defend fellow citizens from injustices sparked by racial or ethnic differences. “Shortly after 9/11,” he recalled, “a group of neighbors formed a ring around the mosque on 15th Northeast to protect it from people who were coming to wreck it, remember?” Despite his pessimism about public leaders, this historian has moments of faith in ordinary people.
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Apr 9, 5:02 a.m. Inappropriate
Lightfoot....Teabag Sympathizer?
"The story makes the fears of people who hide from 2010 Census workers, along with the opposition of NRA members to forced weapons registration, seem positively rational."
Or is she concerned about the present administration's repeating behavior like this "Civilian Exclusion Orders deliberately lumped Japanese immigrants and Japanese-American citizens together in the phrase “aliens and non-aliens” to mask the violation of the citizens' civil rights." in the current immigration reform debate. Obama and the "One America" crowd love to conflate legal immigrants (citizens) and illegal immigrants to mask the violation of the citizens civil rights.
Posted Fri, Apr 9, 10:09 a.m. Inappropriate
Thanks, Judy, for your insightful review of "Camp Harmony". When I became minister of First Christian Church in Kent I heard the painful stories of adults, who when they were in the third grade, as a class went to the Kent Depot to say good bye to their Japaneses classmates and their families who were going away for what was a long time. The children didn't understand, and even today I don't understand either! I know the fear that abounded after 9/11 but we didn't raise our voices and say, "Never again!" (remembering our painful past of World War II). Where is our national conscience on this issue? - Marvin Eckfeldt
Posted Fri, Apr 9, 10:52 a.m. Inappropriate
Good article, Judy. I appeciate you and other who remind us of this sad time in our history. It is sad that in the several American history classes I took at UW, this issue was never once addressed.
Posted Fri, Apr 9, 11:39 a.m. Inappropriate
I really didn't appreciate Lightfoot's decision to link this with the current-day census or gun registration. That kind of statement only stirs up ignorance and fear.
Posted Fri, Apr 9, 3 p.m. Inappropriate
Ms. Lightfoot's bravery in accurately linking the present-day climate of fear and anger with the forbidden history of U.S. oppressiveness is rare and commendable.
Left and Right -- labor activist or teabagger -- "our lives as American citizens can change on a dime," precisely as Mr. Fiset discovered.
Moreover it is something we all know at least subconsciously, our sense of dread underscored by the Bush/Obama suspension of the Constitution and a national history that includes not just savagery toward minorities but relentless efforts to suppress any cause unpopular with the Big Business aristocracy.
Thus the diverse currents of our collective memory include a dark undertow of atrocity: genocide against First Nations peoples; internment of Japanese Americans; (ongoing) persecutions of African Americans, Hispanics and homosexuals; the post-World War II purges of Marxians, all other socialists and ultimately all intellectuals; and a litany of massacres far too long for this space: not just Wounded Knee but Everett and Centralia and Ludlow and Columbine Mine and Kent State University and Jackson State College.
The Battle of Seattle lacks a body count only because of the bogus humanitarianism of allegedly “non-lethal” weapons.
For that matter, anyone who doubts the present-day existence of U.S. concentration camps need only visit any one of the poorer Indian reservations.
Such is the ugly truth of government in action, whether in post-Katrina New Orleans or the Upper Big Branch coal mine.
In which context Debbalee's accusation that Ms. Lightfoot's analysis "only stirs up ignorance and fear" gives us a glimpse of a frightening antagonism toward the First Amendment -- a dangerously growing sentiment on both Left and Right and yet another of the reasons our collectively libertarian fears are so chillingly rational.
In reality what Ms. Lightfoot does is courageously take another small step toward examination of the one pivotal truth of our time: that all of our ideologies are bankrupt and all of our systems have failed us -- that neither the Left (with all socialism now discredited by the selfishness of bureaucratic malfeasance) nor the Right (with all capitalism now discredited by the savagery of plutocratic greed) have any answers.
In the parlance of the 12-step groups, it is time for us to admit we are powerless – that our lives have become unmanageable.
Paradoxically, it is only by such admission we can begin to evolve alternatives that might indeed save us from ourselves.
Meanwhile Debbalee might investigate a certain Appalachian folk song, perhaps inquiring into the origin of its lament: “Well it's Coal Creek, well it's Coal Creek, well it's Coal Creek ain't thar no more.”
Posted Fri, Apr 9, 6:41 p.m. Inappropriate
Still sorry about voting for Gregoire Loren?
Posted Fri, Apr 9, 7:08 p.m. Inappropriate
Thank you, Ms. Lightfoot, for this review that draws attention to a sad episode in our history and to an interesting local author. Another interesting story that ought to be told sometime that of the Seattleites who did what they could to mitigate the sufferings of their interned neighbors. I can tell you about a few.
The pastor of of the Japanese Baptist Church, Rev. Emery Andrews, followed his congregation to Camp Harmony with nearly daily visits. After the congregation was moved to Minidoka he moved his family nearby and proceeded to devote every resource at his disposal to assisting the internees.
It is my understanding that the Japanese Baptist Church spun off of Seattle First Baptist. SFB also spared nothing in helping out by facilitating communications with the outside, storing possessions and assisting with resettlement when the internees were finally released.
One SFB member was Alice Franklin Bryant. She and her husband William were interned by the Japanese in the Philippines and nearly starved to death before they were repatriated. When they returned to Seattle they immersed themselves in SFB's efforts to rebuild Seattle's Japanese community. When they received their reparations money they personally delivered it to Hiroshima where they donated it to Emery Andrews' and Floyd Schmoe's Houses for Hiroshima project. The money was used to build the Community House which still stands today.
Floyd Schmoe left his teaching position at the UW to go and help Hiroshima rebuild. You know that Peace Park just north of the University Bridge? Thank him for that. He got the city to turn over the land. Then he designed and built the park. There ought to be a plaque or something in his honor there, but. . .
There are unnamed Park in NE Seattle. I am trying to get one of them named in honor of Alice Bryant. In fact, I've been trying for two years now. If you want to watch the eyes of a Parks official glaze over, bring up this subject. It works great.
In short, it isn't easy getting recognition for those who dedicate their lives to high principles, at least not here in Seattle. It would be great if someone would tell their stories, too.
Posted Sat, Apr 10, 1:18 a.m. Inappropriate
Thank you for these comments. The internment of Japanese Americans reminds us that protecting our rights requires stepping up to defend the rights of all of us, including immigrants, NRA members, devout Muslims, and Tea Partyers. As Thomas Paine said, "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." In his book Fiset tells the stories of courageous church congregations and individuals (including those mentioned by Just Wandering) who worked to the point of exhaustion to defend the rights of Japanese Americans. These are heartening chapters, but most of us supported internment policies created by government and military leaders, or spent our energies on other things and let internment happen - which is why it could occur.
Posted Sat, Apr 10, 11:34 a.m. Inappropriate
cameron and debbalee, check out the info about the Northwest Detention Center - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q;=northwest+detention+center&aq;=0&aqi;=g4&aql;=&oq;=northwest+detention&gs;_rfai=
right here in the tideflats of tacoma!
Posted Sat, Apr 10, 11:59 a.m. Inappropriate
Thank you for that additional information! Now I MUST go buy the book!!! From an independent bookseller of course.
Posted Sat, Apr 10, 6:36 p.m. Inappropriate
Another great and well written article, Judy. I think these terrible events are sometimes overshadowed by the horrors that happened in Europe during that time, and your article (and the book it's about) do a great job in bringing to life how humiliating and frightening it must have been to experience these camps. Hard to imagine trying to explain to one's children why the whole family has been uprooted and locked up.
Posted Tue, Apr 13, 8:02 p.m. Inappropriate
One of the really sad stories in our history is the outrageous relocation of loyal American citizens because of the color of their skin. But along with it the absolutely amazing reaction of these folks almost makes it worthwhile. The bravery of the Japenese-Amercan soldiers who became the highest decorated soldiers as a group in the history of the American Army cannot fail to make your heart swell.
They came back from the camps and started over. In some cases they had lost all. In many more cases their white neighbors had taken care of their property for them and they did not have to begin anew.
With al this, I walked into my older cousin's house one time as he was having a reunion of his older friends, mostly WWII folks and the subject of the relocation came up. The reaction of those folks was, "Well they bombed Pearl harbor, What could they expect?" Sometimes it is hard to fight prejudice with facts.
John
Posted Wed, Apr 14, 4:56 p.m. Inappropriate
@debbalee - Linking this piece with the US Census is entirely appropriate, because the US Census was used to identify Japanese who were rounded up in many states.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=confirmed-the-us-census-b
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