How do you prove you are loyal?: Japanese Americans and WWII

Discussing Loyalty

• To start you might want to frame the discussion with an open-ended or essential question about loyalty. For example, Who is asked to prove their loyalty and why? One way to begin the discussion is to use the think-pair-share strategy.
• Keep the discussion moving in a large group by asking, “Under what conditions are people asked to prove their loyalty?” This discussion can transition into an opportunity to build the context for teaching about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Consider sharing the first episode of the executive order 9066 series to build context and engagement.
• Introduce the 1942 photograph of the Wanto Grocery Story from Oakland, California. Photograph shows the Wanto Co. store located at 401 – 403 Eighth and Franklin Streets in Oakland, California. The business was owned by the Matsuda family. Tatsuro Matsuda, a University of California graduate, commissioned and installed the “I am an American” sign on December 8, 1941, the day after the Pearl Harbor attacked by the Japanese military.

The photograph shows the Wanto Co. store located at 401 – 403 Eighth and Franklin Streets in Oakland, California. The business was owned by the Matsuda family. Tatsuro Matsuda, a University of California graduate, commissioned and installed the “I am an American” sign.

• Why do you think the grocer felt compelled to commission the sign?
• The description notes that the sign went up on December 8, just after the Pearl Harbor attack. What message was the grocer trying to send?
• Who do you think was his intended audience?

Use Primary Sources.

Introduce Executive Order 9066 and the instructions for the incarceration of Japanese Americans.

• Executive Order 9066 from Our Documents
• Instructions to All Persons of Japanese Ancestry
• Ask students to underline words or phrases that the government uses to explain the decision to intern Japanese Americans. Compare the explanations in the two documents. Who is the intended audience for each document?  How are they different?
• Consider that the instructions poster was placed in public and written in English. How do those choices impact your understanding of the audience? Imagine you stumbled upon the poster, what factors might influence how you responded to it?

The owner of the store pictured in the above photograph, a University of California graduate, was forced to leave his home alongside approximately 122 thousand Japanese American children, women, and men who would be incarcerated in concentration camps during the war and the store was closed. (See the map above for locations)

Life in the Internment Camps

To help students get a sense of what life was like for incarcerated Japanese Americans, consider screening the video we embedded in this page. The narrator, Saburo Masada, describes his childhood in a concentration camp for Japanese Americans. You might also consider streaming additional episodes of the Executive Order 9066 podcast.

Proving Loyalty

After the film, introduce the two versions of the loyalty questionnaire and use your favorite protocol for examining primary sources to your students.

• This version was prepared by the Selective Service Administration. The SSA was responsible for collecting information about people eligible to be drafted into the military. 
• This version was called the “WAR RELOCATION AUTHORITY APPLICATION FOR LEAVE CLEARANCE”

After reading the questionnaires, discuss what the questions tell suggest about the ways that government officials were assessing loyalty? What could a Japanese American do to prove that they were loyal? What dilemmas might they face as they sought to prove their loyalty?

One choice was to join the military. While that choice was not open to everyone in the camps, over 30,000 Japanese American men and women did enlist. The most famous Japanese American regiment was the 442. Ask students to consider the choice eligible Japanese American faced with regard to joining the military.

• Was it a real choice?
• What options did they have?
• What were the benefits of joining the military?
• What were the downsides?

You can introduce students to the story of Japanese American WWII veterans on this page for Ken Burn’s documentary series The War.

Based on what students have learned, ask them to consider why many more Japanese Americans were incarcerated than Italian Americans or  German Americans. How do they explain the differences in treatment? Follow up with a broader reflection, once a group is perceived as disloyal, what needs to happen for those stereotypes to be broken down? Consider a few additional questions to consider as you close :

• Ask students to think about which groups are asked to prove their loyalty today and why?
• What are the dangers when entire groups of people are perceived as disloyal?
• And, whose responsibility is it to counter those negative perceptions?

Civil Liberties in Times of War

Japanese internment was justified as a military necessity to keep the country safe. Discuss why people, including the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. the United States, might have been willing to set aside civil liberties during wartime?

In a controversial decision announced in June 2018, the US Supreme Court ruled that the President had the right to impose a travel ban restricting people from several Muslim majority countries, alongside resides from a few other non-Muslim majority nations including North Korea and Venezuela, from traveling to the United States. While some argued that the President Trump’s campaign rhetoric was evidence that the intent of the ban was to discriminate, in a 5-4 decision, the majority ruled that the President has the authority to make national security judgments in the realm of immigration. Despite ruling in the President’s favor, the court’s decision also struck down the 1944  Korematsu v. the United States decision. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote:

“The forcible relocation of U.S. citizens to concentration camps, solely and explicitly on the basis of race, is objectively unlawful and outside the scope of presidential authority,” he wrote. Citing language used by then-Justice Robert H. Jackson in a dissent to the 1944 ruling, Chief Justice Roberts added, “Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and — to be clear — ‘has no place in law under the Constitution.’”

Research both decisions.

Why do you think the courts connected the two cases in their ruling? In what ways are the cases similar? What differences do you see? How do you explain the court’s decision to uphold the travel ban while condemning the Korematsu ruling? Why might some people argue that the rulings are inconsistent? What do you think? What evidence do you have to support your position?

Extensions: How can the government atone for an injustice? Does the government have a responsibility to demonstrate its loyalty to those they have wronged? Have students research the apology issued to Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during WWII and watch President Reagan’s address before signing H.R. 442. You will find links to both resources above. After students research the apology, have them develop their own list of questions that are raised by the apology. To learn strategies for facilitating this exercise, explore resources from the Right Question Institute.