A concentration on change
Derek Tahara
“Banish Japs Forever.”
“Japs Keep Movin’. This is a White Man’s Neighbourhood.”
These were signs that Japanese Americans and people of Japanese ancestry, including my grandparents, saw as their lives were slowly crumbling during The Second World War. On February 19th 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorised the internment of thousands of people with Japanese ancestry. The concentration camps were located all across the country, from California to Arkansas.
My grandparents told me stories of when they were detained in internment camps in Tule Lake, as well as a number of other concentration camps in Arkansas called Jerome and Rohwer. They shared with me the gruesome details regarding their cramped sleeping arrangements and meagre portions of food. But at the same time, they did not fully grasp the situation due to their youth.
Since both of my grandparents were very young, they did not comprehend why they were leaving their homes with as many belongings as they could stuff in their suitcases, why they were made to reside in crowded barracks with other Japanese Americans. My grandparents did not understand that the President authorised an executive order enforcing the detainment of thousands of Japanese Americans, a decision that all started with the bombing of Pearl Harbour 1941. All they understood was that when the weather and time would allow it, they would be able to go outside and play.
Original caption: Hayward, California. Members of the Mochida family awaiting evacuation bus. Identification tags are used to aid in keeping the family unit intact during all phases of evacuation. Mochida operated a nursery and five greenhouses on a two-acre site in Eden Township. He raised snapdragons and sweet peas. Evacuees of Japanese ancestry will be housed in War Relocation Authority centers for the duration. Dorothea Lange - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
1 April 1942. Exclusion Order posted to direct Japanese Americans living in the first San Francisco section to evacuate. First and Front Streets, San Francisco, California. National Archives and Records Administration
There are a number of definitions the words ‘concentration camp’ can take. In general, it can be defined as the separation of people from another group of people. Alternatively, a concentration camp can be described as a mass detention center. The latter is precisely what the Japanese internment camps were 77 years ago.
Currently, it’s happening again to several thousand undocumented immigrants at the southern Mexican border, under direct orders from United States President Donald J. Trump.
Racial inequality has plagued American society since Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ America in 1492, when European-white settlers waged violence against Native American communities. President Trump has been racially divisive the day he stepped into the Oval Office in 2016. He is not trying to decrease racism, but promote it. Trump’s authorization of ICE detaining people in concentration camps and putting children in cages is evidence of the racist rhetoric, policies, and ideology he is disseminating to the people of the United States without remorse.
Immigration has been a debatable topic, and an ‘us vs. them’ mentality trumps all in the White House. ‘Us’ in this case are white Americans, while ‘them’ is anyone who does not look white. In 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, a white nationalist rally occurred with many carrying torches and chanting, “You will not replace us.” The words ‘replace’ and ‘you’ are a clear reference to the idea that people of colour are a threat to Caucasian people in the United States. Discourse used in conjunction with those considered ‘the other’ is not so different now as it was during the Second World War. Both the Japanese and South Americans are deemed ‘invaders’, threats to a country where power and privilege are localised in the hands of the Caucasian majority.
The treatment surrounding the Japanese internment camps also strongly echoes the current political climate in the United States. In terms of health and hygiene in the Japanese concentration camps, the Japanese were put into cold, unsanitary barracks - some very tight which was a breeding ground for diseases. Some of the facilities were tight quarters that attracted diseases such as smallpox and typhoid. The shared bathrooms were vessels of disease, carrying pathogens that were easily spread among the internees.
Similarly, some of the ICE concentration camps have children forced into cages. In a concentration camp in McAllen, Texas, Dolly Lucio Sevier examined 39 children under the age of 18, and found gruesome living conditions, which included, “extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, water or adequate food”. Sevier also noticed that teenagers were not able to wash their hands, in which she described as “tantamount to intentionally causing the spread of disease". Thus, the unsanitary conditions of the Japanese internment camps have striking similarities to the ICE concentration camps located at the southern border of the United States.
Barracks are from the Japanese Relocation Center and are now furnishing housing for farm labor on Bryant Williams farm in Klamath County, Oregon. Item Number: P120:2606. Original Collection: Extension and Experiment Station Communications
Protests regarding the concentration camps at the border are indicative of an overwhelming level of dissatisfaction towards ICE’s mistreatment of Central American migrants. Activists from New York were reported to have put mannequins inside cages in protest. They also incorporated real-life audio recordings of children crying, “obtained by ProPublica in their investigations of families being separated at the border.” Direct action and advocacy, fortunately, is attempting to help American society evaluate what kind of changes need to be made, and takes a firm stance as to what cannot, and should no longer be tolerated.
The comparisons I have made show that history is only repeating itself. Concentration camps for Japanese people decades ago, and the current situation at the US-Mexico border, have an overarching common thread: the abuse of human rights.
Children are separated from their families. They are forced to sleep on cold, hard concrete floors with the lights on all day, covered only with aluminum blankets. They reside in extremely unsanitary and unsafe conditions, indicating human rights abuses at a level that should never be reached, and is intolerable. These detention centers and concentration camps that Japanese people and South-American migrants act as barriers, cutting people off from the ability to build better lives for themselves and for their families. At a core level, these methods of detention dehumanize people who only aim to live regular lives.
I can only hope that 2020 brings a leader, policies, and an ideology that upholds the humanity and dignity of people who are unjustly viewed as ‘the other’. I hope it brings an end to this vicious cycle of abuse. We must concentrate on change, not camps.