Study Notes on Japanese American Internment during World War II

The draft was met with compliance by Japanese Americans who reported for military induction.
They were law-abiding citizens understanding military service as a responsibility.
Some went reluctantly, others volunteered eagerly, and many viewed it as a chance to demonstrate loyalty.
Despite their loyalty, conflicts arose due to cultural and political ties to Japan.
Loyalty as a political behavior does not necessarily equate with nationalism as an ideology.
This conflation fueled the evacuation and relocation of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, leading to their eventual internment.

The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II stands as the extreme representation of alien citizenship in American history, although the government never officially stripped Japanese Americans of their citizenship.
The U.S. government nullified their citizenship due to racial differences, presuming all Japanese Americans were disloyal, leading to the internment of 120,000 individuals, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens.
The military orders for evacuation targeted ``all persons of Japanese ancestry, both aliens and non-aliens''.
This represented a form of racial profiling, evident from the slogan A Jap is a Jap.

Government policies varied significantly in treating Japanese Americans compared to Germans and Italians. Policies for the latter were based on individual investigations rather than blanket assumptions.
Post Pearl Harbor, the Justice Department arrested:
- 1,393 German nationals
- 264 Italian nationals
- 2,192 Japanese aliens, most leaders from Japanese American communities.
Japanese alien detainees included Buddhist priests, martial arts instructors, and businessmen, many of whom were later paroled to internment camps.
Earl Warren, then California’s attorney general, commented that the treatment of Japanese as a race was fundamentally different than for Caucasians.

President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19, 1942, authorized the exclusion of persons from military areas based on perceived military necessity.
General John L. DeWitt justified the evacuation claiming
the Japanese race was an enemy race, despite dismissals from the FBI and ONI stating the loyalty of Japanese Americans.
Supreme Court cases Hirabayashi and Korematsu in 1943 and 1944 sanctioned the internment allowances based on military necessity while claiming strict review was not warranted.
The military effectively nullified citizenship for Japanese Americans, including those in the armed forces, who were discharged en masse after Pearl Harbor, and draft boards that ceased inducting Japanese Americans.

The internment rested on simple racism but was complicated by the War Relocation Authority's (WRA) approach to manage camps with a focus on assimilation.
WRA officials did not view all Japanese as disloyal, instead practicing benevolent assimilation—using cultural integration to gauge and produce loyalty.
This fusion of culture and loyalty demanded Japanese Americans shed native customs to demonstrate allegiance, echoing historical pressures faced by other immigrant groups.
The WRA director viewed the camps as positive social engineering, considering themselves anti-racist while believing in democratic self-governance within internment.

The internment camps aimed for democratic practices, yet demonstrated limits of paternalism and practicalities of citizenship amid control measures which invoked significant conflict.
Underlying loyalty and cultural conflicts were apparent, particularly highlighted during WRA’s assimilationist programs, which some internees resisted.
Leisure and activities in camps were bicultural with activities connecting to both American and Japanese heritage.
Conflicts arose over governance, primarily due to the insistence on using English and U.S. citizenship for leadership voices in community councils.

In early 1943, the WRA introduced the Loyalty Questionnaire to classify public loyalty, forcing many internees to confront their allegiances.
Questions aimed to assess loyalty were invasive and prompted significant internal conflict and debates among the internees.
Responses illustrated sharp divides within community attitudes towards citizenship and loyalty, reflecting complex intergenerational tensions.
Registration stirred cooperation and resentment; many felt coerced to comply without a choice.
Despite the coercion, many chose to answer favorably, yet 13% refused to engage or answered negatively, with high levels of dissent at Tule Lake camp reflecting deeply entrenched divisions.

A critical aspect of Japanese American experience during internment culminated in the option for voluntary citizenship renunciation post-Executive Order and amidst widespread dissatisfaction with governmental treatment.
The Denationalization Act of 1944 allowed citizens to renounce citizenship voluntarily, contradicting the longstanding prohibitions against renunciation during wartime.
Outcomes of the loyalty questionnaire and subsequent events inadvertently influenced a high number of renunciations, often misinterpreted as disloyalty.
The Justice Department's approach to management and attitudes towards dissociation helped produce mass confusion, particularly regarding Japanese American identity.
Renunciations frequently brought out substantive legal battlesome, with some internees regretting their decisions following shifts in wartime trajectories and recognizing Japan's precarious position in the conflict.

By the end of the war and amidst rising public awareness attitudes changed towards Japanese Americans, leading to clamor for reinstating citizenship rights.
Legal battles persisted into the following decades, culminating in collective efforts resulting in the restoration of citizenship for most renunciants.
Historical narratives surrounding this experience illuminate tensions between national identity, personal agency, and the political landscape of citizenship during wartime—a duality that reverberated through the lives of the interned Japanese Americans and continues to inform current discussions on race and rights.