On Jan. 29, Attorney General Biddle issued an order creating restricted zones along our coastal areas, and regulating the movement of enemy aliens therein. Early in February, Pacific Coast Congressmen recommended to the President that all persons of Japanese ancestry be removed from these restricted zones. Many Japanese fishermen had acquired land adjacent to military and naval bases along the coast, and this was assumed to be indicative of possible bad faith. On Feb. 19 the President issued an order authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe military areas from which any or all persons might be excluded, or within which civilian movement might be restricted. Thus began the removal of approximately 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific Coast; about three-fourths of them are American citizens.
Wartime Civil Control Administration.
At first voluntary removal was permitted, but because of the implication of disloyalty the settlement of these people in the Midwest and the mountain states was resisted by their residents. On Mar. 29 further voluntary evacuation was forbidden, and systematic removal of all persons of Japanese ancestry first to assembly centers and then to permanent relocation centers was begun. The Wartime Civil Control Administration under Colonel C. R. Bendetsen was established by Lieut. General J. L. DeWitt, Commanding General of the Western Defense Command, on March 14, to assume responsibility for the immediate removal, and on Mar. 18 an Executive Order of the President created the War Relocation Authority, a civilian agency with authority 'to formulate and carry out a program for a planned and orderly relocation of persons evacuated from military areas.' Milton S. Eisenhower was appointed director.
Location and Description of Camps.
The rumors of disloyalty on the part of the American Japanese and those in Hawaii have been largely disproved. A limited number (about 2,000) have been charged with subversive activities, and confined in Montana: no agency concerned with the evacuation has imputed any disloyalty with regard to the vast majority, who may be considered in 'protective custody.' The Japanese American Citizens League has cooperated in advising unprotesting conformity with the military instructions governing the removal.
War relocation camps were rapidly set up at Manzanar and Tule Lake in California; Colorado River (Poston) and Gila River in Arizona; Minidoka, Idaho; Heart Mountain, Wyoming; Granada, Colorado; Central Utah, Utah; and Rohwer and Jerome in Arkansas.
The first contingent of evacuees was received at the Colorado River center on May 8, and by November most of the transfers had been completed. The camps for the evacuees were erected by the army engineer corps, and consist of tar-paper covered wooden barracks of the 'theater of operations' type, one hundred feet long and twenty feet wide, subdivided into four apartments, to house from five to eight persons each. Kitchens and dining halls, toilets, shower baths, laundries and recreation space are community structures erected as part of each group of twelve barracks. The resettlement communities are designed to house from 5,000 to 10,000 people and are built singly or in groups of two or three.
Most of the lands chosen are ones over which the Federal Government exercises some control; Indian reservations, reclamation projects, Farm Security homesteads, or other public lands. The Government has undertaken to vacate these lands and return them to their original purpose at the end of the war. In most of the areas, the first work of the evacuees was to complete irrigation systems, subjugate land, and otherwise prepare the land for cultivation, with the purpose of providing their own subsistence and later contributing to the national war food supply. Factories for the manufacture of camouflage nets and other war needs have been established in all the camps and cooperative stores have been opened.
Education, Self-Government and Employment.
About 15,000 of the evacuees were students attending college, and the National Student Relocation Council was organized on May 7 to assist these students in continuing their education in colleges outside of the restricted zones. Several hundred students have been admitted to Eastern and Mid-West colleges under this arrangement. Schools have been started in each of the camps. About half of the teachers are Caucasians, the rest American-born Japanese.
Within the camps, a form of community self-government has been encouraged, although elective positions have been limited to citizen Japanese, who constitute about 35 per cent of the adult group (most are children under 18). Most of the work within the camps is carried on by evacuees, who receive their board, lodging, education, and medical care, and a small compensation of $12, $16, or $19 a month, on a basis of unskilled, skilled and professional work, and a clothing allowance. Government hospitals are operated in each of the camps.
Many of the evacuees were permitted to accept employment outside of the camps during the harvest season, and the War Relocation Authority has made it a matter of permanent policy to encourage and assist the evacuees to obtain permanent employment outside the camps.
Anti-Japanese Agitation.
Anti-Japanese agitation on the Pacific Coast has not rested with the wartime removal of persons of Japanese ancestry. The Native Sons of the Golden West, a California organization, and western posts of the American Legion and of the Veterans of Foreign Wars have begun agitation for the revocation of citizenship of persons of Japanese ancestry.
No comments:
Post a Comment