I would see glimpses of pain and shadows of sadness. He left an infant daughter and a wife of two years.Īs I gently probe family memories, I would find that time does not heal all wounds. A 442nd Army sergeant and squad leader, he was killed by Germans while on patrol during the hellish battle for the Lost Battalion. His brother-in-law, Uncle Ned, never made it back. Uncle Mas was awarded a Bronze Star for valor, a Purple Heart for combat injuries and eight other military decorations. The 442nd became one of the most highly decorated U.S. Except for some of its officers, the 442nd was composed entirely of the American-born sons of Japanese immigrants who chose as their motto “Go for Broke.” In the dank and forbidding forests of the Vosges mountains of France, they fought in the famed “Battle of the Lost Battalion,” rescuing a group of Texas soldiers at a cost of four lives sacrificed for every one saved. While Jichan was locked up as a national security threat, one of his three sons-my Uncle Mas-volunteered for the celebrated 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the United States Army. Here are the records of the Alien Enemy Hearing Board that interrogated my grandfather and concluded that he was potentially dangerous, and the deliberations of another hearing board 19 months later that decided he was not.Īs my grandfather’s file prompted my extended family to gather and reminisce, I would hear stories of stoic and heroic responses to the bewildering turn of events following Pearl Harbor. ![]() In these pages we would at last learn the reasons for Jichan’s arrest and detention. The unexpected appearance of my grandfather’s file, an invitation to reopen the past and compare it to the present, seems discomfortingly coincidental. There are “disturbing parallels with post 9/11 experiences in Arab, Muslim and South Asian communities all over the U.S.,” says John Christgau, who wrote a 1985 book, “Enemies,” on the alien internment program and who helped compile a current exhibition at UCLA’s Powell Library on the 31,000 Japanese, Italian and German immigrants and their families who were interned during World War II. Japanese Americans are making documentaries, staging performances and holding forums and vigils-from Seattle to Los Angeles-to underline their concerns that innocent people are again being trampled upon in the name of national security. These developments have provoked unease among many Japanese Americans, 120,000 of whom-including my grandmother and her children-were removed from their West Coast homes and locked up in desolate camps after Pearl Harbor. ![]() 11, about 4,000 men, mostly Arabs and Muslims, have been arrested and detained, according to Georgetown University law professor David Cole among them, he says, only a minuscule number have been charged with crimes related to terrorism. It spawned a Department of Homeland Security and laws such as the Patriot Act, which vastly expanded the surveillance powers of federal law-enforcement agencies.Īfter Pearl Harbor, nearly 8,000 Japanese immigrants were arrested and interned as potentially dangerous enemy aliens, says University of Cincinnati professor emeritus Roger Daniels not one was found guilty of espionage or sabotage. 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center-a strike that was often compared to Pearl Harbor-President Bush declared a war on terrorism. Now a thick file detailing his case has unexpectedly landed in our laps, 60 years later, at another time of tension and fear in America. He died with his secrets, nearly 40 years ago, when I was 6, too young to know enough to ask questions. ![]() We never asked him about it, and he never volunteered any information. We never knew what his experience was like. He’s a carpenter, after all-an amateur historian whose zeal surely can’t reflect any real sleuthing ability. But she decides not to hire him-his quote is too high-and she never expects to hear from him again. The woman mentions that her grandfather had suffered such a fate, and the carpenter grows excited, promising to do some research. Not the well-documented stories of families sent to internment camps, but the largely untold tales of people who were essentially convicted, in closed hearings without legal representation, of being a threat to national security. She’s the chatty type and, as they talk, it turns out he has an interesting hobby-a private passion, actually-researching Japanese immigrants who were detained during World War II. She considers one man who, like her, is Japanese American. This is how serendipitous and odd and mysterious life can be.Ī Seattle woman is searching for a carpenter to do some work in her home, which is being remodeled.
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