They Called Us Enemy

“In California, at that time, the single most popular political position was ‘Lock up the Japs.’” 

Earl Warren is the attorney general of California when the attack on Pearl Harbor happens. He embraces the immediate anti-Japanese sentiment for political gain. He warns that unless true Americans do something about the Japanese American citizens, Pearl Harbor, or something like it, will happen again.

“They are Japanese and nothing else…regardless of how many generations may have been born in America.” 

Fletcher Bowron, the mayor of Los Angeles after the Pearl Harbor bombing, reduces the Japanese to nothing but their ethnicity. His close-minded view does not allow for any dialogue between the US government and the Japanese American citizens. Bowron’s propaganda engenders widespread mistrust of the Japanese.

“For my parents, it was a devastating blow. They had worked so hard to buy a two-bedroom house and raise a family in Los Angeles. Now we were crammed into a single, smelly horse stall. It was a dreadful, humiliating, painful experience.” 

As Takei looks back, he realizes how odious the internment was for his parents. He also realizes how hard they worked to shield him and his siblings from their pain and embarrassment. It is only as an adult that Takei can imagine what it must have been like to be kicked out of the home they had saved for to be incarcerated for unjust reasons.

“I thought everyone took vacations on a train with armed sentries at both ends of each car. It was an adventure.” 

The train ride to Arkansas does not frighten George. He sees people crying, but his parents keep him entertained and tell him that they are going on vacation. He does not understand that he is in the middle of a journey that dehumanizes them all. His parents allow him to be an innocent, excited child, to remain unaware of the injustice the family is suffering.

“Through my child’s eyes, Daddy always seemed in command of any given situation.” 

As an adult George is impressed by his father’s commitment to the calm stoicism he showed to his children in the camps. George never suspected that the camps tormented his parents so badly. This idea that his father was in command of the situation clashes with George’s later notion that Takekuma’s passivity caused their incarceration.

“People can do great things, George. They can come up with noble, shining ideals. But people are also fallible human beings. And know they made a terrible mistake.” 

Takekuma reflects on the mistake of internment and how it worked within the context of American democracy. His faith in the system is at odds with his feelings about the internment, as shown when he is unable to make himself meet Eleanor Roosevelt. Unfortunately, he dies before the government acknowledges that America mistreated its Japanese American citizens and that restitution is required.

“Shikata ga nal.” 

George’s father says this—“It can’t be helped”—in response to one of Camp Rohwer’s many indignities. His attitude is not pessimistic or self-defeating. He chooses to focus on the things he can control, and he knows that there are aspects of camp life that he cannot influence. Therefore, those things are not worth worrying about. George will later interpret his father’s attitude as a passivity characteristic of the Japanese people, although he will also realize that he is being unfair.

“The kitchen was just one more aspect of caring for her family that she was denied.” 

Once George’s mother is interned in Camp Rohwer, she loses parts of her identity that matter to her. She does not have to do chores, and she does not have to cook, but this is not a relief to her. She is a nurturer and a homemaker who takes pride in cooking for her family. Rather than viewing her situation as a break from menial household duties, she suffers because she is not allowed to care for her family in ways that are crucial to her.

“We were so diverse, all so different. And yet, we were all the same. We were all Japanese Americans in Block 6 at Camp Rohwer. That was our common denominator.” 

As George’s father meets the other families in Block 6, he is stunned to find how eclectic they are. There are people from many professions, of many ages, and with vastly different histories. But the US government reduces them to what it considers their most salient, relevant trait: their status as Japanese. This is alienating and irrational to George’s father, but he also sees it as a reason for the interned citizens to form a strong community within Camp Rohwer.

“Other people are other people. Our house is our house.” 

Fumiko says this after Ford and Chevy trick George into yelling “Sakana Beach” at the soldiers. She does not focus on the fact that Ford and Chevy taught her sons bad words. Rather, she reminds them that they are responsible for obeying the rules of their house and taking responsibility for their own actions.

“The idea of snow—and actually experiencing it for the first time—was exciting beyond words. It felt like pure magic.” 

Camp Rohwer is where George sees snow for the first time. Despite the realities of incarceration, he is able and encouraged to play, use his imagination, and discover whatever he can. The older generations have far fewer, if any, positive memories of the camp, which is why it remains a more acute burden for them in the future.

“They cannot be assimilated. There is not a single Japanese in this country who would not stab you in the back.” 

Senator Tom Stewart denies any possibility of American-born Japanese who are loyal to the United States. The attribution of false, malicious motives to US citizens who have never even been to Japan is one of many egregious examples of xenophobia portrayed in the book. His statement that they cannot be assimilated closes all future conversations.

“No. 27. Are you willing to serve in the Armed Forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?” 

Question 27 in the loyalty questionnaire asks incarcerated US citizens if they are willing to enter combat on behalf of the nation that is unjustly imprisoning them. It asks people who are being treated as enemies by their country to risk their lives for that country on behalf of freedom. The absurdity of the proposition prevents George’s parents from answering “yes” and contributes to their transfer to Camp Tule Lake.

“No. 28. Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any foreign government, power, or organization?” 

Question 28 assumes that all Americans with Japanese heritage harbor an innate allegiance to the Japanese emperor. It also presupposes that they view Japan as their homeland, despite the fact that many of them have never been to Japan. The term “unqualified allegiance” is more reflective of the support demanded by an authoritarian state than a democracy.

“Rarely has a nation been so well served by a people it has so ill-treated.” 

President Bill Clinton speaks on behalf of the Japanese Americans while awarding the Medal of Honor to soldiers of the 442nd regiment. It has taken decades for the US government to admit that the internment camps were a terrible, misguided decision. The past cannot be undone, but the recognition of the 442nd is a bulwark against future justifications for the camps that anyone may try to make.

“In 1944, dozens of these principled objectors were transferred to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas. I’m proud of them, and I consider them just as heroic as those who fought on foreign battlefields.” 

Many young men in the camps were willing to fight for America, but only if they could do so by signing up at their local draft board. They could not, in good conscience, sign up from inside a barbed-wire fence and then leave their families in the camp while they risked their lives as soldiers. Takei considers these men as brave as those who did fight. They were prisoners at the mercy of their captors. They sacrificed even more of their autonomy than before, at risk to their families who they left behind.

“Tule Lake was the most notorious, the most cruel, and by far the largest of the ten camps. At its peak this heavily militarized facility held 18,000 internees. Nearly half of them were kids like us.” 

The Takeis’ negative answers on the loyalty questionnaire result in their transfer to Camp Tule Lake. The idea that half of the internees were children makes the assertion that Camp Tule Lake primarily houses dangerous radicals laughable. But George’s parents are not radicals either. Their refusal to go against their conscience on the questionnaire leads to their categorization as disloyal Japanese with anti-American sentiment despite a lack of evidence.

“Some young men in the camp became disillusioned. After an unrelenting series of abuses, they felt betrayed by their country. If the U.S. government was going to treat them like an enemy, they were going to show them what kind of enemy they could be. Tule Lake had become radicalized.” 

Originally, the people interned at Camp Tule Lake were not overtly radical, if at all. Ironically, the conditions at the camp manage to radicalize many young men who would have had no need to protest if they were treated fairly. The young men’s anger makes the guards feel vindicated in the biased views they already held of the internees.

“That’s how rumors start, and turn neighbor against neighbor. It’s better we don’t guess about that sort of thing.” 

The radicals at Camp Tule Lake lose their jobs after the protests. They then turn on the internees who continue to work, accusing them of ingratiating themselves with the guards to take their jobs away. Takekuma understand that the unsubstantiated rumors and generalizations the radicals make against the others are analogous to the suspicion with which the US government treats Japanese American citizens.

“Years later, the trauma of those experiences continued to haunt me. Most Japanese Americans from my parents’ generation didn’t like to talk about the internment with their children. As with many traumatic experiences, they were anguished by their memories and haunted by shame for something that wasn’t their fault. Shame is a cruel thing. It should rest on the perpetrators but they don’t carry it the way the victims do.” 

Takei reflects on the older generations’ reluctance to talk about their internment experiences. The victims of the camps continue to suffer after their releases, some of them decades in the future. Shame is irrational when felt by people who have done nothing wrong. The internees did not deserve to be incarcerated, but they were treated as if they were criminals.

“I spoke up righteously as my father suffered in silence. It still pains me to this day…that arrogant boy’s outspoken bluntness inflicted on his father…a man who knew the anguish of those dark internment years more intensely than that boy could ever understand.” 

When George confronts his father about allowing them to be taken to the camps, he speaks with the confidence and indignation of youth. Only the wisdom of adulthood allows him to see that he was misguided and disrespectful to his father. It is easier to say what someone else should have done in a difficult situation than to admit that sometimes there are no easy answers.

“As I studied civics and government in school, I came to see the internment as an assault not only on an entire group of Americans, but on the Constitution itself. How its guarantee of due process and equal protection had been decimated by forces of fear and prejudice, unleashed by unscrupulous politicians.” 

In high school George begins educating himself about the internment camps. He is disturbed to find that they are rarely mentioned in his textbooks. He then begins to see that he and his family were actually prisoners. Worse, the instruments of their incarceration were the politicians who were supposed to uphold the Constitution on behalf of all Americans, regardless of their background or ethnicity. These politicians denied Japanese Americans the equal protection promised by the Constitution, and they did so by perverting its concepts to their own ends.

“That makes an amazing statement about this country. It took a while, but it did apologize.” 

Takei speaks about receiving his restitution letter from President George H. W. Bush. He refuses to be bitter about his family’s experience in the camps. Instead, he sees the late acknowledgement of America’s wrongdoing in a positive light. No one could have forced the US government to apologize, but the governing people eventually saw that it was the right choice. Takei knows that such an apology would not be possible in every country.