論文：1.はじめに

Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II

 

1. Introduction

Internment of Japanese Americans to relocation camps during World War II has been considered by historians and activists to reflect racial prejudice against people of color or non-white minorities, which was widespread in the United States in the pre-war period. The pioneering work by tenBroek, Barnhart, and Matson, first published as early as in 1954, established this point of view, which has been followed by recent works (Daniels; “Densho, the Japanese American Legacy Project”; Robinson; Roxworthy). However, this viewpoint is too simplistic because the minority often fights back against the prejudice to protect their human rights. So, questions arise what allowed the racial prejudice to directly drive U.S. government to decide the internment? Or, what did prevent Japanese Americans from protesting this decision? Class might play a role because Japanese Americans were in the lowest class in the society; they might luck sufficient political power to fight back against the prejudice because of their low class status. Thus, combination of racial prejudice and powerless class status of the victims might have driven the U.S. government to decide the internment of Japanese Americans. In other words, the intersectionality of race and class might have caused the oppression of the minority. If so, internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was wrong because it was rooted in racial prejudice and exploited low class status of the minority.

The word ‘internment’ means confinement as a prisoner (“intern”). One might see no problem in it, but the word ‘prisoner’ has two meanings (“prisoner”). One is a person who has been found guilty of a crime and sent to prison. In this meaning, the person is a criminal and confinement can be justified as a punishment. The other meaning is a person who has been captured by someone and kept confined. This definition includes a prisoner of war. In this meaning, the person is not a criminal and confinement is a violation of human right. To refer to the confinement of Japanese Americans, Roger Daniels disputed the use of the word internment, which should be based on what one did, and insisted that it should be called ‘incarceration’ or imprisonment (“incarcerate”).

I had a chance to visit Manzanar, California, where one of the ten relocation camps of Japanese Americans was located during World War II (Burton et al. 161-202). The place was in the middle of desert on the leeward foot of Sierra Nevada. There remained no building, but was the cemetery of people who had died in the camp. There were only several tombs, which, without tombstones, looked like just small mounds. Others must have been lost under the sands. It was a sad sight. I also saw a reconstructed guard tower, which suggested that there used to be a ‘prison’ surrounded by barbed-wire fences.

Exhibition held in 1994 to 1995 at Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, called the relocation camp of Japanese Americans as “America’s concentration camps” (Japanese American National Museum). Robert Ito used the same words to criticize the revisionists who tried to downplay the significance of Japanese American internment. When this exhibition was to be held in 1998 at Ellis Island, New York, there occurred a controversy between Japanese Ameircans and Jewish. Some of the latter wanted to restrict the use of the term to the camps where Germany imprisoned Jewish and commited the Holocaust (New York Times). Unlike German death camps, American camps were far more human places, but it is still true that both were the places where serious violation of human rights occurred. Before looking at the details of the human right violation by the internment, or incarceration, of Japanese Americans to the relocation camps, or concentration camps, let us look at the history of Japanese Americans.