The Other Side of the Coin

Today, as I hope most of you out there know, is Pearl Harbor Day. I suggest you look it up if you haven't. There most certainly will be commemorations in local newspapers getting the memories of veterans down in print. Flags will be lowers to half-staff to honor those who died on that day. Yet as we honor those who gave their lives that day, perhaps we are also forgetting another group of people who would see their lives utterly destroyed by the events of Pearl Harbor: that of the Japanese who lived in the United States.

Japanese-Americans were already having a rough go at it since the 1906 Gentleman's Agreement, an informal agreement between Japan and the US to restrict Japanese migration to the US, and the Immigration Act of 1924, which banned Asians from immigrating to the US entirely. These were just indications of the general dislike, to put it mildly, that the "native" Americans had for the Japanese newcomers.

Then Pearl Harbor came along. The Japanese had been maligned in the press and by government officials in the prior years due to atrocities in China, but Pearl Harbor really kicked it into high gear. Calls for the internment and displacement of the Japanese were immediately raised by so-called "loyal" Americans. Apparently in the minds of many of them, the Japanese were not Americans and instead enemies loyal to their "home country." (Note: 2/3 of the Japanese on the West Coast at this time were born in the US). On Febrary 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, giving the military the authority to round up enemy aliens they thought would pose a threat to the safety of the United States.

Imagine the swirl of emotions that many of the Japanese felt at the time. Many of them did not question the fact that they were Americans. Americans of Japanese descent, of course, but Japanese nonetheless. Merely months later for some, their lives were being turned upside down in the name of "national security," in which there was little to no evidence that any of them participated in such shenanigans.

This does not mean we should discount those who died at Pearl Harbor and those there who worked to save who they could. Nevertheless, we should also understand and look beyond the immediate event to see the larger tragedy at work.