Feb. 19 marked the 80th anniversary since President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, thereby legalizing the evacuation of all persons deemed a threat to national security to relocation centers. The order led to the eviction and incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans throughout the 3 years following its instatement.
Annenberg’s Tiffany Mankarios spoke with Masaru “Mas” Hashimoto, who was incarcerated in Salinas, California and Poston, Arizona from 1942 to 1945.
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TIFFANY MANKARIOS: Japanese American internment: the forced relocation by the United States government of thousands of Japanese Americans to detention camps during World War II. That action was the culmination of the federal government’s long history of racist and discriminatory treatment of Asian American immigrants and their descendants that had begun with restrictive immigration policies in the late 1800s.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese aircraft on Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S. War Department suspected that Japanese Americans might act as saboteurs or espionage agents despite a lack of hard evidence to support that view. Some political leaders recommended rounding up Japanese Americans, particularly those living along the West Coast, and placing them in detention centers inland.
On March 31, 1942, Japanese Americans along the West Coast were ordered to report to control stations and register the names of all family members. They were then told when and where they should report for removal to an internment camp. Here is the story of Masaru Hashimoto.
MASARU “MAS” HASHIMOTO: My name is Mas Hashimoto. I am 86 years old. I live in Watsonville, California, between Santa Cruz and Monterey.
We were no. 16 in the evacuation orders, and we received that order to move on April 27, 1942. We were evicted from our homes to our first prison camp, which was about 20 miles away in the town of Salinas, California, early July of 1942. We were moved from Salinas to Poston, Arizona, and we were there for the next three years and three months.
My family, I was the youngest in the family. My family consisted of my mother — my father had died in 1938, before I was three years old — my mother, four brothers and myself. Brothers number three and four graduated from Watsonville High School in 1938 and 1940. During World War II, they would volunteer to serve in the United States Army, the Military Intelligence Service, because they could read and write Japanese.
All of the camps were in desolate areas. Our camp was in Poston, near the Colorado River and near California. Ours, at one time, was the largest camp. In fact, it was so large it was divided into three camps. We were in Camp 2, so my block was 220. I was in Barrack 12 and our family was in Room A.
It was so hot that half the group suffered heatstroke. When you were coming from cool Monterey Bay, that heat was exhausting. They gave us salt tablets and water to drink. The water was somewhat rusty, and if you did that, a few minutes later you would throw up, and so we learned to dissolve the salt in our mouth.
I didn’t get to finish first grade. I didn’t have second grade. I can barely remember third grade in a barrack building, and we didn’t have educational materials. We didn’t even have desks. We didn’t even have a qualified teacher, a volunteer, so our education was set back somewhat.
My mother got a job in camp as an assistant cook. She got $16 a month. She worked 10 hours a day. She was working for five cents an hour, the lowest pay. Part time workers got $12 a month. Now, we needed the money because we did not sell our home in Watsonville. We boarded up the windows and doors and we gave the keys to a trusted friend, Stacy Irwin, and she took care of our home.
Now, one of the things we had to do was pay city and county taxes to the city of Watsonville and to the county of Santa Cruz —otherwise, we would lose our home to foreclosure. There were protest rallies, and they beat up the Japanese Americans for going along with the incarceration. But we have to prove our loyalty to this country, so our family had discussions on what position to take when there was a loyalty questionnaire that came.
MASARU “MAS” HASHIMOTO: There were 27, 28 questions. Number 27 stated that all those that were 17 years of age and older were to answer these loyalty questionnaires.
“Will you take up arms for the United States?” My mother said yes. Now, she stood about 4′9″ at 50 years old. She knew she wasn’t going to be given a gun to fight.
Question 28 said, “Will you swear allegiance to the United States and forswear any allegiance to the Emperor of Japan?” Those were two questions, but they wanted one answer. My mother said yes, thus giving up her Japanese citizenship, and you couldn’t be a citizen of the United States because that was against the law.
I served in the United States Army Chemical [Corp] at the Sixth Army headquarters at The Presidio, San Francisco, and then after service I got a teaching job at Watsonville High School, my old alma mater. I taught for 36 years.
When I began teaching in 1960s, the civil rights movement just started. Now, I didn’t know much about U.S. history, so I bought a car and I travel around the United States and Canada one whole summer. I wanted to know what this country was about.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: “Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up and wherever they are assembled today, wherever they are in Johannesburg...”
MASARU “MAS” HASHIMOTO: 1963 was the start of the civil rights movement in the South, and I remember staying at hotels for whites only. I went to restrooms that were marked color. I drank from colored drinking fountains. So, I was learning what was happening in the South in regards to Jim Crow laws.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: “Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; our Memphis, Tennessee. The cry is always the same: We want to be free.”
MASARU “MAS” HASHIMOTO: I was so grateful when the JACL and other organizations started to change the curriculum of California — the social studies curriculum — to include Black history, Hispanic history, Asian history and women. Women are the majority, and yet they’re treated like the minority in this country and are denied rights.
California has just passed a law designating that ethnic studies will be a requirement for high school graduation in a near future, and I am so grateful.
NEWS ANCHOR: Well, after more than five years of intense scrutiny, California finally passed a bill making it the first state to require students to take an ethnic studies class to graduate high school.
MASARU “MAS” HASHIMOTO: Teaching about Asian American history — we have a wonderful, colorful history, and we have a lot to offer. What does an American look like? Me!
We’re only one race, the human race. We have variations, and thank goodness for the variations, because they make life exciting.