WHO ARE THE HEROES?

By Ruth A. Sheets

Last evening, I finished reading a book called Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown.  The book was filled with heroes who would have been heroes had they just suffered the imprisonment and insults done to them by the American government and people all over this country, but they did far more.  Who are these particular heroes?  They are the between 110 and 120thousand Japanese-Americans who after Pearl Harbor, were imprisoned in “internment camps” (really concentration camps) in the most god-awful places that could be found in the United States.

Why were they “interned,” you might ask?  A couple of military guys decided it would be a way to get rid of Japanese men, women, and children from the West Coast because the Japanese had attacked our naval base in Hawaii.  With absolutely no evidence whatsoever, they accused people of Japanese descent of being a threat to our nation’s security, working for Japan to bring down our country.  In short, they made it up and even got President Roosevelt and Governor Earl Warren of California to go along with the ruse.  In 1944, even the Supreme Court shamefully agreed the “internment” was OK.

Men, women, and children, even disabled orphans, were forced from their homes into holding pens (race tracks and other public places) until the camps could be readied.  They were forced to sell what they could to white neighbors who offered pennies for valuable household items, even homes and businesses were sold cheap.  The people were permitted to take only what they could carry and were sent by bus and train to deserts, mountainous wastelands, swamps, and other nasty places those military guys located as quickly as possible. 

When the people, most of whom were American citizens, arrived, they were met with barbed wire enclosing rows of hastily constructed barracks with tar paper roofs that barely kept out the weather.  Each family had a number and was forced to live in a small section of one of those barracks, to wait hours in line for almost inedible food, shower and use the bathroom with no privacy, and have machine guns pointed at them 24 hours a day, every day as though they were criminals.  A couple of men who couldn’t take it anymore, tried to leave one of the camps and were shot down.

I describe this because I knew nothing about these concentration camps in my own country until I was out of college.  Somehow, even my class on World War II never covered the “internment.”  I learned about it through a movie.  I thought it was fiction.  My country as bad as it could be would never have done that to citizens!  I had been told the reason they wouldn’t allow Black people to be citizens was because then they couldn’t be enslaved.  That’s what I thought until I read an article about one family’s experience of the camps, around 1977. 

I knew about the Japanese-American troops that fought in Italy.  There was even a “McHale’s Navy” episode about them.  I thought they were Japanese-American soldiers who just happened to make up a unit.  When I finally found out that many of them were from the camps, I was shocked!  Why would anyone treated so badly even consider fighting for the country that did it?  Well, that’s what I mean about doing more.  Many of the imprisoned Japanese men volunteered to join the army when the opportunity came.  They usually said they wanted a chance to prove they were truly Americans.  Japanese Hawaiians had not been interned for the most part, so didn’t know what their mainland brothers had suffered until they met in basic training.  Some men from the camps who did not agree to join were imprisoned in jails or at the worst of the camps for refusing.

Training took place in Mississippi, an environment very different from anything the recruits had experienced previously.  They put up with the bugs, mud, alligators, and racism of Mississippi and developed into an incredible fighting force.  When they got to Italy, they experienced some of the worst fighting of the war.  They famously saved a Texas regiment, used stealth to sneak up on entrenched German soldiers, climbed mountains in the dark to destroy artillery placements, helped liberate German concentration camps, and far more.  Their casualties were high.

Despite all that, their actions were only fully recognized in 2012 when President Obama gave 20 additional Congressional Medals of Honor to members of the 442nd regiment (one such medal had been awarded during the war).  They were the most highly decorated unit in US history.  The men who had been treated like criminals, who saw their families, even parents treated like animals, how were they able to have experienced all this, yet put their lives on the line for the United States? 

The men’s families were not idle at the camps.  They created gardens to grow fresh food; set up baseball diamonds, football fields, basketball courts, and formed teams; opened schools for the children and held classes for adults who wanted to add to their skills; produced all kinds of art; taught dancing; worked on farms miles away just to get out of the camps for a while; in short, created community where there had been nothing.  They were heroes who made a life for themselves and their children under appalling conditions.    

I know a bunch of scared white folks would like this part of our history forgotten just as they want their ancestors’ treatment of Black Americans, our indigenous peoples, Hispanic citizens, and immigrants wiped from the history books.  I suspect that if they knew about it, they would want Mr. Brown’s book banned along with the many others that cover aspects of those shameful years.  Well, they can ban all they want, but their “precious” not so fragile kids will learn about these things because whether the parents want to acknowledge it or not, they are part of the larger community that is the United States of America, not the white states of America.  Maybe, it is time the children should lead them.  Hey kids, we need some heroes.  You could be the ones we need, the ones who will lead your scared parents into the light of knowledge and freedom from conservatives who would prefer them to remain ignorant.  Help them to see that you are not fragile and want to know about the many different people who make up this country.  Girls and boys, you’ve got this!