Feb 19, 1942 - Franklin Roosevelt signed order to imprison 110,000 Japenese - with Indians
Arizona_Republic_Sun__Feb_4__1945_ (1)
By FRANK MASTROPOLO
Feb. 19, 2008
SHARE
For Japanese-Americans, Feb. 19 marks the Day of Remembrance. That's the day in 1942 when President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 and put into motion the government's forced removal and imprisonment of more than 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry — 60 percent of whom were American citizens.
Military officials considered anyone of Japanese descent, whether a U.S. citizen or not, to be a potential spy and a security risk.
With little notice, Japanese were gathered up and ordered to leave their homes, businesses and friends to be incarcerated without trial. They could only take what they could carry and were moved to 10 internment camps spread across some of the nation's most inhospitable terrains.
In "Passing Poston: An American Story," a documentary premiering this month, filmmakers Joe Fox and James Nubile disclose a surprising and little-known secret about the Poston internment camp in the Arizona desert. Poston was built on the Colorado River Indian Reservation for a specific reason: Japanese detainees were brought to the desolate location to provide free, forced labor for the American government.
Ruth Okimoto, who spent her childhood years locked up in Poston, was haunted decades later by the experience. Cameras tracked her journey as she traveled back to Poston and research its beginnings.
"There was a different purpose for Poston besides just being an internment camp. I think the first discovery that absolutely startled me was finding out that the Office of Indian Affairs [now the Bureau of Indian Affairs] was in charge of running the Poston camp, along with the War Relocation Authority, who ran the nine other internment camps."
The Japanese were ordered to build the infrastructure — schools, dams, canals and farms — so the U.S. government could consolidate scattered American Indian tribes from smaller reservations in one place after the war.
Okimoto learned that the U.S. government had been trying unsuccessfully for decades to bring water from the Colorado River to the reservation. Historian Michael Sosi, of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, said it was a government official named John Collier who figured out an ingenious way to accomplish the task.
"John Collier, who was a commissioner of Indian Affairs under Franklin Roosevelt, was very interested in developing this area," Sosi said, "but the problem for the reservation was there were not enough people to justify federal expenditures for the irrigation project."
So Collier, who needed the improvements to coerce other tribes to move to this desolate desert reservation, realized the Japanese would provide the key.
"Japanese internment was the justification needed for the expenditure of federal funds," said Sosi. Once the Japanese were in place, their labor in the torrid heat of the desert made the reservation livable enough to attract the Indians — and fulfill Collier's plans.
In this time of racial discrimination and hatred for the Japanese, the plan was a way to displace one group of unwelcome people and use their hard work to build the infrastructure so another displaced group of people — American Indians — could be isolated there after the war. The irony of this was not lost on Okimoto.
"What better opportunity than to have free, confined laborers in Poston?" asked Okimoto. "And that's what Commissioner Collier figured would be the best way to fulfill a project that he had been working on for years."
"The government and the Bureau of Indian Affairs used us for their ends, for their plans and we were pawns in the hands of the two governmental agencies," Okimoto said.
At its peak, Poston housed 17,000 people, mostly uprooted from the West Coast. The Japanese detainees held at the three Poston camps were used as laborers to build adobe schools, do experimental farming and to construct an irrigation system.
In the film, internees describe the backbreaking work they performed to accomplish the task. When the Japanese were released in 1945, the government carried out its plan to settle the camps with American Indian tribes from the Southwest.
Colonists, as the government referred to them, from the Hopi and Navajo tribes, as well as other tribes living along the Colorado River, moved into the barracks built for the Japanese detainees.
The colonists were recruited by the Office of Indian Affairs and lured by promises of fertile farmland and plentiful water. The new arrivals found a working canal system to irrigate farmland, school buildings and many other necessities for their relocation. For some from the less developed areas of other reservations, it was a step up to have running water and the opportunity to farm. But it remained the product of forced labor by American citizens during World War II.
Dennis Patch, a council member of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, grew up in a house that used to be part of the Japanese barracks. Because American Indian reservations were designed as places where native people had to ask permission before they could leave, Patch called Poston "an internment camp within an internment camp."
"We can identify with mass relocation against our will," he said. "To see another ethnic group brought and lodged there against their will was to me really striking and bewildering."
Patch heard about the Japanese detainees from his parents, grandparents and tribal elders. "They didn't like to see the people suffer that way … because these were men, women and children. They didn't understand it, but they knew it wasn't right. … They had no idea what to do about it; they had no power to do anything about it."
"They built the schools here, they built the roads here, they developed the acreage into fields here, they brought the power down the center of the reservation, Patch said. "So up until that time, we as native people were without running water, restroom facilities, without electricity. From their suffering we gained a lot."
Sosi, the historian, agreed. "Out of this tragedy, we benefited to a great extent. … Their suffering alleviated poverty and other things here on this reservation."
But was the suffering worth it for America? By the end of the war, only 10 people had been convicted of spying for Japan.
And all of them were white.
===========
World War II Impacts Indian Reservations
Posted on October 28, 2014 by Ojibwa
In 1942, the United States was gearing up to fight in World War II and the military efforts on the homefront had an impact on several Indian reservations.
Administration of Indian Affairs:
The need for office space in Washington, D.C. to support the war effort resulted in moving the Indian Bureau to Chicago. The move reduced Indian Bureau influence with Congress and other federal agencies. The Indian budget was slashed and New Deal programs for Indians were dropped. This left many Indian programs in disorder.
A shortage of doctors and nurses on reservations developed as medical personnel joined the armed forces. Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier warned of the potential for a complete breakdown of medical services on the reservations.
Arizona:
The government established concentration camps for Japanese Americans on two Indian reservations in Arizona: the Gila Indian Reservation and the Colorado River Indian Reservation (Mohave and Chemehuevi). The tribes were not consulted in this matter.
With regard to the Colorado River Indian Reservation, the government promises that the land would be returned to the tribes substantially improved for future agricultural use. The tribes opposed the concentration camp, but understood that if they refused the government’s demands they will lose the land. The tribe did not respond to the government. On the other hand, non-Indian business people in nearby Parker saw the concentration camp as a good thing: “The project’s going to be good for the country. It will develop a lot of land, bring in irrigation, so white farmers can use it. White men can’t work out on the reservation now.”
Following the war, the federal government used the former camps to house Hopi and Navajo who were forcibly relocated from their homes as a part of a “colonization” program. Under the plan, up to 1,000 Navajo families were to be removed from their reservation as a means of alleviating overpopulation. The colonization program was a failure.
Alaska:
In Alaska, the U.S. Army removed the Unangan people from the Aleutian Islands and placed them in makeshift camps on the mainland where they suffered from hunger, cold, and disease. Many of the elders died. Their abandoned villages were vandalized by the American military.
South Dakota:
In South Dakota, the U.S. Army Air Corps “borrowed” part of the Oglala Sioux’s Pine Ridge Reservation for a gunnery range with the understanding that it would be returned after World War II. The army notified 128 tribal members that they had to evacuate their homes within thirty days. Some Indians reported that they were told they would be shot if they did not cooperate.
In 1943, more than 250 Oglala Sioux families were given 10 days notice to leave their homes on the Pine Ridge Reservation so that the land could become a bombing range.
Twenty years later, instead of returning the land to the tribe, the federal government simply declared it to be surplus which would allow non-tribal interests to acquire it. In 1968, however, the land was finally returned to the tribe except that the National Park Service was given management authority over half of the land which was now included in the Badlands National Park. For about 25 years, the federal government had leased out 90,000 acres of this land. The profit that the government received from leasing the land exceeded the compensation which had been given to the Sioux at the time the land was taken from them.
Oklahoma:
In Oklahoma, the army expanded Camp Gruber. No thought was given to the forced relocation of the Cherokee who were living on the land taken by the army. The Cherokee had already planted their gardens and would not have food for the winter if they were removed. None of the Cherokee who were to be relocated had transportation and the army told them that it did not have any available trucks to help them. The Cherokee hoped that their land would be returned to them at the end of the war. It was not.
Washington:
In Washington, the Wanapum fishing villages near the White Bluffs on the Columbia River were closed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a part of a top secret war project called the Gable Project (later called Hanford Engineering Works). The Wanapum were allowed to move upriver to Priest Rapids. Here they were allowed to settle in three abandoned houses that had been built for the operators of the first hydroelectric plant on the Columbia River.
Among those moved was young David Sohappy who would later become one of the leaders for Indian fishing rights on the Columbia River. Sohappy was related to the nineteenth century prophet Smohalla and would also become a leader of the Feather Religion, which is an offshoot of Smohalla’s religion.
In 1943, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation closed access to an area sacred to the Yakama. Government officials either ignored or were unaware of the 1855 treaty which guaranteed Indians access to this area.
Following the war, fish studies found that fish were now showing radioactive concentrations averaging 100,000 times the normal amount as far as 20 miles downstream from the Hanford nuclear facility.
Idaho:
In 1943, the federal government under the War Powers Act condemned 2,100 acres of the Shoshone and Bannock’s Fort Hall Reservation to be used as an airport. While the land was worth $100 per acre, the government paid the tribes only $10 per acre.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged American Indians, History, Indians 101, World War IIby Ojibwa. Bookmark the permalink.
=================
Recently the Internet has exploded with statements from American politicians about how the Syrian immigrants should be treated should the come to the United States. These politicians have proposed refusing their requests for sanctuary in over 30 states of the union. Other politicians are proposing holding the refugees in camps while they are being fully vetted and processed for entry into the United States. This is an appalling development in US politics.
George Takei has likened the statements as similar to how Japanese Americans were interned in WWII. These were American citizens, who happened to have Japanese ancestry whose lives were ruined because of this action. And Takei has compared the fact that no Japanese Americans were ever convicted of a crime against the nation, with the fact that 1800 Syrians that have already immigrated and have not committed any crime against the nation.
This is a startling development and indefensible in US history. As Native peoples of this land, we too were imprisoned in military reservations for many years. Even though we were the original people of this land, we were forcibly removed or our leaders chose to remove to save our peoples from the invading colonizers. We were placed on reservations and not allowed to leave without passes. we were not considered citizens of the country until 1924, yet the US kept paternalistic administration over all of the tribes. We were no longer considered to be the people of this land for more than a century, and the Americans took over all of our lands, and resources. Many of our lands were renamed, and for the past two centuries our forests, lakes, rivers, and prairies have been systematically destroyed by pollution, mono-cropping, and over exploitation of the resources of the land.
Our people were subjected to more than a century of various tactics of assimilation. Our children forced to attend American and religious schools. Our people forced to adopt agriculture and give up their traditional ways of living. Even our right to pass on our possessions to our children was removed because our children who did not match the correct “blood quantum” were not allow to own land on the reservation, or inherit the lands of their parents. Those who did not have 1/2 blood quantum had no choice but to leave their tribes and assimilate to American culture in their cities. Our populations, our cultures and our languages declined. At the same time the amount of land on the reservation declined as more and more was given away to Americans. Many Native people were fully dispossessed of their land, culture and tribe.
Ironically, many of the Japanese-American Internment camps of WWII were located next to Indian reservations. As well they could get day passes to work, and children did attend government schools. After their release, most had lost everything they had before their removal
Then when it appeared that our people were fully assimilated, many of the tribes were terminated. The treaties and associated rights terminated, and the reservation lands liquidated. Many tribes ceased to exist and became invisible in American society. Many of these tribes have been restored, and in the past 30 years more and more aspects of their cultures and societies have returned.
It is an extreme vision of what could be, but an appropriate comparison to the internment camps being presently proposed. In the past decades there have been actions of the US government to apologize for the illegal Hawai’ian Nation takeover, for Japanese Internment, and for many other injustices of the US government. I do not recall if there was ever an apology for the treatment of Native peoples on the reservations, nor for their kidnapping of Native children to Boarding schools and their forced assimilation.
All Native Americans are citizens of the United States and have this as their history. I for one cannot hear about the proposition of internment of another people without recalling the history of the imprisonment of Native and other peoples in the world by the United States. This cannot happen again, there cannot be more mistakes like this in the future of the US. The Native nations are still in the process of dealing with the colonization and subjugation and imprisonment of our peoples by the US, and will be for some time. Will the Tribes stand by and let this happen to other peoples?
About these ads
SHARE THIS:
EmailPrint
inShare
1
Share on Tumblr
RELATED
One Hundred Years of Prohibition at the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation
In "Oregon Tribes"
The Red Road to Self-Extermination
In "Anthropology"
"I suppose you know you are leaving us many days behind."
In "Archival Research"
INTERNMENTJAPANESE-AMERICANSRESERVATIONSTRIBES
Post navigation
PREVIOUS POST
Research at the Willamettes
NEXT POST
Economic Disease, Death, and Starvation at the Western Oregon Indian Reservations in 1857
2 THOUGHTS ON “INTERNMENT | IMPRISONMENT |RESERVATIONS”
roarke
APRIL 15, 2016 AT 10:24 PM
I live in Romania, which “leaders” and media present evil as good. As so in USA, i think is the same, regarding you situation, sir.
Like
REPLY
David G. Lewis' Ethnohistory Research, LLC
APRIL 16, 2016 AT 12:25 AM
I think at some level you are right. My essay was focused main at the people, who really need to rethink how and why we still remain under US Federal jurisdiction when they are ways to ridding ourselves of much of the prison that has been created for us.
==========
► Locations of Internment Camps : Internment or "relocation" camps were located in the states of California (Tule Lake and Manzanar Centers), Idaho (Minidoka Center), Utah (Central Utah Center), Colorado (Granada Center), Arizona (Colorado River and Gila River Centers), Wyoming (Heart Mountain Center), and Arkansas (Rohwer and Jerome Centers).
INCARCERATION AND RESERVATIONS: JAPANESE AND NATIVE AMERICANS INTERSECT
OCTOBER 28, 2009 ONE COMMENT HIDDEN HISTORIES, UNCATEGORIZED
“This country has had a history of forced evacuation and detention of non-white Americans.” –Bernie Whitebear, United Indians of All Tribes Foundation
Politically oppressed people of color share storylines in American history. Asian immigrants and their descendants were subjected to legal discrimination designed to diminish them as individuals and economic competitors. African Americans experienced as much and worse. The story of how the first Americans were driven from their lands, traditions, and livelihoods stands as a terrible precursor for the government’s treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The connection is more direct than some would suspect. Like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, charged with managing the country’s displaced Native American population, the War Relocation Authority managed the displaced Japanese American population by penning them in desolate government-controlled territories. The connection does not end there.
===
The Poston War Relocation Center, located in Yuma County (now in La Paz County) of southwestern Arizona, was the largest (in terms of area) of the ten American concentration camps operated by the War Relocation Authority during World War II.
The site was composed of three separate camps arranged in a chain from north to south at a distance of three miles from each other. Internees named the camps Roasten, Toastin, and Dustin, based on their desert locations.[1] The Colorado River was approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) to the west, outside of the camp perimeter.
Poston was built on the Colorado River Indian Reservation, over the objections of the Tribal Council, who refused to be a part of doing to others what had been done to their tribe. However, Army commanders and officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs overruled the Council, seeing the opportunity to improve infrastructure and agricultural development (which would remain after the war and aid the Reservation's permanent population) on the War Department budget and with thousands of "volunteers."[2]
The combined peak population of the Poston camps was over 17,000, mostly from Southern California. At the time Poston was the third largest "city" in Arizona. It was built by Del Webb, who would later become famous building Sun City, Arizona and other retirement communities. The Poston facility was named after Charles Debrille Poston, a government engineer who established the Colorado River Reservation in 1865 and planned an irrigation system to serve the needs of the Indian people who would live there.[3]
A single fence surrounded all three camps, and the site was so remote that authorities considered it unnecessary to build guard towers.[1] The thousands of internees and staff passed through the barbed-wire perimeter at Poston I, which was where the main administration center was located.
Poston was a subject of a sociological research by Alexander H. Leighton, published in his 1945 book, The Governing of Men. As Time Magazine wrote, "After fifteen months at Arizona's vast Poston Relocation Center as a social analyst, Commander Leighton concluded that many an American simply fails to remember that U.S. Japanese are human beings."[4]
Contents [hide]
1 Establishment of the camp
2 Life at Poston
2.1 Written accounts
3 Poston today
4 Gallery
5 Notable Poston internees
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
Establishment of the camp[edit]
After overriding the Colorado River Reservation's tribal council, the BIA and WRA jointly took control of 71,000 acres (29,000 ha) of tribal land and began construction in early 1942. Dell Webb began building Poston I on March 27, and his workforce of 5,000 completed the first camp less than three weeks later. Construction on II and III began soon after, contracted to be finished within 120 days.[3] In the meantime, Poston was partially opened on May 8, as the Parker Dam Reception Center, one of two such sites that augmented the 15 temporary "assembly centers" where Japanese Americans waited to be transferred to the more permanent WRA camps.[5] Approximately two-thirds of Poston's population were brought directly from their homes to what was then Parker Dam, and many of these early arrivals volunteered to help complete the still under construction camps.[1][3]
Upon completion, the Poston site consisted of hundreds of residential barracks, a hospital, an administrative center, and guard and staff housing. The camp officially opened as the Colorado River Relocation Center on June 1, 1942, and the BIA relinquished its authority over Poston in 1943.[1][5]
Poston today[edit]
A number of buildings built for the concentration camps are still in use today. Others, while still intact, are seriously deteriorated and in desperate need of maintenance. The majority were removed after the camp closed and the land returned to the Colorado River Indian Tribes, and many are still in use as utility buildings in surrounding areas, while the former residential areas have been largely converted to agricultural use. The Poston Memorial Monument was built in 1992, on tribal land with tribal support, and still stands today.[1]
The_Los_Angeles_Times_Tue__Mar_24__1942_
This most amazing article appeared in The Phoenix Republic newspaper—possibly in mid 1942— and was reprinted in This is Your America (Literary Classics, New York, 1943).
The article was not bylined, and was, most likely, a verbatim news release — or propaganda—written by the PR bureau of the War Relocation Authority to ease concerns of Arizonan’s who saw the fourth-largest city in their state suddenly grow out of the desert.
The article detailed the “wonderful,” but Spartan conditions, and repeatedly assured Republic readers that “Caucasians” were in charge, assisted by Japanese who formerly held important positions before the war.
story is propogada
----------------------
1945, sept Poston center after it was turned over to the colorado river indians
Comments
Post a Comment