Harrington accepted the suggestions and "agreed in good spirit to leave out such references in future induction ceremonies." But for the Minidoka internees, the insult had registered. Army was as much theirs as it was Lieutenant Harrington's. Exclaimed another: "Why doesn't that guy get next to himself and discover to what country we belong? We are no Japs."Ī Minidoka administrator took Harrington aside after his speech and pointed out the lieutenant's errors: the Nisei draftees were Americans, not Japanese they were leaving the camp to fight for their country, not against it and the U.S. "Doesn't he know we were born here and are citizens of the United States, not Japan?" muttered one young man. Harrington's comments visibly sapped the crowd of its enthusiasm. "The fact that you young Japanese are willing to fight against your country," he stressed, "should prove to all that there are a few Japanese who are good Americans." The lieutenant expressed his hope that at the end of the war, "all nationalities could live in peace in America," and then blundered to his conclusion, congratulating "you Japanese" for "making a splendid record in our Army, where you are welcomed and given all of the rights and privileges of any other citizen who is brought into the service." "We in the American armed forces," the lieutenant said to the new troops, "are happy to welcome you Japanese among our ranks, even though your country, Japan, is at war with the United States." The crowd stirred uncomfortably: Did the lieutenant not know that the draftees were all American citizens, not Japanese? Harrington, a member of the army's Traveling Examining and Induction Board, rose to swear the boys in, and to offer a few inspirational comments to the boys and their families about the task they were undertaking. Then it was time for the swearing of the military oath. "We know you will make good and we, and others, will point to your records and we-all of us here-Issei and Nisei alike, will benefit by your records." After these opening remarks, the president of the Minidoka Parent-Soldiers Association presented each of the inductees with a Bible and a shiny metal cigarette case as good luck presents. "We are mightily proud of you boys," said the Issei leader. The chairman of the internees' community council pursued this theme in his welcoming comments to the draftees and the four hundred other internees in attendance. And Nisei loyalty was what the induction ceremony at Minidoka was designed to emphasize and celebrate. Military service had been promoted to the Nisei as a precious opportunity to prove the loyalty and patriotism of all Japanese Americans-qualities that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had sharply, even if unfairly, called into question. The Minidoka draftees were all "Nisei"-American citizens born along the west coast in the 1920's to the generation called the "Issei." The Issei were immigrants who had come to the United States from Japan around the turn of the century but had been forbidden by American law to apply for American citizenship because of their Asian origin. Minidoka was one of the ten concentration camps that the federal War Relocation Authority ("WRA") set up in 1942 to house the nearly 120,000 Nikkei-people of Japanese descent-that the government had deported from the west coast on suspicion of disloyalty in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The ceremony was taking place behind the barbed wire of the Minidoka Relocation Center in Hunt, Idaho. The army that was welcoming these new draftees was simultaneously guarding them and their families at gunpoint as potential subversives. ![]() Only one thing was unusual about this ceremony. Proud but worried parents and friends gathered around the new soldiers to listen to speeches of welcome and praise. Military music blared over a loudspeaker. The inductees, three abreast and twenty-two rows deep, marched into formation around a flagpole. In most ways, the ceremony was quite ordinary. On the last day of spring in 1944, as American infantrymen began their assault on the Nazi-held port city of Cherbourg in northern France, the United States Army staged an induction ceremony for sixty-six new draftees in Idaho. The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War IIĬould it be, I asked myself, that the United States government had dared to conscript Japanese American internees into the army after forcing them into internment camps on suspicion of disloyalty? -from the PrefaceĪ thoroughfare at the Minidoka Relocation Center in springtime. ![]() ![]() Muller, Free to Die for their Country, excerpt
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