207: Japanese Internment: Removal, Relocation, & Reckoning

"What I vividly recall is after getting to Tanforan and walking into this horse stable, and Mom… putting down her suitcase and just crying.” This is the story of Japanese American incarceration. In February 1942, shortly after the United States enters the war, FDR signs Executive Order 9066, beginning the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their West Coast homes and lives. Some 120,000 civilians—many of them American citizens, none of them charged with a crime—are sent to camps across the American West and South. Their constitutional rights are denied in the name of national security. Even as families struggle to carry on inside the barbed wire, legal challenges arise. Three Japanese Americans fight their way to the Supreme Court, forcing the nation’s highest court to confront a question it would rather avoid: can the Constitution be suspended for an entire ethnic group in wartime? And when the court finally rules—does the answer change anything at all? ____ Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com http://HTDSpodcast.com and preorder Prof. Jackson’s new book https://www.htdspodcast.com/bookgo deep into episode bibliographies https://www.htdspodcast.com/bibliography and book recommendations https://www.htdspodcast.com/book-recommendationsjoin discussions in our Facebook community https://www.facebook.com/groups/257926761619618/get news and discounts from The HTDS Gazette https://www.htdspodcast.com/newsletters-1 come see a live show https://www.htdspodcast.com/live-showsget HTDS merch https://htds-team-shop.fourthwall.com/or become an HTDS premium https://htds.supercast.com/ member for bonus episodes and other perks. HTDS is part ofAudacy media network. https://www.audacy.com/Interested in advertising on the History That Doesn't Suck? Contacthttps://audacyinc.com/contactAudacyinc.com. http://Audacyinc.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Jackson?

  HTDS is sponsored by Quince. Getting dressed in the mornings should be simple, and Quince makes it happen by crafting versatile, high-end wardrobe staples that last. Their ultimate commuter pants and the 100% European linen, relaxed, long-sleeved shirt have been my go-to choice at the end of summer. And now that we're heading into fall, I'm going to pull out the cardigan sweater I got from Quince last year. It's not a stuffy professor's cardigan. It's a stylish, update. Quince also has cashmere sweaters that begin at only $60. And as the weather chills, their warm-down jackets and wool outerwear offer effortless layering options. By cutting out traditional retail markups and shipping straight from ethical factories, Quince keeps prices 50% to 80% lower than high-end brands.

• 0:44Greg Jackson?

  They even offer the same incredible quality in bath essentials, bedding, and home furnishings. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know that it was History That Doesn't Suck. It's the best way to support the show. History That Doesn't Suck is supported by VistaPrint. This podcast is a small business passion project, and seeing our vision come to life offline is cool, too, thanks to our expert partner, VistaPrint. On my recent book tour, we were able to order custom, high-quality banners for book readings. It also added a nice professional polish. It also made the events more memorable

• 1:28Greg Jackson?

  because readers and I could pose together in front of the banner for selfies to post online. And that's just one of the countless premium products VistaPrint offers to elevate your brand identity. From postcards and posters to tumblers and t-shirts, VistaPrint makes high-end, custom printing accessible to everyone, giving you exceptional quality and results that make every single dollar go further. With real people on standby and seamless tools, VistaPrint guides you through every step of the process so you always look completely polished. There's a reason over 17 million small businesses trust VistaPrint to elevate their vision. VistaPrint: Print your possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code NEW20 at vistaprint.com. That's 20% off at vistaprint.com using code NEW20.

• 2:24Greg Jackson?

  It's 10 a.m., December 7th, 1941. After escorting bombers during the second attack wave on Pearl Harbor, Airman 1st Class Nishikaichi Shigenori is flying away from the island of Oahu in his sleek, fast, and deadly Mitsubishi A6M, better known as "The Zero." But as he soars above the Pacific's blue waters, he notices his fuel is going low, fast. He did take some hits. It must be a punctured fuel tank, and it doesn't take him long to realize that there's no way he's making it back the 200 miles to his aircraft carrier. "I hear you." It's time to resort to the backup plan: landing on the small and most western of the eight Hawaiian islands:

• 3:09Greg Jackson?

  the island of Ni'ao. Nishikaichi spots the small, 18-by-6-mile island below. But wait. There are... structures. People, even. Not good. In their morning briefing, his superiors said the island was uninhabited, thus making it a good spot to land, bail, and wait for rescue via an Imperial submarine if needed. Bad intel, then. But at this point, Nishikaichi has no other choice. He's heading down whether he likes it or not, and as he gets close, he takes in another surprise: the fields are deeply plowed, ensuring a rough landing. This won't be pretty.

• 3:51Greg Jackson?

  Standing in his front yard, Howard Caliohano watches as the aircraft and its black plumes plummet, as the wheels clip the fence, and the nose slams into the earth, bending the propellers like twigs. A compassionate man, he dashes toward the wreckage. Howard opens the cockpit. He looks down at the pilot: alive, but unconscious.

• 4:13Greg Jackson?

  Now, Howard doesn't know about the attack on Pearl Harbor this morning. No one on Ni'ihau does. Though decades since King Kamehameha V sold the island to Elizabeth McHutchinson Sinclair in 1864, her Robinson family descendants are still honoring their royal charge as stewards over the island's native population, the Ni'ihauans, by keeping it a "forbidden," almost exclusively native island, all but living in the past with but precious few radios, perhaps only one on the whole speck of land. That said, Howard, who is educated, known for his intelligence, and aware of the recent tensions between the US and Japan, isn't without his suspicions.

• 4:58Greg Jackson?

  He disarms the unconscious and unknown visitor, taking the man's loaded pistol, as well as his papers. Nonetheless, as Nishikaichi wakes up, the 29-year-old, five-foot-six Hawaiian is as kind as ever. He helps the stranger to his feet, and takes him home and feeds him. The oddest of days follows. As the almost entirely native islands, less than 200 residents, descend upon Howard's home, they call for one of the few who might be able to better communicate with the broken English-speaking pilot, Japanese immigrant Ishimatsu Shintani. But after the briefest of conversations, Ishimatsu freezes and excuses himself.

• 5:41Greg Jackson?

  Next is the island's beekeeper and paymaster, a second-generation Japanese-American, Yoshio Harada. Nishikaichi tells him about the attack. Yoshio says nothing for the moment, as the Ni'ihauans treat their unexpected guest to kalua pig and an evening of music. Airman Nishikaichi even plays and sings a Japanese song, basically a luau. But the pleasantries come to a quick end when the island's possibly lone radio brings word of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yoshio translates, as the Ni'ihauans learn from their unexpected guest of his role in the attack. The next few days are filled with uncertainty and improvisation. Having neither a police force nor a jail,

• 6:26Greg Jackson?

  the Ni'ihawans house Nishikaichi with the Harada family, as five others volunteer as guards. But this leaves the Japanese pilot ample opportunity to speak in Japanese with the Haradas, both Yoshio and his wife Irene. Now, what Nishikaichi says, or does to win over the Haradas? We'll never know. Sources conflict. But as the days pass, Yoshio decides to help the stranded pilot get his papers and, if not escape, at least achieve an honorable death.

• 7:00Greg Jackson?

  It's now 4:30 in the afternoon, December 12th. Nishikaichi needs to use the outhouse, and is walking there accompanied by one guard and Yoshio. Or he was, until he gave some excuse for ducking into the honey warehouse. Unsuspecting, his kind guard thinks nothing of it, and even lets the pilot lead the way in. Stepping inside, Nishikaichi grabs a shotgun. Yoshio grabs a revolver. The defiant duo lock the guard in the warehouse, commandeer a horse and wagon, and make their way back to the crash site.

• 7:37Greg Jackson?

  It's now 5:30. Back at the plane, they take the 16-year-old guarding it as prisoner. The pilot then attempts to radio the fleet. As they do, Howard, watching this from his outhouse, sees his moment to escape. He opens the door and sprints off. Stop! Stop!

• 7:56Greg Jackson?

  The shot misses. Howard disappears in the distance.

• 8:01Greg Jackson?

  Meanwhile, the guard locked in the warehouse has gotten free. He alerts the village, as does Howard, who additionally lights a bonfire to signal the Robinson family. Then, sets out on an all-night journey in a rowboat with others to get help from the island of Kauai.

• 8:18Greg Jackson?

  But as Howard and his men row, Nishikaichi and Yoshio are at his house, desperate to find those papers. All they find, though, is Nishikaichi's gun. Desperate to ensure those papers never reach the United States government, they take a drastic step around 3 a.m. with douses of gasoline. They put Howard's house and the crashed Zero to the flame, but not without first taking the aircraft's ammo and machine gun. And sometime after sunrise, they take prisoners, including Ben and Ella Panahelé. They also continue to search for Howard. But as the duo threaten death, Ben's patience grows thin.

• 9:00Greg Jackson?

  It's now December 13th. Under the watchful eyes of Nishikaichi and Yoshio, Ben tells his and his wife's captors that they won't find Howard. He's off-island. In this moment, Yoshio seems to realize just how out of hand this has all become. Just what he has done. He's burned a friend's home to ash. He's threatened the lives of people who thought of him as a friend. Yoshio unbuttons his shirt and reaches for Nishikaichi's shotgun. Is he about to commit ritualistic suicide? Yeah, he is. And Ben takes advantage of this distracted moment. He leaps at the now-unarmed pilot.

• 9:45Greg Jackson?

  As the two grapple, Nishikaichi grabs his pistol. He fires three times as Ella holds his arm back and as Yoshio tries to hold her back. Ben's hit three times and yet still fights on, seizing the 140-pound pilot just as he does his sheep, lifting him in the air. The towering flying then throws Nishikaichi against a stone wall, knocking him out cold. As he lies there, unconscious, Ella grabs a large rock and bashes his head in. Then pulls his hunting knife and slices the airman's throat. Filled with shame, Yoshio places the shotgun against his stomach and pulls the trigger. With both of their captors dead or dying, Ella goes to seek help

• 10:31Greg Jackson?

  as her husband bleeds profusely.

• 10:49Greg Jackson?

  Welcome to History That Doesn’t Suck. I’m your professor, Greg Jackson, and I’d like to tell you a story. The Ni’ihau Incident, as Airman Nishikaichi Shigenori’s dramatic and deadly Pearl Harbor aftermath comes to be known, truly shocks America. Yet, while the press focuses on the Harada family’s betrayal and the heroism of so many Hawaiians, like Ben Kanahé-Lay, who does survive, there’s another part of the

• 11:30Greg Jackson?

  story: the heroism of Jack Mizua and Ben Kobayashi. A 28-year-old lieutenant in the Hawaiian National Guard, Jack volunteered to lead the forces that answered Howard’s call. His fellow guardsman, Ben, also volunteered to serve as interpreter. In other words, even as Yoshio threw in with the Japanese airmen, the very first American soldiers to arrive on the shores of Ni’ihau in response were led by and included fiercely loyal Americans of Japanese descent. But this less dramatic part of the tale was greatly underreported. Instead, the American press was quick to treat Japanese Americans, even those born and raised in the States, as though they would all respond, like Yoshio, and support the enemy.

• 12:15Greg Jackson?

  So did the US government. Less than three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which led to Japanese internment. Oh, and just that name is an issue. Is this internment, relocation, or even concentration? Many at the time and today push back against the use of concentration because of the association with the Nazi work and death camps that we just learned about in recent episodes. I’ll primarily use internment camps today, but note that the history of this topic is hardly settled. And internment is indeed this episode’s story.

• 12:55Greg Jackson?

  But hold on. A few brief notes on language before we dive in. In this episode, you'll hear a few different words to describe Japanese Americans. Nisei is a first-generation Japanese immigrant. Someone born in Japan, but living in the US. Nisei is a second-generation Japanese American. A person born to Japanese parents on American soil and living in the US. And while there are other words for third generations and more, collectively, Japanese immigrants and their children are called "nikkei." These are the three main words that I'll be using, since that's how most Japanese Americans did and still do refer to themselves. But, as with much history,

• 13:38Greg Jackson?

  we also have words imposed on marginalized groups. Words that are uncomfortable, yet will be repeated as I quote historical sources. In this instance, I'm referring to the abbreviation of "Japanese" that Japanese Americans reject immediately. In the words of one young Japanese American living through internment, Ted Nakashima, quote, "What really hurts is the constant reference to we evacuees as Japs. Japs are the guys we are fighting. We're on this side and we want to help. Why won't America let us?" Close quote. Yeah. That's the word. So heads up, we'll hear it more in this episode as we drive toward an unsatisfactory answer to Ted's question.

• 14:25Greg Jackson?

  And with that, our story begins with a brief catch-up on the status of Japanese Americans in the US before the war breaks out. Then, we'll see FDR make the decision to imprison this mix of citizens and immigrants with Executive Order 9066. We'll then go from discussion to action as an ineffective attack on the West Coast is used to accelerate the path to internment. From there, we'll see what life inside these nationwide internment camps is like. In this worst of circumstances, many will make new homes and new lives. But there's no sugarcoating this austere and barren existence. Finally, we'll follow the fight against internment that goes all the way to the Supreme Court.

• 15:08Greg Jackson?

  Much to do, so let's get to it by returning to the 19th century. Rewind.

• 15:18Greg Jackson?

  Acting on behalf of President Millard Fillmore in July 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry and his famous black ships sail into Edo Bay, demanding Japan end its isolationist ways. He gets his way, a reality that we know all too well from episode 193. But here's the thing about Matthew Perry forcing Japan to be economic friends, if you will. One can't exchange goods and services without eventually exchanging ideas and people. As external influence leads to the Meiji Restoration and Civil War in 1868, 22 souls flee the island nation the following year for El Dorado County, California. They set up the Woke Matsu Tea and Silk Colony.

• 16:01Greg Jackson?

  Others head to the island kingdom of the Hawaiian Islands. Not a part of the United States at this point, but will note it since, as you likely recall from episode 106, it will be American soil before the end of the century. In short, the final two decades of the 19th century and first years of the 20th see hundreds of thousands leave no longer isolationist Japan for Hawaii or the continental US's western states, where they work on railroads, farms, and instill other occupations. As we enter the 20th century and America's anti-Chinese sentiment becomes a more general anti-Asian racism, the US moves to limit Japanese immigration. We've covered some of this in past episodes, but here's a streamlined refresher.

• 16:45Greg Jackson?

  On the heels of President Theodore Roosevelt's negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War, the US and Japan strike a "gentleman's agreement" to end Japanese migrant labor. The terms are this: Japan won't issue passports to new would-be US hopefuls without existing relations. Meanwhile, the US will continue to permit the wives, kids, and parents of those Japanese workers already in the States to immigrate. Restrictive, yet the restrictions only tighten in the 1920s. In 1922, Ozawa v. United States confirms that US law prohibits Japanese immigrants, that is, first-generation isei, from naturalizing as citizens.

• 17:30Greg Jackson?

  In 1924, a new Immigration Curtailing Immigration Act that you may recall from Episode 118 goes further, effectively banning even the gentleman’s agreement level of Japanese immigration altogether. So, by this point, the only way to be of Japanese descent and an American citizen is to be a second generation, or nisei. Truly, the United States has put those of Japanese descent in a state of limbo. Even nisei who hold citizenship get signals that theirs is a citizenship of technicality, not political reality. Case in point: When a bill proposing Hawaiian statehood in the 1930s dies, the reason

• 18:11Greg Jackson?

  is that Congress fears creating a state that might soon have a Japanese electoral majority. This is the limiting political reality for the 126,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in the continental US and the more than 150,000 living in Hawaii as we entered the 1940s. The situation is fraught, and it only worsens with Pearl Harbor and the Ni’ihau Incident. And FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is not a man to tread lightly amid tension.

• 18:44Greg Jackson?

  Ah, yes, J. Edgar Hoover. I trust you recall our meeting, the decades-long leader of the Bureau, at the start of the Red Scare in Episode 151. Well, Edgar has been gathering intel on immigrants, especially those hailing from the Axis nations, that is, Italians, Germans, and Japanese, for years. His plan to arrest those deemed the most potentially subversive is actualized as FDR leans on ancient legislation: the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and issues Proclamation 2525 on December 7, 1941. This declares Japanese nationals over 14 years old and living in the US “enemy aliens.”

• 19:25Greg Jackson?

  The next day, December 8, two more proclamations apply the same designation to likewise youthful Germans and Italians, making over a million people “living in the US” “enemies.”

• 19:38Greg Jackson?

  Yet, the truth is that, of the Axis nationals, it's primarily the Japanese who get arrested. Like Japanese orphanage director Rokuichi Kusumoto, who's seized from his home in Los Angeles, all but immediately. The American media jumps right into the fray. Newspapers warn of the peril from “spies, saboteurs, and fifth columnists”. The “fifth column” being those who are sympathetic to an enemy nation, even if they aren't working to promote said nation's cause. And it doesn't stop at warning the public to be keen-eyed. Headlines like “Jap Boat Flashes Message Ashore”

• 20:19Greg Jackson?

  and “Japanese Here Sent Vital Data to Tokyo: Report Widespread Aid by Japanese-Americans Along the Coast”. To be clear, none of these headlines are true. In fact, beyond the Ni'ihao Incident, not a single instance of Japanese-American betrayal, sabotage, or espionage will ever be discovered. There are zero such incidents on the West Coast. But that doesn't matter in December of 1941. Instead, these “local” reports are deeply disturbing General John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Command. As bespectacled and bald as he is responsible for protecting the West Coast,

• 21:03Greg Jackson?

  the just over 60-year-old commander is sure invasion is imminent and that Americans descending from any current Axis nation aren't to be trusted. Now, he can't lock up every German or Italian-American in his jurisdiction. That would mean millions of people. Simply not feasible. But the West Coast's just over 120,000 Japanese-Americans? That's doable.

• 21:30Greg Jackson?

  chaired by Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts. Yes, the “switching time saves nine” justice, whose New Deal conversion we witnessed back in episode 176. The official Pearl Harbor report goes public on January 25th, 1942. This Roberts report stops short of accusing Japanese Hawaiians of aiding the attack outright, but the implication is unmistakable. Coming on the heels of the Ni’ihau incident, the document is just what General John DeWitt needs for his mass incarceration argument. Attorney General Francis Biddle isn’t having it. Insane. Considering this not only unnecessary, but unconstitutional, he pushes back, hard.

• 22:15Greg Jackson?

  But that doesn’t deter John. The West Coast commander pivots from the Justice Department to pushing his case with the War Department, and here, John finds friendlier ground. While 74-year-old Secretary of War Henry Stimson has reservations, his 46-year-old Assistant Secretary John J. McCloy does not. The Johns, then, are in alignment. And General John DeWitt is unwavering. In fact, he even sees the lack of spy work evidence as evidence, considering the complete absence of sabotage a suspicious situation in and of itself. Truly, this is nothing short of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation for Japanese Americans.

• 22:59Greg Jackson?

  More support for internment follows, not just on a supposedly defensive basis. Organized white farmer groups, like the Grower/shipper Vegetable Association and White American Nurserymen of Los Angeles, are happy to use the war as an opportunity to “kick the Japs out,” and also take over their farmlands. Meanwhile, the manager of the Grower/shipper Association tells the Saturday Evening Post, “We might as well be honest. It’s a question of whether the white man will live on the Pacific Coast or the brown man.” And so, over the protestations of AG Francis Biddle, who insists that there is “no evidence

• 23:40Greg Jackson?

  whatsoever of any reason for disturbing citizens,” General John DeWitt and his collaborators in DC go straight to the President.

• 23:53Greg Jackson?

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt. What does America's progressive president think of the "Japanese problem"? Honestly, worrying about hypothetical domestic spies is a luxury he doesn't have in the immediate war declaring aftermath of Pearl Harbor. But by January 1942, the pressure is mounting from every side. From General John DeWitt and Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, from a public whipped up by journalist Walter Lippmann's columns demanding "mass evacuation and mass internment", and from Canada, which is starting its own Japanese relocation program.

• 24:32Greg Jackson?

  There is one voice in FDR's world, however, that consistently and bravely pushes back: his wife. Even amid the misleading official reports of alleged nefarious actors right after Pearl Harbor, Eleanor urges the nation not to falter on its great ideals. On December 16, 1941, she wrote in her syndicated newspaper column, "My Day", "If we cannot meet the challenge of fairness to our citizens of every nationality, of really believing in the Bill of Rights and making it a reality for all loyal American citizens regardless of race, creed, or color, if we cannot keep in check antisemitism,

• 25:15Greg Jackson?

  antiracial feelings, as well as anti-religious feelings, then we shall have removed from the world the one real hope for the future on which all humanity must now rely." And now, in early 1942, she's all the more adamant in pressing Franklin not to intern American citizens. But amid the rising political pressures and the Japanese victories in the Pacific we heard about in Episodes 197 and 198, Franklin falters, making what historian John Meacham aptly calls "Roosevelt's greatest concession to fear", and, to quote again, "arguably his greatest failure as president."

• 25:58Greg Jackson?

  In mid-February, Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy gets verbal confirmation. FDR tells him, “There will probably be repercussions, but it has got to be dictated by military necessity. But,” the President adds, “be as reasonable as you can.” Days later, February 19th, 1942, Franklin issues Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War “to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate military commander may determine, from which any and all persons may be excluded.”

• 26:43Greg Jackson?

  The order is vague at best. It says nothing about Japanese Americans, the West Coast, or relocation. Still, it grants all the power internment advocates need. So, how do they proceed from here? Well, sometimes events just line up, and answers come in a flash. It’s just before 7:00 PM, Monday, February 23rd, 1942. We’re at Wheeler’s Inn, a restaurant and hotel along Coastal Highway 101 in California, near the Elwood Oil Fields, just about 12 miles west of Santa Barbara. The two aproned owners of this white adobe

• 27:26Greg Jackson?

  classic roadside stop, Lawrence and Hilda Wheeler, are very proud of their homemade American diner meals. Hmm, and it does smell good. I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking of ordering one of the roasted meat dinners for 75 cents. Ah, but we’ll have to order later. They’re shushing everyone, so we can hear President Roosevelt’s fireside chat. Let’s listen.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  For eight years, General Washington and his Continental Army were faced continually with formidable odds and recurring defeats. Throughout the thirteen states, there existed fifth columnists and selfish men, jealous men, fearful men, who proclaimed that Washington's cause was hopeless and that he should ask for a negotiated peace.

• 28:14Greg Jackson?

  A strong Revolutionary War comparison on the president's part, and the right instinct. These are, as the president will quote later in his speech, "truly times that try men's souls." But the Fifth Column, that's a side of the revolution rarely invoked, yet it speaks to what Americans are really worried about right now, and among their greatest fears is domestic enemies throwing in with the foreign foe. And foreign is the focus. Franklin wants still semi-isolationist Americans to really get that this is a world war. We need our allies. We need to fight far from home. He asks us to lay out maps and follow along as he describes places and countries many

• 28:57Greg Jackson?

  of us rarely think about, or in some cases, haven't even heard of.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  We must fight at these vast distances to protect our supply lines and our lines of communication with our allies. The object of the Nazis and the Japanese is of course to separate the United States, Britain, China, and Russia, and to isolate them one from another. It's the old familiar Axis policy of divide and conquer.

• 29:30Greg Jackson?

  Axis propaganda, talk against defensive isolationism, or what he calls "turtle policy." So Franklin continues. But wait, what was that? The whole building is shaking. Lawrence and Hilda head outside. We follow. 7:15 PM. A shell explodes against a cliff a mile away, a geyser of dirt, as Hilda will call it. Another winds overhead and lands on the nearby Stanif Ranch. Of course, a scream. Out toward the beach, Lawrence sees it, a Japanese submarine about a mile offshore, hammering the bankline absorption plant with its deck gun.

• 30:14Greg Jackson?

  By 7:45 PM, it's gone. 16 shells, $500 in damage, no casualties. For Hilda, it's even a backhanded win. She and her sisters in Australia and Washington DC respectively had a standing bet on who'd be closest to a bombing, and the Californian just won. But then, 36 hours later, 2:15 AM, February 25th, radar picks up an unidentified target off the California coast. By 3:06 AM, anti-aircraft batteries opened fire. 1,440 rounds erupt into the LA night sky. And erupt at what? Nothing. Maybe a weather balloon?

• 30:59Greg Jackson?

  One man dies of heart failure. A streetcar takes a falling fragment. That's the damage. Even though this attack mostly sprays sand and scares horses, think of what it is. A Japanese attack on the US mainland. The first attack on the continental United States since the War of 1812. Pearl Harbor was horrible, but Hawaii is still over 2,000 miles distant from the continental US. This is different. Amid the blackouts and anti-aircraft fire on February 25th, this so-called "Battle of Los Angeles" fires up Congressman Leland Ford of California's 16th District.

• 31:44Greg Jackson?

  He insists that Japanese-Americans are signaling to ships while his 10th District Californian colleague, Alfred Elliott, is greeted with applause on the House floor for hyperbolically demanding, quote, "We start moving the Japs in California into concentration camps and do it damned quick. Last night, 25 shells were dropped in my district. Don't let people kid you by saying they are good Japs. Maybe one in a thousand is, but not any more than that." Close quote. With Franklin's executive order 9066 barely a week old, the authorization to exclude civilians from military areas leaps to booting Japanese-Americans out of their homes on the West Coast.

• 32:24Greg Jackson?

  By March 1942, the increasingly hard-set general John DeWitt furthers FDR's executive order, producing Public Proclamation Number Four, which forces evacuation and detention for Japanese-Americans along the whole West Coast. And non-coastal states are already registering their disapproval at the thought of Japanese-Americans coming their way. Idaho Attorney General Burt Miller declares, "We want to keep this a white man's country." The new proclamation requires time to build spaces large enough to house the West Coast's roughly 120,000 EK. While the Army sets things up, these displaced people are sent to quickly-created "assembly centers" in California, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona, none of which are ready.

• 33:10Greg Jackson?

  Some are proper barracks, others repurposed racetracks like Tanforan, south of San Francisco, or fairgrounds like Kewalup, south of Seattle. Internee Bob Utsumi will later remember, "What I vividly recall is after getting to Tanforan and walking into this horse stable, and Mom putting down her suitcase and just crying." The War Relocation Authority, or the WRA, is created to bureaucratize the process. They manage transfers to the permanent camps once anyone deemed a security risk is removed. Most internees stay in the assembly centers, anywhere from a few weeks to several months between the spring and fall of 1942.

• 33:54Greg Jackson?

  Of the 112,000 people sent to these centers, almost 70,000 are American citizens with no charges for disloyalty and no legal means to challenge their loss of liberty or property. The relocation centers, or internment camps, are finished at different times. Tulley Lake, in far northeast Modock County, California, opens first on May 25, 1942, followed by Manzanar, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevadas, by June 1, 1942. Previously an assembly site, Manzanar will house thousands of Japanese-Americans ripped from their own homes.

• 34:38Greg Jackson?

  History That Doesn't Suck is sponsored by Cash App. For all the parents out there like me who are raising teenagers, I see you. I know you're already trying to keep a million different things under control. Cash App is here to help make sure your teen's money and their spending isn't adding to that craziness. It's never too early for your kids to start saving. Small steps today can build strong habits tomorrow. Cash App is now offering teens Interest On Savings so they can grow money faster, all under your guidance. You can sponsor your teen on Cash App to set them up today. There's no hidden or monthly fees and no minimum account balances. Teens can start with as little as a dollar and grow from there without paying anything extra. You can also manage everything directly from your own Cash App account without having

• 35:22Greg Jackson?

  to switch between the two, making it simple to stay connected to your teen's financial activity in a way that's both efficient and empowering. If you're ready to give your teen access to Interest On Savings, start by downloading Cash App and sponsoring their account today. Download Cash App today and sponsor your teen.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and the Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton Prepaid Card, Sutton Debit Flex Card, and Bancorp Debit Flex Card. Savings provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures.

• 36:13Greg Jackson?

  It's a hot afternoon. Tuesday, June 23rd, 1942. Lillian Matsumoto and her husband, Harry, are in a bus packed with children, somewhere on the Californian roads running north from Los Angeles, likely Route 6. While many parents have been on similar bus rides, Lillian and Harry are effectively the parents to every child on this bus and another one behind them. See, this is a bus full of orphans. Orphans on the move. Yeah. Their hands are full. Let's allow this couple to focus as I explain the situation.

• 36:52Greg Jackson?

  Recently, Lilian and Harry became the superintendents of the Shonian Japanese Children's Home in Los Angeles. They took over after the FBI arrested the orphanage's founder, Japanese national and LA resident Rokuichi Kusumoto, right after the Pearl Harbor attack last December. That's right, I mentioned his arrest earlier. He's now imprisoned in Missoula, Montana. Anyhow, newlyweds Lilian and Harry have been running the orphanage since. Now that everyone of Japanese descent on the West Coast is getting locked up, including American citizens, the question arises: Where do orphans go? Where should these children be incarcerated? Despite an initial push to split the kids up,

• 37:36Greg Jackson?

  Lilian, Harry, and others win the battle to keep them together. All orphaned children from the West Coast and Alaska are heading to the eastern side of Central California's Manzanar Internment Camp. And that's where our bus is headed, right now. Across two buses and a van, forty children, thirty-two from the Shonian Japanese Children's Home, seven from the Catholic Mary Knoll Home, and one from a San Diego convalescent home, are making the five-hour journey. The twenty-two children at the San Francisco Salvation Army Home will join next week. Ages and situations vary too. Three-year-old Annie Shirai Shi Sakamoto has never known a home other than the Mary Knoll orphanage.

• 38:21Greg Jackson?

  Six-year-old Kenji Sumatsu's Japanese father is being held by the FBI, a situation that caused his mother to have a nervous breakdown, leaving him and his younger brother and sister at the Shonian. In other words, this war and the nation's policy responses are the direct cause of his orphaned state. Some kids don't even look Japanese. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, six-year-old Dennis Baumbauer didn't even know his birth mother was Nisei until someone checked his records and sent him to Lilian and Harry and this bus. I think you get the picture. Let's get back to the bus ride.

• 39:01Greg Jackson?

  As the bus rolls along California's scorching desert highways for hours on end, Lillian tries desperately to keep the children entertained. They play games, tell stories, and sing songs. In fact, one little girl, about four years old, expressly asks Lillian if she can sing a song. Well, of course. Going to the front of the bus, where a young military policeman sits with his rifle, the little one turns and faces her fellow orphans. And then, she starts singing. Of all the songs, it's a poignant moment. One burned into Lillian's memory. Into everyone's memory.

• 39:43Greg Jackson?

  Perhaps especially the young soldier, who is clearly flooded with a mix of emotions. As the bus supervisor will later recall, she didn't know all the words, but she knew the melody. The young soldier, holding onto his rifle, with the bayonet, listened. And I could see the tears flowing down his cheek. It's not long before this orphan bus arrives at Manzanar Children's Village. Some kids won't be here long. Their parents are released, they get adopted, or they just age out of the village and into Manzanar internment camp. Zooming out, the War Relocation Authority, or again, the WRA, runs a total of ten war relocation centers.

• 40:26Greg Jackson?

  We've mentioned the two California camps, Tulley Lake and Manzanar. Arkansas also has two, Rower and Jerome. So does Arizona, called Poston and Gila River, respectively. Four other states have one each. Idaho has Minidoka. Wyoming has Hart Mountain. Utah's camp is called Topaz, while Colorado's is Grenada, or more commonly, Amachi.

• 40:53Greg Jackson?

  The camp locations are not chosen for hospitable environs. Instead, it seems more typically sparse hillsides, and most certainly, guard towers in barbed wire. Locations are selected because they're remote and unused. It's a very military existence. The internes sleep in barracks, meals are in mess halls. As then-seven-year-old orphan at Manzanar Children's Village, Francis Honda will later testify, "It was a very lonely place and sad, too, with babies crying and nothing to do. It was like the end of the world for me." Each of these barbed-wired, surrounded camps are largely the same. To grab but one example, at hot and humid southeast Arkansas's Roer,

• 41:38Greg Jackson?

  are rows of identical black tar-covered barracks, which house the almost eighty-five-hundred internes. Each block holds about two-hundred-fifty people and has twelve of these barracks, with six rooms per barrack. These heat-absorbing wooden rooms have thin walls, three windows, and a pot-bellied stove. In the center of each block is a mess hall and buildings for toilets, showers, and washing. But dignity is not lost in these camps, as each forms communities of their own. They celebrate American holidays, like July Fourth, right alongside the Akogishi Sai Festival of December fourteenth, honoring the forty-seven Ronan. Even Christmas isn't lost. Santa still makes the rounds inside the barbed wire.

• 42:23Greg Jackson?

  Walking through the camps, you'll find old men playing cards and drinking home brew Saki, or reading the camp newspapers, often printed in Japanese and English. You'll see worship services, both for Buddhists and Christians. And don't forget to catch the internes playing sports, from football to volleyball, and most popular of all, baseball.

• 42:45Greg Jackson?

  There's a fierce rivalry between the baseball teams across different blocks in Poston, Arizona. Sometimes camps even play each other, or local high school teams. We'd be remiss not to mention the thriving art scene, which includes wood carving, calligraphy, embroidery, ceramics, and live performances. Hart Mountain has four groups of Kabuki theater performers. Manzanar holds classes in both ballet and the traditional Japanese dance called Bon Odori. Grenada, or Amachi, has parades for summer carnivals, and, a few months later, children performing traditional Japanese dances in kimonos for the Buddhist Oban Festival celebrating their ancestors.

• 43:27Greg Jackson?

  In Minidoka, internees get to enjoy a yosei, that is, a Japanese vaudeville show, showcasing singing, dancing, and musical comedy. Minidoka loves the ever-popular Star Band, with their lineup of a saxophone, harmonica, guitar, and vocalist. But overwhelmingly, the main art practiced in the internment camps is poetry. Here's one example from Japanese-American journalist and poet Kejo Soga, reflecting on being taken from his home in Honolulu to be interned on the mainland. "From the cabin window, I bid farewell to this fair island, my home of fifty years, until its shadow disappears."

• 44:12Greg Jackson?

  The war doesn't keep all the internees bound to the States. Some people are able to leave for college, while others help with the war effort. This requires passing the WRA's loyalty test, which includes renouncing any allegiance to Emperor Hirohito and noting if they're willing to serve in the armed forces. The majority of Japanese-Americans answer yes to both questions. Young men enlist and are drafted into the military, forming all Japanese-American units.

• 44:40Greg Jackson?

  Ultimately, over thirty thousand Nisei will serve. And yes, that includes the patriotic Japanese American who didn't hesitate to respond to the Niiihao Incident that opened this episode. Lieutenant Jack Mizuhara. Sorry, scratch that. Despite a demotion that morning for simply being of Japanese descent, he's now Captain Jack Mizuhara. A well-earned promotion reflecting his unwavering loyalty to Uncle Sam even when Uncle Sam didn't reflect that loyalty back. Now he and other Nisei soldiers of the Hundredth Battalion, as well as the later 442nd Infantry Regimental Combat Team into which their battalion is later folded, are two-storied to squeeze into this episode.

• 45:23Greg Jackson?

  But never fear, we'll get to see these brave Nisei GIs in action in the future. But keeping our stateside focus, it's more than fair to ask, how do these soldiers' interned families feel about their service? Well, it's a mix. On the one hand, there are feelings of honor, as displayed in this anonymous poem. "The cream of the crop, Nisei soldiers, raised by wrinkles on the parent's brow." On the other hand, not everyone could swallow their pride and dignity as sons and brothers put their lives on the line for a country denying them their constitutional rights. An estimated twelve thousand or more, mostly Nisei youth, protest their internment by

• 46:05Greg Jackson?

  responding "no" to both rejecting Emperor Hirohito and to serving in the military, leading to their nickname as "nono residents," or, like the title of John Okada's novel, "Nono Boys." These nonos are separated from their families and sent to the Tulley Lake Relocation Center in California. Issei Muinozaki writes in verse, "Disloyal, with papers so stamped. I am relocated to Tulley Lake, but for myself, a clear conscience."

• 46:38Greg Jackson?

  These protests aren't the only trouble that arise in the camps. Labor strikes demanding safer work, better pay, and the firing of perceived hateful administrators abound. Sometimes, it gets violent. At Manzanar, on the night of December 5th through 6th, 1942, protests to release a popular union leader end with attacks on the police station and gunfire into the crowd. Eleven internees are hit, two die. It's a shocking incident, one that doesn't help the Japanese-American cause. But it also shows the American public that all is not well within the remote barbed-wire fenced camps. Unfortunately, Manzanar isn't the only place where the public and internees learn

• 47:22Greg Jackson?

  just how similar to prisons these camps are.

• 47:29Greg Jackson?

  It's about 7:30 in the evening, April 11th, 1943. 63-year-old internee number 1105494, or rather, James "Hatsuaki" Wakasa, is out for a sunset walk along the west fence of the Topaz Internment Camp in central Utah. He's likely with one or more of the many dogs he likes to take for walks near the perimeter fence after he finishes dinner. As this hard-of-hearing isei man looks out across the windswept sagebrushed desert all around him, his mind could be many places. Maybe he's thinking about getting to speak Japanese with his friend, Carl Akia, at dinner. Maybe he's far off from this desert, all the way back to his college days in Tokyo before he graduated in 1900.

• 48:14Greg Jackson?

  Or maybe he's back in his days as a chef in San Francisco, teaching cooks in the US Army during the First World War. Whatever James is thinking about, his attention shifts to something near the west fence. He pauses to get a closer look, completely oblivious to the shouts from the guard tower 300 yards away. Inside that tower, lanky teenage military policeman Gerald Philpott is hollering into the wind. Yeah, just a teenager, and how old exactly he is is hard to say, since, like many young men in this war, Gerald lied about his age when he enlisted. And what exactly is going through this young soldier’s mind at the moment is hard to say.

• 48:56Greg Jackson?

  Maybe the teenager is distracted by a desire to head home to Durham, North Carolina, to see his widowed mother. Perhaps he’s thinking about his new wife, Donna, here in Utah. Regardless, Gerald’s reverie was interrupted as he watched James walk. The young soldier shouts at James to stop, to get away from the barbed-wire fence. No answer. The young soldier does so again. Four times now! But what this kid doesn’t know is that James couldn’t hear him on a normal day, let alone in this wind. He’s hard of hearing. James draws closer to the fence. Gerald fears he’s trying to escape. The youth shoulders his rifle and fires.

• 49:39Greg Jackson?

  The .30 caliber bullet rips through James’s chest, then shatters his spine. The 63-year-old internee never saw it coming and dies instantly. Forty inches away from the fence, his blood soaks into the hard Utah clay. James’s death makes the internees plainly aware of their position in this camp. As Michito Akamoto later remembers, “We were totally vulnerable. We were helpless. There was no way of defending ourselves from anybody who just got trigger-happy and wanted to shoot us.” Ultimately, the effects of James Wakasa’s death are best summarized by historian Sandra Taylor.

• 50:22Greg Jackson?

  To quote her, “Some of the innocence and presumed goodwill that had existed between the interned and the incarcerators died with Wakasa and was not reborn.”

• 50:38Greg Jackson?

  HTDS is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner, BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for available members of just $23 per session. Burnout does an RSVP before setting in, and stress certainly doesn't wait until a World Mental Health Day to affect your week. Managing your mental health is an ongoing effort, and you don't need to wait for a calendar reminder to start giving yourself attention. A lot of people assume therapy's only for major emergencies, but it's equally helpful for navigating smaller everyday challenges. It provides a space to talk through a work situation that is taking up too much headspace, work through a tricky personal dynamic, or explore that quiet sense that something simply feels a bit off.

• 51:21Greg Jackson?

  Taking that step can help bring a lot of clarity. If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks, and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. Don't have insurance or don't live in the United States? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com/HTDS to explore your payment options. That's betterh-e-l-p.com/HTDS.

• 52:00Greg Jackson?

  From arrests to voluntary evacuation, internment, and now, the death of James Wakasa, Japanese-Americans, American citizens, have seen their constitutional rights utterly trampled. It should come as no surprise then that legal challenges to internment arise. Some are fought all the way to the highest court in the land.

• 52:24Greg Jackson?

  It's a crisp fall Monday morning, October 16, 1944. Black robes sway with every step as nine Supreme Court justices trudge across the carpeted main floor conference room of the Supreme Court Building. Only two of them include the nine old men whom we met back in Episode 176, Chief Justice Harlan Stone, who, as an associate justice back then, supported the New Deal amid the vicious judicial fights, and Owen Roberts. Yes, the switch-in time justice who wrote the Roberts Report. All seven of the other justices are FDR appointees.

• 53:02Greg Jackson?

  I guess you might say Franklin got to pack the court after all. Anyhow, now gathered around the room's large wooden table, the nine justices exchange a customary handshake, take their seats, then proceed with their first order of business for the day. A case that will decide just how real American citizenship truly is or isn't for Japanese Americans. But before we go there, let me give you some background.

• 53:30Greg Jackson?

  Last Wednesday was the chief justice's 72nd birthday. But more importantly, it was the court hearing for Fred Korematsu. His case dates back to May 1942, when the dark-haired and handsome Nisei man refused to leave his home in San Leandro to report to an assembly center and a subsequent internment camp. Instead, he changed his name to Clyde Sarah and got plastic surgery on his eyes. But it was for nothing. He was recognized and turned over to the FBI. His case was taken on by the American Civil Liberties Union, or the ACLU. But so far, Fred has lost. And now Fred's fight has found its way to the sprint court. Now Fred wasn't at Wednesday's hearing.

• 54:14Greg Jackson?

  Looking to avoid internment, he's relocated to Detroit since his case began. But his ACLU lawyers, Wayne Collins and Charles Horsky, have more than punched and poked at the solicitor General Charles Fahey's arguments, which primarily rely on the 1942 report by General John DeWitt about the military necessity of Japanese-American relocation and internment. Wayne has argued that General John DeWitt's "military judgment" was based on, quote, "tendencies and probabilities as evidenced by attitudes, opinions, and slight experience, rather than a conclusion based on objectively ascertainable facts." Close quote. A well-placed blow.

• 54:58Greg Jackson?

  Further, the lawyer duo pointed out that the Justice Department has repudiated claims made in the general's report, like shoreline radio communication done by Japanese Americans. Thus, the two ultimately are arguing that Fred's civil rights were violated because, quote, "had he obeyed all of the provisions of the order and the accompanying instructions, he would have found himself in a place of detention." Close quote. A solid one-two combo. But will it land? Or will SCOTUS sidestep every swing, as this highest of judicial bodies did, with both Gordon Hirabayashi’s and Binooru Yasui’s cases, by making them only a matter of whether each man broke a curfew

• 55:41Greg Jackson?

  and not a matter of whether their constitutional rights had been infringed? Well, let’s get back to the deliberating judges and find out.

• 55:52Greg Jackson?

  Following protocol, gray-haired and chiseled-faced Chief Justice Harlan Stone starts the discussion from the head of the conference table. As he sees it, they’ve got two choices. Are we confined to the exclusion order? Or was it so tied in with relocation orders that it must be considered? He thinks the court, quote, “cannot say as a matter of fact that one who goes to an assembly center will go into a relocation center,” close quote. Ah. So Harlan thinks they can and should only look at the exclusion aspect while ignoring detention. Harlan continues, “We must read the order as if it said he should go to the assembly center

• 56:37Greg Jackson?

  and stay there subject to further orders.” Hmm. Sounds like some sidestepping footwork in the making. And indeed, our Chief Justice asserts that this, quote, “ends the case,” close quote. He’s voting against Fred. But others disagree. Owen Roberts says that Fred’s “only choice was to go to prison.” That is so violative of the constitutional rights of citizens that I think he was wrongfully convicted. Huh. Maybe that combo will land after all. The oscillating continues as the next three justices, Hugo Black, Stanley Reed, and Felix Frankfurter, all agree with Chief Justice Harlan,

• 57:21Greg Jackson?

  while Frank Murphy and today’s birthday boy, William Bill Douglas, side with their switch-saving report-writing colleague. So, four say Fred is guilty. Three say not. Justice Robert Jackson weighs in next. Fifteen months ago, he was a part of the Judicial Duck in Gordon Hirabayashi’s case. But not today. Looking up from his side of the table, the widow-peaked justice tells the Chief Justice that the exclusion order is not “something we have got to accept without any inquiry into reasonableness.” Close quote. “Oh, Harland doesn’t like that.”

• 58:01Greg Jackson?

  He steps again, pointedly challenging Robert, exclaiming, “You are saying that Congress and the President, acting together, are unable to protect us against military espionage and sabotage.” And that, that is the fist striking constitutional flesh. While Harland says it comes down to whether or not Fred was required to go to a detention center, what this case is really about is whether or not detention of US citizens is allowed in wartime. And with that power at stake, the court is now divided four to four. Harland turns to the newest black-robed justice of the Supreme Court, Wiley Rutledge. Wiley also voted against Gordon Hirabayashi.

• 58:46Greg Jackson?

  Harland doesn’t ask so much as demands. “If you can do it for curfew, you can do it for exclusion.” Looking around the table, Wiley tells his fellow justices, “I had to swallow Hirabayashi. I didn’t like it. At that time, I knew if I went along with that order, I had to go along with detention. So I vote to affirm.” That’s it for today. As the sun sets on October 16th, 1944, five justices favor Fred’s conviction. Four justices are against. The decision becomes more lopsided by the time SCOTUS’s ruling is publicly announced on December 18th.

• 59:30Greg Jackson?

  Bill Douglas flips, making it six to three against Fred. “The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of Japanese internment.” Hugo Black’s majority opinion reads, “All legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect. Courts must subject them to the most rigid scrutiny.” Pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions. Racial antagonism never can. To cast this case into outlines of racial prejudice without reference to the real military dangers which were presented merely confuses the issue. Korematsu was not excluded from the military area because of hostility to him or his race.

• 1:00:15Greg Jackson?

  He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire. The military authorities considered that the need for action was great and time was short. We cannot now say that, at that time, these actions were unjustified. Take a moment with that. Justice Hugo Black has just proclaimed that racial classifications get the most rigid scrutiny the court can apply. Then he concludes, “This one passes.” It’s the most dramatic case of having it both ways in 20th-century jurisprudence. The great irony is that the standard Hugo is announcing here, strict scrutiny, will go on to do the opposite work. Future courts will use it to strike down racial discrimination, making Korematsu a precedent

• 1:01:00Greg Jackson?

  quoted against itself. But those are stories for another day. Right now, the Supreme Court is using this majority opinion to uphold the military’s current power and actions in this time of war. Meanwhile, the dissenting opinions are most noteworthy. Collectively, they are three of SCOTUS’s strongest dissents in the 20th century, and they most certainly do not accept Hugo’s premise that the government’s actions are not racially motivated. According to Justice Owen Roberts, “This is not a case of keeping people off the streets at night, as was Hirabayashi v. United States. On the contrary, it is the case of convicting a citizen as a punishment for not submitting

• 1:01:41Greg Jackson?

  to imprisonment in a concentration camp based on his ancestry and solely because of his ancestry.”

• 1:01:50Greg Jackson?

  Taking the dissent one step further, Justice Robert Jackson looks to what precedent this case sets. Quote, “Once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.” Close quote. Justice Frank Murray brings the moral capstone. He goes to the heart of Fred’s plea to the Supreme Court.

• 1:02:35Greg Jackson?

  To quote him, “This exclusion of all persons of Japanese ancestry on a plea of military necessity goes over the very brink of constitutional power and falls into the ugly abyss of racism. Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States. All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land, yet they are primarily and necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States.

• 1:03:19Greg Jackson?

  They must accordingly be treated at all times as the heirs of the American experiment and an entitlement to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.” Well said, Frank. And thankfully, despite SCOTUS’s utter failure to declare internment unconstitutional, there’s another case that is doing important work, one that doesn’t get internment declared unconstitutional either, but puts a huge crack in it.

• 1:03:49Greg Jackson?

  On the same day that Fred Korematsu loses, December 18th, 1944, the Supreme Court hands down a second decision. This one pertaining to a 24-year-old Nisei woman from Sacramento, Mitsuya Endo. By her lawyer, James Purcell’s careful design, Mitsuya is the perfect plaintiff. She’s Christian, she speaks only English, she’s never visited Japan. Her brother is serving in the US Army, and before the war, she worked as a clerk for the state of California, until California fired her, along with about 400 other Japanese-American state employees, simply for being Japanese-American.

• 1:04:29Greg Jackson?

  That’s why James Purcell asked Mitsuya to allow him to file a habeas corpus petition in her name, and she agreed. Seeing what a force she could be, the WRA offered Mitsuya immediate freedom if she would drop the case. She refused, choosing instead to stay locked up, so she could fight for everyone else. And on December 18th, she wins unanimously. Bill Douglas, yes, the same Bill Douglas who just flipped to side with the majority against Fred, writes the opinion: “The WRA has no authority to detain conceitedly loyal American citizens. Mitsuya Endo is free, and by implication, so are thousands of others.”

• 1:05:14Greg Jackson?

  And yet, we might even say that Mitsuya won the day before she officially won. On December 17th, 1944, Major General Henry Pratt of the Western Defense Command had already issued Public Proclamation Number 21, declaring exclusion rescinded effective January 2nd, 1945. Yeah, the timing is no accident. The administration moved first to get ahead of SCOTUS. Thus, internment begins to unwind in the New Year, and continues unwinding for a not-inconsiderable while. The Western Defense Command only lifts the last individual exclusion orders on September 4th, 1945, two days after Japan’s formal surrender.

• 1:05:55Greg Jackson?

  Meanwhile, Tulley Lake, the final camp, doesn’t close its gates until March 20th, 1946.

• 1:06:06Greg Jackson?

  Coming to our close, let's take a moment to reflect on this tale and the internment of 120,000 Americans. Unquestionably, internment was a violation of Japanese Americans' rights, full stop. Yet incredibly, some of the very leaders who championed civil rights for others couldn't see the wrongs they perpetrated against this specific group of Americans. Justice Hugo Black later defends his vote in the Korematsu case with the following: "We had a situation where we were at war. People were rightfully fearful of the Japanese. They all look alike to a person who is not a Jap. Had they attacked our shores, you'd have a large number fighting with the Japanese

• 1:06:50Greg Jackson?

  troops." This from a justice who, though a former Klan member, goes on to fearlessly rule against segregated public schools 10 years after internment, even as his effigy burns back home in Alabama. For all of his growth, clearly, serious blind spots remain. The same is true of President Franklin Roosevelt. As historian Greg Robinson concludes of the man who signed Executive Order 9066: "Roosevelt's decision followed logically from his view that Japanese Americans were incapable of being true Americans." Indeed, the same man behind the New Deal and the Four Freedoms utterly failed to recognize

• 1:07:33Greg Jackson?

  what both his wife and his Attorney General saw clear as day: that, in the case of Japanese Americans, he trampled the very rights he so bravely championed for others. The government seeks to make amends in decades to come, particularly in the 1980s, after lawyer and historian Peter Irons discovers proof that the government knew at the time of the Korematsu case that General DeWitt's claims of Japanese-American disloyalty were false, and worse, that the Solicitor General's office had hidden it from the court. This then raises the question of a pardon for Fred Korematsu, who rightfully responds: "I don't want a pardon. If anything, I should be pardoning the government."

• 1:08:18Greg Jackson?

  Nonetheless, in 1983, a federal judge formally vacates Fred's conviction.

• 1:08:24Greg Jackson?

  Five years later, in 1988, President Ronald Reagan signs the Civil Liberties Act, thereby formally apologizing and providing reparations for survivors of Japanese internment. And three decades after that, seventy-four years after Hugo Black wrote his majority opinion, Korematsu v. United States is finally repudiated. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for SCOTUS in Trump v. Hawaii, says, “Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided and has been overruled in the court of history, and, to be clear, has no place in law under the Constitution.” Close quote. Yes, more than seven decades later, the Supreme Court finally takes the bullets out

• 1:09:09Greg Jackson?

  of the loaded weapon, Justice Robert Jackson described in his dissent. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Back in the 1940s, still in the midst of World War II, our former Hawaiian resident-turned-mainland interney poet Kejo Soga loses a friend to illness, who’s then buried in a camp graveyard. Reflecting on this internment amid internment, the poet writes, “When the war is over and after we are gone, who will visit this lonely grave in the wild where my friend lies buried?” A truly great and terrible question, and one that doesn’t only apply to Japanese-Americans

• 1:09:51Greg Jackson?

  who meet their end in camps, but also to so many Americans far from home dying on the battlefield. That’s right, next time, we’re leaving the home front. It’s time to return to the Pacific Theater, where we last saw the momentum shifting in America’s favor after the Battle of Midway. But don’t mistake that shift for smooth sailing. The waters ahead are rough and tinged with blood. So grab your gear, you’re gonna need it. The fight for every grain of sand is fierce on the island of Guadalcanal.

• 1:10:29Greg Jackson?

  History That Doesn't Suck is created and hosted by me, Greg Jackson. Episode researched and written by Greg Jackson and Will King. Executive editor, Riley Newbauer. Production by Airship. Audio editing by Mohammed Shazade. Sound design by Molly Bond. Theme music composed by Greg Jackson. Arrangement and additional composition by Lindsey Graham of Airship. For a bibliography of all primary and secondary sources consulted in writing this episode, visit htdspodcast.com.

• 1:11:07Greg Jackson?

  HTDS is supported by fans at htdspodcast.com/membership. My gratitude to you kind souls providing funding to help us keep going. Thank you. And a special thanks to our patrons whose monthly gift puts them at producer status. Adam Goran, Ahmed Chapman, Amy and Ross Hensman, Andrew Nissen, Andrew Sherwin, Anna M. Huta, Art Lang, Baby Nico, Bob Stinnan, Bonnie Brooks, Ryan Gavigan, Ryan Boils, Ryan Goodson, Bruce Hibbert, Kayden Hallitz, Charles Clendenin, Charles Starkey, Charlie Majes, Christopher Merchant, Christopher Lyle, Christopher Pullman, Christopher Young, Cody Brown, Colleen Martin, Colin Ferris Pennington, Connor Hogan, Craig Burrhost, Dan G., Daniel

• 1:11:48Greg Jackson?

  Beacham, Daniel Lucana, Darren Chambers, Daryl the Kid Lovell, David Rifkin, Dean Heiser, Donte Spencer, Donald Moore, Eli Edwards, Elizabeth Chris Jansen, Ellen Stewart, Ernesto Franco, Ernie Lomaster, Ethan Lowery, Ethan Thompson, G2303, Jeffrey Nelson, George J. Sherwood, Gareth Griffin, Gina Johnson, Gordon Garwood, Henry Brunges, Holly Hamilton, Jake Gilbreth, James Bledsoe, James Blue, James Schlender, Jarrett Zangora, Jeffrey Moos, Jennifer Mingioni, Jennifer Ruth, Jessica Poppin, Joe Dobis, John Booby, John Frugal Dougal, John Huber, John Messmer, John Oliveros, John Rudelevich, John Schaefer, Jonathan

• 1:12:28Greg Jackson?

  Schaaf, Jordan Corbett, Joseph Curry, Joshua Steiner, Julian Wright, Justin Tolman, Karen Bartholomew, Carl Friedman. Carl Romer, Penn Culver, Kim R., Kimberly Pruitt, Kristen Pratt, Kyle Decker, L. Paul Goringer, Laura Norman, Lawrence Neubauer, Linda Cunningham, Mark D. Worle, Mark Ellis, Marcia Smith, Mason Glenn, Matt Siegel, Michael Longest, Michael Sullivan, Nick Cafrell, Nicholas Powell, Owen W. Sedlak, Paul Hugenrat, Philip May, Randy Keen, Rich Ruckel, Rick Brown, Rob Dravovich, Robert Shelton, Brock Gay, Ryan Fogelman, Sam Holtzman, Sarah Prescott, Sarah Traywood, Scott Hurst, Shane Smith, Shannon Hoagland,

• 1:13:08Greg Jackson?

  Sharon Feasen, Sean Baines, Sean Collins, Stacy Ritter, Steve Williams, The Creepy Girl, Thomas Churchill, Thomas Matthew Edwards, Thomas Sabbath, Tim and Sarah Turner, Todd Curran, Tom Bestafka, Travis Cox, Walter M. Ames, Wesley McKee, William Durham, William Curry, William Thompson, and Zach Jackson. Join me in two weeks, or I'd like to tell you a story.