Sobering Lessons from the Primary Documents

I spent yesterday afternoon going through a book of Seattle area newspaper clippings documenting the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast during WWII (we are compiling a collage of period headlines for an exhibit that opens on Thursday). It was heart-wrenching to see the familiar story unfold: an ill-conceived, unconstitutional executive order based on racist assumptions and trumped up fears is announced. It tears apart families, interrupts educations and careers, threatens whole industries, guts communities, and throws thousands of people’s lives into turmoil.

Most Americans have heard of Executive Order 9066, signed 75 years ago this week by FDR. It authorized the wartime incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent, two thirds of them American citizens. Mostly we hear the story summed up in past-tense textbook generalities. But these newspaper articles – with their jarring “Jap” and “Nip” headlines – were written by reporters covering specific, local stories in real time, interviewing specific, confused people. And none of them, including the reporters, had any idea how it was all going to turn out.

There were stories about produce shortages after a curfew was imposed on enemy aliens: Japanese farmers couldn’t leave their houses until six a.m., so there was no way they could travel into town in time to sell their fruits and vegetables at the Pike Place Market. Indeed, there were real concerns about whether that year’s crops could be planted and harvested at all, as whole farming communities spent the spring of 1942 selling off everything they owned and preparing for a looming but unknown departure date. In some cases Filipinos were recruited to take over the farms. Filipinos also replaced the Japanese red caps (porters) at King Street Station; the red caps at Union Station were replaced by Negroes. A young couple hastily married so they wouldn’t be separated if their families were sent to different places – nobody knew where they were going, after all, or for how long. A woman asked the Army for permission to stay with her Chinese American husband and their two daughters (no, said the army, she and her daughters would be incarcerated; the girls hoped their father could join them somehow). A Japanese American man proposed the establishment of a segregated "model city" in Eastern Washington, where his community could live in "voluntary exile." Another man suffered an anxiety attack while in line at the registration office, and had to be taken to the hospital.

A selection of these articles
can be found on the SPS
web site, for some reason.  

In late February, twenty-six “Jap” girls resigned from their office jobs in Seattle schools, after a delegation of mothers in West Seattle circulated a petition demanding their dismissal. The mothers claimed they had been “swamped with phone calls from people all over Seattle commending us on our action and offering support.” According to the Post-Intelligencer, “the girls said they bear no ‘ill will’ to the petitioners, and hope that the welfare of the schools will be served by their resignations. But, they pointed out, they did not take their action in any ‘spirit of defeat.’” 

When Mrs. Esther Sekor, who had headed up the petition drive, heard news of the resignation, she said, “I think that’s very white of those girls. We really feel this is best, for the duration. When we started this thing it was not from any grudge against the American Japanese, but only for the safety of the school children.”

Had to stop and take a deep breath here. Honestly, my head still hurts from digging around in the darkest, dankest corners of my brain to find the corroded wires that could possibly connect in some twisted way that would make any sense of that.  

The school board accepted the resignations the next day, after “considerable debate” (and despite concerns that they would not be able to hire replacement clerks at the wages they had been paying the Japanese American girls). It was good to hear that a couple of clergymen had urged the board to ignore the resignation letter, and that Mrs. Dale Marble, the president of the Seattle Council PTA, declared that her organization had not officially endorsed the mothers’ petition – though it had been instituted “by individual members of the group.” (The PTA mother in me wishes Mrs. Marble had weighed in more forcefully, and condemned Mrs. Sekor's racist illogic in no uncertain terms; if she did, it didn't make the papers.) The assistant superintendent offered “words of highest appreciation of the courtesy, industry, efficiency, and loyalty of the girls.” But in the end, the school board let the them go, leaving their families with one less paycheck as they prepared for the uncertain, stressful journey ahead.

Like many of the clippings in the book, the articles about this incident were accompanied by a collection of letters to the editor in response. Many of these letters were awful, of course: Mrs. Dorothy Stanton Betts warned that Japanese office workers were only the first step. “Next will be hiring Japanese teachers for our children.” But there were, among these horrors, clear voices of reason pointing out that what was happening to these young women – to thousands of people up and down the West Coast – was “unfair, unwise, and contrary to American principles.” Arthur P. Redman pointed out that mill workers in Portland had “voted unanimously to continue in employment some forty of their Japanese associates,” and asked, “may we not profit by their example?” Clearly, in the midst of all that much-touted wartime hysteria, there were people who recognized the injustice that was happening before their eyes – and were upset enough by it that they felt the need to fire off a letter to the Seattle Times, or show up at a School Board meeting to testify.

Of course, it wasn't enough. All those reasonable people and their well-argued letters to the editor didn't stop the train wreck. And this is what haunts me now, as I listen to the news on the way home from work... That and the grainy photo of the young man huddled on the stretcher headed for Harborview.