Baseball at Manzanar: Executive Order 9066 – Society for American Baseball Research

Introduction Executive Order 9066 Daily Life Baseball Behind Barbed Wire Reconstruction & Reclamation

On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s raid on Pearl Harbor stunned Americans who had long thought their neighboring oceans would shield them from foreign military assault. Though ties with Japan had broken in recent months due to the empire’s takeover of French Indochina and America’s halting of oil shipments in protest, few if any had predicted such ruin. Even fewer expected it on a day often used for rest and churchgoing, let alone weeks before Christmas. “December 7, 1941,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told a joint session of Congress the next day, “a date which will live in infamy.” The president asked the House and Senate to authorize war on Japan. Near-unanimous approval came minutes later.

Some newspaper writers and political figures urged the public not to respond with racism or xenophobia, particularly against the roughly 285,000 people of Japanese ancestry who lived in either Hawaii or the continental US. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which only two presidents before Roosevelt had invoked, allowed him to subject any foreign national to arrest whenever a “predatory incursion” is “perpetrated, attempted, or threatened.” In the case of Presidential Proclamation 2525, issued hours after the Pearl Harbor attack, the “alien enemies” were Japanese-born American non-citizens, or Issei.

The US Navy ordered Issei-owned fishing boats back onto land. Issei-owned bank accounts were frozen. The US Department of Justice ordered all Japanese-born people to surrender their firearms, knives, shortwave radios, and cameras. In Hawaii and on the West Coast, where most Japanese Americans lived, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation began rounding up Issei men who seemed to maintain the strongest ties to Japanese culture. Unlike German and Italian citizens in America, Japanese citizens caught in the Alien Enemies Act could not legally naturalize as US citizens at the time. due to the Supreme Court’s 1922 ruling in Ozawa v. United States and the Immigration Act of 1924. It was not until the passage of the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 that the Issei were allowed to naturalize.

Jim Morita oral history interview, July 17, 2023, courtesy of Manzanar National Historic Site

In 1940, Japanese Americans comprised only 2 percent of California’s population and less than one one-thousandth of the continental US population—but suspicions of mass takeovers festered all the same. “I am for the immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior,” Hearst Newspapers columnist Henry McLemore wrote in January 1942. “Herd ’em up, pack ’em off. … Let ’em be pinched, hurt, hungry, and dead up against it.”

The president’s proclamation on January 14, 1942, required noncitizens from Italy, Germany, and Japan to register with the US Department of Justice, but a growing crowd wanted the White House to go further — especially on Japanese matters. Los Angeles-based Congressman Leland Ford sent identical letters to Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Attorney General Francis Biddle, demanding that “all Japanese, whether citizens or not, be placed in inland concentration camps. … [I]f an American-born Japanese, who is a citizen, is really patriotic and wishes to make his contribution to the safety and welfare of this country, right here is the opportunity to do so.”

Read more: “From Infamy to Incarceration,” by Harrison Golden

On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The order authorized the Department of War “to prescribe military areas … from which any or all persons may be excluded.” Japanese Americans were not mentioned in the order. Nor were any specific races, ethnicities, or nationalities. No person of Japanese ancestry in the US had been — or would be — charged, tried, or convicted of crimes against America. Yet there was no doubt: The order targeted them.

Less than a week later, the US Navy ordered about 500 Japanese American families on California’s Terminal Island to leave within 48 hours. A proclamation issued on March 2 split California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona into two military areas. An executive order signed on March 18 created the War Relocation Authority (WRA), a civilian agency tasked with relocating Issei, Nisei (U.S.-born citizens of Japanese descent), and their families to places inland. On March 29 the military stopped allowing “voluntary” relocation. A curfew took effect for all enemy aliens and “persons of Japanese ancestry” who still lived within the military areas: 8 PM to 6 AM, with no movement allowed anytime “more than five miles from their place of residence.”

The last day of March brought an even more sweeping move. Notices of exclusion orders began covering store windows, poles, fences, and bulletin boards all along the West Coast, with this heading: “INSTRUCTIONS TO ALL PERSONS OF JAPANESE ANCESTRY.” From the moment these were posted, heads of households had to register with local military offices. Families often had less than a week to surrender at a designated place.

(National Archives and Records Administration)

Without trial or proof of guilt, most were stuffed inside buses and trains, often with window shades down. Only when they neared their destination did the wheels slow and shades go up. From behind the window glass, they saw barbed wire, searchlights, watchtowers, and soldiers with machine guns. They arrived at what the government called an “assembly center,” a harmless-sounding term for yet another cramped space. Most of the 15 or so military-run assembly centers stood on converted fairgrounds or racetracks.

The assembly centers stayed filled for months, until the WRA finished building what it generously called “relocation centers.” These camps were more isolated and permanent, with 10 in all:

Amache: Granada, Colorado
Gila River: Rivers, Arizona
Heart Mountain: Cody, Wyoming
Jerome: Denson, Arkansas
Manzanar: Manzanar, California
Minidoka: Hunt, Idaho
Poston: Parker, Arizona
Rohwer: McGehee, Arkansas
Topaz: Delta, Utah
Tule Lake: Newell, California

By the time the US government had hauled 120,000 Japanese Americans into the new camps, it was late October. The Battle of Midway, which eliminated any chance Japan had of invading the West Coast, had been over since the first week of June. “If military necessity was the only reason for evacuation, it could have stopped right there,” a writer said long after the war. “But sometimes people and governments continue mistakes rather than admit them.”

Incoming incarcerees stand in line at a registration table at the Manzanar incarceration camp. (Courtesy of County of Inyo, Eastern California Museum)

The Loyalty Questionnaire

In February 1943, the WRA and the War Department administered a questionnaire to prisoners. The forms included questions that could be used to determine if incarcerees were loyal enough that they could be relocated outside of camps or, better yet, inducted into the military to serve the US. Incarcerees who were considered to be “trouble-makers,” who were thought to be more loyal to their Japanese homeland, would be sent to separate camps.

Although each version of the questionnaire was slightly different, they asked for the same background information, including voting status and parents’ place of birth. The questions also requested information on ties to Japan, including family still in Japan, property and assets still owned there, and even if they spoke Japanese. The answers were then graded on their perceived “Americanism.”

There were two questions on the questionnaire that were especially of interest to agencies. The questions fell last, at numbers 27 and 28, and they were the two most controversial items of the survey. Question 27 asked, “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?” That was followed by Question 28: “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization?”

Many of the Nisei, who were born in the United States, could not even have named the emperor of Japan before the war started, let alone sworn allegiance to him. Besides the issues of possibly being sent to war or losing everything they owned, the American-born camp members felt insulted by being questioned about their loyalty to their homeland, where they were born, grew up, and raised their families. Many Issei, or Japanese-born citizens, were also confused and upset by these questions. Some were concerned that if they denounced the emperor, they would be a person without a country because they could not legally naturalize to the United States due to the Immigration Act of 1924. (This would not change until passage of the McCarran-Walter Act in 1952.)

Read more: “The Manzanar Uprising and the Loyalty Questionnaire,” by Chris Betsch

As armed United States military police stand by, the first of many cars carrying Japanese Americans to the Manzanar incarceration camp arrives. (Courtesy of County of Inyo, Eastern California Museum)

The Manzanar Uprising

The more than 120,000 individuals who were forcibly removed to the camps had their share of conflicts and divides. One such division was at the heart of the Manzanar Uprising, one of the most tragic events of the incarceration camps, which left many Japanese Americans with a deep distrust of their own country that lasted for decades.

Fred Tayama, the son of Japanese immigrants, was a prominent businessman in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles. He was president of the L.A. chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League and served as the camp’s JACL representative at Manzanar. After Pearl Harbor, the JACL cooperated with the federal government in relocating Japanese Americans to incarceration camps.

On December 5, 1942, Tayama was attacked in his barracks by a group of six masked men. He identified Harry Ueno, a leader in the Mess Hall Workers Union, as one of his assailants. Ueno was arrested and taken away to the county jail 6 miles away. The following night, a group of 500 protestors arrived at the camp police station and demanded Ueno’s release. Military police fired tear gas toward the protestors and, in the chaos that ensued, began shooting toward the crowd. James Ito, 17, was found dead in the street and Jim Kanagawa, 21, died from his injuries five days later. Nine other protestors were treated for bullet wounds. A review panel later cleared two MPs of any wrongdoing.

Read more: “The Manzanar Uprising and the Loyalty Questionnaire,” by Chris Betsch

Toyo Miyatake: The Eyes of Manzanar

In the hands of a Japanese American after Pearl Harbor, a camera was contraband — hardly less of a weapon of war than a rifle or a bayonet. Toyo Miyatake, a Los Angeles resident sent to Manzanar with his family in early 1942, had smuggled a lens, shutter, and film holder inside a bulky winter coat. He spent his first weeks at the camp fashioning those components into a functioning device.

Miyatake had taken lessons from respected portrait photographer Harry Shigeta and the modernist master Edward Weston before opening his own studio in 1923. He documented scenes of life behind barbed wire, developing his photos in a laundry room that he converted into a makeshift darkroom, working through the wee hours so no one would catch on.

“As a photographer, I have a responsibility … to keep a record of what’s going on here, so this kind of thing will never happen again.”

Camp director Ralph Merritt caught wind of what Miyatake was doing. Many people in his position would have considered confiscating the camera. Instead, he became a most unlikely co-conspirator. Merritt was good friends with Ansel Adams through their membership in the Sierra Club. Merritt permitted Miyatake to become the official camp photographer, complete with a grand opening celebration in the ironing room of Block 30.

Read more: “Toyo Miyatake: The Eyes of Manzanar,” by James Forr

Portrait of Toyo Miyatake, who smuggled his lenses into camp, building a box around each to make homemade cameras, and took over 40,000 images. (Photo by Ansel Adams at Manzanar, 1943. Library of Congress)

After Manzanar officially closed on November 21, 1945, camp director Mr. Ralph Merritt addressed the staff that gathered at the gates to witness the departure of the last evacuee. (Courtesy of County of Inyo, Eastern California Museum)

Returning to Former Lives

As people thought about leaving the camps—yearning for their former lives, consciously and subconsciously—images of what used to be home became their dreams. Unfortunately, for many detainees those images were wisps of memories of a far different time.

Sadly, after years in the camps, too many people discovered that their homes, businesses, and communities no longer existed. In other words, a person’s memories collided with depressing reality. Reality, though, was in flux because no one knew when the nightmare of the camps would end. If the detainees were more or less gathered in groups and subsequently sent to the camps—that is, sent jumping into the ponds in large groups—the opposite was true about their releases.

Some people left early to join the Army, some left at various times to work in agricultural or other jobs, and some waited until the end of the war before leaving and jumping back into the ponds of their prewar lives. Tule Lake was the last camp to close on March 20, 1946.

Read more: “The Return,” by Joe Marren

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