Teaching

Japanese Immigrants, Internment Camps, and American Loyalty

Michael Caraballo
Still image of interview subject Girls Making Snowman painting thumbnail

Overview

This source collection focuses on the interviews and stories of first and second-generation Japanese Americans internment during World War II. 

Essay

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 which required the detainment of Japanese Americans throughout the West Coast. Issei (first-generation), Nisei (second-generation; with US citizenship), and Sansei (third-generation; born of ‘Nisei’ Japanese Americans with US citizenship) were detained throughout the West Coast and southwestern US in the Wartime Civil Control Administration’s “Assembly Centers”, the War Relocation Authority’s “Relocation Centers”, and the Department of Justice’s “Internment Camps”. Using this source collection, which includes oral history interviews with Japanese Americans incarcerated during this period, students will be able to identify the key elements of interviewing as a means of historical interpretation and how memory is an important addition to teaching history. These sources will also provide students with a general understanding of how Japanese immigrants and their descendants were treated in the United States during WWII. Over half of the roughly 120,000 detainees were children.

Students can explore this aspect of incarceration by examining Sugimoto’s painting of girls playing in the snow included in this source collection. 

The interviews, one of Kenge Kobayashi and the other of Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, both Niseis, detail their stories in their respective camps. Kobayashi’s experience tells of the trouble he and his family faced when they were presented with what is informally known as the loyalty questionnaire. This form, issued by the WRA to Nisei adult men in WRA concentration camps and Japanese Americans already serving in the military, asked if they would swear their allegiance to the United States, renounce any allegiance to the Emperor of Japan, and if they would be willing to be drafted into the military. This questionnaire was widely criticized by the detained Nisei Japanese Americans who felt they were being accused of being disloyal to a country they have sole citizenship in. Kobayashi’s answers mirror that reality as he details fights within his camp. Herzig-Yoshinaga’s story enlightens the reality of women living in the camp. Her story also discusses the trouble pregnant women faced, as she was nine-months pregnant at the time of her detainment. 

Interpreting these interviews for the classroom can be beneficial for students as they grow their communication and critical thinking skills. How can studying an interviewer's wording of a question shape an interviewee’s answer? Where should interviewers place certain questions within their script to receive a receptive response? As shown in Herzig-Yoshinaga’s interview (part two), when is it appropriate for an interviewer to step in and ask an unprompted question?

Primary Sources

Japanese American Incarceration, Interview

Annotation
Kenge Kobayashi is a Nisei (second generation) Japanese American born in 1926 in Imperial Valley, California. With his family, he was incarcerated at Tulare Assembly Center, California, and then at the Gila River, Arizona, and Tule Lake, California, incarceration camps. A traumatic episode in the years of incarceration was the imposition of a loyalty questionnaire in early 1943. The government attempted to separate those they considered disloyal so that Japanese Americans designated as loyal could serve in the military or be released to communities away from the West Coast. The poorly worded and badly administered loyalty registration caused anger and turmoil in the camps and divided families. Questions 27 and 28 in particular put the detainees in untenable positions: the first asked if respondents were willing to serve in the armed forces, and the second asked respondents to swear unqualified allegiance to the United States and to forswear any loyalty to Japan. Issei parents feared their sons would be drafted; the American-born Nisei resented the assumption that they were loyal to Japan. Those who answered "no" to questions 27 and 28 or qualified their answers in any way--such as, "I will serve in the military when my rights are restored"--were labeled disloyal and sent to Tule Lake. Designated as a segregation center, Tule Lake experienced the worst violence and repression of all the camps, as War Relocation Authority (WRA) authorities imposed harsh security measures and jailed protestors in a stockade. In the interview excerpt, Kobayashi tells how he was a relatively carefree teenager before the loyalty registration changed life at Tule Lake.

Japanese American Incarceration at Manzanar, California, Interview

Annotation
Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga is a Nisei (second generation) Japanese American born in 1925 in Los Angeles. She was incarcerated at Manzanar, California, and later Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas. In the 1980s, working as the primary archival researcher for the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, she discovered documents that led to the federal congressional commission's recommendation of a presidential apology and monetary redress for surviving Japanese American detainees. In this interview excerpt, she describes the difficulty of caring for a young baby in the crude living conditions of Manzanar. She also speaks of the inferior health care available to Japanese Americans in the incarceration camps.

Japanese American Incarceration at Manzanar, California, Interview Part 2

Still image of interview subject
Annotation
Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga is a Nisei (2nd generation) Japanese American born in 1925 in Los Angeles. She was incarcerated at Manzanar, California, and later Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas. In the 1980s, working as the primary archival researcher for the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, she discovered documents that led to the federal congressional commission's recommendation of a presidential apology and monetary redress for surviving Japanese American detainees. In this interview excerpt, she describes the confusion and stress of having to pack for immediate "evacuation" from the military zones declared on the West Coast in early 1942. People destroyed family treasures that tied them culturally to Japan, and with as little as a week's notice, they were forced to sell belongings for a fraction of their value.

Girls Making Snowman

Girls Making Snowman painting thumbnail
Annotation
Motivated by wartime hysteria and racial sentiments following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that ordered the removal of Japanese Americans on the West Coast to internment camps in the interior. Children were over half of the 110,000-120,000 Japanese Americans forced to leave friends, pets, possessions—even siblings (those with severe disabilities were excluded from camps). The social realism of Sugimoto's paintings chronicle and critique the physical dislocation, social disruption, and material deprivation experienced by children and their families. In the militarized camps located in desolate areas, children inhabited cramped and cold barracks with scarce furnishings. Children attended make shift schools that lacked basic necessities and received scant portions and stale bread three times a day at a mess hall. Unappetizing food and inadequate nourishment compromised the health and happiness of children. Japanese-born artist, Henry Sugimoto (1900-1990), his wife, and their 6-year-old daughter were among more than 8,000 inhabitants at the Jerome camp in Arkansas where he painted this picture around 1943. This seemingly simple painting connects the bleak reality of everyday life with the play of interned children like his daughter. Children engaged in the expressive "language" of play provide researchers with a challenging form of documentary evidence. What purposes might their play have served? As an expression of feelings about their internment? An escape from an unjust reality? A fantasy about a better place? Was their play a wish? Compare this snowman with the traditional Japanese yuki (snow) daruma (the monk who founded Zen Buddhism and who also serves as a wishing doll). What evidence is there of racial and cultural conflict? Does that explain the contrast between the snowman's luminescence and the girls' dark complexions? In what ways might the iconic American "snowman" have served as an ironic reference to the customs and values of the society that incarcerated its youngest citizens because of their race?

Credits

Michael Caraballo is an intern for Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.  

How to Cite This Source

"Japanese Immigrants, Internment Camps, and American Loyalty," in World History Commons, https://worldhistorycommons.org/japanese-immigrants-internment-camps-and-american-loyalty [accessed December 13, 2025]

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