Incarcerated Because of Race
Within 10 permanent Incarceration Camps, which began operating in the summer of 1942, Japanese Americans endured dehumanizing conditions: poor housing and food, lack of privacy, inadequate medical care, and substandard education. With little to do and harsh living conditions, tensions grew.
Issei men lost their traditional leadership role in their families and in the community. Before the war, teens and children deferred to their elders; now, teens ate with other teens in the mess hall, taking cues from their peers. The traditional social order was undermined. The loss of authority and respect drove many Issei to despair.
2nd-generation Nisei tried to find their way in this new and strange landscape. Children, teens, and young adults when they entered the camps, many Nisei struggled with the impacts of incarceration on their identities. As American citizens who grew up in the U.S., many felt betrayed by the only country they knew. At the same time, the breakdown in social and family structures meant they didn’t feel any closer to their Japanese heritage either.
The Incarceration Camps could also be physically dangerous. While walking his dog inside the barbed wire fence at the Topaz camp in Utah, an Issei man named James Wakasa was shot and killed by a bullet to the chest. The bullet came from a military sentry in the guard tower 300 yards away.
Military police on duty at the Temporary Detention Center in Santa Anita. Inmates were not free to come and go, but they were allowed visitors in the Temporary Detention Centers. Military police guarded the perimeters of the camps. A small staff of Japanese Americans provided interior security under the supervision of a police officer. Clem Albers, Arcadia, California, April 6, 1942.
This elderly blind man was one of the 2,000 people older than 65 and the 1,000 seriously disabled or bedridden persons imprisoned. Clem Albers, Lone Pine, CA, April 1, 1942.
Mass Incarceration of People of Color
PARALLEL STORY
In WWII, prejudice and fear led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans based on their race. Today’s criminal justice system disproportionately targets people of color for the same reasons.
Ignoring the Fourth Amendment, police routinely target people of color with unreasonable searches and seizures, such as New York City’s “stop-and-frisk” policy (still in modified use, though deemed unconstitutional in 2013). In 2017, 90% percent of those stopped were African American or Latino, although they only made up 54% of the population.
The Eighth Amendment has also been violated via harsher sentences for people of color. A 2001 report by the American Civil Liberties Union investigated the disproportionate rate of African American incarceration. It stated, “[although] whites and blacks use drugs at almost exactly the same rates…African Americans are admitted to state prisons at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than whites, a disparity driven largely by the grossly racial targeting of drug laws.”