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According to the Journal of Social Issues, ethnic and racial minority groups face unique burdens during World War Two.

For Japanese-Americans, the war's burdens included the U.S. government's incarceration of thousands of Japanese American citizens based only on their ethnic heritage.

Tonight, we meet an author who is bringing the voices of over 100 Japanese-Americans impacted by this decision.

And to one book, we are coming to you from the Japanese American National Museum in the heart of Los Angeles.

I'm so happy you're joining us.

From Los Angeles.

This is KLCS PBS.

Welcome to Everybody with Angela Williamson, an innovation, arts, education and public affairs program.

Everybody with Angela Williamson is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

And now your host, doctor Angela Williamson.

Susan H. Kamay is our guest at the Japanese-American National Museum.

Susan, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

You have written this incredible book.

But before we get into the book, I want you to just let our audience know why this is so personal for you by telling us about your family.

Yes.

Thank you.

I'm what you call a third generation Japanese-American, a Sansei.

And it was my grandparents who were the immigrants from Japan not long after the turn of the century.

The 20th century.

My dad's family, my dad's parents were from a rural part of Japan, Wakayama.

And when they came here to Southern California, they took up farming because that's what they were familiar with in Japan.

And, in the 30s, settled in Orange County and were vegetable farmers before and after the war.

My dad used to say that his family were the country mice, and my mother's family were the city mice, because my mother's parents were from the city, Hiroshima and Osaka.

My my grandmother was Osaka, and they, were, from families of education and some means.

And so my, grandmother, my maternal mother in particular, was, highly skilled and, and trained in Japanese classical dance and music.

And she was known for being a Japanese classical stringed teacher and performer, the koto, the floor harp, and the shamisen, which looks like a banjo.

Oh, wow.

And when she was here in pre-war Little Tokyo, was well known in the community for her teaching and, performing and being part of the cultural community here in Little Tokyo.

Which is really interesting because, we're going to talk about the change that happened with your parents, but they were really young.

Correct.

My both my parents were high school freshmen at the time Pearl Harbor was bombed.

And then they, as high school, students experienced the incarceration.

And that really changed how Japanese Americans in the families, especially first and second generation, really, how they grew up and what they saw around them because of this event and how it impacted the entire country.

Correct.

Oh, absolutely.

The American born children.

the what we refer to as the Nisei generation ranged from, babies and toddlers through elementary high school students to young adults.

this is really interesting because, what I would love to talk about, because you're telling us this important event that impacted your parents before they even met each other.

And then they have children, and you learn because now you're third generation, correct?

Yes.

And so you learn about this event that people really aren't talking about per se, but you really become interested in it because it impacted how your father and your mother probably ended up raising their family.

This is such a complex issue.

Yeah.

In terms of, my generation really not knowing as we were growing up about their experience.

And there are several reasons for that.

And we're just beginning to understand this intergenerational, impact the trauma that we're just now beginning to grapple with.

It relates, in large part to the fact that they were innocent of any crime but treated as criminals put into prisons and, never accused directly.

on an individual basis of any charge.

and so the constitutional rights of them to be able to, especially as citizens, to be able to, not be held without, specific charges, and they were indefinitely detained, were, part of that, criminalizing damaging, impact.

so it was fierce.

It was fear.

It was shame.

It was having to deal with intense prejudice.

And after the war, wanting to just move on with their lives.

my father said that, they just had to restart, themselves with.

They were destitute.

but wanted to return to farming in Orange County with nothing, having lost everything.

And I think that's really important to talk about, too, because your your father, they released thousands of Japanese-Americans from these camps, and they go back home and you have nothing, and you literally have to start over.

So how does your father, what does he remember from that day?

Because that's so impactful to say.

first had to deal with prejudice that was even more intense after the war.

the government had done a very complete job of casting anybody who was of Japanese heritage, either legal resident.

if the first generation aliens who were precluded by naturalization law from becoming naturalized citizens.

So even if they wanted to become citizens, they couldn't legally, and not until 1952. they also, many of them chose, or couldn't come back right away to the West Coast homes after the exclusion orders were lifted.

and there were, there's many documented, events of terrorism of of, what we would today identify as hate crimes.

and so many of them didn't come back to the West Coast, to Washington, Oregon.

the, coast of California, you know, bits of Arizona where they came back later.

and, they had to, not only deal with the prejudice and the, loss of their, possessions and life savings.

but the East say generation depending on their age and, their health could have been, degraded with the circumstances in the camps.

And so the Nisei generation, really had to take care in many cases of their parents find work wherever they could.

Housing, postwar for everyone was, was, was very difficult.

And there's a phrase that some of the Japanese American researchers have used that there were three shocks.

The first shock was that this could even happen, when the exclusion orders got posted and the realization that they had to pack up with very short notice and leave everything behind.

was the first shock.

The second shock was getting to, first the assembly centers, which were the temporary, facilities, and then the ten were relocation, authority centers that we call today, the camps.

that they then realized that they were prisoners behind barbed wire and with guards in towers with searchlights and and and guns that were pointed at them.

and then the third shock was coming out of camp.

and so many of the history books act as if, there was this thing called Pearl Harbor.

There was this thing called the camps.

The camps closed and the story and actually, in many regards, it was just the beginning of a different chapter.

When you were younger and you found out about what happened to your father and your mother.

Was there an understanding of why they probably wouldn't want to say anything about that?

No.

And that's, part of, this discovery process that the Sansei generation and subsequent generations, there's a fourth, fifth and even sixth, right, that are now removed from even knowing their family, ancestors or family members that experienced it firsthand.

I was probably among those that were lucky.

and, and in a very small group to actually hear the stories of the Nisei when they were, you know, younger in their lives and to the ones that were willing to talk about it, because I was involved in the campaign in the 1970s and 1980s, we call it the redress campaign, which comes from a phrase in the First Amendment that as citizens, we have a right to petition our government for a redress of grievances.

And so the the campaign, the legislative campaign.

And then there are also judicial initiatives, come under that, what we now call redress.

You know, the umbrella of what we now call redress.

And it was because I was able to with my father, who was a real leader in the Japanese-American community.

get to learn about the stories beyond those of my, my own family and otherwise.

as most sansei, we wouldn't have known.

We wouldn't have.

We wouldn't have heard, I think so much of that false narrative, that we have either in history books or that is still being perpetuated out there, is because this all happened because Pearl Harbor was bombed.

And what I want to do in the in the front part of the book, and, when I teach at this at USC is to show that there is within our country, there have been a long pattern of, immigration and naturalization policies and other, other factors that have been, anti-Asian and in particular, first anti-Chinese as as the first major Asian group to come to the U.S. and how the Japanese immigrants, unfortunately stepped in to that preexisting yellow peril and and other prejudices and quickly became the, the recipients, the, you know, the the unfortunate inheritors of that, anti-Chinese sentiment.

And so that it wasn't just about, Pearl Harbor being bombed.

I found fascinating was that you could see your background in what you did and that redress campaign in the 70s and 80s, which at that point you were still educating largely Americans as to what happened.

Absolutely.

So so my question is, is at what time do you realize that Susan needs to write this book?

The first was that I had the opportunity to create a class that had never been put together before at USC, and so most of the material that's in the book were materials that I assembled to teach the class and realized that while there's fine scholarship out there, and I and I stand on the shoulders of of many, many, scholars before me in this area, they had written about very specific slices or very specific topics, such as the Supreme Court, wartime cases, or the legacy of the Nisei soldiers or, anthropological or sociological aspects of the camp experiences.

So, and so the there was lots of material out there, lots of historical fiction, that, that, has brought to life.

and very readable and accessible.

but what I realized in, in threading together the materials to teach a 15 week semester is that, there were lots of great materials out there, but there wasn't any one place that put the whole story together.

There were also, as a whole, a body of oral histories of interviews that had been done by the Nisei, incarcerated at a time in their lives where they were able to have sharp memories and were willing to talk about it.

because if we were to do that today, most of them are unfortunately really already passed away.

but we had those materials, in many, cases now, available online, digitized, transcribed and interviews that had been done on them, in newspapers and of course, any, family, collections, whether it was unfortunately for an obituary or, you know, for a service or whatever.

So, there had not ever been a way that had integrated those personal stories to show that, we're now using the number 125,000. if there were 125,000 that experienced incarceration under the jurisdiction of the War Relocation Authority, there were 125,000 different stories and had to be very individual decisions that they made in terms of how they were going to, what they were going to do, how they were going to handle their emotions, what they were going to do after the war, how they were going to go about rebuilding their lives and that, and there wasn't any monolithic or uniform response.

And, it really to try to honor the fact that different people felt different ways in handled the experience in different ways.

There's so many deniers out there and what I call justifiably.

Oh, but you have to remember, we were at war with and and the honest and unfiltered ones will say with you people to reveal that there's still this confusion and lack of discernment that, that these are American.

That is, two thirds of them were American citizens.

They weren't they weren't loyal to to Japan.

But, that the stories in the first person combined with the history then, brings it to life and I hope and brings it to, perhaps a creation of a common ground for those who might otherwise think, well, I don't have anything in common with, with, with what happened and perhaps to discover that maybe if they were to put themselves in that position, that they would feel more empathetically.

And I was thinking the word empathy.

This is a perfect way to end our first segment together.

When we come back, we want to discuss your book in detail and actually tell our audience the name of the book.

So thank you.

Hold on just one second.

Come back to hear more of our conversation.

Hiroshi Kamay, age 15, War Relocation Authority records, National Archives and Records Administration Hiroshi Kami, incarcerated at age 14 on the day before the post evacuation date, there was a lineup of cars in our driveway extending about another 200 yards in both direction along Garden Grove Boulevard.

waiting their turn to come to our house to see what they can get from us.

for a small fraction of their worth or for nothing.

Most of the people were strangers, but some were, people.

We thought, where I found, one man wanted to buy our, pickup truck.

My father had just spent about $125 for a set of new tires and tubes and a brand new radio.

battery.

So he asked for $125.

the man, quote, bought our pickup for $25.

One, one friend bought an and I used the words brand and bought me.

one friend bought our, stolen spray rig for $15.

We had we had only a few weeks earlier, purchased it for about $100.

The man told my father that he might as well take the $15.

Otherwise, he would be back the next day and pick it up for nothing.

Welcome back.

We are coming to you from the Japanese-American National Museum here in Little Tokyo, downtown Los Angeles.

I'm here with Susan H. Kamay, author of When Can We Go Back to America A Narrative History of Japanese Americans before, during, and after World War Two incarceration.

That title, to me says a lot.

Can you explain to me the meaning of that title?

There was a story that circulated among the camps.

It was printed in various camp newspapers, and it took on, urban mythology proportions.

But the story captures the phenomenon that as, they were removed from their neighborhoods where they were racial minorities, and then they found themselves in first the assembly centers and then the War Relocation Authority camps.

They were suddenly in environments where everyone was all Japanese.

And so, the story goes that as a child, sometimes as a little boy, sometimes as a little girl, I chose to make her a little girl, mistakenly thought that her parents had taken her to Japan, because why else would now she be in an environment where everyone is Japanese?

And so, the story goes that she pulled on her mother's sweater one day and said something along the lines of, mommy, I don't like it here.

Why do we have to be here?

I want to go home.

I want to go back to America.

And for the Nisei, who were the American born citizens that took on this metaphor of meaning that.

Well, when can I go back to an America where my rights as an American citizen would be honored in a way, where is that country that would honor my civil liberties?

Well, in the first segment, you talked about putting together one book with the entire history in there, and in that case, what you're doing is you're allowing everyone to pick up this book and learn about the experience and your mind.

What was the one goal you wanted to accomplish?

To make it real, to make it relatable, and to make it undeniable?

Because those are the three things that, either people don't know about it at all or have a very superficial.

Oh, yeah, I think I might have heard about that.

or that they continue today to say, well, it was for their own good or, they were treated so well.

Well, we were on war rations, or, that it wasn't that bad.

I wrote an op ed piece for the Los Angeles Times on the 80th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombing.

December 7th, 2021.

And on my USC publicly available email, as, as the article in the, in that issue dropped that day.

the first email that I got was from someone who said a lot of things, but concluded, War is hell.

Everyone suffers.

Let it lie and move on.

And the I share that in talks and and people gasp because, because this is still the thinking out there that oh footnote in history.

Why should we care.

Footnote in history?

Why should we care?

Why can't we move on?

But I find it really ironic that we are actually conducting our interview in front of a partial camp.

Yeah.

My mother was at the heart that your mother?

Yeah, my mother and her parents.

And this is an actual barrack that they dissembled in pieces and reassembled, to be part of the exhibit here from Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

And so when we see something like this, this is what we call as historians.

artifact.

Yes.

How can we still be in denial?

Well, I think one of the things that I try to do in the course that I teach at USC and what I what I hope that the book will help do, is give what I call a framework of reference for trying to understand and have our eyes open to what is the social phenomena that are going on today.

You know, we experienced today, marginalized groups, politically politically vulnerable groups, whether it's on the basis of national origin or religion, we saw this after nine, 11 and, the, terrorist profiling, the calls for, Muslim registry, to ban, those from, Muslim companies, the, the so-called travel ban cases.

so these are phenomena that are going on today, and, it's important in 1941, 1942, that the Japanese-American community was not able to have, effective, political allies to stand up for them.

There was certainly friends and, and we were very grateful for those that were that were friends.

but not to the level of being able to provide, allyship and, and, and work in solidarity to, you know, bring these other considerations forward and say, well, hold the phone here.

Maybe we, maybe in our quest to try to deal with our fear as a society, we shouldn't be going to such an extreme.

And I think, what I try to do at the end of the book is bring that forward to today, the, National Archives.

That was where so much of this information, came, was we were now able to have it come to light.

has chiseled on on the stone.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

And so we as citizens, I think, and those who want to protect the rights of citizens, need to be part of that eternal vigilance.

I mean, when we had nine, 11, it was a lot of Japanese-American organizations that stood up to make sure that this didn't happen to another group of people.

Oh, absolutely.

and one of the things that I think is great about, what I look at in terms of, not just at being, these are Japanese American stories or Asian American stories, but these are American stories.

You know, this is the the success of the political success of the redress campaign that resulted in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, signed by President Reagan, was to have it be framed.

It was a it had to be a bipartisan, effort.

And it was a bipartisan success.

I love that portion of where you're talking about the redress campaign, because, I mean, at that point, it's almost as if you have to educate, current legislators as to as to what happened then.

And so we're looking at so many years past that date.

but even when I read The Redress and, and it was passed into law, still, it was always looked like 68% only received that redress.

And, and so it's that you consider that a high number.

In my case, when I'm reading your book, I want 100%.

Well, of course, there was, the passage of time.

Yes.

we did recognize that the longer time went on.

And of course, even after the bill was passed, there still a couple of years where we needed to get the funding.

to be able to make the, the payments.

And with that clock ticking, there were more and more of the survivors that were not going to live to, to to see that.

but there were many elements to to that.

One is, the apology, the recognition, by the government that it was the wartime actions were wrong.

another was to make, the amount be significant enough that it was, you know, never going to compensate them.

never possible to, to estimate the, the, the true losses, but to, but to have it be something that while token was nevertheless meaningful, many of those contributions created the the museum here.

We are almost done with our time.

I mean, it's gone by so quickly.

if you could have one takeaway from your book that I would take away after I read your book, that maybe someone in middle school would take away.

Also someone who still here that lived through that period doesn't recognize the importance of it.

What would that one takeaway be?

I would say that that, to appreciate the the bravery and the resilience and that to have hope, in our country, to young people that they, understand what the issues are and that they have a right to vote and that they exercise that right to vote.

because, so much of why this happened to the Japanese-Americans was because of really very few people being in powerful positions to make these kinds of decisions.

And the Japanese-American community itself and, the times not having the political ability to to stand up to that.

Susan, how can our audience find you?

Oh.

Thank you.

I have a website, SusanHKamei.com, and people can get in touch with me there.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much, Susan.

Thank you.

And thank you for joining us on everybody with Angela Williamson.

And also a very special thank you to the Japanese American National Museum for hosting our interview tonight.

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