In northern Wyoming, on the road to Buffalo Bill’s Cody and Yellowstone National Park lies a oddly shaped mountain made up of limestone and dolomite. Standing watch over empty fields nearby, a red-brick chimney rises up from ruins. Just beyond Highway 14A’s shoulders, wooden vents pop up from the ground like decaying mushrooms.
To locals, these images are part of the landscape. To the average passerby, these anomalies break up the sage brush and hay fields. Collectively, these natural and man-made features are Heart Mountain–the physical mountain itself and the site of Wyoming’s third largest city at one time. Heart Mountain Relocation Site. This evaporated community, and its existing features, serve as a warning for the ages. How mass hysteria and years of social bias took its toll on the civil liberties and livelihood of average American citizens and their families.
“December 7, 1941–a day which will live in infamy–the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
125. The President Requests War Declaration: Address to the Congress Asking That a State of War Be Declared Between the United States and Japan. December 8, 1941
Unfortunately, anti-Japanese sentiment didn’t begin after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Hawai’i. The intricate history of anti-Asian sentiments and racial prejudices started almost 100 years before. In the 1849 California gold rush era, Chinese immigrants provided cheaper labor than their non-Chinese counterparts during California’s economic boom. Chinese workers, still toiling for lesser pay in 1869, continued to compete for trans-continental Union-Central Pacific Railroad jobs, unintentionally fueling American racial prejudices. Chinese discrimination became legislation in 1882 when the U.S. Congress passed a Chinese immigration exclusion bill. This bill prohibited Chinese workers entering the United States for 10 years.
Around the same time, Japanese immigrants, called Issei or persons born in Japan, started moving into Hawai’i and the West Coast, where anti-Chinese sentiments already existed. With the Japanese victory over Russian in the 1904 Russio-Japanese War, some Americans began to become fearful of Japanese immigrants. Russia’s defeat was the first time in modern history an Asian power overthrew a western nation. Nine years later, the California state legislature passed a series of laws. At first, Japanese immigrants were prohibited from owning farming land in the 1913 Alien Land Law.
Non-Japanese farmers in the western United States grew increasingly jealous at the economic prosperity Japanese farmers experienced. They simply were successful farming land deemed as infertile. The 1920 Alien Land Act forbade Japanese farmers from leasing or sharecropping land. To further hinder Japanese prosperity, the federal Immigration Act of 1924 set quotas on the number of immigrants allowed into the U.S. (no more than 150,000 persons). Unfortunately, the Immigration Act also created a distinct and widening generational gap between Issei and Nisei in the western United States. Nisei are individuals born in the United States or Canada to Japanese immigrants.
Seventeen years later, when Japan attacked the U.S. military bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawai’i, years of fear and resentment towards the Issei and Nisei exploded into a fever pitch.
Within hours of the bombings, the FBI arrested over 1,200 Japanese men, including Issei, Buddhist priests, business men, teachers and community leaders. Shortly afterwards, more than 5,500 Issei men were detained at Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) camps as being possible threats to national security. The Department of Justice gave each case individual legal review, but many men were given no legal representation, nor had evidence to prove them as a national security threat. Ultimately they were transferred to War Relocation Authority (WRA) relocation camps. (1) These camps are also referred to as incarceration or internment camps. Their forced residents are cited as incarcerees, evacuees, and internees.
Responding to public and military fervors, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. Citing the necessity for “possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material…premises, and…utilities,” Roosevelt authorized the Secretary of War and military commanders the power to determine which “alien enemies” living in proximity to military areas be allowed to remain or be removed from those areas. (2) No where in EO 9066 is the word “Japanese” written, but its intent was to remove 120,000 Issei and Nisei who lived in coastal California, Oregon and Washington. Violating EO 9066, and subsequent Public Law 503, was a misdemeanor, punishable of up to one year in prison and a $5,000 fine.
The entire West Coast was categorized as a military zone and divided into sectors. The Western Defense Command (WDC) announced curfews which only affected Japanese Americans. Initially, the WDC offered voluntary evacuation for Issei and Nisei in select zones. When only about seven percent of the population observed this, forced evacuation and Civilian Exclusion Orders began appearing in coastal communities. (3)
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