Analysis: An Interview with an Older Nisei
"Analysis: An Interview with an Older Nisei" explores the experiences of Japanese Americans during World War II, particularly focusing on the internment of individuals of Japanese descent following Executive Order 9066. This order, enacted in early 1942, led to the forced relocation and detention of over 120,000 Japanese Americans, primarily impacting the Nisei—second-generation Japanese Americans born in the U.S. The interview captures the sentiments of an older Nisei, who expresses profound loyalty to the United States while grappling with the injustices faced by his community, including loss of property, livelihoods, and dignity.
The narrative highlights the discrimination that Japanese immigrants (Issei) and their American-born children (Nisei) faced prior to the war, including social ostracism and legal barriers to citizenship. The interviewee's frustrations are evident as he questions the rationale behind the internment, contrasting the treatment of Japanese Americans with that of other ethnic groups during the war. This historical analysis serves not only to document the personal impact of wartime policies but also to address broader themes of nationality, loyalty, and the struggle for civil rights within the context of American democracy. Understanding this perspective provides valuable insight into the complexities of American identity and the repercussions of racial prejudice in times of crisis.
Analysis: An Interview with an Older Nisei
Date: July 26, 1943
Author: Morris E. Opler
Genre: interview
Summary Overview
As the United States' involvement in World War II unfolded in early 1942, certain influential military officials—especially General John L. DeWitt—focused on what they perceived to be the threat of subversive activity by people of Japanese birth or ancestry living in the United States. President Franklin D. Roosevelt followed DeWitt's recommendation and signed Executive Order 9066, which stated that anyone deemed a potential threat to national security could be detained in internment camps. Typically given only one or two days to put their affairs in order, Japanese Americans, such as the “older Nisei” interviewed in this document, had to leave their lives behind to be transported to detention facilities in remote areas of the American West for the duration of the war.
Defining Moment
Not referred to by name in the interview, the “older Nisei” was one of more than one hundred thousand Japanese internees, many of whom could have told similar stories. Japanese immigrants began coming to the United States in very small numbers in the decades after the Civil War; as of 1890, there were only a little more than two thousand. But in the early part of the twentieth century, as Japan began to modernize, immigration to the United States increased to the point that there were about seventy thousand immigrants from Japan by 1910 and more than eighty thousand by 1920—a small but growing number compared with other ethnic groups. In 1930, about 70 percent of the Japanese population in the United States lived in California. (Though Hawaii had a longer-established and sizable Japanese population, it was not yet a state.)
Japanese immigrants (Issei) and their American-born children (Nisei) faced much discrimination in California, and they were often targets of racial epithets, demeaning behavior, segregation, and even violence. The vast majority worked in agriculture for extremely low wages, and some worked as railroad construction labor and in the canneries along the Pacific coast. During the early twentieth century, however, a number of Issei and Nisei went into business for themselves. As of 1909, there were between three thousand and thirty-five hundred Japanese-owned businesses in the West, many of which catered to the specific needs of the Japanese community. Others began to farm for themselves, either purchasing, leasing, or signing share-crop agreements. As the desire for fresh produce increased in the West Coast's burgeoning cities, Japanese farmers thrived, purchasing more and more land.
In order to live successfully in the United States, Japanese Americans banded together. They purchased goods from Japanese-owned businesses. Japanese farmers formed cooperatives to purchase goods at reasonable prices. Though many Issei dreamed of returning to Japan once they had enough money, the Nisei, soon outnumbering their parents, considered the United States their home country and had no plans to move to Japan. Laws passed during the 1910s made it impossible for the Issei to become citizens or to own land, so they depended upon their children to act as the landowners in their families. With the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act, the influx of new Issei almost completely ceased, while the Nisei became more numerous.
When World War II commenced, and the United States joined the conflict after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, life became even more difficult for both the Issei and Nisei. Though the US government commissioned a study that showed the loyalty of the Japanese American community, louder voices such as that of General John L. DeWitt did not trust Japanese in the United States and called for them to be confined for the duration of the war. In early 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, setting the stage for both first- and second-generation Japanese to be relocated to remote detention camps.
Author Biography
Though the “older Nisei” interviewed is never identified, his interviewer, Morris E. Opler, is. Born on May 16, 1907, in Buffalo, New York, Opler was an anthropologist who began his fieldwork chronicling American Indian life after earning a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1933. During World War II, he conducted anthropological analysis at the Japanese internment center in Manzanar, California, where this interview was conducted in 1943. After the war, he advocated for Japanese American rights, authoring two legal briefs in their defense, heard by the Supreme Court. For the rest of his career he worked as a professor at several universities, including Cornell. He died on May 13, 1996, in Norman, Oklahoma.
Document Analysis
The older Nisei interviewed in July 1943—a little over a year after the Japanese American community was forced into detention centers—was a resident of the Japanese internment camp at Manzanar, California. The man's answers focus on two themes: his loyalty to the United States (and, by extension, the loyalty of all of the Japanese Americans being interned), and his disillusionment and anger with the fact that all Japanese Americans had been deemed disloyal and forced to abandon their entire lives.
During the interview, the Nisei says he was born in Hawaii, which was a US territory at the time, and has never been to Japan. He says he moved to the West Coast and built a family and a life. He has never done anything that might demonstrate disloyalty to the United States or allegiance to Japan. He also states that his wife owned a beauty parlor, he was a successful gardener, and they owned a home before being interned. Because of their displacement, he says that he and his wife have lost everything they had, including their life savings. He is frustrated and angry, asking “What kind of Americanism do you call that? That's not democracy. That's not the American way, taking everything away from people.”
The man is indignant; he asks, “Where are the Germans? Where are the Italians?”—seeming to question why US residents from nations of the other Axis powers were not interned at the same rates as the Japanese. For the most part, Germans and Italians were interned because of their political affiliations or actions, while all Japanese Americans were rounded up based solely on their ethnic identity.
Glossary
furlough: a vacation or leave of absence granted to an enlisted person
Bibliography and Additional Reading
Takahashi, Jerrold Haruo. Nisei/Sansei: Shifting Japanese American Identities and Politics. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1997. Print.
Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Boston: Back Bay, 1989. Print.
Weglyn, Michi Nishiura. Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1996. Print.
Yoo, David K. Growing Up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California, 1929–49. Champagne: U of Illinois P, 2000. Print.