Tofugu Comments - Latest Comments in Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

megan — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:13:07 -0000

my grandma, a full blooded japanese, was living in hawaii at the time with her father, mother and sister. she was originally from stockton california because her father, kenso nushida, was playing baseball. i dont know if you heard of him. but she moved to hawaii when she was ten and the bombing came a year later. but she had family on her mother, jane fujishige's, side living in california. my great-great-grandfather,( i forget his name, but it started with a T) was one of the cooks at the camp in arizona. he had to sell his farm. im not too sure about the story, but i know that he was a good cook and everybody liked his food. unfortunately, he died there.
my grandmother, iris nushida, said that they were going to intern the japanese in hawaii to molokai, but it never happened. the japanese had it tough in hawaii also. i mean, the government took away all their stuff in the house, my grandma was called a Jap by some navy boy, and during school, they felt a separation between the haoles(white kids) and the japanese.
anyway, i really liked what you wrote and it kinda reminded me of that book under the blood red sun, you might have heard of it, but just the part about the sword. haha.
i totally get what your'e saying, im just saying, in hawaii, it wasnt paradise for them.

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

mountaincritter — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 03:37:20 -0000

I picked this topic for a school paper, too. Mainly because the school wasn't going to teach anything about it (shock, shock).

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

vintage_natalia — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:49:49 -0000

At my college we hosted International education week. I had a table set up and had random students answer basic trivia about the world. This just reminded me of a students answer. Someone thought pearl harbor was in japan. He he :)

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

krys — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 04:10:11 -0000

my great grandpa was one of those interned from hawaii...

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

JackTamaki — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:07:39 -0000

My school has the IB Program too! I'm a senior this year, and my extended essay topic is why internment was handled differently in Hawaii, focusing on the economic factors. I wrote a paper on internment a few years ago in a non-IB class, so this seemed like a natural next step. It's going to be about 14 pages long, but I wonder if I can keep it that short. Hahaha. It's really interesting, so I'm having fun with all of my research. :)

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

Kristen — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:07:36 -0000

Very late, but I am glad you wrote about this! My family was interned during WW2 and such. But I work in a "Nikkei Traditions" gift shop that sells a documentary about why the Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not interned.

I find it very cool that something like this was posted! There aren't too many people out there who know about it.

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

Ana_chan — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:32:39 -0000

I'm no feminist, but I'm not sure I liked the "you know women" part either.

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

Ana_chan — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:19:49 -0000

Nice article! Writing about something teachers usually don't specialize in is nice. I guess we're all sick of repeating the same old quotes over and over--it reminds me of a friend who couldn't be bothered about learning over-used quotes; he just put his own thoughts and made up a name. Nice technique, too bad it won't work above a certain level T__T
I'm doing a short thesis--don't ask, the French schooling system is just plain weird--on the Japanese American Internment and I appreciate the fact that people are still interested. Sadly, most people in France don't even know about the internment in the US. So thanks for this article!

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

karab1n3r_k90 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:29:51 -0000

i know the reason!
because the japanese may know the top secret things
confidential missions and they may know what will the army and the opposing army do...

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

Viet — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:36:38 -0000

Hahaha Mr. Wolf. The guy could totally have yakuza street cred if he cut off his broken pinky.

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

Fitzy — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:09:25 -0000

It must have been, since you took off to Japan after that and then you just had regular non-IB classes for the most part when you came back. I think... I just remember making retarded busy work papers in his class and we had to use the CIA factbook all the time >.>

I also totally thought I would be smarter then I was 10 years ago, but I still have the attention span of a 13 year old sadly... There was a pinnacle I think at around 19, totally lost it now. Good thing I'm going into film, blame everything on the producers and go from there.

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

koichi — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:53:47 -0000

I don't think so ... I can't remember which teacher it was, but it was the IB paper we had to do. Maybe this was at the end of middle school and not high school... I think I may have switched parts of my life up, come to think of it...though, I'm pretty sure it was for some IB class, and it was some research thing everyone had to do, which doesn't sound very middle schooly. Who knows, memory has gone downhill. We old man, we old.

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

Fitzy — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:50:15 -0000

Is this the paper you wrote for Mr. Wolf?

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

DudeB — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:59:28 -0000

Good job on doing your research. There is a lot of history that public schools do not teach us. In fact, most of the stuff they don't teach us is all the good stuff. I myself am an Asian-American studies minor and have done a lot of personal research on many Asians Americans and their heritage as well as our history here in America. Good job sir.

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:59:25 -0000

St is correct. Not a single American of Japanese ancestry was ever charged with sabotage/treason/etc. Internment was racist bullshat of the highest order. There was never any "military necessity" for it, and the people in charge knew it too.

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

WOTDsctoo — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:01:20 -0000

That was very informative!

I think writing about things your teachers (or other people for that matter) don't know much about is a good idea. In addition to possibly scoring higher, it makes the report seem like it actually has a point. Regurgitation of commonly known things, like reports are usually done, just feels so weightless. More original reports/investigations are more fulfilling!!!

Anyway, your grandmother was a sneaky one. The sword wielding relatives should have lived with her in Hawaii.

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

BZou — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:30:15 -0000

Wow, I never knew about this thing dealing in Hawaii, the history books in school really did skip over this whole chapter. And yeah it was a horrible thing that the Japanese on mainland America was forced to give up their lives just because of some paranoid white folks in government.

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

emiko — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:47:32 -0000

reminds me of 'farwell to manzanar'

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

St — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:47:15 -0000

"My family’s sword was taken. Bastards!"

Oh you mean that's your family's swords my family has been using as an oversized toenail clipper for the last half century?

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

St — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:37:23 -0000

Well, besides the economic aspect of interning one third of your population, there are four other reason why Japanese-Americans were not put into internment camps
1. Less anti-Asian sentiment compared to the states on the west coast
2. No statehood, meaning no outlet for existing anti-Japanese sentiment on the federal level
3. Hawaii was already under martial law since december 7th 1941, so there was no perceived need for any special meassures.
4. The persons involved. Delos Emmons, commanding general in Hawaii, seems to have operated on the assumption that Japanese-Americans were loyal citizens. His counterpart on the west coast, general John DeWitt, on the other hand was much more racist, assuming that loyalty was determined by ancestral blood ties, hence that Japanese-Americans were disloyal.

"Did a lot of Japanese people actively (for a certain value of active :P ) support Japan during WW2?" In all seriousness, there wasn't a single case of Japanese-Americans sabotaging the US war effort or actively supporting Japan during the entire war.

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

Kurisu — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:03:36 -0000

Yea, I noticed the article a couple weeks ago, but couldn't fully comprehend it all because my kanji reading skills still sucks（￣へ￣*）but then again, I've had my fair share of dining in Hawaii, so I can some-what relate.

And for the record, Matsumoto's shave ice is the business, anyone says otherwise, 'yo mama'. The only thing bad about Matsumoto's is that the lines can sometimes get long.

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

koichi — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:47:11 -0000

Kinda wrote about that over on koichiben:
http://www.koichiben.com/2008/07/hawaii-no-oish...

but, i definitely don't feel qualified to talk about this...maybe erin will, since she's the one who actually lives there 0_o

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

Kurisu — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:43:17 -0000

Reading this makes me want to go back to Hawaii and visit the memorial at Pearl Harbor, then maybe stop by the swap meet at Aloha Stadium (＾∇＾) I need some new shorts.

To keep this Hawaii x Japanese theme going, how about mentioning the Japanese influence on Hawaiian cuisine, spam musubi anyone? （￣ー￣）ニヤリ~

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

Kurisu — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:28:09 -0000

I was thinking of the same book when I saw this article in my RSS Feed. Decent book, unfortunately I had to read it twice while in school; once in high school and a second time in my first year of college.

Re: Why Japanese in Hawaii Weren’t Interned during WWII

Livvi_Spatula — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:27:42 -0000

"She would walk around the streets of Nu’uanu, picking up cigarette packaging and pulling out the aluminum linings, then send it back to Japan so they could make weapons and bombs."

Did a lot of Japanese people actively (for a certain value of active :P ) support Japan during WW2?