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September 10, 2007

American Inquistion: Questions and Answers, Part 2

I
n about a month, the University of North Carolina Press will publish my new book "American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II." It tells the story of the enormous system of bureaucratic tribunals that was created between 1943 and 1945 to decide which Japanese Americans were "loyal" and which were "disloyal."

The Press has released a Q-and-A about the book. Over the next couple of weeks I'll be publishing excerpts from the Q-and-A here at IsThatLegal. The first was here -- and here is the second:

Q: The Japanese loyalty questionnaire is central to your book. Can you explain what the form was and the significance it had for Japanese internees?

A: The loyalty questionnaire was a twenty-eight-question form that the government forced all Japanese American internees to fill out while behind barbed wire in spring of 1943. It tried to probe each internee's work and education background, reading habits, and familiarity with Japanese and American cultural, religious, political, and linguistic traditions. It also asked each internee whether he was willing to serve in the U.S. military and to forswear allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. These forms became a centerpiece of the government's administrative efforts to adjudicate the loyalty or disloyalty of American citizens of Japanese ancestry.

For the internees, the loyalty questionnaires provoked intense anxiety and controversy. Already a year into captivity, many internees saw the questions as a series of vague traps that could only force them deeper into incarceration. Especially provocative was the question asking them to renounce loyalty to the Emperor—a loyalty that none of the American citizens in the camps had ever sworn or announced in the first place. The questionnaires were greeted with wariness, confusion, and even open hostility and resistance in the camps.

Posted by Eric at September 10, 2007 10:37 AM