Enduring Communities
Enduring Communities: The Japanese American Experience in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah is an ambitious three-year project dedicated to re-examining an often-neglected chapter in U.S. history and connecting it with current issues of today. These articles stem from that project and detail the Japanese American experiences from different perspectives.
Stories from this series
Records at the National Archives—Rocky Mountain Region Relating to the Japanese American Internment Experience
May 22, 2008 • Eric Bittner
The wartime removal of 110,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans living along the West Coast of the United States to internment camps situated in remote areas in the country’s interior, formally initiated when President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, was a sweeping act that continues to have ramifications for individuals, families, communities and the national conscience. The relocation process carried out by the federal government resulted in the creation of many “official records” which can now …
Betrayal on Trial: Japanese American "Treason" in World War II - Part 3 of 4
May 20, 2008 • Eric L. Muller
>> Part 2E. Criminal Intent Vanishes on the Road to TrialIt was also the last day that anyone in the government gave more than fleeting thought to what the actual intent of the Shitara sisters might have been. In order to prove the sisters guilty of treason, the government would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that in helping Haider and Loescher escape from Camp Trinidad, they intended to give aid and comfort to an enemy of the United …
Four Hirabayashi Cousins: A Question of Identity - Part 1 of 5
May 17, 2008 • James A. Hirabayashi
The sudden onset of World War II on December 7, 1941, thrust the issue of identity to the forefront for all Japanese Americans. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the War Department to prescribe military areas from which any or all persons might be excluded. This order served as the basis for Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt to issue the curfew and exclusion orders. Public Proclamation No. 3 established a curfew from 8:00 …
Betrayal on Trial: Japanese American "Treason" in World War II - Part 2 of 4
May 13, 2008 • Eric L. Muller
>> Part 1At first, the photographs seemed little more than a curiosity to the state and federal law enforcement officers who were interrogating Haider and Loescher. The police chief of Las Vegas, New Mexico, decided to keep them as souvenirs, and he showed them around to his friends. One of his friends, however, showed them to the editor of the local newspaper, and he, in turn, gave them to the Denver Post. On Sunday, October 24, 1943, the Post ran …
An Issei's Six Years of Internment: His Struggle for Justice
May 8, 2008 • Nobusuke Fukuda
My father, Yoshiaki Fukuda, was a minister for the Konko religion. He was born in Nara prefecture in 1898, raised in the village of Kamikitayama, and graduated from Matsumoto College and the Imperial University in Tokyo. He attended the Konko seminary in Okayama ken and came to the United States in 1930 with his wife, Shinko, to do missionary work. He established the Konko Church of San Francisco and became responsible for the Konko Churches in America. On December 7, …
Betrayal on Trial: Japanese American "Treason" in World War II - Part 1 of 4
May 6, 2008 • Eric L. Muller
This Article tells the story of the federal treason trial of three Japanese American sisters for helping their paramours, two German soldiers, to flee from a Colorado prisoner-of-war camp in October of 1943. At the time, the story seemed to confirm the suspicion of national disloyalty that had forced the sisters and tens of thousands of other Japanese Americans from their West Coast homes in the spring of 1942. But a careful review of the record of the case reveals …