Enduring Communities

Betrayal on Trial: Japanese American "Treason" in World War II - Part 2

By Eric L. Muller

Second in a four part series. (click here to read part one)

On July 4, 2008 at the Whose America? Who’s American? Diversity, Civil Liberties, and Social Justice Enduring Communities National Conference in Denver, CO, Professor Eric Muller will tell the remarkable story of the now-forgotten trial of the Shitara Sisters—three sisters accused of treason for aiding in the escape of two German POWs. -ed.

At 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 three of the photographs on the front page under the headline “German Prisoners Spooned with Jap Girls in Trinidad.” The Associated Press then picked up the photos, and within days the story of the “Japanazi Romances” was in newspapers across the country. The military's embarrassment mounted.

An Issei's Six Years of Internment: His Struggle for Justice

By Nobusuke Fukuda

On July 5, 2008, Nobusuke Fukuda will be speaking on the Department of Justice internment camps at the Whose America? Who’s American? Diversity, Civil Liberties, and Social Justice Enduring Communities National Conference in Denver, CO. This article is a preview of his talk. -ed.

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.

Betrayal on Trial: Japanese American "Treason" in World War II - Part 1

By Eric L. Muller

First in a four part series.

On July 4, 2008 at the Whose America? Who’s American? Diversity, Civil Liberties, and Social Justice Enduring Communities National Conference in Denver, CO, Professor Eric Muller will tell the remarkable story of the now-forgotten trial of the Shitara Sisters—three sisters accused of treason for aiding in the escape of two German POWs. -ed.

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 that the women were disloyal only to their husbands, not to their country. The government presented the jury with no evidence that the sisters intended to advance the cause of the Axis Powers or to betray the United States. The jury convicted them of conspiracy to commit treason nonetheless.

The Nikkei in New Mexico

By Andrew B. Russell

New Mexicans were celebrating their racial and cultural diversity long before most other Americans. Often described as a “tri-cultural society,” comprised of Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos, the New Mexico mosaic is actually much more complex. This part of the Southwest is the ancestral homeland of a variety of Indian people, including the Pueblo, Navajo, Apache, and Comanche. Over four hundred years ago, it became the northern frontier of Spain’s vast empire, settled by people already representing Spanish, Indian, African, and mixed bloodlines. The “conquest” of the Southwest by the Americans in the 1800s brought new multitudes to the military forts, supply stations, railroads, mines, boomtowns, ranches, and homesteads of the territory. The majority were “Anglos” (tracing roots back to various parts of Europe), but many African Americans, Chinese, and Mexicans also came to explore opportunities. This great mixing of humanity certainly spawned some epic conflicts, from the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 through the wars against the Navajo and Apache in the late 1800s. On the whole, however, New Mexico has earned its reputation as a place where diversity rules and racists fair poorly.

This famed landscape provides a unique backdrop for studying Japanese Americans in the West.

Words at War: The Sensei of the US Navy Japanese Language School At the University of Colorado, 1942-1946

By David M. Hays

We have heard the meaning and effect of the vocabulary used by the majority aimed at the minority Japanese and Japanese Americans while the United States was at war with the Empire of Japan. However, there is quite another, formerly secret and almost unknown, story of the Japanese American sensei at the US Navy Japanese Language School at the University of Colorado.

Japanese Americans in Texas

By Thomas Walls

Texas is a large state with a diverse population. Although Texans of Japanese ancestry have never been large in number, they have nonetheless made big contributions throughout their unique history. The first significant impact was in the early 1900s, when Japanese initiated at least thirty large-scale attempts to grow rice on the southeast coastal plains around Houston and Beaumont.

Japanese Americans in Utah

By Nancy J. Taniguchi

From earliest human habitation, the area now called Utah exhibited diversity. The prehistoric Fremont and Anasazi built villages and cultivated crops. Goshuite, Paiute, Navajo (Dine’), Shoshone, and Ute cultures replaced them, the last of whom gave its name to the state. Subsequent groups squeezed Native Americans to marginal lands where they remain today.

First, in the 1700s, the Spanish (then the Mexicans) forged the Old Spanish Trail, which bisects Utah. They brought the gift of horses, but also enslaved native people and encouraged an inter-Indian slave trade.

Next, other people of European (and a few of African) descent from the eastern United States sought religious sanctuary in Utah. In 1847, the vanguard of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) arrived. They established a theocracy that would mellow into the state’s dominant force in all aspects of life. To be non-Mormon in Utah is to be a minority. Hence, the Japanese in Utah – definite late-comers – were originally both a racial and a religious exception to the rule.

Japanese Americans in Colorado

By Daryl J. Maeda

Japanese Americans have a long and complex history in Colorado, and their story features struggles and perseverance, discrimination and tolerance. Exploring this history from the 1880s to the present enables us to learn about race and racism, civil liberties, and the responsibilities of individuals in a diverse and democratic society. Colorado is notable among states to the degree that 1) it boasted thriving Japanese American communities before World War II; 2) during the war was the site of an internment camp; 3) served as a major resettlement center for exiles from the West Coast; 4) housed a major military Japanese language school; and 5) was home to an independent and principled ethnic press during the war.