Kato Shinichi did not leave a detailed record of what happened to him as a leading figure in the Japanese community as the editor-in-chief of a Japanese newspaper after the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States. He only wrote that "When war broke out between Japan and the United States, I was imprisoned in the Mizola Internment Camp in Montana, and returned to Japan on the first exchange ship from New York in June of the same year" ("A Centennial History of Japanese Americans in the United States").
In the early hours of December 8, 1941 (December 7, Hawaii time), the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Within hours, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Immigration Bureau began going to the homes of Japanese, German, and Italians, arresting and taking away Issei men from pre-prepared lists, most of whom were local community leaders, such as Japanese language teachers, newspaper editors, and Buddhist monks.
Missoula Internment Camp, Montana
The men were subsequently questioned and some were released, but many were classified as enemy aliens and sent to internment camps in Crystal City, Texas, Kennedy, Seagoville, Fort Lincoln, North Dakota, Fort Stanton, New Mexico, Old Layton Rex, Lordsburg, Santa Fe, Kooskia, Idaho, Fort Missoula, Montana, and Sand Island, Hawaii.
These camps were run by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Army, unlike the internment camps located across the United States where approximately 120,000 first and second generation Japanese Americans living on the West Coast and elsewhere were later sent.
In Kato's own words, he was "held captive" at a detention camp called Fort Missoula in Montana, about 2,000 kilometers northeast of Los Angeles.
In the Americas, fighting had been ongoing between white settlers who had been developing the land since the 17th century and the Native Americans, but Fort Missoula was a base built by white settlers for the so-called Indian War in 1877. When the Japan-US war began, about 2,200 people of Japanese and Italian descent were interned here.
Japan-US exchange ships, like prisoner exchanges
The Japanese interned in the internment camps were people who played important roles in the Japanese community in America, including government officials, trading company and bank employees, journalists, and scholars. Similarly, after the outbreak of the war, there were Americans in Japan and areas under Japanese control who were in a similar position to the Japanese in America. The two groups were in a hostage-like relationship, and so it was decided to exchange them, similar to the prisoner exchanges between the United States and Great Britain. Negotiations were conducted through a neutral country, and an exchange agreement was concluded in May 1942 (Showa 17).
To put this into practice, the "Japan-US exchange ships" were used. Both Japan and the US sent ships carrying people from the other country, which gathered at a designated port in a third country. The passengers were then "exchanged." In the case of the Japan-US exchange ships, the US exchange ships departed from New York. Therefore, those aboard the exchange ships were ultimately gathered in New York from internment camps across the US.
There are no records from Kato himself, but the philosopher Tsurumi Shunsuke, who was also in the United States and returned to Japan on an exchange ship, spoke to literary critic Kato Norihiro and writer Kurokawa Hajime, and in addition, Kurokawa's book "The Japan-America Exchange Ship" (Shinchosha), which he compiled into a record of the exchange ship, describes the events from his detention to his return home on the exchange ship.
Tsurumi was studying abroad at Harvard University in Boston on the East Coast at the time, and was detained and interned at Fort Meade in Maryland before boarding an exchange ship. However, within a few days of the outbreak of the war, more than 100 Japanese trading employees around San Francisco were arrested and held in Immigration Bureau detention centers, and then sent to the Fort Missoula internment camp in Montana.
On the way, the train met up with Japanese detainees being sent from the United States Internment Camp on Terminal Island in the Port of Los Angeles and other places, and headed north, arriving at the Fort Missoula internment camp, a complex of 20 or 30 barracks surrounded by wire in the middle of the wilderness, on the afternoon of the third day. The story from the West Coast is based on "The Actual Conditions of Life of Japanese Detainees" by Yoshiyuki Akiyama, who was then the San Francisco bureau chief of Domei Tsushin.
So, what route did they take from the internment camp to board the exchange ship? In Kato's case, this is also unknown, but at Fort Meade internment camp where Tsurumi was, the Americans asked whether they wanted to board the exchange ship to return home, and after they answered this question, the list of those who would return was announced. At this stage, some people chose to remain and not return home.
The exchange took place in East Africa, in Lorenzo Marquez.
The Americans also announced details about the exchange ship. The ship to be used was the Gripsholm (18,000 tons) from the neutral country of Sweden, and it would carry Japanese nationals residing in North America, Canada, Mexico, Central America, and South America. The ship would depart from New York, pick up passengers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, then head east across the Atlantic Ocean, round the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of the African continent, and finally reach Lourenço Marques (present-day Maputo, the capital of Mozambique), a Portuguese territory located on the eastern side of the continent, where the exchange of Japanese and American citizens would take place.
On the Japanese side, the Nippon Yusen Kaisha Asama Maru (17,000 tons) and the Italian Conte Verde (19,000 tons) were assigned to the mission. The Asama Maru departed Yokohama to Hong Kong and Saigon to pick up returnees from the area, while the Conte Verde departed from Shanghai to pick up Americans from the Japanese-occupied territories of China. Both ships stopped in Singapore and headed west across the Indian Ocean, heading for Lorenzo Marques.
It is likely that Kato also wanted to return to Japan, and so he ended up boarding the exchange ship. As for his wife and children, it is unclear whether they returned to Japan with him, or whether they remained in Hiroshima when he returned in 1940.
In any case, about six months after the outbreak of the war, the procedures for the "exchange" between Japan and the United States were finally completed, and just before midnight on June 18, 1942, the first American exchange ship, the Gripsholm, set sail from New York Harbor. According to documents from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the number of passengers on board was 1,083 in total, including 1,066 Japanese and 17 Thais (from "Japan-US Exchange Ships"). Kato was among them.
The Gripsholm headed south, crossed the equator, and arrived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on July 2nd. It left the port on the 4th and headed east, arriving in Lourenço Marques on July 20th.
Meanwhile, on June 25th, one week after the Gripsholm, the Asama Maru departed from Yokohama Port, and on the 29th the Conte Verde departed from Shanghai Port, both arriving in Lourenzo Marques on July 22nd. The exchange of passengers began the following day, the 23rd. The passengers on the two Japanese ships disembarked and transferred to the Gripsholm, which had come from New York, while the North American passengers on the Gripsholm split up and boarded the Asama Maru, while the Latin American passengers boarded the Conte Verde.
With the "exchange" thus completed, the Japanese ships, Asama Maru and Conte Verde, returned to their home countries on July 26, while the American ship, Gripsholm, returned on the 28th. The two Japanese ships returned to Yokohama on August 20, and the American ship returned to New York on the 25th, completing the exchange successfully.
The exact whereabouts of Kato after he disembarked at the port of Yokohama are not known, but he soon experienced the days of war in his hometown of Hiroshima.
(Titles omitted)
© 2021 Ryusuke Kawai
