Interesting story Re WWII Japanese Internment
 

"The Ni'ihau Incident"

When Pearl Harbor was attacked on the morning December 7, 1941, Japanese Airman 1st Class Shigenori Nishikaichi was among the raiders, escorting a group of bombers in his Zero fighter. During the attacks Shigenori Nishikaichi’s fuel tank was punctured by a bullet. Nishikaichi was able to fly and safely land on Ni‘ihau.

Nishikaichi’s choice of Ni‘ihau was, apparently, not random. The Japanese Imperial Navy wrongly believed the island was uninhabited and had designated it as an emergency landing site. The Japanese had a submarine standing-by off-shore to rescue any Zeros – but it’s not clear why they ordered it away prematurely, leaving him alone on the island.

Ni‘ihau residents were initially unaware of the Pearl Harbor attack. Nishikaichi was rescued by Howard Kaleohano who confiscated his pistol and papers, but treated him kindly and took him home to be given a meal. However, Nishikaichi was apprehended when the gravity of the situation became apparent.

Nishikaichi then sought and received the assistance of three locals of Japanese descent (Yoshio Harada and Ishimatsu & Irene Shintani) in overcoming his captors, finding weapons and taking several hostages. In the end, Nishikaichi was killed by Niʻihauan Ben Kanahele, who was wounded in the process, and one of Nishikaichi’s accomplices, Harada, committed suicide.

Some believe that single bullet set into motion events that would eventually lead to the US interning more than one-hundred thousand people of Japanese heritage – despite their citizenship – in concentration camps for the remainder World War II.

Novelist William Hallstead argues that the Niʻihau incident had an influence on decisions leading to the Japanese American internment. According to Hallstead, the behavior of Shintani and the Haradas were included in a Navy report.

In the official report, authored by Navy Lieutenant C. B. Baldwin and dated January 26, 1942, Baldwin wrote: “The fact that the two Niʻihau Japanese who had previously shown no anti-American tendencies went to the aid of the pilot when Japan domination of the island seemed possible … indicate likelihood that Japanese residents previously believed loyal to the United States may aid Japan if further Japanese attacks appear successful.”
The particulars of the case “indicate a strong possibility that other Japanese residents of the Territory of Hawaii, and Americans of Japanese descent … may give valuable aid to Japanese invaders in cases where the tide of battle is in favor of Japan and where it appears to residents that control of the district may shift from the United States to Japan.” (Baldwin)

Ultimately, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066, issued February 19, 1942, which allowed local military commanders to designate “military areas” as “exclusion zones,” from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from “military areas” and “military zones.”

While the incident at Ni‘ihau may not have led inevitably to the evacuation and internment of Japanese Americans, it is believed to have exerted influence in the investigation that ultimately led to the internment Executive Order.

On February 19, 1976, Executive Order 9066 was rescinded by President Gerald Ford.
In 1988, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation said that government actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership”.

The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6-billion in reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned and their heirs.

An interesting twist in all of this is that just as the Nishikaichi events ended on Ni‘ihau, a boatload of soldiers – led by a Japanese American, Lt. Jack Mizuha – reached Ni‘ihau.
Mizuha would later serve in a storied Japanese American 100th Battalion unit in Italy, where he was severely wounded. Still later, he would become the first attorney general of the new state of Hawai‘i – and eventually a justice on the state’s Supreme Court.

Ben Kanahele was awarded the Medal of Merit and the Purple Heart and Howard Kaleohano the Medal of Freedom.

Ni‘ihau Incident | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

I didn't know this.

Living in Oregon, my friends with Japanese ancestry have stories of the camps from parents and grandparents. Not a high point in our history.

Interesting, I've done a fair amount of light reading and research (on the Internet) about the internment, and I've never heard of this. I suppose that's not surprising.

Ni'ihau is owned by the Robinson family, and is only populated by full-blooded Hawaiians who speak Hawaiian (with the exception of Robinsons, who have haole ancestry) .. so it was surprising for me to read of Japanese living on the island back in 1941. Perhaps this incident led to the exclusion of Japanese (and other non-Hawaiians) from Ni'ihau ? ..

Sorry, but no. That story has nothing to do at all with the internment.

More likely was due to the fact that the emperor of Japan attacked the USA. The anger, suspicion, and hate were directed toward Japanese who looked like the new adversaries. It was sort of like the California bullet train. It sounded like a good idea at the time to those in charge, and then it became more of a liability to those in charge when it became clear that they only victimized people who had nothing to do with the attack or the war.

This is one of the things about the USA that I find interesting.

We had STRONG anti Japanese propaganda, even kids cartoons from Disney.

The Japanese did things in SE Asia that still cause animosity today.

They brutalized US prisoners.

Yet despite this, the hatred for the Japanese died off with the generation that lived it from the United States.

Leading products in many areas of the U.S. are Japanese brands.

What is the difference that these racial issues faded so fast, yet other racial issues have not?

https://mashable.com/2016/10/09/japanese-american-evacuations/#GJBY8y9V3kqB

Not enough Japanese votes to be worth pandering to.

I was raised with the narrative that you outlined for why there was Japanese interment camps.

The OP story should have been in the linked article you had for a balanced view of history.
This is the first I heard of support of a Japanese combatant by people of Japanese decent living in the US.
It defiantly ads some legitimacy to interning Japanese in the US during the war and it was not all unrealistic fear based as I thought before.

It is like much of current version of the Civil War (rewritten to be PC). Detailed story here:

https://www.historynet.com/the-niihau-incident.htm

One has to go no further than Wikipedia to find American traitors from WW2 that were Japanese Americans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Allied_traitors_during_World_War_II

Just for PERSPECTIVE....

below is a picture of my first cousin twice removed. He volunteered and was deployed to the Philippines.
I never had a chance to meet the man, he was murdered by Japanese soldiers during the Bataan death march. Along with an estimated 10,000 other prisoners.
it was easier to bayonet them than to feed them.

My grandfather was lucky, he was pulled out of Kwajalein a few weeks earlier so he could be sent to rebuild Henderson field on Guadalcanal. Otherwise he too would have likely been murdered at the hands of the Japanese on that infamous death march.

You can read about it here along with just a few of the many other atrocities committed by the Japanese during WWII.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/heroic-us-coast-guard-cutter-crew.html
It's fortunate for them that we didn't have more of those special bombs.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1550767874.jpg

The internment may not have been the country's finest moment, but I don't fault the leaders for doing what they thought needed to be done under the circumstances. I hate the 20/20 hindsight historical revisionism BS.

To Sammy's point: last summer I read a library copy of the "The Forgotten Highlander," a biography of a scots soldier imprisoned after the fall of Singapore. Early in the book where he first starts detailing the horrors the POWs suffered at the hands of the Japanese captors, someone had scrawled in the margin "And they wonder why we dropped the bomb." I had to laugh at that in spite of the subject matter.

Japan surrendered unconditionally. We beat them into submission with just two nuclear bombs after destroying their navy and infrastructure with conventional bombs and bullets. We lost a lot of men, they lost a lot more. They started a fight they could never win, but they gave it a good try.

One of my now dead friends served in the Marines and in the pacific. He saw many examples first hand of the atrocities committed by "Japs" and he flat refused to say the word Japanese, and he said Japs with a real hatred I had never come across before. The Germans were brutal, but the Japanese took brutality to a new level.

Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton and the rest of the hucksters are not Japanese

Yes, it seems quite a few people do not know about this. Also, I think I have heard that we also interned a few Europeans (Germans, Italians??). By few, probably less than 1,000, I am not sure.


On a related note, the local public radio station has been running a a series of one hour shows on this topic because of the anniversary of Executive order 9066 (Japanese internment). I heard one of the shows previously, and one thing I noticed is that all the people being interviewed were of Japanese descent, no 'opposing' view.


Edit: For those who are interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Italian_Americans

You don't suppose this Hallstead guy isn't just trying to sell books, do you?

The truth is that there were Japanese Americans, who were born in the US, who were sympathetic to Japan. That is a fact. My dad's cousin's family moved back to Japan rather than go to the camps. There, they were shunned by Japanese citizens, and starved. They had to steal food to survive, and ended up coming back to the U.S. Then there were the vast majority who went to the camps, after being forced to sell or leave almost all of their possessions behind. No one at the time really blamed Roosevelt for the evacuation. They sort of blamed Japan, but most were pragmatic, having survived through the worst year of the Great Depression, which for farmers living on the west coast, was 1932.


I also don't think you are REALLY trying to suggest that there was 'legitimacy' to the evacuation of the ethnicity of entire West coast of the continental USA based on this one incident. I mean, tell me if I'm wrong about that, or if you don't think popular fear had reached a level in a month and a half after the attack at Pearl Harbor to cause a rather hasty act on it's own.

Have also met similar.

Have also met some that forgave.

I believe the answer is multi-fold.

First, the Japanese changed aspects of their culture.

They went from honor/dishonor and gradually implemented our idea of right/wrong.

It is difficult for us to grasp as a society that does has a sense of right and wrong ingrained an entire country that does not.

So one part is a change of culture.

Another part is family, the Japanese had very strong family ties in their culture.

Something the descendants of slaves where families are easily broken up by being bought and sold do not.

Then there is the aspect referred to already, something I consider less important. There are people motivated to keep this contentious, motivated to prevent healing. But leaders need willing followers, and not all the blame can be put out into this category. We are however putting out policies that will help perpetuate the situation.

Not that I'm justifying anything, but the Japanese were also fairly brutal to their own in the military. Lower ranks were often treated very harshly by upper ranks, so the poor treatment of "inferiors" by "superiors" was an ingrained part of the culture. On top of that, there's the fact that Japanese culture thought that you should fight to the death rather than surrender, and that if you did surrender, it was dishonorable. Lots about their culture made things that they did "ok" in their book.

Yes, Unit 731 did horrible things. And the Allies performed minimal prosecution of the folks from Unit 731 in exchange for the results of their "research". There were some folks prosecuted, and then most of their sentences were reduced or commuted.

My best friend growing up in California was Japanese. His parent both went into internment camps during WWII.

I never heard Mr. and Mrs. K speak about that time. My friend said that his parents where not willing to let those years define them and they got on about the business of becoming successful and raising a family.

Both of which they did spectacularly well.

I suspect the huge difference in culture was part of the reason for the internment. We could understand the motives of the Germans and the Axis solders, but the motivation to die rather than surrender and the apparent ease at the Japanese willingness to die or commit suicide instead of being captured played a big part. We just could not get our minds around that. And when the did capture American or our allies they were stunned that we would surrender and not fight to the death. Thus they treated captives as less than human.

A German American with no German accent was impossible to pick from a crowd by just looks. Picking an "oriental" out of a group of Caucasians is pretty simple. Rounding up all German descendants would be an impossible task but pretty easy for Japanese.

You are right, the truth is they were Japanese Americans that burned the house down of their neighbor, supported an enemy combatant, and for days terrorized the town they had lived in peacefully for years. It was not one Japanese American but three that sympathized and supported a enemy solider over their adapted nation.
What a piece of history that needs to be told when talking about the interment of Japanese Americans during WWII.
Does it make it right? No. does it justify it? not really. does it ad to the reason why? Yes.
So this story should be told when talking about the interment of Japanese during WWII, if we want a more complete understanding of history.

Different time, different viewpoints. Any culture that would send pilots out on kamikaze missions or would disembowel themselves if they dishonored themselves is totally foreign to us...as those who would execute prisoners, behead them or use them for "experiments". Similarly, it was pretty easy to fear the Japanese after a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. We did some brutal things as well...but different.

As far as Germans and Italian nationals (not U.S. citizens)...they were interred both in WW1 and WW2 in the U.S. as were POWs. There were only about 12k in WW2...so about 10% of the number of Japanese.

Given that my entire family on both sides was shipped off to Arkansas, I can say that Glen is the closest to being correct. Ficke, I respectfully disagree with you 100%. Fint, I think you sort of embody the same sort of thinking that they had in the 1940s. I would say that only you could draw some sort of moral equivalent between say, a 5 year old daughter of some Japanese farmer who grows strawberries on a California farm, and a Kamikaze pilot. That is what you did there. You would indict an entire culture as deserving of imprisonment. I think the only thing that you and I agree on was that it was a natural human reaction to fear all of the "yellow bastard" Japanese people.

But if you want to know the perspective of how the Japanese here in America thought, because that is what you SHOULD be asking, is that the Japanese American people who were born here and had built up a life were horrified and even more terrified than their White friends were. You have to understand that they had school friends, colleagues, and neighbors who were outraged that they had been locked up and all of their land, possessions, and businesses were taken away from them. These were people who were farmers, teachers, government employees, artists, and college professors. They all lost everything.


If anyone was interested, I could upload footage that my grandpa took of the actual concentration camp and the people living there.

You are mistaken. I draw no equivalent to anything (much less between kamikaze pilots and strawberry farmers)...but, the facts are the facts. Japanese culture (in Japan) was far different than that of most folks in our country. Certainly their military had a different code. Although not strawberry farmers, the traitors at Niʻihau were bee keepers. Lots of folks were scared. To be cautious probably was justified...but as we know...things went too far (confiscation, internment, etc.). Certainly, they should have not lost property, etc. We did the same with Germans and Italians in WW1 and 2 (who were not citizens) and native Americans just before that. Of course, hindsight is 20/20. On the other hand, maybe there were those among the "locked up" that would have sided with their brothers in Japan (like those in Niʻihau) or Germans that would have aided their homeland (as noted earlier, there were traitors of both Japanese and German ancestry in WW2). For recent immigrants, it must have been very difficult to side with their new country against the homeland. Perhaps the internment actually prevented some of them having to decide and it worked. The country was also very angry and to some extent, it might have also protected them from civil violence. As stated, hindsight...

Regardless, we do know that the story of Niʻihau and it being part of the rational for the internment (along with intel assessment) is not often told (as demonstrated by how few here knew about it.

Footage of the camp would be very interesting.

No, you don't understand. Japan had a caste system. If you were born a son of a shoe repairman, you'll die a shoe repairman.

The first generation Japanese who moved here HATED that system. My great-grandpa hated the Emperor. He loved the freedom, the wide open spaces, and opportunity of America. He loved driving around in an American pickup truck. He said that his proudest achievement was becoming an American citizen in the 1950s. He loved this country even though the FBI tortured my grandpa. And this was a man who settled thousands of acres of farmland, and was sort of a Japanese Sam Walton. My siblings were all taught that the USA is the greatest country in the history of the world. We all wave the American flag and are as conservative and hard working as it gets. I don't doubt that any of my family would die to defend this country, but none were more anti-Japan and pro-USA than the one who came here and made a life out of nothing.

Please do.

Your perspective is excellent.

I think that most Japanese immigrants (and most Asian immigrants) were/are fabulous. Moreso than most. They are smart, industrious and patriotic. On the other hand, some Japanese-Americans (not many) still sided with Japan. We have immigrants from the ME that side with AQ and ISIS. Some are second and third generation. Some are even not of ME lineage. The folks that shot up a Christmas Party in CA were reportedly model citizens....enjoying the American dream. Sometimes folks see their loyalty different than others.

It sounds like your family were fabulous immigrants and patriots...just like my German and native American family members were (although some were locked up as well)...not to mention my horse-thieving Scot-Irish ancestors. At the time, folks thought they were doing the right thing. Many who fought in the Civil War on both sides were noble and brave (despite what the current version of history tells us). Hindsight is 20/20.

That's awesome. That is a huge part of what makes America both great and good.

Thank you for your post. I would absolutely be interested in any information that you are willing to offer whether that be information that you are willing to post or send in PM or footage that you can upload. Thank you