Debate over interned `resisters' reopens painful wartime wound

A test of loyalty, patriotism and constitutional rights that divided Japanese-Americans 55 years ago is once again threatening to resurrect resentments that many thought were quietly buried in the past.

While thousands of Japanese-American men chose to serve in segregated battalions during World War II, several hundred others living in internment camps chose to defy orders to report for military duty -- demanding that their country first restore their rights as citizens and release their families from camp. The majority of those young resisters were from Santa Clara County, sent to live in the internment camp at Heart Mountain, Wyo.

That fateful resistance tore apart the tightknit Japanese-American population of 1944.

On Sunday, the debate is expected to be ignited again at the district meeting of the Japanese American Citizens League in San Lorenzo. At issue is a JACL resolution that calls for a formal apology to the men they call ``resisters of conscience'' for not recognizing their ``principled stand'' and asks that they be properly honored at an appropriate public ceremony.

But a group of impassioned, decorated Japanese-American World War II veterans and their supporters plan to oppose that resolution, saying it dilutes their sacrifices and patriotism, casts a pall over their military service and paints a revisionist history of the climate of the time.

``The veterans are opposed to saying the word `apology,' '' said Sukeo ``Skates'' Oji, a Walnut Creek resident who served in the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) during the war and a spokesman for the veterans. ``The draft resisters stood up for their civil rights and so should be recognized for doing so. But an apology is going too far.''

Mits Koshiyama, though, doesn't think the apology goes quite far enough.

The San Jose resident was one of those resisters. He clearly recalls the JACL and its supporters labeling him and other resisters as ``traitors'' and ``seditious rabble-rousers.'' Their act of defiance -- refusing to go for their physicals after receiving their draft notices -- led to the largest organized protest over internment and the largest trial for draft resistance in U.S. history. More than 300 Japanese-American men -- most in their early 20s -- were convicted of draft evasion and served two to three years in federal prisons before being pardoned by President Truman.

Defeated by the justice system and their own community, most simply faded into postwar America, refusing to talk about the resistance movement.

``The apology should be very specific,'' Koshiyama, 74, said of the JACL's resolution. ``We were never resistant to being drafted -- look at the court papers. That's what's lost on the veterans.''

The point of the protest, Koshiyama noted, was to challenge the order that imprisoned Americans of Japanese ancestry.

Though the rhetoric has volleyed back and forth for decades, both sides can agree that neither the veterans nor the resisters can blame each other for decisions that were made in the midst of the war, and each side must respect the other's decisions.

``We all went and did what we thought was right,'' said Marvin Uratsu, 74, president of the MIS of Northern California, a veterans group. ``It's time to take away the anger and rancor and find reconciliation. It can't go on.''

The group pushing the controversy to the surface is JACL -- the nation's oldest and most influential Asian-American civil rights organization. During the war, its motto was to ``fight discrimination against people of Japanese ancestry.''

It did so by encouraging Japanese-Americans to prove their loyalty by complying with internment orders. It also proposed the formation of the segregated battalions of young men who would volunteer for dangerous missions. Those Japanese-American infantry units -- the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team -- would sustain the highest casualty rate. The soldiers who survived would become among the most decorated of World War II.

``You have to understand the vast discrimination of the time to understand the thinking of the JACL,'' said Karl Kinaga, 76, a retired San Jose attorney and JACL member who says he's opposed to the apology but stresses that is not ``anti-resister.''

``Minorities didn't have rights as written in the Constitution. The JACL wanted to change the attitude of the American people about the Japanese. The way you did that was that you went to war for your country. By doing what they did, the resisters did not help the cause of the (Japanese-Americans) at the time.''

During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the JACL was criticized for its complacency during the war. Today, many Japanese-Americans acknowledge that they would not have gained acceptance as quickly or received redress had it not been for those 33,000 soldiers of the 100th battalion and the 442nd.

Yet at the same time, there is also pride among the community, especially the third- and fourth-generation Japanese-Americans, that there were men like the resisters who raised the question of constitutionality and civil rights. It's this new-found support that has prompted some resisters to talk publicly.

But Kinaga and other veterans wonder if the resolution would be there at all if the younger members of the JACL understood what it was like to be of Japanese descent in 1941. He says the current interest in the resisters, from two documentaries to a Web site (http://www.resisters.com/), romanticize what really happened.

Claire Omura, a member of the San Jose JACL chapter, which will take its local vote to Sunday's district meeting, said her chapter is opposing the resolution because ``we thought the word `apology' was an insult to the vets.''

She adds: ``But the sansei and yonsei (third- and fourth-generation Japanese-Americans) in our group were very much for the resisters and the stance they took.''

Meanwhile, John Hayashi, a JACL district governor, is wondering if the JACL needs to reconsider its role in the debate.

``Perhaps we should have had an open discussion about the wording because there seems to be much misinterpretation about the intentions,'' said the leader for the JACL chapters that cover Northern California, Western Nevada, Hawaii and Japan.

The resolution must pass in all eight JACL districts before it can be adopted on a national level.

``I've been asked, `Does this resolution mean that the resisters were right and the veterans wrong?' '' said Hayashi, a San Francisco tax attorney for Wells Fargo. ``Of course it doesn't.''

Roger Daniels, an expert on internment as a history professor at the University of Cincinnati, said the resurfacing of this issue is so explosive partly because it was suppressed for so long.

``The draft resisters were simply non-persons for years,'' he said by e-mail. ``I believe that this issue will continue to create strong feelings as long as significant numbers of resisters and World War II veterans are still active -- that is until well into the next century. This will be true, however the JACL handles the issue this year. I would be surprised if the issue were resolved in this biennium.''