Exposing Japanese-Peruvian WWII internment camps
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On February 19th in 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, interning approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans. But that order had implications way beyond the American shores. It affected thousands of Japanese living in Peru and in other countries of South America. Their story is only now being told. Tyler Sipe reports on today’s show.
Libia Yamamoto attends church with other Japanese-Americans in Richmond, California. The seventy-three-year-old often reminisces with her friends about her early childhood memories, including time at a school in Peru.
Libia Yamamoto attends religious service at a Japanese-American church in Richmond, Calif. Yamamoto was born at a hacienda in Peru. Her parents were immigrants from southern Japan. She and her family were deported to a detention camp in Texas during World War II.
Yamamoto: “Every morning we had what we called radio exercise. The Peruvian principal would lead us in Japanese, he would count in Japanese.
Yamamoto was born to Japanese parents who had immigrated to Peru. More than 20,000 people of Japanese ancestry lived in Peru before the outbreak of the Second World War. But the Japanese-Peruvian community changed dramatically after December 7th, 1941.
Three months after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government began sending Japanese Americans to internment camps. At the same time, several Latin American countries also sent their Japanese residents to camps in the U.S.
Ueunten: “Peru got a lot out of that deal. There was also that latent anti-Japanese hostility, and opportunists who thought if they got rid of the Japanese they could take over their businesses and land.”
That’s Wesley Ueunten, an assistant professor of Asian-American studies at San Francisco state university. Ueunten traveled to Peru to study the internment of its’ Japanese citizens.
Wesley Ueunten, left, plays a sanshin, or Okinawan guitar, at a celebration of Okinawan-Americans in San Francisco. Ueunten is an assistant professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. He traveled to Peru to research and study the Japanese-Peruvian experience during and after World War II. Peru sent more than 1,800 of their citizens to U.S. internment camps.
Ueunten: “Peru and the U.S. got into these agreements where Peru would cooperate with the U.S. defense efforts with sending the Japanese to the u.s. In exchange, Peru received loans for things like steel processing plants, ammunitions, and etcetera. The U.S. needed a body of hostages, people they could use to exchange for U.S. citizens caught in Japanese territory after Pearl Harbor. They specifically targeted Japanese in other countries because they didn’t want to send Japanese Americans. It would have looked really bad.”
In Peru, police detained Yamamoto’s father. The next morning Yamamoto and dozens of other Japanese Peruvian families went to the police station.
Yamamoto: “And all the mothers sobbed silently. We didn’t even know if we’d see him again. And we waved good-bye, and we waved until we couldn’t see them anymore.”
Six months later, Yamamoto and her family were also put on a ship and deported from Peru.
Yamamoto: “It was a very terrifying time. On the plank they were lined with us soldiers who had guns, pointing at us and we thought we were going to shot.”
Yamamoto was reunited with her father in a detention camp in crystal city, Texas. The war ended in 1945. But Yamamoto and her family remained in the camp for another two years.
Yamamoto: “The government said sorry you’re all illegal aliens and you have to leave. You have to go to Peru or Japan. But Peru wouldn’t take us back.”
Most internees from Latin-American moved to Japan. But Yamamoto, her family and three hundred others fought to stay in the United States. In the 1950’s they were granted permanent residency.
Art Shibayama holds a portrait of his family taken in Peru. Art was born in Lima, and was also deported to an American internment camp.
Grace Shimizu makes dinner for her 96-year-old mother at their Bay area home. She tears up as she looks at a portrait of her father. Shimizu often asked her dad about his forced deportation from Peru to the U.S.
Grace Shimizu holds a portrait of her father Susumu Shimizu. Susumu was a Japanese-Peruvian sent to America's World War II internment camps. Thirteen countries in Latin-America sent some of their ethnically Japanese citizens to U.S. camps.
Shimizu: “I think the way he expressed it was wartime … “shikataganei,” it couldn’t be helped.”
Shimizu believes differently. She co-founded the Japanese-Peruvian oral history project, which tries to shed light on internment experiences. The organization also tries to help other communities that are under attack. The group spoke up for Muslim-Americans in the days following September 11th.
Shimizu: “The message of peace and standing with our neighbors who were also under attack because they are also considered the enemy was so important. During World War II we know what it meant when other did not send by our side.”
Grace Shimizu embraces her mom Yoneko Shimizu following dinner at their home in El Cerrito, Calif. Grace started the Japanese-Peruvian Oral History Project in 1991. The organization is dedicated to telling the stories from Japanese-Peruvians and their internment experience.
For The World, I’m Tyler Sipe in Berkeley, California.
photos: Tyler Sipe
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