Sorry, Sorry, Sorry by Marjorie Ingall & Susan McCarthy

Author:Marjorie Ingall & Susan McCarthy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2023-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

Follow the Racism

When DeWitt wasn’t allowed to incarcerate Italian Americans and German Americans, he slapped strict curfews on them. This didn’t last long, in part because there were many Italian Americans in the fishing industry and canned fish was needed to feed the troops. Also, though this wasn’t stated, they were white. (DeWitt had nothing to do with bribing Peru with armaments to arrest thousands of Peruvian Nikkei and ship them to the United States to be declared “illegal aliens” and then sent to incarceration camps. No, that was the OSS.)

In another seldom-noted motive, Nikkei farmers tended to be exceptionally good, successful farmers, using methods brought from Japan. Many non-Nikkei farmers hated this. Before the war, these other farmers throughout the American West lobbied for “alien land laws” to keep Nikkei from owning farmland. According to scholars like crop scientist Sarah Taber, some of the first calls to incarcerate Nikkei farmers came from the California farm lobby. Within hours after Pearl Harbor, they sent a representative to Washington to argue for their interests. He told the Saturday Evening Post, “We’re charged with wanting to get rid of the J——for selfish reasons. We might as well be honest…. It’s a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown men. They came into this valley to work, and they stayed to take over.”

The result of detaining so many of the best farmers on the West Coast? Produce shortages. Hence the need for Victory Gardens, families’ home gardens that were needed to supplement their rations. A third of the fruits and vegetables Americans consumed during the war came from Victory Gardens.

Despite all this, some thirty-three thousand Japanese American men served in World War II. Except for a few fluent Japanese speakers assigned to military intelligence, they weren’t allowed to serve in the Pacific Theater, though German Americans and Italian Americans served in Europe. Over fourteen thousand Nikkei fought in Europe in the 442nd Regiment, including Sono Osato’s brother. The 442nd, known as the “Go for Broke” boys, became the most decorated unit for its size in Army history. Its soldiers took part in the liberation of France, the rescue of the “Lost Battalion,” and the liberation of Dachau. They were brave and they were used recklessly. Many of the 442nd’s officers felt that higher-ups were treating their troops as cannon fodder. On one occasion division commander General John E. Dahlquist ordered the 442nd mustered for an awards ceremony. He was annoyed when only eighteen out of the four hundred men who’d been assigned to the 442nd’s K Company appeared. He told the officer in charge, a Lieutenant Colonel Miller, that he wanted all the men present. “That’s all of K Company left, sir,” Miller answered.

In December 1945, there was a ceremony honoring Kazuo Masuda of the 442nd, killed in action in Italy. Masuda was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by General Joseph Stilwell. Stilwell was tired, and asked Captain Ronald Reagan of the 1st Motion Picture Unit to say a few words.

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