What did U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry do when the government targeted them with
an 8 p.m. curfew and then incarceration?
Almost all cooperated with the orders, but a few openly defied them.
Curfew thing. I made a personal decision to break it.
One day, I'm dashing home.
"Hey Gordon, it's five to eight."
I grabbed my stuff and it takes about five minutes to get home so I was just dashing home, and it hit me.
A question that I should've faced earlier just hit me.
How come I'm dashing home and all your time keepers are still there?
And when it hit me I knew, gosh, I can't do it. That's two-faced.
The only reason I'm subject to go is because of my, the way it's stated.
I'm a person of Japanese ancestry.
Later on, ordered to move, go to Puyallup.
If I couldn't accept curfew, how could I accept this?
Soon as that question hit me, I knew the answer. I can't accept it.
This is worse.
Gordon Hirabayashi decided that it was his responsibility as a citizen to defend constitutional
rights that were unfair towards Japanese Americans.
He told the FBI he would not follow the orders to leave because they'd violated his rights.
Hirabayashi was arrested, and he challenged his conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Rather than oppose the government, some Japanese Americans who were behind barbed
wire wanted to support the war effort. Over a thousand incarcerated men volunteered to
fight in the war.
The marching cadence of Uncle Sam's fighting men. This is a brief account of one unique
group of them: Americans with Japanese faces and Japanese names.
The army formed the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated unit made up of
Japanese American men to fight in Europe.
The 442nd was an elite unit that fought in some of the most dangerous battles.
For a brilliant fighting record from Salerno onward, the Japanese Americans are cited as
a unit, and received citation streamers to be permanently attached to their battle colors.
After a difficult month in France, only a quarter of the men were healthy enough for combat.
Many did not realize the magnitude of the losses.
The field commander ordered the unit to march before him,
and then complained when so few appeared.
The 36th Division commander wanted the 442nd to pass in review.
So the 442nd passes in review.
And like I say, you got three battalions plus headquarters, and they don't even have
a battalion out there, passing in review.
So General Dahlquist turned around, and he said to the colonel,
"When I order everyone to pass in review, I mean the cooks and everybody
will pass in review."
And Chaplain Yamada said, "This is the first time I saw the colonel cry."
And he said, "This is all I have left."
Can you imagine the feeling he must have had
to think that he had to order
people to go out and get killed when it was these people that put the families
into concentration camp, and they're still there?
To replace the heavy casualties suffered by the 442nd, government officials went to the
ten American concentration camps and started drafting Japanese American men, telling them
it was their duty as U.S. citizens to fight for their country. Some thought that this
was wrong and refused to report for their army physicals.
They kick us around and now you're going to have go and prove that you're an American?
To me it was just pure gut. I had no intellectual understanding of this or anything.
No way. From my feeling, it was totally wrong.
Let us, take us back to Seattle. Get our parents,
get our hotel back, get us back into what we were. We were American.
How come the German friends I had, they weren't evacuated?
Three hundred Japanese American men did not believe that they should be forced to fight
for the country that was imprisoning them and their families. The courts ruled against
them, and almost all the men were convicted of draft resistance and sent to federal prisons.