Understory 2019

Race and Internment: World War II from an Alaskan Perspective

In February of 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which granted authority to the military to remove anyone they saw fit from military zones that they would determine. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor just over two months prior, and fear was rampant along the West coast of the U.S. that the next targets might be even nearer the mainland. People expelled a great deal of this fear on Japanese Americans, who were viewed as ethnically bound to Japan in a way that prevented them from ever being truly Westernized. They faced heavy discrimination even before the war came to the U.S., and it only worsened as they came to be viewed as potential spies and agents for Japan. In this highly charged atmosphere, FDR delegated the situation to the military. The West coast was deemed a military zone, and the removal of people of Japanese ancestry began. By August 1942 around 110,000 Japanese Americans were interned in camps in the interior of the U.S.

Alaska was, of course, designated as a military zone at this time, since the threat to it from Japanese forces was deemed very high. Governor Ernest Gruening, then the territorial governor of Alaska, was in the states during much of the removal of Japanese-Americans. Bob Bartlett, who was acting in his stead, communicated about the internment process with Gruening and others in Alaska through telegrams. These telegrams have since been collected, and they provide a uniquely Alaskan perspective on what internment meant for Japanese living in the territory.

One particular telegram, which I analyzed for this project, was sent by Bob Bartlett to Governor Gruening to plead the case of a young half Native Alaskan and half Japanese man, Henry Hope, about to be sent to the internment camps. When quoting from Alice Stuart, who had contacted Bartlett about the issue, the telegram states that “...QUOTE HE HAS NEVER EVEN SEEN A JAP NOR DOES HE WISH TO UNQUOTE...” (Governor Ernest Gruening’s file...) This attempts to emphasize Hope’s lack of contact with his Japanese heritage by using the popular derogatory racial slur, “Jap.” The telegram vividly demonstrates some of the personal anguish and the social consequences that resulted from Japanese internment. At the same time it is revealing of how racial discrimination was functioning during WWII.

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Hannah Cox is a junior pursuing a Baccalaureate in English with a minor in French.

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