Loyalty Assured by Japanese of Chula Vista Area.
Deploring the “treacherous infamy of Japan’s attack upon the United States,” a delegation of local Japanese recently appeared before the city council.
Those are the headline and opening paragraph from the Dec. 19, 1941 edition of The Chula Vista Star, 12 days after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
The collection of Chula Vistans had gathered at Chula Vista City Hall Dec. 13 to assure their neighbors they were not to be feared.
“Our action today was to prove our sincere allegiance to the country in which we have lived for many years. Our assistance and our lives if necessary will be offered to the United States if it needs us,” J.K. Sano is quoted as saying.
But for some, the pledge of allegiance may have been too late.
Local historian Steven Schoenherr wrote in “Chula Vista Centennial” :
“The Japanese community experienced fear of another sort when on December 8, 1941, the FBI began arresting local Issei, the Japanese-born generation. Leaders of the Vegetable Growers Association on K Street, teachers at the Japanese school on Palomar Street, and the fathers of most of the Japanese families were taken to the federal prison at Terminal Island in San Pedro.
“Saburo Muraoka later remembered, ‘I was arrested, I assume, because I was an officer of the Vegetables Growers Association. I was taken to the county jail, where I was detained for about two weeks. We were all put into a large cell, all together. We later determined that the cell was 18 by 20 feet, and all we could do was walk back and forth—we felt like caged animals. When we were taken out we were all chained together and forced to walk about three blocks through downtown to be interrogated. It was a shameful thing.”
About two months later the president of the United States signed Executive Order 9066, ordering the internment of Japanese Americans.
On April 10, 1942 The Chula Vista Star reported: Japanese Here Were Evacuated Last Tuesday. Japanese residents of the Southbay area, with hundreds of others in Southern California defense area, left San Diego railway station Tuesday evening at 7 for Santa Anita, from which station they will be sent inland for the “duration.”
Those who will not see the similarities between what happened then and what is happening today in this country will draw a distinction based on legality. Immigrants who arrive or live in this country without documentation are breaking the law and deserve to be arrested, they argue.
They may willingly forget that in the 40s a segment of the population were arrested and jailed without having broken any laws.
They will also ignore that today as the Department of Homeland Security and it subsidiaries ICE and CBP crack down on “illegal immigration” they occasionally sweep up neighbors, friends and colleagues who legally reside in this country. Families and communities are being ripped apart, much as they were not long ago.
