Child Abduction as a U.S. War Policy: Japanese Concentration Camps

Published at: 18/07/2025 08:50 PM

The separation of families is a form of aggression and fascist propaganda used by the United States to undermine the dignity of countries that do not submit to its politics, also using a narrative supported by the media so that the people who are the object of these acts are considered inferior to the rest of the world.

Child abduction has been a recurring war policy used by the United States. To support this statement, we consider the case that occurred with Japanese citizens, when in December 1941, the imperial army of Japan attacked the naval base that the United States had in Pearl Harbor as part of a strategy to protect its expansion in Asia, neutralize US interference and ensure access to key natural resources in Southeast Asia.

In an investigation carried out by journalist J. M. Sadurní, a specialist in current historical events on the Second World War, he explained that “after the attack, everything related to Japan profoundly impacted American society. Given this, for racial reasons, all North American citizens of Japanese origin were arrested and deported to internment camps throughout the entire geography of the United States between 1942 and 1948.”

In the investigation, Sadurní explained that “on December 8, 1941, the day after the attack, and coinciding with the declaration of hostilities pronounced by then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the authorities decreed the first measures against Japanese citizens: A Presidential Edict was issued whose content segregated citizens of Japanese, German or Italian origin from the rest of the population autochthonous. The president's words left no room for doubt: All citizens, residents or subjects of Japan, Germany and Italy over 14 years of age who are in the United States and do not have nationality, may be arrested, detained, locked up or expelled as enemy aliens. That decree triggered an outpouring of racial hatred that affected citizens who were heavily impacted by the Japanese attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base. An example of this are the statements of the governor of Idaho for the time, Chase Clark: The 'Japs' live like rats, are raised like rats and act like rats. We don't want them here.”

Added to these expressions of hate were concrete acts, beyond the decree; Sadurní commented on the recall of products manufactured in Japan and the felling of 3,000 sakura cherries that the citizens of Tokyo had donated to the city of Washington in 1912, members of the Federal Police and the The U.S. military forced all Japanese citizens to register following racial segregation, and the authorities accepted these actions for reasons of “national security”.

Order 9066

Two months after the Japanese attack, on February 12, 1942, the US Government approved Order 9066, according to which all Japanese immigrants and the first generation of them born in North America would be deported to internment camps that would be divided into three categories:

• Assembly camps under the responsibility of the US military, where prisoners would be temporarily grouped together and then transferred to another destination.
• Relocation camps under the control of the War Relocation Authority, where the deported would live.
• Detention centers under the direction of the Immigration Service where it would detain non-nationalized Japanese people, including some Germans and Italians.

Regarding this order, Sadurní commented that “it only affected residents of California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington and Alaska, but not those of other states such as the Hawaiian Islands; because the Japanese community was the engine economic of the region and stopping this group would have meant collapsing the financial machinery of the entire archipelago”.

After a few years, it became known, through some revealed documents, that, for the implementation of Order 9066, there were a total of ten relocation camps for American-Japanese: Manzanar, Tule Lake, Poston, Gila River , Topaz , Minidoka, Granada, Heart Mountain , Rohwer and Jerome. Prisoners considered potentially dangerous were transferred to other camps located in Arizona and Moab, in the state of Utah. Approximately 113,605 Japanese citizens were deported during the Pacific War.

The photos of shame

Manzanar was one of the best-known fields. This one, unlike others built on swampy terrain, was located on land in the Sierra Nevada of California. It was a terribly harsh place, with extreme temperatures all year round, in winter the thermometer didn't rise above zero degrees and in summer it didn't go below fifty. Half of the population held there were women, a quarter consisted of school-age children, and there were also babies and the elderly who could barely fend for themselves.

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston , a woman who lived in the Manzanar camp as a child, says that “interns with professional training found work in the fields through the War Relocation Agency (WRA), and earned a minimum fraction of the salary earned by an employed white civilian.

As a mutation of the concept of slavery, inmates were allowed to work outside the field, especially as an agricultural labor force. Some of them did so under armed surveillance, while others had some autonomy. However, everyone had to carry cards that identified them as prisoners of the camp.”

Also, the professional photographer, named Toyo Miyatake, secretly documented Manzanar, managing to insert a lens and support inside and then, with the help of a carpenter, to build the rest of the camera. Miyatake was discovered and his camera confiscated, but the camp director allowed him to continue taking photos. Thanks to this, the photographer was able to take about 1,500 snapshots, which documented life in the countryside, during his more than three years in prison.

Family Separation

“Shoot anyone who tries to flee.” That was the order the soldiers received when they recorded some incidents in the camps due to the prevailing poor living conditions. There, tension, suspicion and despair were the norm . The most serious case was a riot that took place in the Manzanar camp, where American troops opened fire on the inmates, killing 135 people. Despite this, and as the war progressed, the Government allowed some of the inmates to join the army after signing a loyalty document. In the Manzanar camp, 174 men were enlisted.

At the end of the Second World War, on September 2, 1945, when the inmates were released, there were only broken families left in economic ruin due to the loss of numerous businesses and land; that was the price that these people had to pay for their three years of confinement.

As compensation for the losses, the authorities only handed the inmates $25 and a train ticket. Many were unable to resume their previous lives: without means to survive and without employment, they had to stay in shelters, shelters or official housing in cities far from home, where they continued to face racist attitudes for years. It was until 1988, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, that the White House issued an official statement of apology to Japanese Americans.

“They marked our lives forever out of revenge and, 40 years later, we received an apology,” summarized Rick Noguchi, head of operations at the Japanese-American National Museum, located in the Little Tokyo neighborhood in Los Angeles Ángeles, which houses a detailed permanent exhibition on the forced internment of families of Japanese blood during the 1940s; that is the story of American wars, which in addition to bombs, missiles and bullets, destroy the families that work and move their economy. Shamefully, this fascist policy is not history, it has not been left behind.

AMELYREN BASABE/Mazo News Team