"World War II On Topic" is made possible by The Herzstein Foundation.

Jeremy Collins

Hi. I'm Jeremy Collins, the director of conferences and symposia at the national World War II museum in New Orleans and you're listening to World War II On Topic. Today's episode is brought to you by the museum's Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. On February 22nd, 2021, Dr. Rob Citino, the museum's Samuel Zemurray Stone senior historian had a conversation with Shirley Ann Higuchi, the chair of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. Shirley's American-born parents were children when they were incarcerated at the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center during World War II. Her mother inspired her to author Setsuko’s Secret: Heart Mountain and the Legacy of the Japanese American Incarceration. There is a portion in the beginning of this program where Rob and Shirley throw to a trailer for the book. While you won't be able to view it, please listen, as it provides great context to their conversation, and please give it a watch after the program. Thank you and have a listen to this wonderful conversation.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

It's so good to be here with today's guest, we're going to be discussing what, frankly, is one of the most disturbing episodes of the Second World War, at least as it relates to the American home front. And it's the separation, so to say, and incarceration of Japanese-American citizens who were not convicted of any crime, in fact, were not even accused of any crime beyond being Japanese. To focus our discussion today, we have a really, really fantastic guest and I'm very pleased to welcome Shirley Ann Higuchi to our program today. Shirley it's wonderful for you to be with us.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate being here today.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Great. Just for our guests who may not know your entire story, I'll give the briefest of introductions. We often say, "This person requires no introduction," and that usually means they deserve a very long one, but I'll try to keep it as brief as possible. The thing that our audience needs to know about Shirley, she is the chair of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. She's also an extremely accomplished person in other realms, as well. The associate executive director of legal and regulatory affairs for the American Psychological Association. She is also the daughter of Heart Mountian inmates, Heart Mountain incarcerees, so we'll talk about the exact terminology we should use for this. Shirley, you say early on in this marvelous book you've written Setsuko's Secret, which I would urge every one of our listeners, right now, to run out and purchase. It's brand new from University of Wisconsin Press and extremely well done.

 

You say you didn't know much about that experience of your parents in Heart Mountain. In fact, reading from the dust jacket, where you often find the most interesting material about the book, "As children, Shirley Ann Higuchi and her brothers knew Heart Mountain only as the place their parents met, imagining it as a great stardust ballroom in rural Wyoming." Why is this book Setsuko's Secret? Tell us, who is Setsuko? Who was this woman?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Well, Setsuko is my mother, who has since passed, and so the story goes is that in 2005, after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, on her deathbed, she said she wanted her memorial money, when we were writing her obituary, to go to the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. And, essentially, we were quite stunned by this, because my mother, as well as my father, and many of my relatives and others that were incarcerated at Heart Mountain and throughout the United States really never talked about their incarceration experience and that's why Bill Hosokawa, a former incarceree himself, who has since passed, wrote the book Nisei: The Quiet Americans, which talks about the silence.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

I wonder if we could begin today, I know that you've had a film that was recently produced and I wonder if we could begin today by showing our guests this brief video, so that they'll have some orientation into the Heart Mountain experience. As I mentioned to you, Shirley, I have family who live in Powell, Wyoming, so I've seen the place, but it is not an easy place to get to and undoubtedly, most Americans have never visited it, so I wonder if you'd be willing to queue up this film for us.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Yes, this is a film that was produced and put together by my cousin, Vanessa Yuille. Her mother, Kathleen Saito, is on the board of directors with me and she was actually born at Heart Mountain. And Vanessa's an accomplished filmmaker. She's actually produced several films that have received awards and this is her way of putting together the story in my book to educate people a little bit about the background, so it sort of enriches this discussion and helps facilitate the learning process. So why don't we go ahead and see it and see how it goes.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Wonderful. Thank you.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

I always knew that my parents met as children as a place called Heart Mountain in Wyoming. And my mother Setsuko always called it a place of love. It was only after she died, however, that I learned the truth. Heart Mountain was a prison. 14,000 Japanese-Americans were incarcerated there during World War II for the crime of looking like the enemy. Setsuko's Secret is my attempt to understand the lives of my family, myself, and the complicated history of the Japanese-American experience.

 

Both sets of my grandparents immigrated from Japan. The Higuchis came first, arriving in 1915 from Saga on the southern island of Kyūshū. They started farming in Santa Clara County, California. My mother's parents, the Saito's, came in 1918 and in 1923. They lived in San Francisco's Japantown and opened a story. Life in California was hard for Japanese-Americans. State law banned immigrants from owning land and Caucasian neighbors often resented their success.

 

The children of immigrants, called the Nisei, had to work extra hard to prove they were loyal Americans. Despite hardships, many Japanese-Americans found the good life and made they're way in society. Some became professionals and owned their own home and others excelled in college. But then came December 7th, 1941. After Pearl Harbor, wartime hysteria and racism intensified towards Japanese immigrant and Japanese-American citizens. They called them spies or saboteurs, despite the lack of evidence.

 

Then on February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed executive order 9066, which allowed the military to ban Japanese-Americans from the west coast. Census records told the government where to find Japanese-Americans. Signs posted in neighborhoods said they had just days to pack and leave. They could only bring what they could carry. My family was issued a duffle bag with their name and number stenciled on the outside. "Shikata ga nai," some said, the Japanese term for, "It can't be helped." There was little resistance.

 

They were first sent to assembly centers, which were temporary concentration camps on converted fairgrounds and racetracks. Some families slept in horse stalls and were forced to live like animals. This lasted a few months. Then the prisoners road on a darkened train to one of the 10 concentration camps scattered across the U.S. My father remembers peering under the window shades to see where the train was going. My family was sent to Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming.

 

Many prisoners wept when they saw their new home surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers. Wind and dust swept through the tar paper walls. The barracks had no running water, the bathrooms had no privacy, and the mess hall food was terrible. Summers were sweltering and winters were brutal. The prisoners repeated another term, gaman, which meant endure. In spite of this treatment, many incarcerees yearned to serve the country that imprisoned them. They enlisted in the army and fought bravely in Europe and the Pacific.

 

But others stood up for their rights. More than 80 men at Heart Mountain resisted the military draft as long as they were prisoners. They were convicted and sent to federal prison. The rest of the Japanese-American community shunned them for decades. My parents and grandparents spent three years behind barbed wire. After the war, they, along with many others in the community, wanted to put the shame and the rejection behind them. They never talked about it. My generation, called the sansei, could not understand why.

 

Only after my mother died did I realize the depth of her commitment to preserving the memory of the incarceration. She inspired me to understand this part of my family's history and my community's experience. Over the last decade, I've been committee to safeguarding against the racism and fear that drove the Japanese-American incarceration. It was my mother, Setsuko, and her secret that taught me, and hopefully you, that we can never relax in the fight for justice.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Thank you, Shirley. What a moving film that is. I'm a child of the '60s and I just want to say right on to the sentiment that's expressed at the end. I would like to tell our audience, today is February 19th, and this is, of course, a sad anniversary for the Japanese-American community. It's the Day of Remembrance and it's the anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt's executive order, 9066. Shirley, may I ask, the Day of Remembrance, when did that and how did that come about as a memorial day?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Well, it is the day, as you mentioned, that President Roosevelt signed an issued executive order 9066, which essentially gave the military the power to removed, forcibly, all Japanese-Americans, even of one-eighth blood, off of the West Coast primarily, and move them inland to one of the 10 incarceration camps and one of those was Heart Mountain Wyoming. So that's the reason why it's a really important day to remember, because the whole act of being able to suspend constitutional rights by a brush of the pen is something that we all need to be aware of. That's possible even today. So thank you for having me here on this very important day.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Wonderful. I've been to Heart Mountain, as I say, I've been to the wonderful interpretive center that you have spearheaded and that you've erected out there on the site of the camp. And again, I urge all Americans to get up there to northwestern Wyoming and see the beautiful town of Cody and the equally charming town of Powell, which kind of flank Heart Mountain, and come out and see what you've done. Let me ask you a bit about the physical space of Heart Mountain, Shirley. Your mother and father are sent there, you future mother and father, I should say, are sent there in 1942. What was Heart Mountain, Wyoming like in 1942? What did they see when they arrived at their new, I'm putting it in quotation marks, their new home?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Well, I mean, you have to remember that Heart Mountain, after it was built and operating and filled, it was the second largest city in Wyoming. I mean, they actually created the second largest city, so you can imagine it's a very rural, prairie-like environment. And in many ways, back then, was extremely desolate. There weren't a lot of different people than your traditional, Caucasian white person that were ranch hands and ran farms and other things around Cody and Powell. So I think, for the Japanese-Americans, especially those that were being taken and uprooted from places like LA and San Jose, just from a weather perspective, it was really shocking and, in many ways, for many of the Japanese, unbearable.

 

They didn't have the proper clothing or the shoes or the coats that you would wear in Wyoming in the winter, because the weather, as you know, is very mild in southern California. So I would say it was a real shocker and I think the worst part was that they really had no privacy. It was basically a communal prison-like setting and there was really no electricity or any heat in the barracks that were shabbily put together, except for this pot-belly stove that they'd have to collect coal and wood to keep it going throughout the winter.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

When I hear tar paper shack and Wyoming winter in the same sentence, I know we're in a bad place.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Right.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

You've talked about executive order 9066. I notice that, in your book, you use the term concentration camp. I've seen prison camp, internment camp, it's difficult to know what to call the individuals who were caught up in the system. Were they prisoners? Were they internees? And here at the National World War II Museum, we struggled with these kind of terminological issues all the time. So talk to me about what to call Heart Mountain Wyoming?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Well, we really think it's up to the reader and the individual and the person that visits our museum to decide what they choose to call Heart Mountain. I tend to use the term concentration camp lightly, although I did use it in the film, as well as in the book, just for sensitive political reasons, because people associate that with the Holocaust and it's really more of a technical legal term. If you were to pull out Webster's dictionary and look up what the definition is of a concentration camp, actually Heart Mountain fits that profile. I tend to sort of steer away, if I can, unless it's a technical identification, the term relocation center or internment camp, because from a technical perspective, Heart Mountain was much more than that. People were not given constitutional due process, they were ripped from their homes, they were taking their life, liberty, and property away from them in California and they were forcibly moved into a prison camp where they had guard towers with guns pointing inward at the inmates and not outward.

 

Because one of the other euphemisms that are sort of floating around there, in addition to terminology, is this belief that somehow the Japanese-Americans were in danger because of vigilante acts and attacks, so we were putting them into Heart Mountain to protect them. So that's kind of another myth that's out there. This was, this. I'm sorry.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

I know that many internees, many prisoners at Heart Mountain, noticed that very fact and often mention it in their memoirs.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Right.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

It all depends which way the machine guns are pointing, in a sense, as to how you decide what your situation is.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Exactly, exactly. The one thing that I mentioned in this film is that the Japanese-Americans, especially the Esai, my grandparents, had this gaman, which is a Japanese term to endure. And, as you know, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States didn't really come into being until the '60s and the Japanese-Americans felt that they really didn't have a choice. They didn't have a choice to fight back, and even if they did fight back, you can just imagine what would've happened. I mean, we have Black Lives Matter today. I mean, if you have Japanese-Americans having riots and fighting back, I think it would've ended pretty badly.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

And again, given the wartime passions that had been aroused. I was a university professor for 30 years and now I work at the National World War II Museum. I constantly have to remind people, I've noted, that these were American citizens. And so, internees... you're a citizen. You have certain rights, being interned is a non-category and I think you already just brought forth the term euphemism.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Right.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

President Franklin Roosevelt is a hero to many Americans, I'll even cop to that myself, and he certainly plays a role in our museum's narrative of World War II, precisely for the great things he did as a wartime leader. Can you describe Roosevelt's thought processes leading to the roundup of Japanese-American citizens? Perhaps this isn't his finest hour? I wonder what your thoughts are on that?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Well, it wasn't like Roosevelt did that all by himself and as you saw in the film, there was a lot of propaganda, even Dr. Seuss did a lot of propaganda against Asian-Americans, Japanese-Americans in particular. There was the huge economic issue at stake here. I mean, my grandparents owned 14.25 acres in San Jose and they were very successful farmers like other Japanese-Americans. So there was a lot of competition from the food growers' associations and other economic interests. Also, the media, as you know today, plays a big role in terms of creating false narratives, and the news had a lot to do with it, and the newspapers and the reporters, so it was very easy, in my mind, for Roosevelt to slip into this mindset, but from my research it was clear that President Roosevelt was a racist. He had many racist feelings against Japanese-Americans. I think a lot of times, a lot of that is not irrational, but it's hard to rationalize now that we look back at it.

 

But his wife, Eleanor, actually had a lot of empathy for the Japanese-Americans actually visited prisoners in camps, and I think she knew there was something definitely wrong about this act. But an executive order, essentially, gives the president the power to suspend life, liberty, and other rights in this county and also using the proper Senate passaging of laws and allocation of resources, by claiming this is a military necessity and the hardest part that happened with the Japanese-Americans is there really was no concrete evidence of espionage and sabotage and the government apologized for their role in terms of concealing evidence that pointed exactly in the different direction.

 

So it's not like all the government officials agreed with what Roosevelt did and there were those that stood up and said, "Hey, this is wrong, there's no evidence of any of this. Why don't you incarcerate Japanese-Americans in Hawaii, where the bombing of Pearl Harbor occurred? And why are you doing it now in California, but not there?" And there were much more Japanese-Americans in Hawaii, but it also, from an economic standpoint, would've shut down the entire island. Money really is sort of the motivator to a lot of the tragedies that we've suffered in our society, and I think the economic issues had a lot to do with it.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Before we leave the economic side, I noted in your book and from some of the materials I saw at your interpretive center, we're talking about property today that would be Silicon Valley.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Right.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Some of the most precious real estate in America or maybe anywhere in the world. You say 14 acres and it may or may not sound like much. 14 acres in Silicon Valley is quite a lot.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

It is. I mean, we're talking about millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars. I just heard recently there was one San Jose family that actually was able to keep their farm and I think they just sold off a part of it for $30 million or something. And we're not talking about their whole farm, it was just a couple of parcels of land. So yeah, it's a lot of money and that's the economic loss that the Japanese-Americans really never fully recovered. Although, interestingly, I mean, this is part of the big picture of the Japanese-American experience, in some ways, the government's strategy of trying to get the Japanese-Americans to assimilate and scatter throughout the United States sort of helped Japanese-Americans land on their feet pretty successfully. And for my family, for instance, my father ended up as head of pharmaceutics at University of Michigan and Utah, so he had a pretty clear upward trajectory, I think, because he focused in the sciences, which research and science is much more objective than saying, "Hey, I'm going to be a lawyer and try to get into a law firm in New York or something.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Right, right. You make a good point, I think, about President Roosevelt. And executive order is really the result of an internal debate within the administration, they probably all are. I don't think most presidents just sit down and write something up. But President Roosevelt does wait to rescind 9066 until after the 1944 elections. So he must've still been worried about some political fallout from announcing the closing of the camps and the reintegration of Japanese-Americans into their previous lives.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Right. I mean, I think that it's really funny, like you said, there are always a lot of internal debates about this subject. But as quickly as they tried to take them off the West Coast and stick them into these camps, as quickly as they tried to kick them out. And again, I'm sure it all had to do with economics and political strategy, but when I was looking at my parents relocation files, my grandparents had a hard time, after giving up their farm and their property and their stores, they had no place to go. They literally had no place to go and when I started reading my grandfather Higuchi's war relocation file, the counselor and the staff people were actually having empathy for my grandfather, because he was having such a hard time. And I almost feel like I could sort of read into the consciousness of these staff members, that they really felt bad, I think, at the end of all this and realized what they did was wrong.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

I thought the most fascinating part of your book was your discussion of this, something Americans should not have to do, fill out a loyalty questionnaire. We're citizens and if we obey the law and pay our taxes, a loyalty questionnaire is not really the American way. Could you tell our audience about questions 27 and 28, because they seemed to really pose the most serious problems to those filling out the questionnaire? Could you talk about that a bit?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Right. I mean, in some ways those were sort of trick questions. I mean, it's kind of like the question you get from a lawyer that says, "When was the last time you beat your wife?," or something like that. What happened was that question 27 was saying, "Are you willing to serve for the U.S. Army? Are you willing to fight on behalf of this country?" And one of our board members, Takashi Hoshizaki who is a resistor, gave an unqualified no. He said, "Look, I'm willing to fight if you restore my rights. If you treat me like a U.S. citizen, of course I'm willing to fight." And question 28 was if you're willing to give an unqualified allegiance to the U.S. and sort of reject your citizenship or your affiliation with Japan. And that one was difficult, because of the fact that the Japanese-Americans and their parents were being treated like criminals and being disowned by the U.S. government. If they gave up their right to go back to Japan and denounce that citizenship, then they may have no country to be in.

 

So it was a very complicated process where it really felt, in many ways, like trick questions. And Takashi did end up going to federal prison because of his answer to the first question being no and the second one he said yes, I will give unqualified allegiance. But it got him in trouble just for saying no to the first one.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Some of the respondents were worried about 27, are you willing to fight, am I volunteering? Right? There's the implication that you were about to be drafted the next day if you said yes. And about that second one, it implies you haven't been loyal up till now and hopefully, now, you're willing to swear your loyalty to the United States. Those, I think, probably could best be qualified or described as trick questions.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Right, yeah. And unfortunately, because of those questions, it allowed the government to have authority or evidence to do certain things like having Takashi Hoshizaki be arrested at age 18 and to participate in one of the largest trials in Wyoming. And all those boys that were convicted, all 80 of them, went to federal prison. But interestingly, Takashi felt, when I interviewed him, that going to federal prison was actually no different than being incarcerated at Heart Mountain. And, in some ways, the food and the treatment was a little bit better. But the one thing he really did get to experience was the opportunity to meet different people. And throughout his life, he has had a connection with not only Japanese-Americans, but also African-Americans and he talked about those friendships that were formed in that federal prison.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

As the film said and you just implied, some Japanese-Americans, they went different directions on these questions, on whether to serve. So we all know about regimental combat team 442, we talk about this [inaudible 00:28:31] regiment all the time in our museum. But other who refused, resisted, were called draft resisters and convicted and sent to prison. Looking back, how difficult was it for individuals to make that kind of choice and how has that impacted the Japanese-American community, since? Because there's been arguments back and forth on who did the right thing at the time in this impossible situation.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Well, the more I read about this and I research it and I talk to, actually, resisters who had been in that situation, I think the situation was untenable, both through the boys that volunteered and the ones that resisted. I mean, we now know that, and I've been told this by psychologists and neuropsychologist that the human brain isn't even fully formed until age 26.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

[?]

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Yeah, so you figure a kid gets incarcerated and torn from his home in California at age 14 or 15, he turns into a man, supposedly, because he turns 18, and now he's supposed to make a decision that's the biggest decision of a person's life, whether I need to be a civil rights activist and protest what's happened, but being put in federal prison or should I risk my life for a country that's not protecting me. And so, I just think that, either way, I think both of those decisions were horrible decisions to put a child into. And the other problem that developed is those decisions also fractured the Japanese-American community indefinitely, because the Japanese-Americans were put in this awful position to sort of take a side like, "Well, we all should go fight and we all need to be these war heroes." And those that didn't do that were ostracized by the Japanese-American community for years.

 

And it's only till now that we're really learning the story of the resisters and really what the resisters were actually cutting edge civil rights leaders of the time. They were ahead of their time. So now the resisters are being held out as heroes now, but we're talking about 77 years ago or 78 years ago, when they had to be ostracized by their own communities.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Sometimes that rear view mirror is the clearest view of all. Perhaps some distance from an event, that might be the case for the Japanese-American community?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Right, yes. And it's really funny, it's easy to just sort of take these incidences as simple things. "Oh, this one guy resisted, he probably was afraid to fight." But after looking at the war relocation files of Takashi Hoshizaki, it was really well thought out and analyzed. And in my interviews, he talked to his father about this and his mother and he actually really knew, somehow, he knew what he was doing that gave him that foresight, but I think many of the others didn't know what they were really committing themselves to. And I often wonder with the Japanese-American young niseis that went to go fight, and they still realized towards the end, towards their death, that their family is still incarcerated by their own country. I'm sure a lot of them must've felt quite awful about that.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

This untenable situation, as you put it, which is an understatement, to put it mildly, this came to an end, of course, the camps were closed, President Roosevelt rescinded 9066 after the 1944 elections. But the problems had just really begun. You've already alluded a bit to your parents' circumstance. I know they succeeded. You grew up in Ann Arbor and attended the University of Michigan. A great city. I lived there, as well, Shirley, our lives have intersected on a few moments, and a great American institution, as well. What was that like? You heard hints? We've read the jacket and you said you and your brother said, "Well, Heart Mountain, that's where mom and dad met. Must not have been that bad." Your mother kind of painted it in overly rosy colors. I'm thinking of not so much your early childhood, but your middle school years, your early adolescence, how were you beginning to process what had happened to your parents? There's been a whole lot of research today on children of survivors of an ordeal, of a trauma, for example, of the Holocaust. But I'm wondering how that began to sort of filter into your consciousness as a young adult?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Well, I think, in some ways, growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan might have been a blessing in some respect, because I was doubly insulated, I think, from the Japanese-American incarceration experience, because I didn't have any other Japanese-American friends around to sort of compare notes. I mean, that's how children learn, is they learn from each other. So all my friends were white and black. I mean, I pretty much grew up in that environment and I think I was highly assimilated. But I think that it was very difficult in some respect, in hindsight, because I even had a classmate ask me in high school ask me whether I was black or white. And I didn't even know how to respond to that question, and I made a joke, "Well, in the summertime I'm black, because my skin gets dark and I perm my hair and in the winter I'm white." And it's almost like the kid actually believed me, because I think the kid was just as confused as I was about my own Japanese-American identity.

 

But life is a process and I sort of did things backwards. I mean, I think what I learned working with African-Americans and white people in Ann Arbor and throughout law school really served me well as a lawyer in Washington D.C., because a lot of my colleagues, the judges here and lawyers are African-American and I was able to mix and mingle very easily and felt very comfortable in this community, in this world. As a matter of fact, I recall at Georgetown Law School, a Hispanic law student came up to me and said, "Why don't you hang around with the other Asian law students?" And I was like, "The Asian law students? You mean the guy that's from Japan and the woman that's from Korea? And you mean those other Asian, Japanese-American law students from Hawaii?" I mean, I felt more comfortable around what I was used to, which is I was raised in Michigan and that's kind of where it starts and where it ends.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

For those of use who live in Michigan, we know the meaning, the import of that phrase. Michigan stamps you forever, it's, in some ways, a classic middle of the country state where you get to know just about everybody. But hearing your experience, that's fascinating. Now, you began to detect though that your mother was holding many things inside, particularly as she became ill. And you've mentioned pancreatic cancer and I'm sure most of our listeners know that that's pretty much a death sentence, that's a tough one to recover from. Tell us that. Break down that story a little bit for us, how you began to know more about your mother? You say in the book you sense she was holding many things inside herself.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Well, you'll find, in my mother's generation, this is very common. Now that I've accessed other Japanese-American peers, they said that their parents were the same way. They never really talked much about the incarceration and they wanted to put everything behind them to move forward and that's a classic psychological coping tool. As you might've heard, when you go through a traumatic experience, denial is a very strong coping tool. I mean, a denial that it was that bad, a denial that it maybe even really existed, maybe repainting it as a fun place to be or a place that wasn't so bad after all. And I think that was sort of the theory that my mother adopted, but I think that it worked very well for her. Because of the place that we were growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she wasn't able to validate any other reality, but sort of putting it behind her, I think.

 

However, in 1981, when my dad accepted the position of chair of the pharmaceutics department at University of Utah, interestingly enough, I talk about how she kind of reunited with former camp inmates that she met as children, when they were 11 years old and in the camp. And the character, Judge Raymond Uno, who's an essential character in my book, was one of those individuals that she connected with and that's what sort of spurred her interest in Heart Mountain, because he's a huge civil right activist in Utah. He was actually the first minority judge elected in Utah, so she had validation that then, I think, encouraged her interests in Heart Mountain. But interestingly, she kept her thoughts pretty much to herself. I mean, we didn't realize that she was secretly donating tens of thousands of dollars to dream of something being built there. I didn't know about that until after she died.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

That's fantastic. Do you think there was an attempt to, excuse me, plunge herself into normality, the sort of classic, middle-class life, new car every couple of years, the sort of American Dream of the post-war era, but perhaps a little more intensely than many of us, do you think there's something to that?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Oh, definitely. As I talk about, we had the first microwave. We were the first to get TV dinners. We had the first color television set. I remember the girl across the street, her family would never break loose of their black and white TV and I was like, "Hey, I thought everyone had a color TV." So we were always sort of on the cutting edge of everything. And, as a kid, in made our lives really exciting and fun and interesting. But I also do believe it was a way to sort of accelerate our American Dream and put us in a place that we wanted to be, which is the first at everything.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Right. You mention, in the book, and there's some very, I thought as an outsider to this story, I found it fascinating. You often hear that Japanese-Americans are a model minority, that's the term you used in the book. What does that phrase mean to you? I mean, it sounds great, but it also sounds like a heck of a burden to carry. I'm Italian-American and I can't cook and then people say, "How come you're not like you're supposed to be?" What is it like to be a model minority and what does that phrase mean to you?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Well, that is a very, very complicated question and I'm learning more about what a model minority is now, sort of examining the impact that our society has on Black Lives Matter and African-American and how they've experienced institutional racism. And I sometimes feel that the whole model minority myth was something that we were put in, by the government, essentially it was something they created and it really served, I think, to undermine other minority groups. Because, oh, they're perfect, why can't you be like them? I think, in some ways, a lot of assumptions were made about me that worked to my benefit. I mean, people think I'm really smart, they don't question me as much in terms of my credentials, because they assume I must be bright, because I'm Asian-American. But I think the downside is, is that, by the way you look, being an Asian and having an Asian face, the reality is people will always sort of view you as this perpetual foreigner.

 

So it's kind of a double-edged sword. But the model minority myth, I think, has put, yes, undue pressure on us and I'm almost certain that many Japanese-Americans, historically, kind of liked the idea of being a model minority, like we're special, we're different, we're smarter, we're better, and we're more assimilated and attached to the white community.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

You write very movingly in this book, Shirley, of the ceremony in June 2000 in which President Bill Clinton bestowed the medal of honor on Daniel Inouye, one of the real patron saints of our National World War II museum, I might say, and other Japanese American veterans. You write that it was, I'm quoting you, "it was a ceremony drenched in emotion." Tell me what that ceremony meant to you and to other Japanese-Americans, particularly as sons and daughters of this incarceration generation.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Well, I think that recognition really meant a lot to the Japanese-American community, because it really validated the heroism and validated their loyalty to the U.S., especially someone like Senator Inouye, who I had the pleasure of knowing for many years during my lifetime. And the sacrifice that Danny, in a way, made from a wartime perspective and losing his arm and what he sacrificed and what he believed in really came full circle during that recognition of him and his valor, as well as the other Japanese-American soldiers. But it's also pretty much also like the apology that Secretary Norman Mineta and others worked on when President Reagan signed the apology letter and gave a token reparation of $20,000 to those that were living. My grandparents never got to see that apology, because they were since deceased, but it's the symbolism that our government recognizes and forgives and appreciates what the Japanese-American experience was and that meant a great deal to our community.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

This is an inspiring story, but even your book has some darker overtones and you describe a conversation with Judge Antonin Scalia, a jurist of now small ability, a brilliant guy, talking about this entire sorry episode and I'll quote, "It was wrong, but I would not be surprised to see it happen again," he said. You went on to quote that old Latin adage, Inter arma enim silent lēgēs, which means that in times of war, forget about the laws, the laws become silent. Could something like Japanese-American internment happen again, in your opinion, Shirley?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Well, I do think that something like the Japanese-American incarceration can happen again. Remember, it happened by the stroke of a pen, an executive order. I think we've seen, in the last several years, a president's ability to promote something like building a wall or family separation or detention and marginalizing of communities very easily. So I think the reason why we're all here today and when I mean we, I mean the Japanese-American community and Heart Mountain is we're really committed to telling the story, educating, putting this information in the school systems, making it available for teachers, and running teacher workshops actual at the center, so that all these teachers are armed with correct information that they can disseminate throughout the United States. So education first, and accepting that our country does make mistakes and we need to look at ways to make sure those mistakes don't happen again.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

I think education is the key, and we have a lot of very interested listeners and viewers right now. Shirley, thank you so much, I think it's probably time now to get onto the Q&A, the portion of the show where you never know exactly what's going to come your way, but all the questions are extremely well-informed. So if you don't mind, folks, will see my kind of peering. I'm a older man and I need to get a little closer to the screen to read these. Terrence Skelton would like to know, Shirley, were only Japanese incarcerated? What about other Asian immigrants? Korean? Chinese? Were they also sent to camps?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

No, no, no. Not during the World War II incarceration. Actually, what they did was the identification of Japanese-Americans was pretty scientifically done. I mean, they used the census materials. And during the film, I showed the census materials that we found through our research and they targeted Japanese-Americans and not other Asians.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

A professor at Henry Ford Community College, Hal Friedman, from our old neck of the woods in southeastern Michigan, why do you think virtually all of the Japanese-Americans were removed from the West Coast, but so few were removed from the territory of Hawaii, given how important Hawaii was to the U.S. prosecution of the Pacific War? I think you referenced this earlier, but I wonder if you could speak a little more about it?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

It would have economically ruined Hawaii and shut down the ability to produce and have viable economic efforts in Hawaii. So the decision was made not to do that and not clear why. I mean, I think it was a racist move, political move, economic move, and I really can't overemphasize how the government did suppress information about the Japanese-Americans in California that there was no evidence of espionage and sabotage, but if you look at all the public records of all the hysteria, the media, and the economic benefits during that time period, it was substantial.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

There's a tale of one of the officers on the West Coast and somebody said, "There's no sabotage," and he said, "The absence of sabotage makes me all the more worried." It was kind of a classic bureaucratic double speak, it may even be an apocryphal tale, but it sounds typical. Pamela Ogata would like to ask you think question, good morning, thank you for the wonderful webinar, how can we use our internment experience to help support the Black Lives Matter movement and, moreover, racial and health equity and unite the nation. That's a lot, I know, but how can we use this... I think she's really speaking specifically to Japanese-Americans, but I wonder what you would say to that?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Well, I've actually written a couple of op-eds on the Japanese-American experience, but also tying it to Black Lives Matter and the treatment of African-Americans in this country. And I do think it's important and I was actually reading the news that even with the violence against Asian-Americans today, because of the COVID crisis, I think Biden actually just signed something saying that we need to really try to help these violent attacks against Asians. The African-American community has stepped up to actually collaborate and help with that effort. But, I think that right now, actually, there is a bill that's going through Congress that's asking to establish a commission, HR 40, to study the effects of discrimination on the African-American community and a team of Japanese-American advocates, like myself, have helped contribute information and support to that effort. The need to establish a commission to study how best to address these historical wrongs to the African-American community.

 

And I think the brilliant advocacy work done by Secretary Mineta, who was then a congressman, and others on Capitol Hill really neatly pulled together the concept of commission, let's study the Japanese American incarceration. And I think once that study was established, they used that evidence to do a formal apology with a monetary principal reparation amount.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

I'll interject one question. You've mentioned Daniel Inouye and Norm Mineta, two towering figures in this particular story, how did you come to know them and what has knowing them meant to you in your journey forward as you've come to understand this process to much more deeply.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Well, I met Secretary Mineta a couple of times. I actually first met him when I was a student at the University of Michigan. I'm sure he didn't remember me at all, but I went to a lecture that he was having on the reparation of the Japanese-Americans and I was a student there. And then, I quickly caught up with him in Washington D.C., as well as at Heart Mountain, because of my role as chair and we became very close allies and very close friends. I just actually was on a program with him a couple of days ago about this very topic. And he's still doing really quite well. With Senator Inouye, actually his chief of staff, who was also a psychologist and a lawyer, spoke with me about having Senator Inouye give my keynote when I was elected D.C. Bar President in Washington D.C. in 2002. So I met Senator Inouye through his keynoting me and the rest is history. He actually ended up coming out to our grand opening and keynoting that, as well.

 

So it's always been, for me, a real process of support. I've been very lucky to have people just really believe in me and what I'm doing and as everyone knows, especially when you're trying to promote something like educating people about this incarceration experience, you really need all the help you can get.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Absolutely. There's one other character, by the way, I'm going to take one more personal privilege question right now, one other person you talk about in this book is a Wyoming senator by the name of Alan Simpson and his relationship with the... so he's a white, Caucasian Wyoming kid, how does he get involved in the Heart Mountain situation?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Well, the first thing is that, for those of you that know Al Simpson, he is just a very principled, committed, and passionate man who has a great depth of understanding. He is a Republican, he's a long-standing Republican and he has a very close friendship with Norm Mineta, but ironically they actually met as Boy Scouts in the camp. Norm was a kid, he was in the camp as a prisoner, and Al was a Boy Scout in Cody, Wyoming and his troop actually came into the camp and they had a jamboree together and Norm and Al have stayed in touch ever since. And Al's just another guy where he... I call Norm, he picks up the phone, same thing with Al Simpson, and they're both so committed to our efforts, but they're also symbolic in that they have taught this nation the importance of working together and across the aisle, which is one of the hugest things right now for our country. We need bipartisan cooperation, so we're in the process now of building the Mineta Simpson Institute at our museum, where we will replicate and honor these two men, but also use them as a teaching tool on how government practices should work for this country.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Wonderful. Rachel Wata, I think this is to me, please don't compare the model minority myth with being Italian-American. The two are not comparable, it's insulting to insinuate the experiences are similar. I was merely using a metaphor to illustrate the silliness of racial stereotyping, but all metaphors limp and I know we have to be careful about those, Rachel, so thank you for your comment. Jim Cowart, my brother-in-law's family was held in Manzanar, another of these camps, when the reparations were offered to them, some accepted the money and some didn't. Do you have any sense of how many of the prisoners or internees refused the money? Any thoughts about that, Shirley?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

I could probably find out and get the exact numbers, but I know firsthand a couple of families that refused to accept the money just out of principle. I mean, if you're thinking about losing that 14.25 acres in San Jose, now known as Silicon Valley today, I mean what is $20,000 many, many, many years later. But I know that a lot of people like Norm Mineta, who I spoke with directly, he donated his money, his $20,000 to Japanese-American advocacy causes, like the Japanese-American Citizens League and other groups. And I think, for my parents, what they ended up doing with their $20,000 is they actually divided it up and gave it to their children and relatives who needed money.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Even there, I can see the difficulty of that decision. $20,000, of course, who wouldn't want that, but at the same time, you have to think about the context. I think, Shirley, our time together and also reading your book has shown me the fraught nature of so many of the aspects of this story. There's an argument about virtually everything, and a good argument for and against virtually everything we're talking about. Tim Barnes, did any legal group attempt to get FDR's order rescinded? This might be a good time to say a few words about some of the Japanese-American advocacy groups and the different kinds of points of view and the different kinds of tactics they pursued.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Well, one of the lawyers, I actually sat on a panel with them last weekend, Dale Minami, was instrumental in legally trying to overturn those cases and working against to clarify the unconstitutionality of that nature, but it really was sort of an uphill battle with the Supreme Court back then. I mean, they really did not honestly address the constitutional issues and what happened to the Japanese-Americans. So essentially, even though Antonin Scalia came out much later said that this was one of the worst decisions ever. The Korematsu case, one of the premiere Supreme Court cases, is still on the books. So if that case is still in existence, that means, yes, it can happen again.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

This is from Catherine Ladneer, I believe I'm pronouncing that correctly, this might be a bit granular. I'm from El Monte, California, I believe the Japanese-Americans of El Monte and San Gabriel Valley went to Heart Mountain. Could you comment? Do you know the specifics of that, Shirley?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

I believe that do. I mean, I don't think that the areas are ironclad, but a lot of Japanese-Americans from that area, including Raymond Uno, who's one of the main characters in my book, was from that area. LA was probably the biggest recruitment or removal area, as well as San Jose, California and San Francisco.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Mm-hmm. Here's a good one. I'm not sure there's a correct answer to this from David Smith, how do you counter the belief that telling the truth is rewriting history? I'm sensitive to this question. I've been a history professor for years and I know sometimes you just feel like you're standing up there and your kids in the seats believe one thing and you're just trying to make them disbelief everything they've been taught up till now and it's really more of a conversation, I suppose. But I wonder if you'd like to address this? When you talk about this subject, I'm sure sometimes people react badly to what you have to say.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Well, interestingly enough, I've been actually really lucky. I mean, I may be living in a bubble. I lived in a bubble in Ann Arbor, Michigan and maybe I'm living in a bubble in Washington D.C., but I have just been exposed to so many people, black, white, Republican, Democrat, who have really embraced the Heart Mountain story, and I have no idea why that is, and we always scratch our heads. Part of it, I think, is because of Norm Mineta and Al Simpson. When you get two principled and well-known politicians standing up and saying, "Hey, we need to tell this story, it's amazing how many people listen." And I know there's a vast amount of individuals throughout the United States and we witnessed this the last four years, that are racist and don't want to hear this and don't want to understand. But I'm hoping that through education, through your museum, through our museum, we can help to slowly turn the tide and I feel if I can get the support of the state of Wyoming and Powell and Cody, which I know I do have support, that's a really great place to start.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

I might say that I have the benefit right now of reading all the questions and comments and it's one after the other. Thank you, thank you, thank you for telling this important story. Mary Blackburn, this is a little bit of a long comment, but I think it's worth reading. I don't know how to communicate the depth of my feeling, Mary says. Thank you for this, I hope that there are deeper moments for restitution. In 1973 my father was a farmhand on a beet field adjacent to Heart Mountain. My mother lived in a shack set aside for migrant workers and took me on my walks to the former concentration camp. We moved away, but for years I was hoping for the establishment of a site clear the history and the impact. Again, thank you. Would you say that's a typical response to your presentations?

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi 

Well, yeah. The Blackburns are actually in my book and I had interviewed their family for the book and they were really instrumental in really starting to recognize the site itself before we built the museum. So this is an example, and that's why we give away this award called the compassionate witness award. When you're able to stand out of your shoes and help other communities, even though you're not a victim of that community, to help educate the public, that kind of support goes a real long way. I mean, I'm not trying to say that white people in Wyoming necessarily have more credibility than a Japanese American standing on a soapbox in Cody and Powell, but guess what? They do. They have credibility.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Shelly Williamson [inaudible 00:58:29] she said, "This is incredible," Shelly said and she wants to thank you for the presentation. We've come to the end of our hour now, Shirley and I just do want to say a couple of things. The work you've done in that stretch of the great American west between Cody and Powell, Wyoming is really amazing. It's a very moving presentation. I stayed for a very long time at the interpretive center during my visit, so I'd just like to say congratulations to you on that, and I know that's been a long road. You can have the last word, if you like.

 

Shirley Ann Higuchi

Thank you, Rob. And thank you so much for having me today with this very important program and a very important remembrance day. And I do intend to come down to your museum and I would love to present in person as soon as the COVID crisis is over. But I also really think that folks who are interested in this should get on our website at www.heartmountain.org. We do have a pilgrimage that is coming up. It'll be mostly virtual, although we will have about 50 to 60 people on site, so please come join us and for those of you that can come out, we are open and because of the fact a lot of our structures and original buildings are outside, you can talk the walking tour, you can look at the original barrack, and the original chimney stack and hospital, so please come out.

 

Dr. Rob Citino

Thank you, Shirley. From the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, also currently open, so please come see us. I've been talking to Shirley Higuchi. I'm Rob Citino and thanks to everyone for tuning into this program. We'll see you again.

 

Jeremy Collins 

Thank you for listening. If you liked what you heard, please consider visiting nationalww2museum.org/podcasts for more episodes. Again, that is national w w, the number 2, museum.org/podcasts. Don't forget to rate and subscribe, we truly appreciate it. This series is brought to you by the Albert and Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation which supports content like this from the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. I'm Jeremy Collins, signing off.