Loyalty Indicators of Relocated Alien Families

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    Starting February 6, 1943, internees were given a loyalty questionnaire to determine how to encourage their integration back into society. Two questions were aimed at draft aged men. Twenty two percent of the 21,000 Japanese eligible to register answered "No" to both questions.
Question 27 "Are you willing to service in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty and serve wherever assigned?"
Question 28. "Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any and all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor." ⁽¹⁾

Males between the ages of seventeen and thirty-eight answered "No."
    "The following figures speak for themselves, showing as they do that about one out of four Nisei in the relocation centers admitted their loyalty was to Japan, and that only six out of every one hundred of them considered themselves to be Americans by volunteering for service in the United States Army."

				Number
				Answering
		 		"no" to		Number of
Relocation 	Number	 	loyalty		Volunteers
Center 		Registered	question	Army
Central Utah	2,420		806		116
Colorado River	3,356		671		238
Gila River	2,488		547		119
Granada		1,117		117		121
Heart Mountain	1,881		451		47
Jerome		1,341		110		33
Manzanar	1,826		913		101
Minidoka	1,607		32		310
Robwer		1,585		300		37
Tule Lake	2,342		836             59
TOTAL	        19,963        	4,783           1,181
Average (percent) ....          24%             6% (2)

Sources
1. "Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II" by Takaki, Ronald
2. "Betrayal from the East" by Alan Hynd

    These statistics are understandable once we realize that most of these were Japanese people working in the United States as a place of employment with no commitment to the American Way of Life. Their children born in the U.S. held dual citizenship -- Japanese through their parents and American by way of birth location.

    There were Americans living in areas occupied by the Imperial Army, in the Philippines for example, who were captured with no loyalty to Japan. These civilians owned businesses, worked for foreign corporations, were military dependents, or who merely enjoyed the Filipino lifestyle. However, contrast the treatment of American civilians interned by the Japanese.
    "We were put in different internment camps (16 year old girl separated from her store manager parents) and we were able to exist in a very primitive way. We lived on practically nothing. We had to buy our own food because the Japanese kept telling us we were only in protective custody. They had no reason to feed us and they did not have to follow the Geneva Convention rules." -- Margaret Gillooly
    "It was terrible to watch the children as the starvation process proceeded. They became like little old men and women. They would sit on the sidewalk and have absolutely no energy to accomplish anything. ... When Manila was recaptured, they found tons of Red Cross supplies stored in Manila that the Japanese had not released to us." -- Hattie Brantley, nurse in the same camp.

    Contrast this with 4,300 youths from Tule Lake Relocation Center alone that were sent to college on scholarships. Or, that Japanese citizens visiting the United States trapped by the war were awarded $20,000 (1978) for their inconvenience, including the 3,500 returned in a civilian exchange early in the war.

Miscellaneous notes:
    The period of forced relocation was the same period where civilian rationing brought charges of coddling of Japanese and of POWs who were feed balanced diets while Americans scrimped.
    By December 1943, most camps had relocated people working outside the camp as day laborers and farm workers, the work many had done in the prewar period. Their West Coast jobs were taken by Mexican workers imported to take the place of Japanese field workers.
    In December 1944, the West Coast was declared to be no longer a war zone -- those relocated could return to their homes if they wished. Many did not return until after the war for fear of their lives. The camps remained open for their convenience.
    You can estimate the orientation of a speaker by noting if they say that "peaceful Japanese-Americans and their parents were imprisoned" or if it is said that "enemy aliens and their children were relocated from a war zone."

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