<Begin Segment 19>

FM: Anyway, this is background, out of which the registration strike event occurs at Tule Lake. The whole series of strikes and rebellions and so on which occurred from August 15 through the last of October, about two months and a half of resistance that occurs. And then, suddenly, the resistance ends because people get so tired of all this tension that's in the camp. But, then registration comes in, let's say, toward the end of January, three months later. Nevertheless, there's this underlying sense of dissatisfaction and unease that was built up in this period of resistance and continues in, although there no longer is any resistance in these months of November, December, January. Nevertheless, there is this underlying tension that is still there.

The question is "Why did Tule Lake have this kind of problem?" Part of it could have been that the project director was such a liberally-minded guy, that he tried to handle these people in a reasonable, rational fashion, and they were not disposed to be reasonable and rational, and therefore, his attempt at liberal dealings with them just escalates the resistance, the reaction, the rebellion. The rebellion should have been suppressed, so to speak, and you would have had to use strong-armed tactics to do that, and if they had been suppressed, why they might have reacted more (normally), [Laughs] reasonably. Whereas, given the freedom to react against the situation as the project director, with his liberal orientation allowed, then the reaction, the rebellion, escalates and creates this underlying sentiment. That would be part of my sociological analysis of why this thing developed the way it did. Anyway, things at Tule Lake, with respect to segrega-, uh, with respect to registration, had this kind of unfortunate background to it. And when the army came in with their registration crew, the people were, so to speak, uh, were ready to dispose to look with great, uh, skepticism about this whole process and ready to react against it. And that was part of the problem.

SF: Could you describe what this, the army registration crew, was like? I mean, how did they, how did people find out about it?

FM: Yeah. Yeah.

SF: And how was it handled?

FM: Well, I -- it's a little hard for me to give you an analysis, because subsequently I studied these things and I know what happened and the background, and I want to separate that from what I observed at that time, which is something different, of course, because I didn't know exactly what the background circumstances were. But observationally, in terms of what we saw, it was as if the -- well there was a sense that the WRA had been saying "We've got to close these centers down." And I'm having trouble separating out what I know now from what was going on at that time, and maybe the two things are a little mixed up. But the WRA was trying to close the centers down, because of the belief that detention was not a good way to deal with the evacuee population. That detention only aggravated their sense of antagonism against the WRA and against the whole experience that they were having. Whereas the WRA's notion was that if people could be put into normal community life, they would become a part of the American scene, wartime scene, better than if they were isolated in their detention centers. That was the idea that the WRA came to by the, by the fall of 1942. They then discussed this, the idea of relocating the evacuee population, closing down the centers ultimately, relocating the population into non-exclusion areas in the Mountain States and in the Central and Eastern states.

So that was the background out of which the registration arose. Then there is the notion that, at the time that the population is removed from the detention centers, the question of the Selective Service, the draft of the American citizen males should be brought up. And therefore, a decision is made that there should be a separate combat unit formed to which Japanese Americans would be recruited and a policy is established of having them, having Japanese Americans in the centers volunteer for this unit. JACL was particularly instrumental in developing that kind of an idea.

[Interruption]

FM: Let me add one thing. To the population as a whole, the evacuee population as a whole, this kind of background was not clearly known. Certainly, it was not known that JACL was involved in trying to organize a combat team. Although, there was some information of that kind being voiced, nevertheless, it was not clearly understood. And it was not understood that the WRA was trying to close down the centers for the reason that they felt detention was not a good solution for the evacuees. But the evacuee population was made, it was made clear to them, that the policy was to clear the evacuee population for clearance to move out of the centers whenever they would. And, secondly, that as they did so, why, that the Japanese American citizen males would be subject to selective service draft.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.