Bar­racks with Mt. Williamson, by Dorothea Lange. Via Wiki­me­dia Commons

Dur­ing World War II, while mil­lions of Euro­pean Jews were impris­oned and ulti­mate­ly slaugh­tered by the Nazis, tens of thou­sands of Japan­ese Amer­i­cans were impris­oned by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment. Among the incar­cer­at­ed were over 2,000 mem­bers of mixed-race fam­i­lies — includ­ing one Jew­ish woman and her three-year-old son.

Elaine Yone­da, a leader in the pre­war West Coast labor rights and anti-fas­cist move­ment and the daugh­ter of East­ern Euro­pean Jew­ish immi­grants, was the wife of Japan­ese Amer­i­can left­ist activist Karl Yone­da. After the Japan­ese Navy bombed Pearl Har­bor, the US gov­ern­ment forcibly detained any­one on the West Coast with, in the words of one offi­cial, even one drop of Japan­ese blood.” Elaine was faced with a dev­as­tat­ing choice: to enter a camp near Death Val­ley named Man­za­nar with Karl and their son, Tom­my, or let them be tak­en there with­out her. She did what almost any moth­er would do. On April 1, 1942, Elaine and Tom­my became the only Jew­ish incar­cerees on record in any of America’s World War II con­cen­tra­tion camps. But ensur­ing she could pro­tect her son in Man­za­nar came at a steep cost for Elaine: she was forced to leave behind her white daugh­ter from a pre­vi­ous marriage.

The Yonedas’ sto­ry — and those of their approx­i­mate­ly 120,000 fel­low pris­on­ers — high­lights the pro­found effect that euphemism can have in shap­ing a nation­al nar­ra­tive. Since the end of World War II, Man­za­nar and the oth­er sites incar­cer­at­ing Japan­ese Amer­i­cans have been almost uni­form­ly referred to as intern­ment camps.” In the ear­ly 1940s, how­ev­er, they were wide­ly called con­cen­tra­tion camps — a far more accu­rate description.

Accord­ing to Mer­ri­am Web­ster, a con­cen­tra­tion camp is a place where large num­bers of peo­ple (such as pris­on­ers of war, polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, refugees, or the mem­bers of an eth­nic or reli­gious minor­i­ty) are detained or con­fined under armed guard.” This is what Man­za­nar and the Amer­i­can camps like it were. On the oth­er hand, as the his­to­ry orga­ni­za­tion Den­sho explains, intern­ment” is a legal term for the detain­ment of for­eign­ers des­ig­nat­ed as “‘ene­my aliens’ in time of war.” Using this term for camps like Man­za­nar only per­pet­u­ates the myth upon which the entire forced removal and incar­cer­a­tion of Japan­ese Amer­i­cans was built: that they were an ene­my race,” in the words of US offi­cials at the time; that regard­less of their Amer­i­can cit­i­zen­ship, they were for­eign­ers, eter­nal out­siders who could nev­er be trusted.

The Nazis used the term con­cen­tra­tion camp” to obscure the truth of their own slave-labor and exter­mi­na­tion cen­ters. The Ger­mans first referred to their camps as spe­cial con­cen­tra­tion camps.” As the world dis­cov­ered them, the lat­ter two words stuck. But the Nazi camps were not ulti­mate­ly con­cen­tra­tion camps any more than the camps for Japan­ese Amer­i­cans on US soil were intern­ment camps. A look at Elaine and Karl Yoneda’s painful predica­ment in Man­za­nar shows how indi­vid­u­als were per­son­al­ly impact­ed by the use of euphemism. At first, con­cen­tra­tion camp” was a term that the Yonedas accept­ed and used. But as the war dragged on and news of the Nazis’ own camps began to leak, they became increas­ing­ly ambiva­lent about the term. So did the Amer­i­can media, the pub­lic, and in par­tic­u­lar the left­ist com­mu­ni­ty. The incar­cer­a­tion of the West Coast Japan­ese Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty was nec­es­sary,” argued even the left­ist papers. But no con­clu­sive evi­dence ever exist­ed of Japan­ese Amer­i­can sab­o­tage, of risk to the nation from this pop­u­la­tion of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens.
 

Since the end of World War II, Man­za­nar and the oth­er sites incar­cer­at­ing Japan­ese Amer­i­cans have been almost uni­form­ly referred to as intern­ment camps.” In the ear­ly 1940s, how­ev­er, they were wide­ly called con­cen­tra­tion camps — a far more accu­rate description. 

This truth did lit­tle to sway pro­gres­sives (includ­ing those on the Jew­ish left) like the jour­nal­ist Wal­ter Lipp­man. The Pacif­ic Coast is in immi­nent dan­ger of a com­bined attack from with­in and from with­out,” he wrote. He admit­ted that since the out­break of the Japan­ese war there has been no impor­tant sab­o­tage.” But, he argued, This is not, as some have liked to think, a sign that there is noth­ing to be feared. It is a sign that the blow is well-orga­nized and that it is held back until it can be struck with max­i­mum effect.”

Detained under armed guard, removed from soci­ety, the Yonedas found few ways to join the nation’s bat­tle against the Axis. But they longed to par­tic­i­pate in polit­i­cal strug­gle as they promi­nent­ly had before the war, to main­tain some sense of their pre-incar­cer­a­tion iden­ti­ties and some role in their for­mer left­ist com­mu­ni­ty, even from behind Amer­i­can barbed wire. They yearned to par­tic­i­pate in the strug­gle against Impe­r­i­al Japan’s bru­tal col­o­niza­tion of their Asian neigh­bors and the mass exter­mi­na­tion of Europe’s Jews. The only avenue for doing so from Man­za­nar was to pro­claim America’s right­eous­ness by down­play­ing the obvi­ous civ­il-rights and Con­sti­tu­tion­al breach­es of its own race-based mass incarceration.

Instead of a con­cen­tra­tion camp, Man­za­nar became the Yonedas’ own bat­tle­field in help­ing to win the war,” Elaine wrote in her diary, a sym­bol of their own sac­ri­fice” to the war effort. This project,” as Karl referred to Man­za­nar in a let­ter to People’s World, will take its place in Amer­i­can his­to­ry – in the fight for the preser­va­tion of democ­ra­cy and the defeat of the Axis-Fas­cists.” Whether or not Man­za­nar and the deten­tion cen­ters like it were con­cen­tra­tion camps or were in vio­la­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion” were ques­tions that would have to wait, to be addressed after the war.” 

Although the Yonedas faced per­ilous vio­lence in Man­za­nar, they all sur­vived. Once the army agreed to dis­patch Japan­ese Amer­i­can cit­i­zens to bat­tle, Karl became one of first men from the US camps to vol­un­teer to be sent to the Pacif­ic front. After the war, Elaine and Karl fought for redress for the Japan­ese Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty. They joined many camp sur­vivors and descen­dants in refus­ing to let our nation for­get its ille­gal deten­tion of 120,000 US res­i­dents — the great major­i­ty US cit­i­zens — with no due process. But the ques­tion of whether Man­za­nar was a con­cen­tra­tion camp, espe­cial­ly in light of con­cur­rent Nazi atroc­i­ties in places called con­cen­tra­tion camps, con­tin­ued to haunt them until they died.

The hor­rors of the Holo­caust shouldn’t obscure America’s wrong­do­ings. The US gov­ern­ment put Japan­ese Amer­i­can cit­i­zens in con­cen­tra­tion camps. Nam­ing this truth remains fun­da­men­tal to a full and accu­rate his­tor­i­cal record, par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­cial now amid gov­ern­men­tal attempts to scrub past trau­mas and strug­gles from the nation­al nar­ra­tive. Rec­og­niz­ing this his­to­ry hon­ors fam­i­lies like the Yonedas and the tens of thou­sands of oth­ers incar­cer­at­ed along with them. Per­haps most impor­tant­ly, by fore­go­ing euphemism, we recog­nise our abil­i­ty to hold mul­ti­ple truths simul­ta­ne­ous­ly: that of the mil­lions who suf­fered and per­ished in Nazi exter­mi­na­tion cen­ters, and that of the mul­ti­tude of US cit­i­zens who lost homes and prop­er­ty, endured fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tions and ago­niz­ing hard­ships, some­times died vio­lent­ly, and were wrong­ly impris­oned sim­ply because of their eth­nic­i­ty or whom they loved. 

Tra­cy Slater is a Jew­ish Amer­i­can writer from Boston, based in her husband’s coun­try of Japan. Her most recent book is the nar­ra­tive his­to­ry Togeth­er in Man­za­nar: The True Sto­ry of a Japan­ese Jew­ish Fam­i­ly in an Amer­i­can Con­cen­tra­tion Camp. Her first book, the mixed-mar­riage mem­oir The Good Shu­fu: Find­ing Love, Self, and Home on the Far Side of the World, was named a Barnes & Noble Dis­cov­er Great New Writ­ers selec­tion and one of PopSugar’s best books of 2015. Slater has pub­lished work in the New York Times, the Wall Street Jour­nal, the Wash­ing­ton Post, Time magazine’s Made by His­to­ry, and more. She taught writ­ing for over ten years in Boston-area uni­ver­si­ties and in men’s and women’s pris­ons through­out Mass­a­chu­setts. She is the recip­i­ent of PEN New England’s Friend to Writ­ers Award and holds a PhD in Eng­lish and Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture from Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty. She can be reached at http://​www​.tra​cys​later​.com