Trump’s war on immigrants repeats America’s past shame

By Evelyn Iritani, especially for CalMatters

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The Trump administration boasts that its war on immigrants, which includes threats of imprisonment and incentives for “self-deportation,” has prompted 1.9 million people to “voluntarily” leave the country or “reimmigrate” in the past year. But these decisions are no more voluntary than those made by thousands of Japanese immigrants and their families eight decades ago that still reverberate across generations.

In the 1940s, opportunistic American politicians and military leaders relied on racial prejudice and wartime fears to justify the inhumane and illegal treatment of the Japanese community, including US citizens. Today, the Trump administration is using the same racist game — including resurrecting the age-old Alien Enemy Act — to purge America of people it claims are a danger to public safety, to job security, to white Christian civilization threatened by immigrants from non-white nations. Now, as then, America’s values ​​and its commitment to the rule of law are at stake, along with the lives and futures of the people who have made this country their home.

On the night of December 7, 1941, George Haswicke returned home to Burbank after a family fishing trip to find two men waiting to arrest him. The 41-year-old Japanese immigrant and American-born father of three became one of more than 2,000 Japanese, mostly first-generation Issei, detained as disloyal “enemy aliens” in the early days of the Pacific War.

Haswicke, the owner of one of the largest manufacturing operations in Los Angeles, finally hit a roadblock he couldn’t overcome.

Long before Sam Walton revolutionized retail, Haswicke, who arrived in America in 1918 with big dreams and nothing else, found ways to cut costs from the supply chain connecting Japanese farmers in California to the vast consumer market of Los Angeles. To extend the life of his perishable stock, the shrewd businessman pioneered the packaging and sale of frozen vegetables.

In just two decades, Haswicke, a leader in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo neighborhood, built Three Star Produce Company into a regional powerhouse, employing 350 people in a series of small markets, a deli, a case company and Lucky Star Market, one of Southern California’s first full-service grocery stores.

In order to build a comfortable life for his family and protect their future, he followed the laws that governed his adopted homeland—and prohibited him from becoming a US citizen, owning property, or even living in many parts of California. He transferred the family’s assets to his American-born wife’s name, a common practice among Japanese immigrants. He paid his bills and taxes and bought life insurance. He crossed racial lines, raising his family in a predominantly white suburb and forming partnerships with people like Frank Van de Kamp, owner of the popular Van de Kamp Bakery.

Had this trajectory of business success continued, the Haswicke name could grace the symphony halls or university buildings of Los Angeles today. Instead, just hours after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, law enforcement officers escorted George Haswicke to a waiting car and drove him away. It happened so fast that his children didn’t even get to say goodbye. He disappeared into the federal prison system, where he joined other Japanese, German and Italian immigrants labeled “enemy aliens” and would-be saboteurs.

Two months later, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the order that led to the imprisonment of the rest of the Hasuke family, as well as more than 120,000 other people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of whom were US citizens. George’s wife, May, and their son and daughters, all US citizens, were sent to Camp Amache, a hastily constructed detention center in the southeastern Colorado desert.

Meanwhile, as the Imperial Japanese Army advanced into Asia, its troops captured more than 10,000 American men, women, and children. Their rescue became a top priority for State Department officials.

The Haswicke never expected to be forced to leave their home, much less America. But the US had to find Japanese people to “repatriate” to Japan in a one-for-one exchange for captured Americans. The definition of repatriation is to return to the country of your birth or citizenship. The majority of people of Japanese descent in America are US citizens. If the government sent them to Japan, they would trade Americans for Americans. But in the chaos of war, when the rule of law gave way to the rule of prejudice and fear, it didn’t matter.

American officials were divided over the ethics and legality of sending Japanese people, especially American citizens, into a war zone. So, in the spring of 1942, they asked imprisoned Japanese and Japanese Americans to state in writing whether they wanted to be sent to Japan. Much to the surprise of officials, the vast majority, including May and her children, said no.

But for George Haswicke, who remained in a segregated prison, options are quickly narrowing. His request to appeal the government’s finding of disloyalty was denied. The feds seized his home, his cars, his company, his life insurance policies, even his children’s savings accounts. The Internal Revenue Service began investigating George and his wife on dubious tax evasion charges.

In the end, Hasuike decides that the only way for him and his family to be together is on a ship to Japan. When his name appeared on the passenger manifest for the second civilian exchange in 1943, he asked his wife to return with him to his family’s village near Hiroshima.“come in” May, whose repeated pleas to reunite with her husband had fallen on deaf ears, told their children. It can’t be helped.

In September 1943, the MS Gripsholm sailed for Mormugao, India, carrying nearly 1,500 passengers of Japanese descent, including the Hasuikes and other Japanese Americans. More than half of those on board were Japanese Latinos – mostly from Peru – who were detained at the request of the Roosevelt administration, sent to the US and eventually used as barter for trade.

In the midst of a bitter war, American officials had pulled off a diplomatic coup – the rescue of nearly 3,000 Allied civilians in two exchanges. But for many innocent civilians like Hasuike, it meant being sold into a country that is no longer, or never was, their home.

Scenes from this dark chapter in US history are returning today as immigrants who have put down deep roots in this country, including US citizens and others here legally, are persecuted, imprisoned and deported without due process.

Now, as then, immigrants are quietly debating whether to leave America to protect themselves and their families. They sell furniture and cars, find shelters for pets, and say goodbye to friends and, in some cases, their American-born children.

The Trump administration’s continued demonization of the other, the suggestion that people of a certain skin color or place of birth don’t belong in America, is an affront to the promise of freedom, democracy and freedom for all that brought George Haswicke to California to pursue his entrepreneurial dream. It makes a mockery of the democratic values ​​that our soldiers and sailors — including 33,000 Japanese Americans — fought for in World War II. This is the very definition of anti-American.

This commentary is adapted from an essay created for Plinth Public Square.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.