False Reports of Sabotage
In the months after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, radio and newspaper journalists issued unsubstantiated reports that Nikkei on the West Coast had assisted the Japanese military, and that they were acting as agents of Imperial Japan. In particular, newspapers in California continued a long anti-Japanese campaign by resurrecting old stereotypes of treacherous Asians and “yellow peril” invasion. Reporters claimed that Issei fishermen and farmers were signaling enemy planes and ships by aligning their boats or planting their crops to point toward military installations. In addition, the Secretary of the U.S. Navy stated that “fifth column” activity had aided in the destruction of the Pacific fleet. Hawaiian Navy commanders and the FBI rejected the claim, though not publicly. Especially damaging to the future of anyone of Japanese ancestry in the United States was the stance of General John DeWitt, in charge of defending the western territory of the United States. DeWitt repeated anti-Japanese rumors and incorrect claims that West Coast Nikkei were signaling Japanese submarines so that they could attack U.S. ships. Federal agencies discredited those claims, but the government did not go on record to refute the false stories that were escalating the public’s hysterical fear of everyone of Japanese ancestry.
Excerpt from Densho Archive
I remember when the war first began, the local newspapers were very sane about it. They ran editorials urging the people of Seattle not to take the war out against the Japanese residents in this country because they had nothing to do with the starting of the war, and so forth. And so the four or five weeks, everything seemed reasonable. At least in Seattle I didn’t know of any assaults on the Japanese by mobs or even by individuals. Though I understand California wasn’t quite that peaceful. The atmosphere began to become nasty only after the newspapers, the press, began whipping it up with an anti-Japanese slant. If the newspapers had not done that, maybe that evacuation would have– well, it was totally unnecessary in the first place, but it might have been avoided. Had it not been for the irresponsibility of the American press in inflaming public opinion — which really didn’t need to be inflamed — we probably would have escaped being put into prison like we were.
Shosuke Sasaki
Issei active in Seattle redress movement