The Roots of Removal: The Path to the Japanese American Incarceration

Written by Jeff Suzuki & Nigel Chandler. Edited by members of the Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition.

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 2, 2025

This two-part article explores events and policies that paved the way for Japanese American Incarceration, focusing on the genocide of indigenous people and the racialization of people of Asian descent that began with discrimination against Chinese immigrants.

PART I - The American Indian Connection

Incarcerated on Native Lands

Hana Chittenden Maruyama is one of many descendants of the Japanese American Incarceration here in California. From 1942 to 1945, her grandmother’s family was imprisoned at the Heart Mountain Concentration Camp in Wyoming–the same camp as the Inouye family of Los Gatos–and her grandfather’s family at the Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona. At the time of the Japanese American Incarceration, it had been nearly 60 years since the Office of Indian^{2
Various terms are used to refer to the Indigenous peoples of the United States, including “American Indian,” “Indian,” “Native American,” “Native,” and “Indigenous.” All of these terms have varying degrees of acceptability depending on the preferences of the tribes, nations, and peoples that are referred to by these terms. Legal institutions in the United States typically use the term “American Indian” or “Indian.” When possible, LGARC uses the specific names of the tribes, nations, and peoples in question. Many of LGARC’s sources for this article, some of which are written by California Indian people, use the term “California Indian” when referring to this particular state’s Indigenous population. When making generalizations across groups of Native peoples, LGARC uses each term mentioned above interchangeably and without preference. See the following

“National Museum of the American Indian” explainer
and
FAQ
for more information on acceptable terminology.} Affairs forced the Apsáalooke (Crow) to leave Heart Mountain, a sacred landmark of their people.^{3
https://wyoarchaeo.wyo.gov/index.php/learn/wyoming-archaeology-awareness-month/project-a-day/82-september-25-heart-mountain-archaeology-3,
4

https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/1d37d335-f5c2-41ec-9cd6-3f3c0e1bcf7a/contentPage 1, footnote 1 details the timeline of the relocation of the Crow people from Heart Mountain.} The Gila River War Relocation Center was placed on the Gila River Indian Reservation, against the will of the local Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Piipaash (Maricopa) people. For years, Maruyama had wondered why the American government would choose, out of all the places in the country, actual Native reservations and sacred sites to place their concentration camps. She decided to investigate.

As a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota, Maruyama combed through the U.S. National Archives in Washington, D.C. over the course of five years on a quest for answers. As part of her research efforts into the Japanese American Incarceration, she examined documents belonging to agencies directly involved in planning and executing it. As she requested the relevant federal records, searching by keywords, she noticed an odd classification number repeat itself in some of these files: “123,” a label that stood for the “Transfer and Removal of Indians.”^{5

https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/1d37d335-f5c2-41ec-9cd6-3f3c0e1bcf7a/
Page 27 details the discovery of the BIA documents handling Japanese Internment.} If she had been searching for files using those labels rather than by keywords, she would have never found the two entire boxes of files containing the names and records of Japanese Americans interned on camps located on Native land. Afterwards, she even found that the Bureau of Indian Affairs Alaska Superintendency had folders also labeled “123,” which mixed together files on both Alaska Native and Japanese American individuals who had been incarcerated during the war. In fact, many of the bureaucratic mechanisms of the Indian Reservation system, managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), were inherited by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) in the 1940s. It is not a coincidence that much of the leadership and staff of the BIA were shared with the WRA when it was established.^{6

https://www.pbssocal.org/news-community/how-japanese-american-incarceration-was-entangled-with-indigenous-dispossessionNote: Two of the ten internment camps used during the war were placed directly on Native reservations, on the Gila River and Colorado River Indian Reservations in Arizona.}

The Incarceration of Japanese Americans in 1942 followed a well established precedent of racial discrimination against Native Americans and Asians on the West Coast over the course of the prior hundred years, and this discrimination began in its most extreme manifestation: genocidal violence.

Agnes Savilla, a Mohave woman who worked for the Colorado River Indian Community Council in the spring of 1942, observed that the Council had two reactions when pressured to accept a concentration camp on their lands: first, that their land was being taken again and, second, that the government was treating Japanese Americans “just like us.”^{9

https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/1d37d335-f5c2-41ec-9cd6-3f3c0e1bcf7a/content
Page 14.} Indeed, the Incarceration of Japanese Americans in 1942 followed a well established precedent of racial discrimination against Native Americans and Asians on the West Coast over the course of the prior hundred years, and this discrimination began in its most extreme manifestation: genocidal violence.

Genocide and Displacement in California

In 1848, after Mexico’s defeat in the Mexican-American War, the United States forcibly annexed over half of Mexico’s territory. California, the most valuable of these territories, would soon become the focal point of the American drive West to fulfill the country’s so-called “Manifest Destiny.” What is not so often mentioned is that an explicit, state-sponsored campaign of extermination against the California Indians began virtually as soon as the American settlers arrived. In the words of California’s first governor, Peter Burnett, in 1851: “[t]hatThat a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected. While we cannot anticipate this result but with painful regret, the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power or wisdom of man to avert.” ^{10

https://governors.library.ca.gov/addresses/s_01-Burnett2.html} As much as Burnett liked to paint this “war of extermination” as an inevitable destiny that he had no power to prevent, his government actively rewarded those settlers who dealt violently with the “Indian Problem.” The state and federal government spent over $1,700,000, a massive sum for the day,^{11

There is no reliable way to account for inflation going back this far into the past, as the Consumer Price Index had not yet been invented and the necessary data was not actively recorded by the government.} on campaigns of military and vigilante violence against California Indians.^{12

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/revealing-the-history-of-genocide-against-californias-native-americans} State legislators raised money for state militias, and money from state coffers was used to reward the settlers and organized local militias who participated in the killing.^{13

https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/tending-the-wild/untold-history-the-survival-of-californias-indians} In a stunning wave of violence, from an estimated population of 150,000 in 1848, the Native American population of an estimated 150,000 people in 1848 was reduced by as much as 2/3rds 100,000 within the first two years of the Gold Rush, according to California’s own Native American Heritage Commission.^{14

https://nahc.ca.gov/native-americans/california-indian-history/} An integral reason why the population was able to fall by so much, so quickly, was due to this level of state intervention, which was legally organized for the express purpose of fulfilling the “war of extermination” against California Indians.

This is not to say, however, that explicit murder and frontier violence was wholly responsible for the rapid decline of the Native American population by the turn of the century. Starting in 1850, the California Legislature passed a series of laws that effectively legalized the violent enslavement of California Indians.^{17

California Indian History} These laws had benevolent-soundingflowery titles like the “Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.”^{18

https://www.aclunc.org/docs/FINAL_Act_for_Government_and_Protection_of_Indians.pdf} Empowered by state, county, and local laws, settlers engaged in the gruesome practice of killing Indian parents before kidnapping and indenturing their young children, who could be kept as slaves until the age of 30 for men and 25 for women.^{19

California Indian History}Meanwhile, adult Indians found guilty of any crime, including “vagrancy,” would be auctioned off by the state to the highest bidder.^{20

https://www.aclunc.org/docs/FINAL_Act_for_Government_and_Protection_of_Indians.pdf} Other survivors were herded together, without regard for tribal affinity, and placed into newly-established “reservationsReservations” located in far-flung and resource-poor areas of California with little to no government assistance. The remaining majority of California Indians found themselves on the brink of starvation, forced to find work as landless laborers on the new settlers’ farms and ranches.^{21

https://nahc.ca.gov/native-americans/california-indian-history/}

Living conditions for all of these survivors were abysmal, which led to the deaths of perhaps more Native Californians than the state-sanctioned settler raiding campaigns. The population was reduced to 30,000 by 1870 and to nearly 16,000 by 1880, ultimately eliminating nearly 90% of the California Indians over the 32 years since the United States took control of the territory.^{22

Madley, Benjamin. 2016. An American Genocide : The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873. New Haven: Yale University Press. Table C-1 containing demographic data is located on page 347.} Many historians now recognize this event as the California Genocide – and in 2019, California’s governor also recognized this event as a genocide, finally making an official apology for it for the first time in California’s history.^{23

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/us/newsom-native-american-apology.html} Unfortunately, this means that until only a few years ago, this genocide has been a fringe, obscure, and controversial topic. It has only very recently been mandated to be taught in California schools, from a bill signed into law in September 2024.^{24

https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2024/10/native-american-history/}

The territory that our Town, Los Gatos, sits on is land that is claimed by the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and the Tamien Nation. No land or reservation has been provided to either tribe by the government, as the tribes remain federally unrecognized, depriving them of rights and privileges granted by federal recognition. Displacement continues to be a major problem for our Native population, who must now pay the high rents and property prices demanded by Bay Area landowners to remain in a land that they have historically been denied ownership over.^{25

https://youtu.be/j6wB78aRYpM?si=ocLA3QvdymCSawKb&t=2651

Stanford professor Dr. Laura Jones describes the “modern displacement” of Bay Area Indians, calling out gentrification as another phase in the displacement of the California Indian population that has continued since Spanish colonization. The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe endorsed this view during the conference.}

The territory that our Town, Los Gatos, sits on land that is claimed by the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and the Tamien Nation. No land or reservation has been provided to either tribe by the government.

The Indian Reservation, in particular, would become an essential system that the United States as a whole would use to actively manage the displaced population of surviving Native Americans, amounting to nearly one hundred separate Reservations within the state of California alone today. In many Reservations, especially through the 19th century, Native Americans were considered non-citizen “wards of the state” who needed permission from a federal Indian Agent to leave the confines of the Reservation.^{26
The following is an example from Colorado, which applied to the Ute Indians. See

https://files.cfc.umt.edu/cesu/NPS/UMT/2004/Campbell_Etnobotony%20Report/Chapterthirteen.pdf
Page 992.} Laws were passed to finance the “removal” of Indians who refused to stay inside their allotted reservation land,^{27
See the Indian Appropriation Acts of 1851, 1871, and 1885.

https://lib.guides.umd.edu/c.php?g=1261350&p=9246797}with massacres perpetrated against those who chose to leave.^{28
The Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 is one prominent example; a group of Lakota Indians attempted to trek from their homes in the Cheyenne River Reservation to the Pine Ridge Reservation, a separate Lakota reservation. The U.S. Cavalry, suspicious of their intentions, massacred the group at their camp at Wounded Knee. See

https://www.britannica.com/event/Wounded-Knee-Massacre}

We would see an eerily similar system, the so-called “Japanese Internment,” used to manage the displaced Japanese-American population decades later. The Reservation system, in this way, established the bureaucratic mechanisms that would later be borrowed by the War Relocation Authority in the 1940s. The Indian Reservation system would set a disturbing precedent for how the government should be able to handle the survivors of a “war” with our nation.

But why is it that among the wartime enemies of the United States during the Second World War – Germany, Italy, and Japan – did the entire Japanese population in particular, regardless of citizenship status, together with their entire families, apparently deserve the unique fate of indefinite incarceration in camps in the desert? The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, lies in racism against Asian Americans, which overlapped with and outlasted the most violent phase of the California Genocide.

The Indian Reservation, in particular, would become an essential system that the United States as a whole would use to actively manage the displaced population of surviving Native Americans…

We would see an eerily similar system, the so-called “Japanese Internment,” used to manage the displaced Japanese-American population decades later.

PART 2 - Racialization of the Asian

Racialized Housing Access

Prior to their deportation to the concentration camps in 1942, Japanese Americans like the Inouye family were subject to levels of discrimination considered nearly unthinkable today. By this point, the parents of the family, Hirokichi and Asa, were considered “aliens ineligible for citizenship.” This meant that no matter how long they stayed in the country, whether they learned English or not, whether they would assimilate into their community or not, they would never be able to become U.S. citizens based solely on their place of birth^{29
Naturalization was impossible for any Asian born outside the United States. The flow of Asian immigrants was halted by an immigration reform law passed in 1924. Until 1952, Japanese immigrants had no legal path to citizenship whatsoever, a period of nearly 30 years (and more, for the vast majority of Japanese who came before the 1920s). In 1942, no one had any way of knowing when, or even if, the naturalization laws would be reformed, and as such had no hope for citizenship. Many Japanese immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for decades, like Hirokichi (who passed away during the Incarceration), would not ever live to see the day where they could legally qualify for citizenship. Only their children born in the United States could gain citizenship, by birthright. See
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/1924-us-immigration-act-history, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/immigration-act, and https://lgarc.org/a-story-of-resilience/.}

Under the same law, distant family members from Japan were barred from being able to visit their relatives in the U.S., as by this time, the United States had for nearly two decades barred any person from Asia from entering the country for nearly any purpose.^{30
Under the same 1924 law, the United States Border Patrol was established to enforce these harsh restrictions.}

Neither Hirokichi nor Asa were able to purchase or own land in their name, by the letter of the law – in order to acquire their home in Los Gatos, they would have needed to put their land in the name of one of their children with U.S. citizenship, a loophole that would be closed only one year after the Inouyes managed to purchase their home on Canon Drive.^{31

Asian non-citizens were barred from land ownership in California in 1913, while the citizen child loophole was closed in 1920. In the case of the Inouye family, Gordon Yamate has stated that the property may have belonged to a corporation controlled by the minor children as stakeholders, another common loophole that was also outlawed in the same 1920 law.} Had any of Hirokichi and Asa’s children wished to rent or purchase their own homes to live in, or if the family had ever considered moving, they would have needed to navigate racially restrictive covenants that banned the so-called “Mongolian race” from living in White neighborhoods,^{32“White” in this article is capitalized when referring to groups racialized as “White” in the United States in most cases, in accordance with the Center for the Study of Social Policy’s statement on the practice and in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style, the writing style most often favored by historians.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/1924-us-immigration-act-history and https://cssp.org/recognizing-race-in-language-why-we-capitalize-black-and-white.} which covered wide swathes of land in Los Gatos and the rest of the Bay Area.^{33 In the case of the Inouye family, Hirokichi was the foreman of the Hume Ranch. When the Ranch closed, as a token of gratitude, Hirokichi was given his choice of land to purchase from the owner after he subdivided the property. This is an atypical arrangement, where restrictive covenants would not have been drawn up by the owners. In other areas of Los Gatos and the Bay, homeowners’ associations and developers of new housing used restrictive covenants to market whole tracts of housing to White people as White-only neighborhoods. See the following sources for more information regarding racially restrictive covenants:
https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants_report.htm, https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/stanford-researchers-map-white-only-properties-in-santa-clara-co-using-ai/, and https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Restrictive_covenants/ m} Had any Japanese Americans in Los Gatos wished to marry a White person, they would have been barred from doing so by law.^{34
Interracial marriage between Asians and Whites was made illegal in 1905. See:

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6v96n5xf
.} The Inouye children grew up in a country where millions of White Americans had joined the newly reformed Ku Klux Klan,^{35
Membership in the KKK peaked in the mid-1920s before falling due to internal scandals and the jailing of prominent members. Despite this, racial enmity remained high throughout the 1930s and 1940s. See:

https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/kkk-series
.} and where prominent Harvard anthropologists could win themselves headlines like “Sterilization Urged to Purify Racial Strains” in mainstream newspapers like the San Jose Mercury Herald.^{36

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d45o1ZvcLRDqsNvsTuAEzbhHbFTxihJS/view?usp=sharing} In other words, the Inouye family experienced one of the most intense periods of normalized racial hatred in our nation’s history.

“No person of African, Japanese, Chinese or of any Mongolian descent shall be allowed to purchase, own, lease, or occupy any residence lot, except in the capacity of domestic servants.”

-Language from a title to a Los Gatos residence^{37

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d45o1ZvcLRDqsNvsTuAEzbhHbFTxihJS/view?usp=sharing}

Anti-Chinese Sentiment as the Origin of Asian Racialization

The Inouyes, however, were not the first victims of discrimination against Asian Americans. In California, this discrimination would begin at the same time that the California Indians were suffering their genocide: during the California Gold Rush. After 1848, many Chinese quickly picked up on the legends of gold and opportunity far away from their own homelands, which had been ravaged by European colonialism and the Taiping Rebellion, the single bloodiest civil war in human history with over 20 million deaths.^{39

China would be ravaged by a series of crises from 1839 to 1864, beginning with the Opium Wars and ending with the Qing Empire’s eventual victory against the forces of the Taiping Rebellion. The Rebellion was led by Hong Xiuquan, a particularly interesting figure in Chinese history who proclaimed himself to be a son of God and the younger brother of Jesus Christ. The Rebellion killed at least 20 million people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion} After the easy placer gold deposits in California’s rivers and streams were exhausted during the first few years of the Gold Rush, the state’s large and growing population of Chinese immigrants sought work in agriculture, fishing, and most famously in building up the West’s railroad network. These would include the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s and Los Gatos’s very own South Pacific Coast Railroad through the Santa Cruz mountains in the 1870s.^{40

https://www.kqed.org/news/11869346/the-story-behind-those-old-train-tunnels-in-the-santa-cruz-mountains} From the very start, tensions between the dominant White American immigrant group and the Chinese immigrant group would fester and escalate throughout the ensuing decades. These tensions would quickly be formalized into California laws that would explicitly discriminate against the Chinese and all other non-White racial groups in California.

The crucial legal case that decided the racial status of the Chinese immigrant population in California was the California Supreme Court case People v. Hall (1854).^{42

https://immigrationhistory.org/item/people-v-hall/} The subject of the case was a Chinese man was murdered by a White man in the presence of Chinese witnesses. These Chinese witnesses sought justice by pressing charges against the murderer. Existing laws forbade Blacks and Indians in California from testifying in court based on their race—could the Chinese be subjected to the same laws? Overturning lower court decisions that upheld the rights of the Chinese and punished the murderer,^{43
In fact, the lower court judge in this case, Judge William Barbour, made the following poignant statement upon sentencing Hall to death for the murder. “You most unfortunately have participated in a delusion which has prevailed to an alarming extent in California. Many persons here have supposed that it is less heinous to kill a Negro, an Indian, or a Chinaman than a white person. This is a gross error. The law of our country throws the aegis of its protection upon all within its jurisdiction; it knows no race, color or distinction.” This is a remarkable anti-racist judicial statement to be made in America in 1854, made even before the Civil War broke out in 1861. See Stephen Lee’s analysis of this case for more information regarding this point.
https://stephenchahnlee.medium.com/the-opinion-that-silenced-non-white-people-f0db146fe56c} the California Supreme Court instead decided to formally extend the racially discriminatory laws, ruling that the Chinese are likewise considered an “inferior” race that cannot testify in court against White people. The Chinese witness testimony was thrown out, and the White man who murdered the Chinese man was set free, which served to encourage White settlers to act with impunity against people of color—a category that now explicitly and legally included the Chinese.

Chinese immigrants still poured into the state, however, despite their second-class racial status in California. White settlers viewed these Chinese immigrants as a threat, mainly because they were seen as competition for the White working class. Take, for example, this excerpt from an article in the Los Gatos News, published in November 1885, which commemorated the first meeting of the Anti-Chinese League of Los Gatos:^{45
Text from the article and a photo of the original article are shown below. The article is linked here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FEa2isl19oXZqZCQP-aX_Lv_K8CSL9nW/view?usp=sharing}

“Persuant to call in the News of last week, a mass-meeting was held at Lyndon Hall on Monday evening. The hall was well filled, showing that the anti-Chinese feeling is strong. It is clear to all thinking people that the presence of the Chinese is not calculated to elevate the morals of any community. It tends to form classes in society and thus drive the most desirable laboring classes to other places where their services are better appreciated. It makes the rich richer, but does not develop a good healthy laboring element which is the basis of our American government. Our political and moral institutions demand a healthy middle class of citizens, who have and feel an interest in the affairs of the State or Government.

[…]

We, the undersigned citizens of Los Gatos and vicinity, do agree to form ourselves into a league to be known as the Anti-Chinese League of Los Gatos; and do hereby agree to conform to the following resolutions:

1st. We will not employ Chinese labor in any form.

2d. We will as far as possible avoid dealing with those who employ such labor.

3d. We will as far as possible avoid buying goods manufactured by Chinese labor.

4th. That we demand of our merchants that they buy goods manufactured by white labor.

5th. We will use our influence as far as possible, politically, to elect such men to office as are known to be anti Chinese advocates.”

A few years prior, in 1882, the United States had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first law in our country’s history to explicitly^{47
In 1875, seven years before the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Page Act effectively banned the immigration of Chinese women into the United States. However, the language of the law was not explicit towards the Chinese, instead targeting immigrants who were allegedly under contract to perform services for “lewd and immoral purposes.”
https://immigrationhistory.org/item/page-act/} halt the immigration and naturalization of a group of people on the basis of race and national origin. The Act completely stopped legal Chinese immigration into the U.S., and barred those already in the country from a path to citizenship, turning them into permanent aliens with no right to vote or hold political office. Perhaps, if the United States had not uniquely barred the Chinese from citizenship, they would not need to be so concerned about their supposed lack of “interest in the affairs of the government.” Of the so-called “tendency” of the Chinese to “drive the most desirable laboring classes” out – the fourth resolution makes it clear they are referring specifically to “white labor.” who is this “most desirable” class of labor that the article mentions? Among a series of anti-Chinese resolutions in the group’s founding meeting, the fourth resolution may provide a hint to the answer: “We demand of our merchants that they buy goods manufactured by white labor.” The Chinese would not remain the sole targets of racial hatred for long. With Japanese migration to the United States beginning in the 1880s and 1890s, followed closely by the ascendance of the Japanese Empire on the international stage, Japan would begin to acquire a special place in the American consciousness. Japanese farmers in particular became highly successful agriculturists, and were viewed as direct competitors with their White counterparts, same as the Chinese were to the White working class in the decades prior. The Japanese Americans’ success in the industry caused many White people, especially White farmers, to believe that the Japanese were a threat to the (White) “American way of life,”^{48
See, for example, the Los Gatos Times article published in 1942, referenced in this article series’ introduction.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zK0itOi-BWlc1udv4V_FrCTBBs1SVqkc/view.} and to believe that legal restrictions on land ownership among Japanese immigrants would safeguard the economic and political sovereignty of the nation. The Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian races began to be lumped together into a single “Asian,” “Mongolian,” or “Oriental” race, and the laws that were created to address the “Japanese problem” were applied universally to all Asians–as in, to all “Orientals who cannot become American citizens.”^{49
In the original ballot materials of the 1920 proposition to close the legal loopholes that existed for restricting Japanese land ownership, the supporting argument contains sections that get to the heart of the matter: “Through the measure California seeks, as is her inherent right, to preserve her lands, precisely as Japan preserves her lands for the Japanese. Its primary purpose is to prohibit Orientals who cannot become American citizens from controlling our rich agricultural lands. … In defiance of [the 1913 Alien Land Law], through various subterfuges including dummy corporations and minor native born children, Orientals, largely Japanese, are fast controlling the richest irrigated lands in the state, through lease or ownership, the proportion already controlled in some counties being from 50 to 75 percent. … Control of these rich lands means in time control of the products, and control of the markets. Control of the products of the soil by a unified interest such as the Japanese will lead to economic control of the country. That will be followed in time by political control through force of numbers induced by the heavy birth rate. That condition is now at hand in Hawaii. Rather than invite such disaster, better to let some land lie idle, and a few large landholders make less profit, and even see production decrease somewhat, as opponents claim will result if this measure passes.”
https://repository.uclawsf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1129&context=ca_ballot_props.}Japan’s victory against Russia in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War in particular sent a shockwave through the Western world, as these countries recognized the fruits of Japan’s efforts to modernize and stand its own against European encroachment. In California and other Western states, opportunistic politicians, journalists, and labor unions warned that hordes of Japanese would overrun the United States, take control, and corrupt and contaminate the White race. These slurs had earlier been directed at Chinese laborers. In stereotypical images, Asians were depicted as menacing, clawed creatures. They were declared inferior to Whites, but at the same time attributed mysterious “Oriental” powers and devious plans. Newspapers claimed that Japanese workers could survive worse living conditions than Whites, and greatly exaggerated the birth rate among Japanese women. Japan’s military expansion in the early part of the century accelerated “yellow peril” warnings that an invasion of the continent was imminent. For the longtime foes of the Japanese in America, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor pitted the United States not just against an enemy nation but against an enemy race.^{50
Description of the Yellow Peril taken from Densho educational materials. See:
https://nikkeijin.densho.org/JA20/reference_ch1_03_yellow_peril_en.html}

Pictured: An influential white supremacist book, published in 1920, commented on by such famous public figures as W.E.B. DuBois, President William Harding, and Franz Boas. The author pointed to the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 as a direct example of the threat Asians pose to “White World Supremacy.” ^{53 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rising_Tide_of_Color_Against_White_World-Supremacy} The Japanese “red sun,” or Hinomaru, is featured prominently on the book’s cover.

Lessons for Today

If a single lesson is to be taken from the histories we have detailed above, it is that what we now consider to be social progress in our country should not ever be taken for granted. Unfortunately, the history of our country does not only have occasional year-long lapses or mistakes that bring a temporary halt to our progress. Our country’s history has examples of multi-decade waves of decline in the civil liberties of the people who live here. Things are not guaranteed to be better now than they were in the past, and progress did not at all grow in a straight line. Instead – especially in the Native and Asian American experiences – social conditions can start off in a better place before taking a turn for the worse. The fate of the Japanese Americans, together with the Inouye family of Los Gatos, would take yet another drastic turn for the worse on February 19th, 1942.

If a single lesson is to be taken from the histories we have detailed above, it is that what we now consider to be social progress in our country should not ever be taken for granted…

Things are not guaranteed to be better now than they were in the past, and progress did not at all grow in a straight line.

This article is part of the Coalition’s “Local Narrative Series on the Japanese Incarceration in Los Gatos”

FOOTNOTES

1. https://centerofthewest.org/2018/12/14/the-war-at-home-women-in-the-workforce-and-world-war-ii-in-wyoming/

2. Various terms are used to refer to the Indigenous peoples of the United States, including “American Indian,” “Indian,” “Native American,” “Native,” and “Indigenous.” All of these terms have varying degrees of acceptability depending on the preferences of the tribes, nations, and peoples that are referred to by these terms. Legal institutions in the United States typically use the term “American Indian” or “Indian.” When possible, LGARC uses the specific names of the tribes, nations, and peoples in question. Many of LGARC’s sources for this article, some of which are written by California Indian people, use the term “California Indian” when referring to this particular state’s Indigenous population. When making generalizations across groups of Native peoples, LGARC uses each term mentioned above interchangeably and without preference. See the following “National Museum of the American Indian” explainer and FAQ for more information on acceptable terminology.

3. https://wyoarchaeo.wyo.gov/index.php/learn/wyoming-archaeology-awareness-month/project-a-day/82-september-25-heart-mountain-archaeology-3

4. https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/1d37d335-f5c2-41ec-9cd6-3f3c0e1bcf7a/content; Page 1, footnote 1 details the timeline of the relocation of the Crow people from Heart Mountain

5. https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/1d37d335-f5c2-41ec-9cd6-3f3c0e1bcf7a/content; Page 27 details the discovery of the BIA documents handling Japanese Internment.

6. https://www.pbssocal.org/news-community/how-japanese-american-incarceration-was-entangled-with-indigenous-dispossession Note: Two of the ten internment camps used during the war were placed directly on Native reservations, on the Gila River and Colorado River Indian Reservations in Arizona.

7. https://oac4.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft2v19n7kf/?order=2&brand=oac4

8. https://www.pbssocal.org/news-community/how-japanese-american-incarceration-was-entangled-with-indigenous-dispossession

9. https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/1d37d335-f5c2-41ec-9cd6-3f3c0e1bcf7a/content See Page 14

10. https://governors.library.ca.gov/addresses/s_01-Burnett2.html

11. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Protecting_The_Settlers%22_Illustration_by_JR_Browne_for_his_work_%22The_Indians_Of_California%22_1864.jpg

12. There is no reliable way to account for inflation going back this far into the past, as the Consumer Price Index had not yet been invented and the necessary data was not actively recorded by the government.

13. https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/revealing-the-history-of-genocide-against-californias-native-americans

14. https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/tending-the-wild/untold-history-the-survival-of-californias-indians

15. https://nahc.ca.gov/native-americans/california-indian-history/

16. https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/kt4h4nc3xh/

17. https://nahc.ca.gov/native-americans/california-indian-history/

18. https://www.aclunc.org/docs/FINAL_Act_for_Government_and_Protection_of_Indians.pdf

19. https://nahc.ca.gov/native-americans/california-indian-history/

20. https://www.aclunc.org/docs/FINAL_Act_for_Government_and_Protection_of_Indians.pdf

21. https://nahc.ca.gov/native-americans/california-indian-history/

22. Madley, Benjamin. 2016. An American Genocide : The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873. New Haven: Yale University Press. Table C-1 containing demographic data is located on page 347.

23. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/us/newsom-native-american-apology.html

24. https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2024/10/native-american-history/

25. https://youtu.be/j6wB78aRYpM?si=ocLA3QvdymCSawKb&t=2651 Stanford professor Dr. Laura Jones describes the “modern displacement” of Bay Area Indians, calling out gentrification as another phase in the displacement of the California Indian population that has continued since Spanish colonization. The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe endorsed this view during the conference.

26. The following is an example from Colorado, which applied to the Ute Indians. See https://files.cfc.umt.edu/cesu/NPS/UMT/2004/Campbell_Etnobotony%20Report/Chapterthirteen.pdf Page 992.

27. See the Indian Appropriation Acts of 1851, 1871, and 1885. https://lib.guides.umd.edu/c.php?g=1261350&p=9246797

28. The Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 is one prominent example; a group of Lakota Indians attempted to trek from their homes in the Cheyenne River Reservation to the Pine Ridge Reservation, a separate Lakota reservation. The U.S. Cavalry, suspicious of their intentions, massacred the group at their camp at Wounded Knee. See https://www.britannica.com/event/Wounded-Knee-Massacre.

29. Naturalization was impossible for any Asian born outside the United States. The flow of Asian immigrants was halted by an immigration reform law passed in 1924. Until 1952, Japanese immigrants had no legal path to citizenship whatsoever, a period of nearly 30 years (and more, for the vast majority of Japanese who came before the 1920s). In 1942, no one had any way of knowing when, or even if, the naturalization laws would be reformed, and as such had no hope for citizenship. Many Japanese immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for decades, like Hirokichi (who passed away during the Incarceration), would not ever live to see the day where they could legally qualify for citizenship. Only their children born in the United States could gain citizenship, by birthright. See https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/1924-us-immigration-act-history, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/immigration-act, and
https://lgarc.org/a-story-of-resilience/

30. Under the same 1924 law, the United States Border Patrol was established to enforce these harsh restrictions.

31. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QfoTcRXle1rbRG_WYleBRsaleDw6hbih/view?usp=sharing

32. Asian non-citizens were barred from land ownership in California in 1913, while the citizen child loophole was closed in 1920. In the case of the Inouye family, Gordon Yamate has stated that the property may have belonged to a corporation controlled by the minor children as stakeholders, another common loophole that was also outlawed in the same 1920 law. https://immigrationhistory.org/item/alien-land-laws-in-california-1913-1920/

33. “White” in this article is capitalized when referring to groups racialized as “White” in the United States in most cases, in accordance with the Center for the Study of Social Policy’s statement on the practice and in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style, the writing style most often favored by historians. See: https://cssp.org/recognizing-race-in-language-why-we-capitalize-black-and-white/ and https://cmosshoptalk.com/2020/06/22/black-and-white-a-matter-of-capitalization/

34. In the case of the Inouye family, Hirokichi was the foreman of the Hume Ranch. When the Ranch closed, as a token of gratitude, Hirokichi was given his choice of land to purchase from the owner after he subdivided the property. This is an atypical arrangement, where restrictive covenants would not have been drawn up by the owners. In other areas of Los Gatos and the Bay, homeowners’ associations and developers of new housing used restrictive covenants to market whole tracts of housing to White people as White-only neighborhoods. See the following sources for more information regarding racially restrictive covenants: https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants_report.htm, https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Restrictive_covenants/, and https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/stanford-researchers-map-white-only-properties-in-santa-clara-co-using-ai/

35. Interracial marriage between Asians and Whites was made illegal in 1905. See https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6v96n5xf, Page 22

36. Membership in the KKK peaked in the mid-1920s before falling due to internal scandals and the jailing of prominent members. Despite this, racial enmity remained high throughout the 1930s and 1940s. See https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/kkk-series

37. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d45o1ZvcLRDqsNvsTuAEzbhHbFTxihJS/view?usp=sharing

38. https://eji.org/news/californias-alien-land-laws/

39. China would be ravaged by a series of crises from 1839 to 1864, beginning with the Opium Wars and ending with the Qing Empire’s eventual victory against the forces of the Taiping Rebellion. The Rebellion was led by Hong Xiuquan, a particularly interesting figure in Chinese history who proclaimed himself to be a son of God and the younger brother of Jesus Christ. The Rebellion killed at least 20 million people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

40. https://www.kqed.org/news/11869346/the-story-behind-those-old-train-tunnels-in-the-santa-cruz-mountains

41. https://www.santacruztrains.com/2017/12/tunnels-summit-tunnel-2.html

42. https://immigrationhistory.org/item/people-v-hall/

43. In fact, the lower court judge in this case, Judge William Barbour, made the following poignant statement upon sentencing Hall to death for the murder. “You most unfortunately have participated in a delusion which has prevailed to an alarming extent in California. Many persons here have supposed that it is less heinous to kill a Negro, an Indian, or a Chinaman than a white person. This is a gross error. The law of our country throws the aegis of its protection upon all within its jurisdiction; it knows no race, color or distinction.” This is a remarkable anti-racist judicial statement to be made in America in 1854, made even before the Civil War broke out in 1861. See Stephen Lee’s analysis of this case for more information regarding this point.
https://stephenchahnlee.medium.com/the-opinion-that-silenced-non-white-people-f0db146fe56c

44. https://immigrationhistory.org/item/people-v-hall/

45. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FEa2isl19oXZqZCQP-aX_Lv_K8CSL9nW/view?usp=sharing

46. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FEa2isl19oXZqZCQP-aX_Lv_K8CSL9nW/view?usp=sharing

47. In 1875, seven years before the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Page Act effectively banned the immigration of Chinese women into the United States. However, the language of the law was not explicit towards the Chinese, instead targeting immigrants who were allegedly under contract to perform services for “lewd and immoral purposes.” https://immigrationhistory.org/item/page-act/

48. See, for example, the Los Gatos Times article published in 1942, referenced in this article series’ introduction. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zK0itOi-BWlc1udv4V_FrCTBBs1SVqkc/view

49. In the original ballot materials of the 1920 proposition to close the legal loopholes that existed for restricting Japanese land ownership, the supporting argument contains sections that get to the heart of the matter: “Through the measure California seeks, as is her inherent right, to preserve her lands, precisely as Japan preserves her lands for the Japanese. Its primary purpose is to prohibit Orientals who cannot become American citizens from controlling our rich agricultural lands. … In defiance of [the 1913 Alien Land Law], through various subterfuges including dummy corporations and minor native born children, Orientals, largely Japanese, are fast controlling the richest irrigated lands in the state, through lease or ownership, the proportion already controlled in some counties being from 50 to 75 percent. … Control of these rich lands means in time control of the products, and control of the markets. Control of the products of the soil by a unified interest such as the Japanese will lead to economic control of the country. That will be followed in time by political control through force of numbers induced by the heavy birth rate. That condition is now at hand in Hawaii. Rather than invite such disaster, better to let some land lie idle, and a few large landholders make less profit, and even see production decrease somewhat, as opponents claim will result if this measure passes.” https://repository.uclawsf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1129&context=ca_ballot_props

50. Description of the Yellow Peril taken from Densho educational materials. See https://nikkeijin.densho.org/JA20/reference_ch1_03_yellow_peril_en.html

51. https://www.historynet.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Chinese-Immigration-Act.jpg

52. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voelker_Europas.jpg

53. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rising_Tide_of_Color_Against_White_World-Supremacy

54. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seuss_cartoon.png