Immigration crackdown opens old wounds for some Japanese Americans

LOUISVILLE — As immigrants are snatched from U.S. streets, rounded up in workplace raids, and forced to face other indignities as part of a federal crackdown on immigration, the Rev. Janice Kamikawa is reminded of another troubling time in the history of this country, her family and other Japanese Americans.

Relatives of the Presbyterian minister, who are based in Sacramento, California, were among about 120,000 people of Japanese descent who were sent to incarceration camps in various U.S. states during World War II. 

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“Japanese Americans were forcibly removed and put into these camps,” said Kamikawa, a member of the West Task Force of the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People (SDOP). “My own heart for social justice grew out of this injustice.”

Kamikawa and fellow task force member David Johnson have been reflecting on the injustice against Japanese Americans — as well as what were then called resident aliens of Japanese nationality — while doing community work in California on behalf of SDOP that involves coalition building and offering support to marginalized people in California and other parts of the world.

SDOP believes in the importance of “intercultural connection, relationship, community building (and) learning about each other’s different cultures” as ways to increase sensitivity and understanding, Kamikawa said.

In contrast with that is a federal crackdown on immigrants that has included sending the National Guard into Los Angeles to assist with immigration enforcement. Various tactics being employed around the country to intimidate immigrants and encourage them to self-deport have sparked fear but also memories of past injustices, such as the Japanese American incarceration camps.

The 2025 immigration raids and deportations “have been heartbreaking and painful,” Kamikawa said.

Kamikawa and Johnson, who is also a pastor, attended a conference earlier this year in Oakland, California, called “Changing Perspectives on Japanese American Incarceration.” The event included Japanese American scholars, artists, community organizers and other participants from around the country discussing the history of the camps as well as intergenerational trauma associated with them and the healing that is needed within the Japanese American community, Kamikawa said.

Though sometimes referred to as relocation centers or internment camps, the incarceration camps were akin to being in jail. 

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“There were barbed wires around, and there were guard towers,” Kamikawa said.

During that sad period of American history, both of Kamikawa’s parents, her grandparents, aunts and uncles were sent first from their homes in Sacramento to Walerga Assembly Center, a temporary detention center, then to an incarceration camp in Tule Lake, California, and then to another camp, Amache, in Granada, Colorado. Her parents were married in the Amache incarceration camp.

Kamikawa’s parents often shared stories with her and her siblings about their time in the camps and the injustice they endured.

Kamikawa’s mother recalled a stressful moment at Walerga for her, her family and other Japanese Americans.

“They were put on trains, and my mom said that the windows were all covered in black cloth,” said Kamikawa, her voice breaking. “They didn't know where they were going.”

Due to wartime fear and hysteria as well as racial prejudice, the country had become suspicious of people of Japanese descent in the wake of the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan and decided Japanese Americans needed to be excluded from designated areas of the West Coast based on so-called wartime military necessity.

Both Kamikawa and Johnson said they are reminded of that when they hear about the country’s current efforts to clamp down on immigrants, who’ve been accosted on the streets, at home and in their workplaces, and in some cases been deported to unfamiliar countries.

During World War II, the U.S. government was trying to isolate Japanese Americans “because we were nervous about what was happening between Japan and the United States,” said Johnson, who is African American. “When we're nervous about something or we’re fearing something (as a country), the first thing we want to do is set something up and lock it away.”

Johnson would like to see more people become aware of the Japanese American incarceration camps as a cautionary tale about depriving immigrants of their rights today.

“A lot of people in my circles really don't know about” the camps, or they have a superficial understanding of them, he said.

Kamikawa’s relatives, including some who were young children, were incarcerated as a result of Executive Order 9066, which was issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Feb. 19, 1942.

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During a time when California had been divided up into military zones, Executive Order 9066 “authorized military commanders to exclude civilians from military areas. Although the language of the order did not specify any ethnic group, Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Command proceeded to announce curfews that included only Japanese Americans,” according to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

Later, on March 29, 1942, under the authority of Roosevelt's executive order, DeWitt issued Public Proclamation No. 4, which would lead to the forced evacuation and detention of Japanese American West Coast residents, the archives note.

“In the next six months, approximately 122,000 men, women and children were forcibly moved to ‘assembly centers,’” according to the National Archives. “They were then evacuated to and confined in isolated, fenced and guarded ‘relocation centers,’ also known as ‘internment camps.’ The 10 sites were in remote areas in six Western states and Arkansas: Heart Mountain in Wyoming, Tule Lake and Manzanar in California, Topaz in Utah, Poston and Gila River in Arizona, Granada in Colorado, Minidoka in Idaho, and Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas.”

Among detainees were older people, such as Kamikawa’s grandparents. Her parents were young adults in their 20s.

They were monitored en route to the camps. “My mom told me they stopped at this one stop somewhere to go to the bathroom, and the guards came out, you know, surrounding them,” Kamikawa said.

The dwellings at Tule Lake were “big barracks,” she said, with sections sometimes being divided by blankets or cloth. Families did their best to persevere with dignity and patience and for the sake of the children, she said.

The Issei — first generation Japanese immigrants — were determined to create beauty in the midst of the bleak and dire living conditions, Kamikawa said. “My grandparents, they built porches and gardens. They made it the best they could. ... My grandfather, my mother's father, was an artist, so he created plays.”

Though the families tried to make life as normal as possible, they also suffered indignities such as limited privacy, loss of property back home, and being required to sign a loyalty questionnaire to assess their allegiance to the United States. The loyalty questionnaire created deep divisions within the Japanese American community that have continued for decades, Kamikawa said.

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Eventually, the United States issued an apology to Japanese Americans, following the “Redress Movement,” which was led by three major organizations: the Japanese American Citizens League, the National Council for Japanese American Redress and the National Coalition for Redress/Reparations, Kamikawa said. The organizations worked with the Japanese American community and did advocacy, congressional lobbying and organizing.

In 1980, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians was established by an act of Congress to investigate the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans (as well as others, such as the Unangan (Aleut) people of the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands, who were forcibly relocated to camps in southeast Alaska during the fight for naval supremacy in the Pacific during the war).

Hearings were held in multiple cities across the United States, and more than 750 people testified before the commission, according to the Densho Encyclopedia. An aunt of Kamikawa testified at one of the hearings, she said.

The commission vindicated the Japanese American incarceration camp detainees and found that their incarceration was driven by “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.”

In conjunction with the passage of the U.S. Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the U.S. government formally apologized and issued redress checks of $20,000 each, with the first ones going to nine elderly Japanese Americans in a 1990 ceremony, according to the National Archives’ Pieces of History blog. Eventually, about 82,000 people were compensated.

(Go here to learn about restitution to the Unangan [Aleut] individuals who were forcibly relocated to overcrowded and unsanitary camps in Alaska.) 

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Historical events related to the Japanese American camps were explored during the “Changing Perspectives on Japanese American Incarceration” conference in Oakland. Kamikawa said the conference deepened her understanding of the camps, thanks to new research, findings and insights. 

The conference also gave Johnson a chance to learn about the history and to build relationships with attendees. 

In their roles as SDOP task force members, Kamikawa and Johnson distributed information about SDOP and showed the ministry’s commitment to being in solidarity with people in the Asian American Pacific Islander community.

“I believe that it was very important that two colleagues from PC(USA)/SDOP — an African American man and a Japanese American woman — showed and exemplified the importance of intercultural bridge building and connection to all communities,” Kamikawa said.

The Rev. Janice Kamikawa contributed to this report.

Learn more:

• Listen to a sermon on immigration that the Rev. David Johnson gave at St. Peter’s by the Sea Presbyterian Church.
• Read about the Presbyterian response to the forced relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II here.
• Find various links and resources related to immigration and refugees on the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) website.
• Get to know the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People.
• Read about a group called Tsuru for Solidarity here.