Announcer: Idaho Experience is made possible with funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation Anne Voillequé and Louise Nelson, Judy and Steve Meyer.

With additional support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and contributions to the Friends of Idaho Public Television and viewers like you.

Thank you.

Director: All right, here we go.

Announcer: There is a shortage of soldiers, and the need for manpower has never been greater.

Gov.

Chase Clark: All Japanese sent to Idaho must be placed under guard and confined in concentration camps.

Nic Kawaguchi: I've never done this before.

Bailiff: Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye.

On this 13th day of September, in the year of 1944, and in the matter of the Japanese American draft evaders, Idaho Federal District Court Judge Chase A. Clark presiding.

All rise.

Calling United States versus James Mitsugu Yamada.

Charged with violating the Selective Training and Service Act.

Prosecutor: Are you telling this jury that Mr. Yamada refused to serve this country?

Defendant: How could I pledge to serve in the army of a country that treated me like I was the enemy, and put me and my family behind barbed wire?

Judge: Has the jury reached a verdict?

Foreman: We have, Your Honor.

[MUSIC] [SOUNDS OF WAR] Robert Hirai: My mother and her family were living up in the Auburn, Washington, area when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th.

And shortly after that, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which put in motion the incarceration of about 120,000 citizens of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast.

And so they were forcibly moved out of their place in Auburn, Washington.

They and other families had basically two weeks to sell businesses, sell homes, sell assets, pack their belongings into basically what they could carry with them to an unknown place and for a duration that they didn't know.

Defendant: My family and I were forced to leave our home in Seattle and taken to a holding pen.

I remember we were given a tag to wear.

It had a number on it.

No name, just a number.

Defense counsel: Were you allowed to bring anything with you?

Defendant: We were each allowed to bring one suitcase.

That was all.

Defense counsel: What happened to the rest of your belongings?

We had to leave them.

Our neighbors helped themselves.

Those neighbors who were not Japanese.

Jane Gunter: We were taken to Tule Lake, which is in the northern part of California, close to the Oregon border.

Narrator: Jane Gunter came to Idaho as an adult, but her very first memories as a child are of the camp for Japanese Americans where her family was sent to live.

Gunter: I was brought in to camp as an infant.

I was in my mother's arms and it was pretty much desolate.

A lot of volcanic lava rock.

Hardly any growth.

Really, nothing green.

Everything gray.

Black.

Dusty.

It was very bleak.

We were a family of six, and we had an area maybe about 20 by 24 for our family.

So we had our bedroom, our living room.

There was no dining room, no kitchen, no bathroom.

You know, that was a very, very sparse existence.

But to a kid, I mean, it was just home.

Defendant: We were taken from the train station to the camp, under guard by soldiers.

There were as many of them as there were of us.

We were told the guards there were for our protection, but they all faced in looking at us.

When we got there, the barbed wire was up and some of the barracks looked like they were finished, but a lot of them were still being built.

They put us in one that had about 20 people.

The roof wasn't finished yet.

The walls had tar paper on them.

It was always windy and cold, or windy and hot, or windy and dusty.

There was no running water.

We had one outhouse.

Kurt Ikeda: So upon the opening of camp in August of 1942, there were 36 blocks of 44 plots of land set aside for where Japanese Americans would be living.

At the peak population, over 9,000 people lived here, in the seventh-largest city in Idaho.

We doubled the county population here in Jerome, if you could imagine it.

And during its duration in three years, over 13,000 people would call this place home.

Narrator: It was called the Minidoka Relocation Center, with 640 buildings on 1000 acres.

Today, the National Park Service uses the term “concentration camp” to describe the place where people from Oregon, Washington and a few from Alaska were forced to live.

Robyn Achilles: People lost their homes, they lost their businesses, they lost their farms, and they also broke up the Japanese community.

So all the institutions, all the churches, the Japanese towns where there were businesses and it was a cultural hub.

So that was a huge loss and huge impact for the Japanese American community.

Narrator: Family life, family roles, family intimacy, family meals all were disrupted by life in barracks, mess halls and communal showers and latrines.

A painful, humiliating experience that many did not want to relive or rehash.

Achilles: They lost their ability to work, provide for the family.

So all of that not only had economic impact, it also had emotional, mental health impact on them as well.

So it was truly a way to break up the Japanese American community.

Gunter: My dad, he owned a grocery store, and had several employees working for him.

But when the time came, I mean, everything had to be gotten rid of.

Also our home and we had nothing when we left.

Achilles: My father and his family were incarcerated at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and my mother and her family were incarcerated at Rohwer, Arkansas.

So I grew up, you know, living this legacy of incarceration.

And just like other families, my family did not speak of it.

It was too painful.

And they just wanted to forget.

Hirai: I think it was one of those things that it happened.

They survived it.

They moved on.

It's behind us now.

Let's focus on the future.

And that's what they did.

Narrator: Japanese American men initially were not eligible for the World War II draft, but when the U.S. military decided it needed them in the war, many families were eager to see their sons demonstrate their loyalty.

1,000 Japanese American service members came from Minidoka, at least 300 of them volunteers; 73 died in service during World War II.

Hirai: Minidoka had one of the highest enlistment rates of all the 10 camps.

They also consequently had one of the highest casualty rates.

And so you have this highly decorated, famous 442nd Regiment, 100th Battalion, the Military Intelligence Service, who eventually, in 2011, were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

It’s the highest civilian honor.

And I think a lot of the motivation for those young men to enlist and to fight for the United States was so that it would prove their loyalty and also make it easier for their folks and their relatives in the camps.

In fact, two of my uncles were in the army as well, my mother's brothers.

And one was already enlisted in the Army before relocation.

My Uncle Tak, he was charged with guarding the Golden Gate Bridge from any submarines that may enter.

Since he was a Japanese American, he couldn't be trusted with a real firearm.

He was given a wooden rifle.

Prosecutor: Mr. Yamada, did other Japanese American men who were relocated to the Minidoka camp answer the call to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces?

Defendant: Yes.

Prosecutor: But you didn't, did you?

Defendant: No.

But you know what?

When they were given furloughs to see their families, their wives or their girlfriends, they had to come back to the camp.

They were locked in again behind barbed wires.

And they were guarded by their fellow soldiers.

They may be serving their country, but their country still treats them like the enemy.

Hirai: And then, on the other hand, you have these men who say, I'm not going to fight for our country that is imprisoning me and my family.

So there's that conundrum and that, that whole conflict of here you’ve got war heroes, and then you’ve got gentlemen who are saying it's not right.

I'm not going to do it.

So that caused some conflict, some divisiveness between the community and families in the camps, for sure.

Achilles: My parents were second generation, so they were Nisei, and they both graduated from high school in camp.

And then my dad was drafted while his family was still incarcerated.

He chose not to enlist.

He was not a resister, but he felt he didn't want to volunteer, right, in this situation.

Narrator: Most of those who were drafted accepted military service, but about 300 Japanese Americans from the 10 camps refused to serve the country that had betrayed them, their families, and the principles of equality and due process.

44 of those resisters were from Minidoka, arrested and tried in federal court in Idaho in 1944.

The play “The Nisei Paradox” tells that story.

Achilles: The great thing about “The Nisei Paradox” is it really describes what happened in that courtroom and what it was like for those resisters to face trial in front of kind of a stacked court.

And it talks about that injustice that incarcerees faced in getting a fair trial, to hear the injustice of being drafted and serving for the military while your families remained unconstitutionally incarcerated.

Narrator: “The Nisei Paradox” started out as a presentation at an Idaho conference for Idaho judges and lawyers.

Ron Bush: I had responsibility for annual conferences that the court would conduct, called bench bar conferences.

And I thought, this is a subject that I'd like to figure out how to incorporate into that.

So I started digging around, and that ultimately led me to contact Jeff.

Jeff Thomson: Other than the fact that it was a federal judge asking me whether I wanted to do something, I really was interested in the the topic.

You know, I spent many years in the Idaho school system and never heard anything about these draft resisters.

Narrator: Based on research from Judge Bush, Thomson thought that he could write a play to tell the story of the Minidoka draft resisters.

Thomson: We are telling a legal story, and it's a legal story that ties in civil liberties issues that, you know, as as we know are unfortunately still extant today.

Defense counsel: He was classified as an enemy.

He was forced from his home, put in a holding pen, and transported hundreds of miles to the sagebrush desert of South-Central Idaho.

Mr. Yamada was incarcerated behind barbed wire and was deprived of his freedom, of his liberty.

All of this was done without warrant.

All of this was done without a hearing.

All of this was done without a trial.

All of this was done without a hint of due process.

At no time did Mr. Yamada have the ability to challenge his incarceration.

This is not the way of the United States of America.

Bush: It is not a story that is just that of the Japanese Americans who were directly affected.

It's a story of our country and how we treated this segment of the people who are part of our country.

And that's why I wanted to bring it to the Bench-Bar Conference to remind those of us in the justice system that we have a duty that is somewhat different by virtue of our profession and our oath to be especially vigilant against such things happening again.

Narrator: Nicholas Kawaguchi plays the Japanese American defendant on trial for refusing the draft.

Nic’s family has deep connections to Minidoka.

Kawaguchi: My father's family and my mother's family were both incarcerated here.

So my grandfather in Seattle, he was a big fisherman, and he owned a fishing store in Seattle at the time.

And after the war broke out and he had to leave for the internment camp, he left his fishing store to his white friend.

And when he came back, there was a sign on the store that said “No Japs Allowed.” Narrator: Nic’s maternal grandfather, Frank Tanabe, was a student at the University of Washington.

His life was dramatically disrupted by his World War II internment.

Kawaguchi: So he was kicked out of school after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

He joined the Military Intelligence Service, the MIS, just because a group of them wanted to prove that they were they were American citizens.

And that they deserved, you know, the rights that an American citizen deserves, and was contributing to the war efforts by translating breaking codes, things like that.

Narrator: Jeff Thomson and the cast first staged “The Nisei Paradox” in 2017.

For the 80th anniversary of those trials in 2024, The Friends of Minidoka commissioned a revival.

Achilles: I'm so excited for the stage production because it shows a little-known story about these draft resisters, and also it gives you insight into what a legal case is like, what a trial is like, and what, you know, maybe an unfair trial is like.

Narrator: The revival gave the play's creators a chance to do more research, including a visit to the National Archives in Seattle.

The government demanded loyalty of Japanese Americans during World War II, and immigrant and native-born alike had to fill out loyalty questionnaires.

Some of those documents were in the Seattle files.

Bush: And I picked up that first one and I stopped in my tracks.

It just took my breath away because it's so palpable in the space of this document.

And, and the handwriting on it, the enormity of of those moments.

It’s a moment in time where our country and then our judicial system fell short of what we aspire to do and to be, and not in a small way.

Narrator: Just how short?

The U.S. government imprisoned thousands of innocent adults and children without due process of law.

In the case of the Minidoka resisters, the presiding judge was Chase Clark, who had recently demonstrated deep anti-Japanese prejudice as Idaho governor.

But Judge Clark did appoint prominent Boise attorneys to represent the men in court for free.

Long before U.S. courts automatically provided lawyers to defendants.

Those lawyers did not want to be there.

The judge gave them very little leeway, and not all of them offered robust defenses for their Japanese American clients.

Defense Counsel: Matthew Kane for the defendant, Your Honor.

I would like to renew my objection to being forced to be here today.

As I have previously noted, given my personal feelings toward the Japanese, I do not feel I can adequately represent Mr. Yamada.

Thomson: They were the product of their time, and so we do not know how each individual attorney necessarily handled the defense, but some of them didn't acquit themselves well.

Narrator: Judge Clark used the same small pool of jurors for all the cases, including one 11-day span with 33 trials for 34 jurors.

Those are obvious failings that never would be permitted today.

Defense Counsel: I challenge the jury because they have heard evidence in other cases and found other defendants guilty.

I fear that they have already made up their minds regarding the guilt of my client before the evidence and arguments have been presented in this matter.

Thomson: I created composite characters to be able to tell the story fully.

So my FBI agent, my prosecuting attorney, my defense attorney, and my defendant are all composite characters.

The only non-composite character is Judge Chase Clark.

No one defense attorney offered all of the defenses that are offered in the staged reading.

So it was very important to have a composite defense attorney.

And you see his development in the stage play because he starts out asking to be relieved of his duty to be a defense counsel because he's prejudiced against the Japanese and Japanese Americans.

And the judge refuses to allow him to do that.

Judge: And as I have previously explained to you Mr. Kane, it is your civic duty as a lawyer to appear before this court when called to do so.

No matter how distasteful the matter may be.

I have 33 cases currently pending before me and two weeks to try them all.

I have too few lawyers as it is.

Thomson: And so then he starts, OK, if I'm forced to do this, I'm going to do my civic duty and give the best defense I can.

And that's then when he launches into all of these composite theories to try and get his defendant acquitted.

Defense Counsel: How is it fair to require Mr. Yamada to fight for a country that has thrown him and his family into a camp surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by the military?

How is it fair to force Mr. Yamada to fight for freedoms neither he nor his family enjoy?

Finding Mr. Yamada guilty of resisting the draft of a country that has treated him as an enemy is, in the purest sense, unfair.

Judge: Has the jury reached a verdict?

Foreman: We have, Your Honor.

We, the jury, find James Matsugu Yamada guilty.

Judge: Mr. Yamada, you're hereby sentenced to three years and three months to be served at the federal penitentiary at McNeil Island in Washington.

You're also fined $200.

Narrator: In the end, all 44 Minidoka resisters went to federal prison, most for three years and three months.

One judge in Northern California dismissed charges against 27 resisters at Tule Lake.

But the vast majority of the 300 draft resisters from the 10 camps were convicted and imprisoned.

Play narrator: On December 18th, 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court held it illegal to detain American citizens of Japanese ancestry in internment camps.

On January 2nd, 1945, the military reopened the West Coast to Japanese Americans and those of Japanese ancestry.

Japan surrendered on September 2nd, 1945.

The Minidoka Relocation Camp was closed on October 28th, 1945, but most of the Minidoka draft resisters remained incarcerated for another 18 months until April 1947, when they were paroled.

Ikeda: With the construction of this Honor Roll, it's probably not hard to believe that many Japanese Americans who were incarcerated here had a lot of pride or just a lot of personal relations or feelings in regards to military service.

You could imagine just how big that draft resistance would have been in the context of this specific camp, right?

Kawaguchi: This is my grandfather, Frank Shinichiro Tanabe.

Narrator: Nic’s grandfather joined the army and served in the U.S. military intelligence.

In “The Nisei Paradox,” Nic's character makes a much different choice.

Kawaguchi: And what my grandfather did, I think, was extremely courageous.

And when I also look at this story, and this play, and what my character does, it's a whole different type of courage that he had to go through, you know.

Because for those who resisted the draft, they were hated on by the Americans, but they were also hated on by the Japanese because they were trying to fall in line, and we have to do what our government says to prove that we're Americans.

And so for them to go against that and to really face that hostility from both sides, that takes a lot of courage, too.

Bush: It's just such a stark example of what's antithetical to our Constitution and, frankly, to our history, at least to our more admirable history.

Ikeda: We still encourage visitors to take that silent walk along the canal, along the barbed wire, to reflect in front of the Honor Roll and pay their respects to walk past the barrack and think about their own families and the quiet reflection that one can have in this space, is not just one about Japanese American history, but we encourage folks to reflect really on what America means to them.

Thomson: We can't forget these sub chapters in our history that don't shine a positive light on us.

And, you know, recent events indicate that there's a potentiality that our civil liberties could be under attack again.

And we want to make sure that people remember, so they don't repeat.

Gunter: You're not just safe because here you are, an American in the United States.

It's called incarceration because it was a prison.

And every single one of those 10 camps, I mean, barbed wires, armed guards.

You think, wow, you know, that can't happen again, but it can.

It's easy to get caught up in a mob rule.

It's hard to to blame the people.

But it is, maybe, something where you should examine it and recognize where where the right and wrong are, and stand for the right.

I don’t know.

It's just, it was a paradox.

[MUSIC] Idaho Experience is made possible with funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation Anne Voillequé and Louise Nelson.

Judy and Steve Meyer.

With additional support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and contributions to the Friends of Idaho Public Television and viewers like you.

Thank you.

[MUSIC]