EPICANTHUS

“FBI Mined Store Records to Find Iranian Terrorists”

“Feds Hope to Follow Falafel Trail”

“LAPD to Build Data on Muslim Areas”

I chuckled when I first saw these headlines. Later, talk about the FBI’s Muslim mapping and weird preoccupation with fried chickpeas had me staring down into my coffee recalling the wartime tales my elders whispered to me of the dreaded knocks on the door following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and of menfolk being hustled off into the night by stern-faced FBI agents.

The 1940s Japanese American overlay is still valid in the context of our war on Islam. From our talkstory, here’s how G-men covertly gathered intel and shadowed Japanese America prior to Dec. 7, 1941. According to those who experienced it firsthand, mapping of the Japanese American community began in the mid-’30s with the canvassing of non-Japanese familiar with the JA communities from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California; monitoring of the vernacular press; and analyzing U.S. Census data.

The government considered mining the few Japanese Americans adopted into white families as assets. White clergymen with Japanese in their congregations were interviewed.

And here’s why Japanese America can laugh at the “falafel trail”; It was thought one’s “Japaneseness” might be quantified by the separation of their big toe from the rest of the toes. The rationale being Japanese favor zori or flipflop sandals as footwear, therefore…

As actual hostilities approached—1938-’41—monitoring of Japanese American community intensified with FBI employing “speed writers” and shorthand experts to attend meetings of community organizations under the guise of being civil rights supporters, journalists or academics. Editors and publishers of JA newspapers were evaluated for pro-Japan leanings. Japanese American veterans of WWI were approached to become informants. Lists were compiled of Japanese Americans who had traveled to Japan.

From the way our parents and grandparents tell it, these intelligence gathering efforts did not go unnoticed by the community. A too-familiar non-Japanese face stood out like a sore thumb in those segregated times.

But when the wholesale roundups began, what amazed Japanese Americans was the wealth of information the government had gathered on each and every one of them.

The FBI had swooped down and taken away the community’s leadership—all of it.

Immediately after Pearl Harbor, every community leader, including Buddhist priests, educators, Japanese language school officials, martial arts instructors, artists, prefectural club (kenjinkai) officials, prominent businessmen, fishermen and veterans of the Japanese military living in the U.S., were taken away in droves under cover of darkness to secret detention centers and held by the FBI.

Now, I’m not talking about the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast by the military which came months later under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. By now, most educated Americans know about places like Heart Mountain, Manzanar, Tulelake and the rest of the War Relocation Authority’s 10 internment camps. We’re talking about the hush-hush Dept. of Justice prison camps.

Japanese American men snatched up in those initial FBI raids went to secret DOJ prisons in places like Santa Fe, New Mexico, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Crystal City, Texas, Bismarck, North Dakota and Missoula, Montana. Hearing from those who lived to tell their stories, these were the Guantanamo’s and Abu Ghraib’s of their time.

Some who disappeared into the night back in ‘41 and ‘42 weren’t heard from again until 1948 in some cases. Their treatment in the DOJ prisons was poor, sometimes cruel. Some emerged with mental problems or addictions, never to return to leadership roles in the community.

A common topic in any discussion of the FBI’s surveillance of the Japanese American community in that era is the government’s use of informants. Ironically, some of the top officials of an organization still active today, Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), served as “report writers” for the government in WRA camps, labeling fellow camp inmates as “pro-Japan,” anti-conscription, disloyal or as “rabble-rousers” detrimental to the smooth operation of the internment camps.

Japanese Americans today still refer to these FBI informants pejoratively as “inu,” the Japanese word for dog. I wonder how you say “dog” in Arabic or Farsi?

Okay, gotta go. Someone’s at the door.