Prepared remarks for a public talk presented April 22 at Wellesley College in the Pendleton Atrium:

One year ago, when Elena Creef and I first discussed my speaking here, I never thought my talk would take such a dark turn. Then came the election. Elena asked me for a title for the program. By then, we knew the general direction things would take, but not the precise details. So this umbrella title seemed likely to stick by the time April 22nd rolled around.

Then I got this poster artwork designed by Soe Lin Post of Wellesley and I realized: This is it. This is my talk. This says it all.

A 21st century jetliner on the tarmac, ready to forcibly remove these Japanese Americans from 1942 from the cover of my graphic novel, as drawn by Ross Ishikawa, clutching their suitcases and duffel bags holding only what they could carry, and pinned with family number tags. This juxtaposition perfectly captures the connection between WW2 incarceration and the kidnapping and human trafficking of legal residents and immigrants today.

So forgive me if I sound grim and pessimistic, with no easy answers and few reasons to hope. For those who’ve read We Hereby Refuse in Elena’s class, let me revisit the stories in that volume through this new lens to address the question of the day: What does the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II tell us about mass deportation today?

Well, this year, we’ve all learned a new term: Alien Enemies Act, invoked by the president as his basis for mass deportations. This statute enacted in 1798 applies only to aliens of countries with which we’re in a declared war, like, at the time, the Redcoats here in New England. But we’re not in a declared war today with any nation, including those from which migrants or asylum-seekers are arriving. But in 1941 we were at war with the nation of Japan, which had bombed ships at the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor.

As described by Professor Eric Muller, the Alien Enemies Act was the basis for the selective arrest and detention of 55-hundred Japanese community leaders on the West Coast, our grandfathers who would have applied for naturalized U.S. citizenship were it not for the statutes that then denied a pathway to citizenship for anyone of Asian ancestry. The Alien Enemies Act also provided for the arrest and internment of thousands of German aliens and hundreds of Italian aliens singled out for pro-Axis activities. So that law was not based on ancestry alone.

As we show in the graphic novel, Jim Akutsu comes home from playing football to find the FBI taking away his father. The FBI seizes an innocent Japanese language magazine on the list of subversive media as evidence of subversion … the equivalent today of demanding he open his phone so they can search through his emails and social media to see what he’s reading and thinking. And they take away the elder Akutsu to the DOJ alien internment camp at Fort Missoula, Montana. Jim’s father is just a cobbler, not a business leader or Buddhist priest like those arrested before. For two years, Jim’s father is shuttled from one Justice Department camp to another. Jim’s mother writes letter after desperate letter begging for his release.

What’s notable, and I showed it here without spelling it out, is that Jim’s father and the other Issei who were arrested did receive individual hearings to determine individual loyalties, in courtrooms like the one below at Fort Missoula.

These Alien Enemy Hearings Boards were comprised of three civic leaders from the town of Missoula who would question the internees on their loyalties, and issue findings. Most were found “insufficiently dangerous” to justify continued detention and paroled back to their families in camp.

So the Alien Enemies Act was the basis for the arrest of Jim Akutsu’s father, but it was not, as is often repeated today, the basis for the mass exclusion that included Jim himself and other American citizens. The 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry in the War Relocation Authority camps got no hearings, no trials, and no due process.

That authority came with the stroke of the president’s pen on an Executive Order, a vehicle with which we’re now painfully familiar today. This one was numbered 9,066. The ones being signed now are numbered in the 14-thousands. What 9066 did was to authorize the military, in the name of national security, to be able to designate areas from which it could exclude those it considered a threat. The order does not mention any group by name, but everyone understood what it meant.

Now, the Army has no evidence of any espionage or sabotage by Japanese Americans, and in fact no such acts occurred. Eric Muller highlights this line in a report from the general in charge of the Western Defense Command in which he argues “the very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken.”

Eric then highlights this line in a current government declaration filed March 17 in a case against alleged Tren de Aragua, Venezuelan gang members, in which the government presents no evidence: “While it’s true that many of the TdA members, removed under the Alien Enemy Act do not have criminal records, the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose.” 

So, some things never change.

In the graphic novel we show you the bright young adjutant general who comes up with a plan for mass exclusion that can pass constitutional muster. Karl Bendetsen said, let’s prescribe 108 military zones from which we exclude all people, and then license back only those we deem safe to stay. This gets us around any messy constitutional issues around citizenship or race. So to carry out the executive order, the Army nails posters to telephone poles up and down the West Coast that finally say the quiet part out loud, Instructions to all persons of JAPANESE ancestry. Today we see the government trampling fine lines between citizens, visa-holders, green card holders, and the undocumented. These posters also blurred the distinctions. In true Orwellian fashion, the exclusion order applied to what it called “aliens” and to “non-aliens.” And Jim Akutsu stood there and wondered, what’s a non-alien? And he says oh, by non-alien, they mean a U.S. citizen. Jim’s generation had figured their parents as immigrants might get removed, but not them, they’re citizens. But here, in an instant, the line was crossed, and the protections of birthright citizenship went out the window.

So today the government is arresting legal permanent residents like Mahmoud Khalil, who exercised his free speech rights at Columbia University against genocide in Gaza. He’s now been detained in a Louisiana jail for more than a month. I just read his wife gave birth yesterday to their child in New York City, and he was denied a compassionate supervised visit. Just five days ago, on April 17, Kahlil sent a letter from jail in which he wrote:
I saw that and thought wow, our book is still the only book I know of to illustrate the human story behind the legal abstraction, maybe he found We Hereby Refuse in the law library. Or maybe I should try to send one to him. In any event, we show you who Mitsuye Endo was.

She was a key punch operator in Sacramento for the state of California. After Pearl Harbor, the state goes through its lists of employees and suspends all employees with a Japanese name. Of course, they did it by hand; today they’d use AI to assist them. The letters carry wild accusations of treachery and disloyalty drawn from the air, “a member of Japanese organizations violently opposed to the democratic form of government” — not unlike the label of terrorist and MS-13 gangster that the president attaches to Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, the man being held in El Salvador.

Endo joins a group of 63 Nisei state employees who organize to contest their termination, and they hire an attorney named James Purcell. But in the middle of their case, the Army issues its exclusion orders, and Endo is upset that she is denied due process, denied her day in court to contest her exclusion as an individual. What’s key here is how important it is for one person to stand up and say this is wrong. In San Francisco, James Purcell becomes outraged by the mass exclusion and detention as a matter of the rule of law. So Purcell decides to bring a federal petition for habeas corpus – produce the body, to challenge the legality of one’s detention or imprisonment, to seek relief from unlawful confinement – all matters of law that Mahmoud Khalil faces now. Purcell needs to find what he called the “perfect plaintiff:” someone who doesn’t read or speak Japanese, doesn’t attend Japanese language school, and ideally is a Christian, not an Eastern religion like Buddhist or Shinto.

Purcell goes shopping among his clients and lands on Mitsuye Endo as one who checks all the boxes. Purcell grew up in prison as the son of a guard at Folsom, so he can say, “I know a prison when I see one….” Endo is reluctant at first, she’s shy. “Oh no, you can find someone better. What about Eureka, or Ruby?” But she realizes the consequence of this moment and shakes hands to signal her agreement.

Lawyers for the government knew then that they are violating the principle of habeas corpus – produce the body – just as they undoubtedly know today. The War Relocation Authority sends its chief solicitor to offer a deal to Endo. Phillip Glick offers her the chance to leave camp and go anywhere she wants, so long as it’s outside the West Coast. Now, Endo wants her freedom. But she knows the trick is that if she leaves camp, it will render her habeas corpus case moot. She can do what’s best for herself, or for the good of all. Of course, she decides to do what’s best for all: “I am willing to go as far as I can on this case.” For her, it means staying in camp for another full year, until her case finally reaches the Supreme Court, which rules the Roosevelt Administration has no legal right to detain admittedly loyal U.S. citizens for an indeterminant time. This decision prompts the Army to revoke the West Coast exclusion zone, and the War Relocation Authority announces it will close the camps within six months to a year.

Here, we might take a moment to mourn the loss of a world in which a president actually obeys the order of the courts. Because in this moment, we don’t know whether the executive branch of government will obey court rulings to return abducted immigrants, and if not, how the courts can or will enforce them. And if the courts cannot enforce their rulings, many warn that is the death of democracy. So the story of Endo tells us a lot about the question of due process and the rule of law.

What about the other threat in the air today: the whole set of actions taken by Homeland Security and ICE to encourage legal residents to self-deport, to voluntarily leave this country on their own, through the mass cancellation of student visas and other methods of intimidation? Again, over my morning coffee, we find another example: of DOGE staffers rifling through Social Security data to mark individuals in the Social Security system as dead, in an effort to pressure immigrants to self-deport.

We’ve seen this pressure before, right after Pearl Harbor, with members of Congress eager to remove and deport the yellow peril. I cannot tell you how shocked I was last summer, to see delegates of a major political party gleefully waving signs for “Mass Deportation Now!” We’ve seen this before, too, in the story of Hiroshi Kashiwagi and the renunciation crisis at Tule Lake.

As we’ve seen, there were no individual hearings in the mass exclusion and incarceration of 125,000. So a year later when the government realizes it needs some way to sort the loyal from the disloyal, it retroactively administers a loyalty questionnaire. The questionnaire asks if you’re willing to serve in the armed forces on combat duty, and whether you swear allegiance to the U.S. and foreswear any or all allegiance to the emperor of Japan. Nowadays, a paper questionnaire seems so 20th century. Now all the government has to do is run an algorithm to search one’s internet history and trigger transfer to the high-security segregation center at Tule Lake.

All during the war, members of Congress were looking for ways to strip American-born Nisei of their U.S. citizenship, and deport everyone to Japan. The attorney general keeps telling them you can’t do that under the 14th Amendment, which guarantees birthright citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. But he also suggests a way around the Constitution.
And in July 1944, Congress adopts the Denaturalization Act, which for the first time enables a U.S. citizen to voluntarily renounce their citizenship during time of war. The beauty, if you will, of this idea is, why pass a law that will be overturned in court when you can get the angry, frustrated, and confused Nisei in camp to voluntarily surrender their citizenship.

Tule Lake was one of the ten regular concentration camps – if there could be such a thing – until the government converted it to a high-security segregation prison, and that created the conditions for unrest. The 18,000 people pushed into the Segregation Center can see how this government has abandoned or turned against them. Anger, frustration, and isolation, boil over into organization. These are the so-called “pro-Japan fanatics” at Tule Lake, and I won’t go into it here but in the graphic novel we show how these groups are a product of the duress of mass imprisonment. It is in this environment that 7 of every 10 Nisei at Tule Lake, with only rumor and misinformation to guide them, walk into the trap and voluntarily surrender their U.S. citizenship. They act under duress from the government and coercion from gangs the government knowingly allow to run wild.

This includes Hiroshi Kashiwagi. He caves to family pressure and immediately regrets his decision to renounce and desperately tries to withdraw it, but can’t. There were 5,000 families who had arguments like this in 1944. As one character says, how convenient for the government to give us the chance to self-deport — and we walked right into the trap. Today, in countless homes across the nation, families are having these same anguished discussions over kitchen tables about what to do about a cancelled visa, a revoked green card, the loss of earned Social Security income.

Look, I’m no expert on all the current outrages or what we can do about them. In this, I’m as much an observer as you. But what I can show you is how the events we cover in our graphic novel anticipate the assaults on due process and civil liberties we’re seeing today, and how three people refused to submit without a fight.

I’m a former journalist. In journalism we used to pride ourselves on writing the first draft of history. Now I see my former colleagues in the daily media industry being overwhelmed by the blitzkrieg of assaults on so many fronts and unable to understand and assess the attacks on diversity, privacy rights, women’s rights, social security, education, science, public health, the economy, and the very fabric of democracy.

I’m also an historian. And as a historian I can show you what happened before, and how it lines up with today. This is just another internet meme, showing the military police at Tule Lake on top.

In closing, let me return to the question of the day and to one of the themes of Elena’s class: What does the wartime incarceration tell us about mass deportation today?

Simply this: that despite the values and ideals embodied in our laws and founding constitution, the fear of the “other” can drive public policy. It has before, and it’s happening again now. By looking at what’s happened before, we can be guided by it and maybe get an idea how we can respond today. That same fear of the “other” seems to resurface like clockwork whenever America feels itself threatened from abroad:
— In WW2, after Pearl Harbor.
— In the 1980s, when the imports of cars and consumer electronics from Japan stoke alarms of an “economic Pearl Harbor,” culminating in the beating death of Vincent Chin by two Detroit autoworkers.
— After 9/11, when the suicide bombing of the World Trade Center provokes the racial profiling of Muslims and Arab Americans and anyone who wears a turban.
— More recently, the election of 2016 brings racial division and latent white nationalism to the very top of our government, with a ban on travel from majority-Muslim nations, family separations, and the caging of asylum-seekers from Latin America.
— During the pandemic, when the cries from an American president of “China virus” and “Kung flu” condones violence against Asian Americans that continues to this day.
— And now, here we are today. In December I didn’t know precisely where we’d be on April 22nd, but now we know.

This poster image crystalizes the apparent White House mechanism for mass deportation. They won’t be repeating the imagery from WW2 of building camps in remote deserts and swamps, with armed soldiers with rifles and bayonets ordering the displaced people onto buses and trains. No, as this poster so perfectly captures, the plan in the 21st century is to off-shore and outsource concentration camps, away from the public eye. Out of sight, out of mind. At first, and by that I mean in the ancient times of February, it was in places the U.S. owns like Guantanamo in Cuba. In the past few weeks, we now see people kidnapped off the street, with no hearing, no presenting of evidence, no due process, and flown to an industrialized prison in El Salvador, with our President urging the president of El Salvador to build five more like it, to take in what he calls the “home grown,” meaning native born citizens like me and most of you. His exact quote is, “Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough.”

Nick Miroff reports in The Atlantic that Congress is preparing to lavish ICE with a colossal funding increase to implement that placard-waving promise of Mass Deportations Now! Billions to ICE to add thousands of officers to arrest and jail more immigrants. Billions to private contractors to identify and locate targets, jail them in for-profit detention centers, and fast-track their deportations. You’ve heard the acting director of ICE famously quoted, was it last week?, as saying he wants a deportation system that works like Amazon Prime, but for human beings.

Miroff also reports that ICE has been looking to repurpose tent facilities along the Mexico border that were used extensively in the Biden Administration as emergency processing sites for migrants coming in. ICE will now run the process in reverse, and convert the tents into makeshift jails for detainees awaiting deportation” So again, on the border, out of sight, out of mind.

And we need to keep our terms clear and stop calling these deportations. Deporting is sending someone back after a fair hearing, with due process, to the country from which they came, where they arrive a free person. This is kidnapping and human trafficking to a foreign torture prison for the rest of their lives.

We’ve seen this before. In 1944, Journalist James Omura testified to a Congressional commission that was studying the potential mass exclusion, and he had this pointed question for them:

Let me close with this simple yet provocative question from novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen:  

Thank you very much.