Mary Matsuda Gruenwald Quotes
In the internment camp, there was nothing to do.
She was a teenager at the time. The leaders organized some entertainment and she performed traditional Japanese dances. In the beginning there was no school, no education or training, no entertainment. Later there were some rudimentary opportunities provided by the authorities.
Mary Matsuda Gruenwald, American Citizen Interned in Japanese-American Internment camp in WWII, C-SPAN, Book TV, February 2, 1906
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The incredible absurdity of the security claim of interring the Japanese-Americans is that the majority of all the people interred were teenagers, children and babies. See {624010}.
The initial reaction was to prevent Japanese from leaving the area, being out at night, or spending their assets. Incredibly, Japanese-American citizens who had their own hard earned money in a bank were not allowed to withdraw and spend their own funds. Her family had owned a farm on prime land. Soon, whites looking to get the land owned by Japanese Americans lobbied to have the Japanese removed. They lost their livelihood, would default on their mortgages, and much land fell into the hands of whites. Gruenwald’s family did not lose their farm thanks to the local sheriff who had agreed to supervise the farm and split the profits. Not all West Coast Americans approved of the treatment of their Japanese fellow citizens and many helped protect some from the greed and racism of other Americans. See {624010}.
In one of the great American disgraces, during WWII, American citizens of Japanese ethnicity were forced into an “evacuation” into camps for the duration of the war. German American citizens were not similarly treated. There was not a single act of sabotage or anti war propaganda by Japanese Americans before (or after) the “evacuation.” Many German Americans were so involved but never interned, but one of the major motivations was to get the valuable farmland owned by many Japanese on the West Coast. (The Japanese American citizens could not work or earn the money to pay the mortgages or taxes on their property and the white Californians were able to acquire the land for very little. Many believe this was the real motivation for the Japanese American incarceration as there was none such on the East Coast where there were few Japanese American land holdings.
Many of the young men who were given this form to fill out, had never been in Japan and some did not even know there was an emperor there. Nonetheless the Japanese American divisions of enlistees were the most effective and most decorated fighting units for America while their parents who had not been born in America were still imprisoned in the internment camps. See {624010}.
Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor:
She was very conflicted about the interment of Americans of Japanese origin. She understood the arguments for the internment and some had some merit for her. But she was opposed to the internment from the beginning. However, she frequently discussed this issue privately with FDR. She consulted with the judges who dissented in the law suits and presented their arguments to her husband. She visited some of the internment camps and maintained a correspondent with some of the interned Japanese American leaders. Earlier, once FDR signed the internment executive order, she maintained a public silence on the issue until 1944 when she publicly broke with her husband on this issue. (While that may be shocking to us today—for a first lady to publicly disagree with the President—for Mrs. Roosevelt, it was not unusual and was not the scandal that it might be today. Throughout her over 3 terms as First Lady, she wrote a daily newspaper column and did a weekly radio show for much of the period.
