CC BY
11
УДК 94 DOI: 10.53315/1995-0713-2021-51-3-23-30
ББК 63.3
З.Б. Доржинова, А.Б. Мантусов, О.В. Салынова
Калмыцкий государственный университет им. Б.Б. Городовикова
ИСТОРИЧЕСКАЯ ПАМЯТЬ НАРОДОВ, ПОДВЕРГШИХСЯ ДЕПОРТАЦИИ В ГОДЫ ВТОРОЙ МИРОВОЙ ВОЙНЫ
Сохранение исторической памяти народов о Второй мировой войне, борьба с фальсификацией истории актуальны сегодня как никогда ранее. Объектом исследования данной статьи являются трагические события, связанные с выселением некоторых народов во время Второй мировой войны. В Советском Союзе по необоснованным обвинениям в пособничестве странам, развязавшим Вторую мировую войну, были депортированы в восточную часть СССР калмыки, чеченцы, кабардинцы и многие другие народы. В Соединённых Штатах Америки американцы японского происхождения были интернированы в специальные лагеря на западе США. Калмыки находились 13 лет в ссылке, а японцы провели четыре года в лагерях для интернированных. Депортированные народы сохранили память о тех суровых годах. Условия жизни депортированных народов России изучаются российскими учеными, но необходимо провести параллели между причинами депортации народов в разных странах. В работе анализируются условия быта и труда депортированного калмыцкого народа и интернированных японцев на основе архивных документов и книг, написанных самими интернированными.
Ключевые слова: депортация, депортированные народы, интернирование, спец лагеря, нарушение прав, временные центры для перемещенных
Z.B. Dorzhinova, A.B. Mantusov, O.V. Salynova
Kalmyk State University named after B.B. Gorodovikov
TISTORICAL MEMORY OF PEOPLES DEPORTED DURING WORLD WAR II
The preservation of the historical memory of the peoples of the Second World War, the fight against the falsification of history is relevant today as never before. The object of this research is the tragic events associated with the deporatation of some peoples during the Second World War. The Soviet Union deported Kalmyks, Chechens, Kabardians and many other peoples to the eastern part of the USSR on unfounded accusations of aiding countries that unleashed World War II. The USA sent Americans of Japanese descend in special camps in the western part of the United States. The Kalmyks lived 13 years in exile, and the Japanese lived four years in internment camps. The deported peoples have preserved the memory of those harsh years. The living conditions of the deported peoples of Russia are being studied by Russian scientists, but it is necessary to draw parallels between the reasons for the deportation of peoples in different countries. The work analyzes the living and working conditions of the deported Kalmyk people and interned Japanese on the basis of archival documents and books written by the interned people.
Key words: deportation, deported peoples, internment, Pearl Harbor, internment camps, violation of rights, temporary assembly centers.
Introduction
"During the years of the Great Patriotic War, a new wave of political repression of part of individual ethnic groups and entire peoples began. In August 1941, the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR abolished the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Volga Germans. 949,829 Soviet Germans ended up in special settlements in Siberia and the Far East and in other regions. Among them were
5965 Germans of the Kalmyk ASSR, evicted by order of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 84-ks dated November 2, 1941 and by order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 001543 dated November 3, 1941 "On measures for the resettlement of Germans from the Kalmyk ASSR" [10]
As for Japanese Americans, they were forcibly interned in ten different camps across the Western United States after the Imperial Japanese Navy airplanes and midget submarines attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. The United States Navy established a base on the island in 1899. [14] The attack led the United States to declare war on the Empire of Japan and caused the American entry into World War II [5]. Shortly following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. The Order set the program of the forced removal of 120,000 Japanese Americans in motion. Civilians found that three "broad historical causes" shaped the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans: "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership [4].
Problem statement
Maximov K.N. wrote in his book that "at the end of 1943 - the first half of 1944, the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), the State Defense Committee of the USSR, ground-lessly, indiscriminately accusing some peoples of cooperation with the enemy, abolished five more autonomous entities (Karachay Autonomous Region, Kalmyk, Chechen-Ingush, Kabardino-Balkar, Crimean autonomous republics). Their autochthonous population was deprived of civil rights and deported to remote areas for special settlements" [10].
"In December 1941 about 130,000 persons of Japanese birth or ancestry lived in the continental United States and another 150,000 in Hawai'i, then a territory. About seventy percent were native-born American citizens, but their parents, who had emigrated from Japan in the years before 1925, had been, by law, ineligible for naturalization because of their race and ethnicity"[16]. Little is known in our country about the fact that all Japanese Americans were forcibly removed to the West Coast of the United States during World War II. It was an act of abrogation of the basic constitutional rights. Despite the Fourth Amendment in 1791and the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 the Executive Order 9066 authorized the military to exclude any person from any area of the country where national security was considered threatened.
The Fourth Amendment in 1791 reads that "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
According to the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The Executive Order 9066 gave the military broad authority over the civilian population without the imposition of martial law. Although the order did not mention any specific group or recommend detention, its language implied that any citizen might be removed. In practice, the order was applied only to Japanese Americans. In a climate of widespread fear bordering on panic, the order resulted in the incarceration of more than 100,000 people
of Japanese descent living on the West Coast. They were uprooted from their homes and isolated in 10 hastily constructed camps, some of them for as long as four years, in what is widely known as the Japanese-American Internment.
Literature review
Famous Kalmyk historians Maximov K.N., Ubushaev V.B. and wrote many books concerning the deportation of the Kalmyk people to the cold territory of Siberia and Far East during World War II.
Tsutsulaeva S.S. in her article "Deported Peoples' Songs Composed During the Years of Exile" writes that "due to the fact that a third of the population of the deported peoples died in the first two years after the deportation, despair tormented the people. All my life was filled with work - the most difficult and the heaviest. The hope of the return of the fathers and brothers who had gone to war did not leave. Deprived of elementary human rights, being in complete information isolation, the deported peoples nevertheless survived and preserved old traditions, customs and rituals" [18 ].
Roger Daniels, a historian and author, wrote an analysis for the University of Washington Press called "Words Do Matter: A Note on Inappropriate Terminology and the Incarceration of the Japanese Americans. "He concludes that, although it's unlikely society will completely cease to use the phrase "Japanese internment," scholars should abandon the term and use "concentration camp." He considers internment a euphemism that minimizes a tragic time in American history"[17].
Carolyn Hisako Tanaka, veteran of the Vietnam War wrote in the her book "Memoir, Road Runner" that "Executive Order 9066 allowed the government to take us from our homes, strip us of our civil liberties and place us in internment camps all across the United States.. .The family was not given time to sell our belongings or furnishings.. .I remember being boarded on a train almost in the middle of the night, like cattle going to slaughter. We were packed like sardines in a canto standing room only capacity. The train stopped in the desert in the middle of the night. We were allowed to disembark under the watchful eyes of the guards, to allow us to stretch our cramped legs, use the restroom and be given salt tablets to endure the heat of the desert".[3]
Yoshiko Uchida wrote a book "Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family". The book tells the story of one family who lived through these sad years. It is a moving personal account by a woman who grew up in Berkeley and was attending the University of California when the war began. To better understand how such a gross violation of human rights could have occurred in America, and how the Japanese reacted to it, the author takes a backward look at her parents' early years in this country and her own experiences as a Nisei growing up in California. She evokes the strong anti-Asian climate of the years preceding the war, and provides an intimate glimpse of life in one Japanese American household.
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston in the book "Farewell to Manzanar" described a memoir from a Japanese American. "It is the true story of one spirited Japanese-American family's attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention and of a native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States. The book was written without bitterness and the story reflects the triumph of the human spirit during an extraordinary episode in American history. The author describes vividly the life in the camp and the humiliations suffered by the detainees. The book is taught at schools as a history book. This true and bitter story was filmed in 1980s. It is a sober and moving personal account about those years".
Findings
Avliev V.N. and a group of historians investigated life and working conditions of Kalmyks deported to Omsk and Novosibirsk regions. They wrote that 43 thousand Kalmyks were brought to this territory. They were not only resettled in public houses, but also lived together with local residents. Only a tiny fraction of Kalmyks (0.02%) could afford to buy a house in the first years of deportation. In general, the state of living conditions of the special settlers-Kalmyks was unsatisfactory, and loans were disbursed only by a third. The houses lacked basic furniture, stoves, there was no repairs, and the money that was sometimes allocated was used by many Kalmyk families for food and clothing. [2]
Kyshpanakov VA. in his article concerning the Kalmyks deported during the World War II to Khakassia wrote that they worked in different sectors of economy. They helped to restore and develop agriculture and industry of the autonomous region. Representatives of the Kalmyk intelligentsia contributed to the Khakass culture, science and education in the most difficult years. Kyshpanov VA. wrote about Kalmyk scientists Nominchanov Ts.D. and Ilishkin I.K who contributed to the development of Khakass education and science [7].
Executive Order 9066 authorized the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas. What was the base of this Order? In proclamations issued on December 7th and 8th President Franklin Roosevelt declared that, under the authority of sections 21-24 of Title 50 of the United States Code, "all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of [Japan, Germany, and Italy], being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be in the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies"[15].
The order to prepare for the move to the assembly centers left little time for packing, selling household goods, or locating safe storage for precious personal possessions. Allowed to take only what they could carry, Japanese Americans headed for the camps had no room for toys, precious heirlooms, or other personal treasures. Family pets were left behind with memories of the old neighborhood. The patterns of daily life were shattered.
The government offered to store some household possessions for families "at the sole risk of the owner." The government actually stored very little. In many cases, the offer came too late. Some families were fortunate enough to have friends or neighbors who cared for houses, cars, and other possessions.
For thousands of Japanese American homeowners and small businessmen, moving out also meant selling out - quickly, and at an enormous loss. The total dollar value of the property loss has been estimated at as much as 1.3 billion dollars. Net income losses may have been as high as 2.7 billion dollars (both in 1983 dollars).
Temporary assembly centers were the first stop for most internees. Sixteen centers were established in California, Oregon, Washington State, and Arizona. Fairgrounds, racetracks, and other public facilities were pressed into service to handle the influx of Japanese Americans. Internees remained in these centers, under the control of the Army's Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA), until the War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps were ready.
"Crystal City [administered by the Justice Department] became known as the "family camp" where Issei "enemy aliens" and their families were interned during World War II. With a peak population of over 4,000 - including German and Italian internees as well as Japanese Americans - Crystal City was one of the largest of the internment camps.
For the most part Crystal City residents left the camps after the conclusion of the war to go to Japan or to return to their prewar homes in Hawaii or on the West Coast."
"While serving as head of the Aliens Division of the Provost Marshal General, [Bend-etsen] played a key role in planning the mass removal of Japanese Americans. He was in effect a liaison between the War Department and the Western Defense Command (WDC) and later served as General John L. DeWitt's chief aide for the mass removal. As the lone westerner involved in the decision-making process in Washington, DC, Bendetsen stated his belief that "a substantial majority of the Nisei bear allegiance to Japan, are well controlled and disciplined by the enemy, and at the proper time will engage in organized sabotage." He went on to help design the mass removal from the coast and later fought the War Relocation Authority plan to segregate the "loyal" from the "disloyal" Japanese Americans since part of the WDC's rationale for mass incarceration was that one could not tell the "loyal" from the "disloyal." He received the Distinguished Service Medal from the government for his service. Later, he was appointed assistant secretary of the army by President Truman over protests of the Japanese American community in 1950. In the 1980s, he was a vocal critic of the redress movement."
Here is a story of an eye witness - Mary Tsukamoto: We were treated like animals. And I never will forget, the train stopped and we got off and they put us on a big truck. It looked like one of those cattle cars. Anyway, we stood up because there were no chairs for us to sit on this pickup and crowded into this truck. They drove us to the Fresno Assembly Center. And then we got off there and they told us to get in and there was the barbed wire gate, and the MPs around there and uh... We had to go in through that gate and after we got in there we knew that the gate was shut. And so, we saw all these people behind the fence, looking out, hanging onto the wire, and looking out because they were anxious to know who was coming in. But I will never forget the shocking feeling that human beings were behind this fence like animals [crying]. And we were going to also lose our freedom and walk inside of that gate and find ourselves... cooped up there. And the police, the MPs with their guns and some of them had bayonets. I don't know what they were going to do with it, if they thought we were going to run away I guess. But anyway, when the gates were shut, we knew that we had lost something that was very precious; that we were no longer free [9].
Living conditions were described by many witnesses. Conditions in the WCCA assembly centers were unsanitary at best. At Tanforan and Santa Anita, California, internees were housed in stalls that only a week earlier had held horses. Sanitation, food service, and health-care facilities were beneath the lowest U.S. Army standards. Many internees had to stay in assembly centers for several months before being moved to permanent camps.
"The stall was about ten by twenty feet and empty except for three folded Army cots lying on the floor. Dust, dirt, and wood shavings covered the linoleum that had been laid over manure-covered boards, the smell of horses hung in the air, and the whitened corpses of many insects still clung to the hastily white-washed walls" [20].
"On warm days it was unbearable in the stalls and barracks. The stench of manure returned with the heat, and this in turn brought back the horseflies. Most of the people remained outdoors on such days, and usually I did too, but there were times when I kept working inside. Later, by the order of the medical authority, all windows in the stalls were hinged so that they could be opened" [11].
By the end of 1942, more than 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry had been uprooted from their homes. Their final destinations would be one of 10 camps -"instant cities" - constructed by the War Relocation Authority in seven states. Deeply isolated from the rest of America, these "evacuees" - 65 percent of whom were American citizens - would spend up to four years imprisoned, working to rebuild their lives.
"If anything made that country habitable it was the mountains themselves, purple when the sun dropped and so sharply etched in the morning light the granite dazzled almost more than the bright snow lacing it. The nearest peaks rose ten thousand feet higher than the valley floor, with Whitney, the highest, just off to the south. They were important for all of us, but especially for the Issei. Whiteney reminded Papa of Fujiyama, that is, it gave him the same kind of spiritual sustenance. The tremendous beauty of those peaks was inspira-tional....They also represented those forces in nature, those powerful and inevitable forces that cannot be resisted, reminding a man that sometimes he must simply endure that which cannot be changed."
From 1942 to 1946, home for most Japanese Americans was one of 10 WRA camps, all patterned on military facilities. Hastily built, with tarpaper walls and no amenities, the barracks were hot in summer and cold in winter. Most did not meet minimal standards for military housing. A visiting judge noted that prisoners in federal penitentiaries were better housed.
Work
Ubushaev V.B. in his book wrote that a part of Kalmyks deported to Siberia were sent to the coast of the Arctic Ocean to produce fish and fish cans [19].
Internees were encouraged to work in camp-sponsored self-help programs. All of the relocation centers operated farms, and the food grown was often exchanged between camps. Camp administration offices also provided other opportunities for employing residents. The pay was low, ranging from $12 for a month of 48-hour weeks as an agricultural worker to $19 a month for physicians, dentists, and other professionals.
"The call went out for people with any kind of skill to offer their services. Thousands were responding, with great surges of community spirit, sometimes with outright patriotism, wanting 'to do their part.' Woody signed on as a carpenter. One of my brothers-in-law was a roofing foreman. Another ran a reservoir crew. Mama had worked as a dietician in Washington after she was married. In camp this was high-priority training... Nineteen dollars a month. This was top wage for an internee. Unskilled labor started at eight" [6].
"Along the rows of barracks were planted victory gardens. Great care and attention were given to them by the owners, who were spurred by competitive pride. The best were those of former truck gardeners and nurserymen"[11].
Work-release programs offered residents one route out of the camps. As early as May 1942, camp residents who were willing to work as field laborers were offered seasonal furloughs. Though elaborate investigations of "character" and "loyalty" were required of the participants, by 1943, 17,000 Japanese Americans had permanently left the WRA camps under the work-release program.
Justice
There wasn't massive resistance from Japanese Americans. The Japanese American Citizens' League not only cooperated with the government as part of a strategy of accommodation that had, eventually, positive results, but the organization also opposed, viciously, those few Japanese Americans who resisted. Many felt that, in the long run, the Supreme Court would reverse the process. Thus just a handful of individuals, without significant organizational support, instituted legal actions. Their faith in American justice was misplaced, however. In three horrendous decisions - Hirabayashi in 1943, Korematsu and Endo in December 1944 - the court certified what the government had done is constitutional [1].
By 1946, Japanese Americans were released from the internment camps, but the injustice of the war years was not forgotten. Many members of the Japanese American community were determined to create a public understanding of the injustices they had suffered and to resolve the basic Constitutional issues related to their wartime incarceration. More than
forty years after internment, the U.S. government finally acknowledged its wrongs with a formal apology to the Japanese American community, and passage of the Civil Liberties Act in 1988.
On December 17, 1944, Public Proclamation Number 21 ended the mass imprisonment of Japanese resident aliens and American citizens of Japanese ancestry. On the following day, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Ex Parte Endo that claims of military necessity could not justify holding American citizens against their will. This ruling eventually would have ended the relocation program, and government officials were well aware the ruling was coming when it issued the proclamation.
Rejoining society was difficult for many. Each individual received a $25 payment and transportation tickets at the time of release. Many detainees discovered that their pre-1941 communities had vanished, and their homes and businesses were lost.
The postwar housing shortage, the competition for jobs with returning veterans, and lingering discrimination added to the difficulties. In some West Coast communities there was a special effort to welcome old neighbors home. In other areas, there were episodes of vandalism and threats against life and property.
"That which happened to the Japanese on the West Coast must not happen again... to any minority group... I am convinced that if some form of token justice is not done to the wronged loyal Japanese of the U.S., that the U. S. will be the sufferer in the long run. Not from the Japanese-rather from internal instability... A frank admission and attempt at retribution will give America more than a thousand 'slurring-overs'... I yet maintain, that in Truth there is strength... a strength that will stand the test of time and endure for the good of all" [8].
Japanese Americans began the fight for monetary compensation for losses as a result of evacuation through the early 1948 claims act, and later through a 1983 Class Action lawsuit. Hohri et al vs. the United States, which asked for $25.2 billion in damages from the Federal government as redress for the wrongs done to Japanese Americans during and after World War II, was set aside following the October 1988 passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
On July 2, 1948 Truman signed the Japanese-American Claims Act which appropriated thirty-eight million dollars to settle all property claims, a figure which almost all commentators now agree was not nearly enough. The President reported that "more than one hundred thousand Japanese-Americans were evacuated from their homes in the Pacific states solely because of their racial origin" - he made no mention of the fictitious "military necessity" -and urged Congress to pass legislation which was already before it [13].
Conclusion
More than seventy years have passed since the end of the World War II but peoples deported during that war cannot forget those tragic years. Many memoirs have been written but deported peoples of the USSR and the Japanese Americans haven't forgotten tragic years spent in special settlements and internment camps."You know in the Japanese community, what happened is that afterwards, even among my age as we were going through grade school or junior high or high school even, whenever you meet someone, you say, "Oh, what camp were you in?" People five years younger than myself, you know, that's not a question. Or maybe it is, in the sense, "Where were you born?" and it could have well been in a camp. But for us, growing up, in grade school even "What camp were you in?" or "He was in Tule Lake. That's why he got put back..." or comments like that. And so, in some ways, it was very active, you know in our minds and in the discussions though never took place to pursue it, other that to maybe clarify: "Mom, you know, when I got this scar, my brother did this, this, this, was that in Topaz, or was that in Amache?" Or some kind of reference like that" [12].
The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 officially acknowledged the "fundamental violations of the basic civil liberties and constitutional rights" of the internment [4]. Many Japanese-Americans consider the term internment camp a euphemism and prefer to refer to the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans as imprisonment in concentration camps [14].
References
1. Annette Gordon-Reed, ed. Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
2. Avliev VN., Abeeva O.N., Ubushaev E.N. "Living Conditions of Kalmyk Special Settlers in Eastern Regions of the USSR in 1944-1945'// Bulletin of Kalmyk University. -2020. - №4. - Pp.6-19.
3. Carolyn Hisako Tanaka "Memoir, Road Runner", part II "Internment", Library of Congress, Project Veteran's Day.
4. Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied. Washington: GPO, 1982, p. 18.
5. FDR Pearl Harbor Speech. December 8, 1941. Retrieved 2011-02-05. December 7th, 1941, a day that will live in infamy.
6. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2002, Pp.208
7. Kyshpanakov V.A "Kalmyk Special Settlers on the Labor Front in Khakassia during the Great Patriotic War and the Post-war Period"// Bulletin of Kalmyk University. - 2019. -№1 (41). - Pp.44-54.
8. Letter from Sgt. Chester Tanaka to friends in St. Louis, 1944 (Copyright 2001 Smithsonian Institution )
9. Mary Tsukamoto Interview, Copyright 2001 Smithsonian Institution.
10. Maximov K.N. "The Repressive Policy of the Soviet State through the Prism of Documents"// Bulletin of Kalmyk University. - 2019. - №1 (41). - Pp.62 - 68.
11. Mine Okubo, Seattle : University of Washington Press, 1983, Pp209.
12. Nancy Araki Interview, Copyright 2001 Smithsonian Institution.
13. Nancy N. Nakasone-Huey. "In Simple Justice: The Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act of 1948". Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1986.
14."Pearl Harbor: Its Origin and Administrative History Through World War II". Naval History and Heritage Command. April 23, 2015.
15. Presidential Proclamations No. 2525-2527, Dec. 7-8, 1941.
16. Roger Daniel, Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.
17. Roger Daniels "Words Do Matter: A Note on Inappropriate Terminology and the Incarceration of the Japanese Americans", Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005, pp. 183-207.
18. Tsutsulaeva S.S. "Deported Peoples' Songs Composed During the Years of Exile"// Bulletin of Kalmyk University. - 2020. - № 4. - Pp.30-37.
19. Ubushaev V.B. The Kalmyks: Eviction and Return 1943-1957/ V.B.Ubushaev. -Elista: Publishing House "Sanan", 1991. - P.96.
20. Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family, University of Washington press, 1984, Pp.154
