Minidoka Internment National Monument [ID]

Description

The Minidoka Internment National Monument presents the story of the forced relocation of people of Japanese descent within the U.S. following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. With President Franklin Roosevelt's (in office 1933-1945) signing of Executive Order 9066, over 120,000 men, women, and children were required to move to one of 10 Relocation Centers. Minidoka was one such center, built to contain the Japanese in the U.S. and prevent potential spy communications. Today the site includes the guard house and waiting room.

The site offers interpretive signage. The Jerome County Museum offers a display on the Minidoka Relocation Center, and the Idaho Farm and Ranch Museum offers a restored barracks building.

International Aid: How and When the U.S. Helps

Date Published
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Photo, FEMA supplies from the Pacific Distribution Center, May 7, 2008, NARA
Article Body

When the 13 colonies first rebelled against England, they called on the help of established nations—including France and Spain—to succeed. After the Revolutionary War, the newborn United States gradually began to take part in world affairs itself, making payments and treaties, waging war, and withholding or offering aid. Today, the U.S. maneuvers its way through a constant web of decisions. Who does it choose to help and how? What kind of aid should it offer? Military? Economic? Social? When and why does it withhold aid? How have the choices it makes today grown out of those made in the past?

Late 20th-century Aid

Following the March 11 earthquake that rocked Japan, your students may have questions about the U.S. and international aid. Or maybe they're curious about the uprisings in the Middle East, a part of the world with which the U.S. has a complicated history of trade, war, and aid.

A good place to start learning about U.S. aid history is the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

A good place to start learning about U.S. aid history is, appropriately enough, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. Established in 1961 in an effort to separate non-military and military aid, USAID combined the social and economic aid efforts of a number of smaller initiatives under one "roof." Though the website's history page is dense, it provides a sense of the complexity of aid issues. If you want to dig a little deeper (and read a little more), download the primer on USAID. (The section on "Responding to Crises" may be particularly relevant right now.)

For statements on current events, check out the Senior Staff Speeches and Testimony section. Press releases also feature current information. For a broader view, search by location to learn more about USAID's work in Haiti, Egypt, Thailand, and other nations. Browse issues of USAID's newsletter, FrontLines, starting in 2003, to see what's been given the most press in the past few years.

Tracing Aid Back

Ready to head further back in time? In our Ask a Historian feature, look at aid in the Middle East, both non-military and military, during the 1950s.

As it has grown in power, the U.S. has shifted in its relationship to other parts of the world again and again.

Skip back a few years more and learn about the Marshall Plan, a well-known precursor of USAID designed to help Europe rebuild following World War II. USAID's small online exhibit on the Plan features audio, visual, and text primary sources, while the Library of Congress hosts an exhibit on the Plan. If you need more primary sources, try the document collection Truman & the Marshall Plan at the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum.

Of course, U.S international aid didn't begin with the 20th century and isn't limited to the federal government. Read up on the history of the American branch of the Red Cross, an organization founded by Clara Barton in the late 19th century. (The bibliography in the "Students" section recommends American author Pearl S. Buck's 1948 children's novel The Big Wave for learning about tsunamis. You might consider introducing this novel to students as a primary source itself, reflective of Buck and the context in which she wrote.)

Consider having students trace the U.S.'s relationship with a particular country or region back in time. For instance, what part is the U.S. playing in events in Libya now? What is our stance on the country and events there? What was it back in the early years of the U.S.? (For an idea, listen to historian Christine Sears describe the First Barbary War, one of the U.S.'s early overseas conflicts.) Between then and now, how has our position changed and evolved? Have we given aid or taken it away? When and how?

As it has grown in power, the U.S. has shifted in its relationship to other parts of the world again and again. Exploring the history of international aid might help you (or your students) follow these shifts through time and gain a better understanding of responses and relationships today.

American POWS in Japanese Captivity

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charred remains of American POW being interred after World War II
Question

I recently read that, prior to the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, up to 1,000 Allied POWs were dying per week at the hands of the Japanese. Is this true?

Answer

I have found no indication of this figure in the works of several historians who have written about the fate of Allied POWs in Japanese captivity.

Extreme Measures

Gavan Daws, in Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific, states, “Tokyo’s policy as of late 1944 was ‘to prevent prisoners of war from falling into the enemy’s hands,’” citing proceedings of the International Military Tribunal of the Far East and a research report of the Allied Translator and Interpreter Service Section as his sources. Drawing on a document in the National Archives dated February 26, 1945, entitled “Captured Japanese Instructions Regarding the Killing of POW,” of the Military Intelligence Division, Daws cites an entry in the journal of the Japanese headquarters at Taihoku on Formosa that called for “‘extreme measures’ to be taken against POWs in ‘urgent situations: Whether they are destroyed individually or in groups, or however it is done, with mass bombing, poisonous smoke, poisons, drowning, decapitation, or what, dispose of the prisoners as the situation dictates. In any case it is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces.’”

"... dispose of the prisoners as the situation dictates ..."

Daws concludes, however, that with regard to carrying out the policy of killing POWs in various camps, “the picture was mixed.” In Palawan, in the Philippines, Japanese soldiers machine-gunned, clubbed, and bayonets 150 POWs trying to escape air raid shelters that the captors had doused with gasoline and lit. During the Battle of Manila in February and March 1945, guards at the camp at Bilibid left without harming the POWs.

Historian David M. Kennedy has summarized figures regarding the brutal treatment of American POWs by the Japanese. “Ninety percent of American prisoners of war in the Pacific reported being beaten,” Kennedy states. “More than a third died. Those who survived spent thirty-eight months in captivity on average and lost sixty-one pounds.”

POWs and the Atomic Bomb

After noting that 20 American POWs died as a result of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to Japanese military commanders, and that between one and three American prisoners may have been killed by the Japanese after the bombing, Richard B. Frank states, “The average number of Allied prisoners of war or civilian internees who died each day of the effects of captivity at the hands of the Japanese easily doubled this toll.”

In a radio broadcast on the night of August 9, 1945, hours after the U.S. dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan, President Harry S. Truman linked the use of the bomb to the treatment by the Japanese of American prisoners of war: “Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.” In a letter two days later, Truman wrote, “nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am, but I was greatly disturbed by the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war.”

Bibliography

Gavan Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific (New York: William Morrow, 1994), 324-25.

David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 813.

President, “Radio Report to the American People on the Potsdam Conference,” August 9, 1945, in John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project [online]. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters (database). Available from World Wide Web: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12165.

Harry S. Truman to Samuel Cavert, August 11, 1945, in Harry S. Truman and the Bomb: A Documentary History, ed. and commentary by Robert H. Ferrell (Worland, WY: High Plains Publishing Co., 1996), 72.

Van Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II: Statistical History, Personal Narratives, and Memorials Concerning POWs in Camps and on Hellships, Civilian Internees, Asian Slave Laborers, and Others Captured in the Pacific Theater (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1994).

Bernard M. Cohen, and Maurice Z. Cooper, A Follow-up Study of World War II Prisoners of War (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1954).

Images:
"U.S. medical men are attempting to identify more than 100 American Prisoners of War captured at Bataan and Corregidor and burned alive by the Japanese at a Prisoner of War camp, Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippine Islands. Picture shows charred remains being interred in grave: 03/20/1945," National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

"A volunteer of the Red Cross Motor Corps, at the loading of the Gripsholm, painting the destination on boxes of clothing, food, etc., for prisoners of war in Japan and the Far East," Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar

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Photo, Tsutomu Fuhunago, Ansel Adams
Annotation

During World War II, the U.S. Government forced more than 100,000 Japanese Americans to leave their homes and businesses, relocating them to internment camps from California to Arkansas. Well-known photographer Ansel Adams documented the lives of Japanese Americans at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California—from portraits to daily life, including agriculture and leisure.

This site presents 242 original negatives and 209 photographic prints, often displayed together to show Adams's developing and cropping techniques. His 1944 book on Manzanar, Born Free and Equal is also reproduced. Adams donated the collection to the Library of Congress in 1965, writing, "The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice . . . had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment."

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American Experience: Victory in the Pacific

Description

From PBS:

In this provocative, thorough examination of the final months of the war, American Experience looks at the escalation of bloodletting from the vantage points of both the Japanese and the Americans. Despite warnings that his country, brought to its knees by the conflict, might erupt in a Communist revolution, Emperor Hirohito believed that one last decisive battle could reverse Japan's fortunes. From the U.S. capture of the Mariana Islands through the firebombing of Tokyo and the dropping of the atomic bomb, Victory in the Pacific chronicles the dreadful and unprecedented loss of life and the decisions made by leaders on both sides that finally ended the war.

Civil Rights in America, Part Two

Description

Professor Ken Masugi explores the nature of civil rights in the American founding and its evolution during and after the Civil War. He moves on to later developments, including the Civil Rights Movement and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. This lecture continues from the lecture "Civil Rights in America, Part One."

The Future of American Foreign Policy

Description

Professors John Moser and Jeremi Suri look at Wilsonianism in foreign policy post-Vietnam, particularly in the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Moser and Suri also look at foreign policy in the present day.

To listen to this lecture, scroll to the Friday, July 16th, 10:50 am-12:20 pm session; and select either the RealAudio image or link in the gray bar to the left of the main body of text.

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