The offer was accepted, and the Varsity Victory Volunteers was born. Rather than sulk, 169 of the discharged Territorial Guard Nisei offered themselves as a labor battalion. But he resisted orders to remove all Japanese to the continent or at least to one of the neighbor islands. Under pressure from Washington, LTG Delos Emmons, the Army’s new commander in Hawaii, ordered all AJAs discharged from the Territorial Guard in late January. Despite rampant rumors, thorough investigation concluded there had been no sabotage or subversion by any local Japanese during or since the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Nisei soldiers and guardsmen performed faithfully during and after the attack. Another 300 AJAs, most of them University of Hawaii ROTC cadets, were called up as members of the Hawaii Territorial Guard. Two thousand American soldiers of Japanese ancestry - of the 298th and 299th Infantry regiments and engineer and service units - were among the active duty personnel who rushed to defend Hawaii that day.
The attack thrust Hawaii’s 450,000 residents onto the front line of America’s new war. About 2,000 suspect Japanese were removed from Hawaii, where martial law had been imposed on December 7, 1941. All of the Nikkei living on the West Coast - 112,000 - were forced from their homes and incarcerated in concentration camps. The wartime experiences of the two groups differed dramatically. In 1940, there were nearly 127,000 ethnic Japanese on the continent, 158,000 in Hawaii. And two-thirds of the 650 soldiers of the 100th and 442nd who were killed in action or died of wounds in World War II were from Hawaii. That vindication could not have occurred without the Americans of Japanese ancestry from Hawaii who were in the fight first: pre-war soldiers who became the 100th Infantry Battalion, Territorial Guard members who became the Varsity Victory Volunteers, and two spies in the Philippines. That’s true, but it’s only part of the story. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team’s battlefield heroics delivered America’s Japanese populace from the shameful injustice of mass removal and incarceration in World War II. These are a few of the 1,400 Nisei in the 100th Bn, an oversized battalion consisting of 6 line companies and a headquarters company when it went overseas. Front row, left to right: Kunio Fujimoto, Susumu Kunishige, Raymond Yokoyama, Katsumi Jinnohara (killed in combat), Kaoru Yonezawa. It was a miserable time for island residents, partially due to fear of a potential threat from Japan, but mainly due to the impossible conditions in which they suddenly found themselves living.Back row, left to right: Yozo Yamamoto, Henry Shiyama (killed in combat), Yoshikatsu Matsumoto, Kaoru Yamamoto, Charles J. Under martial law in Hawaii, food was rationed, liquor and bars were strictly controlled, and even photography along the coasts was banned. Civil liberties were curtailed, and civilian courts were suspended.įor three years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, conditions in the islands were difficult. Barbed wire on Waikiki BeachĪt sundown, a complete black-out took effect, and a strict dusk-to-dawn curfew was enforced. Military officials tried to let residents go about their daily lives, but there was much that got in the way of that goal. Beaches were no longer just places for recreation and instead looked like military zones.
In anticipation of a second attack, residents were ordered to dig make-shift bomb shelters. Believing that anyone could be an enemy, military officials took no chances, keeping an eye on all residents, though they paid extra-close attention to Japanese-Americans. Martial Law in HawaiiĮven while Pearl Harbor and the surrounding airfields were still in flames, the Hawaiian Islands were placed under martial law. Seeing no other course of action, US officials placed Hawaii under martial law and everyone, regardless of ethnicity, was forced to live under conditions that have since been called unfair and even extreme. At the time, approximately 37% of the population were people of Japanese descent, and although some-out of fear of insider attacks-thought it would be prudent to imprison them all and let the islands try to function as normally as possible, that course of action would have been impossible for many reasons. While there was no question of who the enemy was, that actually made the situation in the islands even more difficult. This is the hisstory of martial law in Hawaii. Though not yet a state, responsibility for Hawaii’s safety went to US officials due to its status as an American territory and their actions after the attack were were influenced by paranoia, fear, and a perceived lack of options. In the immediate aftermath of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, while the rest of the United States was gearing up for the great fight against the Axis Powers, the Hawaiian Islands were still stunned by what had happened in their midst.
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