Ken Masugi of the Claremont Institute was one of the first scholars to challenge the view that Japanese internment was solely the product of racism and wartime hysteria. His groundbreaking work helped inspire my book In Defense of Internment.

Yesterday, Masugi observed that “[o]bituaries of Japanese Americans often reveal a conflict of loyalties rarely commented on today.” By way of example, he discusses an obituary of Shigeya Kihara that appeared in the Los Angeles Times yesterday. The obit contains the following passage:

Although a large number of Japanese Americans taught Japanese at UC Berkeley, [Kihara] said in the 2001 interview, none of them wanted to work for the Army language school at first.

“They listened to rumors that the Army was employing spies,” he said, and they were torn between their allegiance to the United States and a reluctance “to stab the mother country in the back.”

Earlier this month, Masugi discussed a Times obituary of Harry Ueno, a “hero to Japanese Americans in internment camps” who along with thousands of other Japanese Americans renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1944.

Masugi testified before Congress about internment during the 1980s and has written often about the topic. For more, see here, here, and here.

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