Within days of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI arrested over 100 Japanese in the Imperial Valley in a series of massive raids to separate families from their donors. In the weeks that follow, a wave of terror will sweep through our country, with federal, state and local authorities taking panicked political action against local Japanese men, women and children.
Six months later, all of the Imperial Valley’s Japanese residents, including farmers, business owners, ministers, and some of the early settlers, would be ordered to evacuate with only what they could carry. All were eventually taken by bus to a Native American reservation in the Arizona desert. Driven by panic and fear, America will also not offer economic protection to those who are suddenly forced to abandon everything they have worked for in pursuit of the American Dream. This was not the evacuation of “head-shaking and hand-waving”, but the mass expulsion and imprisonment of Imperial Valley Japanese families. This tragedy, which revealed the complicity of the virus and the real consequences of failed leadership, both moral and political, in our country, should be remembered forever.
Before the war, almost two-thirds of Japanese Americans on the West Coast worked in agriculture, growing nearly 40% of California vegetables, including nearly 100% of tomatoes, celery, strawberries, and peppers. Nearly three-quarters of the Japanese in our Valley are engaged in agriculture, plowing tens of thousands of acres of land, perfecting the muskmelon industry, and being the first to successfully grow head lettuce on a commercial basis, the United States A whole lettuce lead. manufacturing.
World War II and the attack on Pearl Harbor would change everything for our valley and the Japanese who helped build it.
Less than two years before President Franklin Delano Roosevelt forced the immigration of more than 120,000 West Coast Japanese Americans on February 19, 1942, more than 600 Imperial Valley Japanese Americans settled in Imperial County. He stood before the Board of Supervisors and pledged allegiance to the United States. Elsewhere in the Valley, conscription parties were held to bid farewell to local Japanese men enlisting in the U.S. military, and Japanese service clubs invited local officials to further prove their loyalty to America. hosted a dinner party. Despite these positive efforts, when the war began, everything was blatantly ignored by the fear-blinded populace.
Similar sentiments toward the Japanese reverberated at the local level, whether federal officials called them an “enemy race” or parliamentarians justified putting them in “inland concentration camps.” County Sheriff Robert W. Ware warned residents to “report the Japanese if they see them.” Our Department of Agriculture also unanimously passed a resolution asking Governor Earl Warren to do whatever it takes to keep them out of California.
[Evenafterthewarendedin1945ImperialValley’sonce-persistentJapanesefamilieswereaspecialpresenceinthecountyCountySuperintendentBMGrahamandBrawleyMayorElmerSearsledalargeBrawleyrallytodemandthatthepresidentandgovernorkeeptheJapaneseoutofImperialValleyDistrictAttorneyCGHallidaywillalsomakeblockingJapaneselandownershipa”primarytask”forhisofficeThemerethoughtofreturninghomemaintainedthesameenthusiasmthathadexistedwhentheJapanesefamilywasbeingdeported[1945年に戦争が終わった後も、かつて根強く残っていたインペリアルバレーの日本人家族は、郡内では特別な存在でした。郡監督官のBM・グラハムとブローリー市長のエルマー・シアーズが大規模なブローリー集会を主導し、大統領と知事に対しインペリアル・バレーから日本人を締め出すよう要求することになった。CG・ハリデー地方検事も、日本の土地所有の阻止を彼の事務所の「主な任務」とするだろう。日本人家族が強制送還されていたときと同じ熱意が、帰国という考えだけでも維持されました。
It is surprising that so few of the groups who were unjustly displaced and returned unwelcome wanted anything to do with a place that was no longer their home and the people who persevered to allow it. not. Within a decade, an entire race of Americans had been completely and forcefully exterminated from the Imperial Valley.
As the end of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month draws to a close, we learn more about the injustices committed against the Imperial Valley’s Japanese families, our original pioneers, and our Valley. and their contribution to shaping an agricultural industry that has endured almost a century later.
Brawley resident Gil Levoror is chairman of the BESD Naming Commission, former BESD board member, and current Brawley City Councilor and county imperial spokesperson.
