The destruction of Shinto shrines in Hawaii and the West Coast during World War II: the lingering effects of Pearl Harbor and Japanese-American internment

Abstract

Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Shinto shrines and kamidana (Shinto family altars) were a fixture in the lives of Japanese immigrants and their communities in the United States. However, after Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans, their communities and their religion were considered a threat to national security and as a result thousands of Japanese-Americans were sent to internment camps and their religion was targeted, which at the extreme involved the destruction of Shinto shrines. As a result, the practice of Shinto in the United States survived the war as a shadow of its former self. This study examines what happened to the Shinto shrines, artifacts, and practices within the Japanese-American communities on the West Coast and Hawaii and to what extent they disappeared due to intense pressure from the stigma, hate, and misperception surrounding them. This ethnographic research has involved extensive interviews with Nisei (second-generation) Japanese-Americans who directly experienced these events and their Sansei (third-generation) children. This research found several factors that influenced the degree to which Shinto survived the war. These include the varying experiences of internment, the loss of property and dispersal of the community, experiences of stigma and discrimination, and the integration of Shinto-based rituals and community events into Buddhist practices.