With Liberty and Justice For All? The U.S. Internment of Japanese Peruvians During World War II

Abstract

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States committed to a policy of interning more than 120,000 Japanese Americans. While Japanese American detention remains the most researched instance of wartime internment, the U.S. incarceration of Japanese Peruvians merits equal attention. The political forces behind Japanese Peruvian internment transcended the more common explanations that haunt so much of literature today. Racism and hysteria played their respective roles in this history of wartime internment, but as the war progressed, other reasons for Japanese internment emerged. On January 4, 1942, the Japanese began interning American civilians in the Philippines. Days later, the U.S. State Department decided to hold Japanese Peruvians hostage for the purpose of aiding American repatriation. America used hostage-taking as a political instrument of war, facilitating the return of more than 3,000 American citizens. Such retaliation, however, came at the human cost of interning more than 1,000 Japanese Peruvians without charge in places like Crystal City, Texas.