Yoshito Kuromiya - Beyond the Betrayal: The Memoir of a World War II Japanese American Draft Resister of Conscience

The George and Sakaye Aratani Nikkei in the Americas Series

Series Editors Valerie Matsumoto and Tritia Toyota

This series endeavors to capture the best scholarship available illustrating the evolving nature of contemporary Japanese American culture and community. By stretching the boundaries of the field to the limit (whether at a substantive, theoretical, or comparative level), these books aspire to influence future scholarship in this area specifically and Asian American studies more generally.

Barbed Voices: Oral History, Resistance, and the World War II Japanese American Social Disaster , Arthur A. Hansen

Beyond the Betrayal: The Memoir of a World War II Japanese American Draft Resister of Conscience , Yoshito Kuromiya, edited by Arthur A. Hansen

Distant Islands: The Japanese American Community in New York City, 18761930s , Daniel H. Inouye, with a foreword by David Reimers

Forced Out: A Nikkei Womans Search for a Home in America , Judy Kawamoto

The House on Lemon Street , Mark Howland Rawitsch

Japanese Brazilian Saudades: Diasporic Identities and Cultural Production , Ignacio Lpez-Calvo

Relocating Authority: Japanese Americans Writing to Redress Mass Incarceration , Mira Shimabukuro

Starting from Loomis and Other Stories , Hiroshi Kashiwagi, edited and with an introduction by Tim Yamamura

Taken from the Paradise Isle: The Hoshida Family Story , edited by Heidi Kim and with a foreword by Franklin Odo

Beyond the Betrayal

The Memoir of a World War II Japanese American Draft Resister of Conscience

Yoshito Kuromiya

edited by Arthur A. Hansen

UNIVERSITY P RESS OF C OLORADO

Louisville

2021 by University Press of Colorado

Published by University Press of Colorado

245 Century Circle, Suite 202

Louisville, Colorado 80027

All rights reserved

The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of University Presses.

The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Regis University, University of Alaska, University of Colorado, University of Denver, University of Northern Colorado, University of Wyoming, Utah State University, and Western Colorado University.

ISBN: 978-1-64642-183-1 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-64642-184-8 (ebook)

https://doi.org/10.5876/9781646421848

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kuromiya, Yosh, author. | Hansen, Arthur A., editor.

Title: Beyond the betrayal : the memoir of a World War II Japanese American draft resister of conscience / Yoshito Kuromiya ; edited by Arthur A. Hansen.

Other titles: George and Sakaye Aratani Nikkei in the Americas series.

Description: Louisville : University Press of Colorado, 2021. | Series: Nikkei in the Americas | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021034799 (print) | LCCN 2021034800 (ebook) | ISBN 9781646421831 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781646421848 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Kuromiya, Yosh. | Heart Mountain Relocation Center (Wyo.) | World War, 19391945Draft resistersUnited StatesBiography. | Japanese AmericansForced removal and internment, 19421945. | Japanese AmericansCivil rightsHistory20th century. | Draft resistersUnited StatesBiography. | Internment campsWyoming20th century. | World War, 19391945Japanese Americans.

Classification: LCC D810.C82 K87 2021 (print) | LCC D810.C82 (ebook) | DDC 940.53/177787dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034799

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034800

This publication was made possible, in part, with support from the University of California Los Angeless Aratani Endowed Chair in Asian American Studies.

Cover illustration by Yoshito Kuromiya. Title-page illustration by Yoshito Kuromiya, ca. 2018.

To the memory of Fred Homi Iriye, whose life was cut short two days before his release from prison. Although he never regained his wrongly taken citizenship rights, his integrity was never questioned. Fred Homi Iriye was indeed a true patriot.

Yoshito Kuromiya

In honor of militant Japanese American journalist James Matsumoto Omura for courageously exercising his freedom of the press rights to support, on constitutional grounds, the military draft challenge of Yoshito Kuromiya and his fellow resisters of conscience at the World War II Heart Mountain concentration camp.

Arthur A. Hansen

The war challenged Japanese Americans to justify themselves before an America more interested in revenge against the Japanese enemy than in an emerging minority just entering its second generation. The question is, Did it emerge?

Frank Chin, Born in the USA (2002, xvii)

Contents

Foreword

Lawson Inada

Preface

Eric L. Muller

Acknowledgments

Yoshito Kuromiya and Arthur A. Hansen

Editors Note

Arthur A. Hansen

Introduction: A Remarkable Man of Consciousness, Conscience, and Constitutionalism

Arthur A. Hansen

Beyond the Betrayal: The Memoir of a World War II Japanese American Draft Resister of Conscience

1. In the Beginning

2. Childhood

3. Rude Awakening

4. Pomona Assembly Center

5. Heart Mountain

6. Fair Play Committee

7. Resistance

8. The Circus

9. McNeil Island

10. The Farm

11. The Return

12. Back to Basics

13. Crossroads

14. Transitions

15. Loyalty to What?

16. Departures

17. Readjustments

18. Rebirth

19. Resolution

Epilogue: Triumph over Deception

Afterword: Drawing the Line

Lawson Fusao Inada

Appendix A: Civil Rights (editorial)

Appendix B: Nisei Servicemens Record Remembered (newspaper column)

Bill Hosokawa

Appendix C: The Fourth Option (essay)

Yoshito Kuromiya

Appendix D: Chronology of WWII and Post-WWII Events and Activities

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

About the Author

About the Contributors

Foreword

Lawson Inada

From out of the abuses,

From out of the cruelties,

From out of the losses,

From out of the tragedies,

Emerges this lucid voice

Of this honorable person.

Preface

Eric L. Muller

The book you are holding is an important document.

The past couple of decades have seen the long-overdue emergence of a significant literature on the Nisei draft resistance movements in the War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps of World War II. Nearly all of it, though, has been from the perspective of outsiders to those movementspeople like myself who were not present to witness them. What is special about this memoir is that it is a detailed account from within: the penetrating narrative of the draft resistance movement at the Heart Mountain concentration camp in northwest Wyoming from the perspective of a thoughtful and brilliant man who actually participated in it.

Several things distinguish Yosh Kuromiyas account of this important chapter in American history. First, Yoshand I will speak of him in the present tense, as he lives on through this memoiris an extraordinarily gifted writer, a natural if ever there was one. When I first interviewed him in the late 1990s, it was evident to me that he had a remarkable command of language; he chose his words carefully and deployed them with precision. But the experience of reading Yosh exceeds even the experience of listening to him. The prose in this volume is crisp and evocative and wry and compelling from first word to last. The draft resistance movement at Heart Mountain relied on the words of its most senior members, pronouncements that could sometimes be stilted and ponderous. They would have done very well to enlist Yosh as their speechwriter.