NM’s reactions to Japanese Internemnt

I will be covering the general reaction from residents of New Mexico to Japanese internment. While Internment in the U.S. wasn’t only focused on Japanese Americans New Mexico was a hot spot for Japanese American Internees. I will show how the reaction of the New Mexican public varied across the state but how the reaction was largely in line with that of the rest of the Nation. I’ll be touching on the historic reaction to immigration amongst New Mexicans to draw a through line to the reactions surrounding internment of Japanese Americans. But I mostly want to explore the attitudes and language surrounding the Internment of Japanese Americans.

Why Newsworthy?

This event and the war surrounding it was a huge event globally and locally. It was an intensely tumultuous time where public fear of “enemy aliens’ was surging. These enemy aliens included any immigrants or citizens of German, Italian, and of course Japanese descent. New Mexico and the greater U.S. already had a past of pushing back against Asian immigration. So, a sudden proposal to bring thousands of Japanese people to the state was of deep importance to the populous as well as very unpopular.¹

The interesting part about the news coverage surrounding bringing Japanese prisoners into New Mexico was the portrayal of it as an act of “Colonization”. Using the framing of calling it a colonization multiple newspapers stated the only way that they would be accepted is if they were kept in detention camps. And the quote from Yazzi Begany shows the negative attitudes from even Native Americans and shows the widespread discriminatory view towards Japanese people and the difficulty of people being able to tell Japanese people apart from one another.²

Affect on Japanese Americans

The discrimination against Japanese was nothing new, but the mass imprisonment was a much larger and far harsher case of state sanctioned discrimination at least against Japanese Americans. A massive problem with the entire operation of internment was the lack of direction given for who to intern. Executive order 9066 was passed on the basis of racism, that any of the Japanese residing on the west coast citizen or not were potential traitors. This indirectness of classifying any Japanese person residing in the country as a potential danger also impacted other Asian Americans residing in the country.

Affect on New Mexico History

The reaction of the residents in New Mexico does have a strange impact on the history of the area. That effect to me is the silence for decades and even till this day. At least where I went to school, it was never mentioned in any of our history classes. To me this indifference comes from the initial reactions to the event being anger at the idea of Japanese being brought here unless they were in detention centers. Though some attempts have been made at calling attention to the atrocities committed, like the historical memorial at the site of the Sante Fe internment camp. The prisoners at these camps like Lordsburg were forced to work on public infrastructure and brought in essentially a new slave class for the time they were there.

Conclusion

Overall, the reaction was negative, residents were not happy with the prospect of Japanese people being brought into New Mexico. The only way they would accept people being brought into the state was if they went into the incarceration camps. This ended up leaving the only option being the camps for a long-term holding of Japanese citizens in New Mexico. I just wish we could see better early education about this topic especially within this state.

Further information: Multiple other sources contributed to my research in this piece mostly news papres from the era like The Gallup Indioendant and The Sante Fe New Mexican. Andrew B Russell The Nikkei in New Mexico (2008) was an a really good source that gave me some numbers for reference of Japanese people within New Mexico