Illuminating the shameful incarceration of Juneau's Japanese-American citizens

Quiet Defiance: Alaska's Empty Chair Story

By Karleen Grummett; published by the National Park Service through a National Confinement Sites grant; 2016; 192 pages; limited complimentary copies available from the author by email at alaskaspecialk@aol.com.

In Juneau's Capital School Park there's a sculpture of a simple wooden folding chair set atop floor planks engraved with the names of the city's Japanese residents who were incarcerated during World War II. It's a simple yet elegant monument honoring the victims of a hastily made wartime decision by the United States' government that would eventually be viewed as a grievous error and draw a formal presidential apology from George H.W. Bush in 1990.

As we learn in "Quiet Defiance: Alaska's Empty Chair Story" by Juneau author Karleen Grummett, the chair itself represents a small act of remembrance carried out by high school students in Juneau in response to the forced removal of one of their classmates. John Tanaka, the class valedictorian who was born in the city to Japanese immigrants, was taken away a month before graduation. So when his fellow students arranged their chairs for their ceremony that spring, they included one for him that remained vacant throughout the proceedings. The children were not going to forget a friend they had known all their lives.

Grummett, who was involved in the planning and building of the memorial, wrote this book to accompany its unveiling. It's part of a broader effort called "The Empty Chair Project" that includes museum exhibits, educational materials, a movie and more, all aimed at showing what happened to Juneau's Japanese-Americans and how the community responded.

Focus on two families

Grummett's story, drawn from interviews and news reports, opens in the early years of the 20th century when Japanese immigrants first began arriving in Juneau, drawn by fisheries, mining, logging and other labor-intensive industries. Like immigrants all over America before and since, some of the Japanese arrivals were soon operating businesses, and Grummett pays particularly close attention to two families that followed this path, and to those who worked for them.

Hikohachi Fukuyama landed in the city in 1906. After working in mining and as houseboy where he learned English, he took a job with Juneau Laundry and by 1917 was a co-owner. Shonosuke Tanaka came to Juneau in 1907 and opened up the Star Cafe. Soon renamed the City Cafe it became popular with both white and Japanese residents. Both men took wives via arranged marriages, which were then still common in Japanese culture. They started families, became employers — primarily of other Japanese immigrants — rented rooms in the top floors of their businesses, and were highly regarded by other Juneau residents.

Grummett devotes a chapter to the daily lives of the families. The children were popular in school and by all accounts both families and their employees were well integrated into the community. Thus even when Pearl Harbor was bombed the Japanese residents appear to have encountered little uneasiness on the part of their neighbors.

It was the federal government that came to Juneau and removed all residents of Japanese ancestry, even those born in the United States and thus citizens. In Juneau, there were about 35 Japanese-Americans and across Alaska there were roughly 200, scattered as widely Kotzebue, Wiseman and Pilot Point.

According to Grummett, many Juneau residents were appalled by what was done to their neighbors. The school held a special graduation ceremony solely for John Tanaka so he could receive his diploma prior to being taken away, and the event was covered by the newspaper. Children wondered why their playmates were suddenly gone. Businessmen spoke up on behalf of the elder Tanaka and Fukuyama. Few if any residents felt the families were anything less than patriotic Americans.

Most of Alaska's Japanese-Americans ended up in the Minidoka Relocation center in southwestern Idaho where they sat out the war in conditions barely above squalid. A few were allowed to leave in the latter years of the war, either to work or serve in the military, but most were not released until after Japan surrendered.

Better treatment in Juneau

The families returned to Juneau and re-established themselves. Welcomed back, they found that residents had watched out for their interests in their absence. Unlike Japanese elsewhere in the country, they were able to resume their prior lives without serious difficulties, a testament to the decency of the people living in Juneau at midcentury.

Prewar Juneau had a population of about 6,000. At the time, it was accessible only by water, adding to its remoteness. Grummett doesn't speculate, but one wonders if the town's small size, the fact that most residents had themselves moved from elsewhere, and its relative isolation were factors in why Japanese residents were better treated than elsewhere on the West Coast. As Margaret Thomas discusses in "Picture Man," another book about a Japanese immigrant in Alaska caught up in the tragedy of war, treatment of Japanese immigrants in western states during the 1920s and 1930s was horrific even before hostilities arose. Yet in that account as well as this one, the implication is that Alaskans were kinder to the newcomers than other Americans. It's a historical anomaly deserving further inquiry.

The project that this book is tied to is part of an effort by Juneau residents to act while people with memories of the event are still alive. Grummett writes, "The journey to establish the Empty Chair Memorial encompassed a determined number of people who were very aware that their generation was the last with an emotional connection to the incarceration event. They realized, if they didn't memorialize it, such a tribute might never happen."

Grummett also quotes former President Gerald Ford's executive proclamation calling the incarceration a "national mistake." He wrote, "we have learned from the tragedy of that long-ago experience forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American, and resolve that this kind of action shall never again be repeated."

With the inauguration of a new president who has called for targeting Americans based on their faith or place of origin, this is a timely book. Ford's words, especially, should be shouted from the rooftops.

David A. James is a Fairbanks-based freelance writer and critic.

"Quiet Defiance," which was produced under a National Park Service grant, can be obtained from the author at alaskaspecialk@aol.com and will be sold later this summer at the Juneau-Douglas City Museum. Further information about the Empty Chair Project can be found at emptychairproject.wordpress.com.