Wartime McCook deals with prejudice

The proposal of locating a Japanese interment camp near McCook was discussed in an editorial in the April 23, 1942, McCook Gazette. You can see by the accompanying ad of Joe Trimmer, that he was not happy with the prospect of such neighbors.

The War Department wanted to move some 125,000 Japanese from the Pacific coast country to the interior for the duration of the war. While they would be under careful guard, they wouldn't be under heavy guard and behind strong fences such as German or Italian prisoners of war. Thousands of these Japanese families were American-born or second generation who owned and farmed their own land on the West coast. Each Japanese family would occupy two acres from which they would produce their own living. "'Two acres to a family?' an anxious farmer inquired. 'You mean they will have to make a living on two acres of land?' Exactly, the government representative explained. 'Well, I'll be damned,' exclaimed the excited farmer. 'And I've been starving to death on a section.'" The editorial pointed out that the government was looking for enough land to take care of many of these Japanese and after the war, we (if we got the internment camp) would be left with "a garden spot of the thousands of acres of land which they would tend."

The editorial concluded, "There may be a lot of things not pleasant in the proposal to move the Japanese into the interior ... There are just as many objections to war itself, but it should be remembered that we do not ask for this war ... It was forced upon us. It must be remembered too, that American boys are prisoners in Japan and American mothers and fathers are anxious that they may be treated with as much consideration as are the Japanese interned in this country."

"The Bystander," in his Gazette column of April 25, 1942, commented, "A glance at history reveals that it cost millions to crown the emperor of Japan back in 1928. There are a lot of us today who'd be glad to crown the whole empire for nothing."

A related article was found on the sports page of the April 25th Gazette.

Local real estate man and a director in the Nebraska Real Estate association, Lyle A. Wiedman, released a letter he had received from the president of the association. The letter told of Greeley, Colorado's actions concerning Japanese from California who were coming to Greeley in droves to settle without restriction or regulation. His letter complained that, "one Jap wanted to buy eight farms." The Greeley real estate board had passed a resolution not to sell or rent any land or property to the Japanese and he thought Nebraska should follow suit.

The McCook Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Valley Conservation association disapproved of permitting Japanese to come into the state independently to purchase land but had gone on record as approving internment camps. "As pointed out by officers of both organizations, no one approves an influx of the Japanese unless they are concentrated in camps and under ample guard."

I can understand the emotion connected with the still fresh attack on Pearl Harbor at the time all this was taking place in April of 1942. I hope we've learned by now, though, that you can't lump a whole ethnic group into one enemy ... not the Japanese, the German nor the Middle Easterners. McCook, of course, did not have a Japanese population of any kind in 1942, but we did and still do, have a large population of German ancestry.

We were at war with Germany and Hitler as well as the Japanese. What did the editorials say about Germany? The editorial of April 28, 1942, talks about how Adolph Hitler was speaking at that time with a more somber voice. "Less than a year ago Hitler was telling the world that Germany would dominate the universe and warned that any and all who might seek to interfere would suffer annihilation ... For every bomb our enemies drop, Germany will drop 100 bombs ... For every German ship that is sunk, we will destroy three ships. But in Sunday's broadcast to the world, Hitler was not as cocky ... It was bomb for bomb Sunday, ship for ship and an eye for an eye. What will Hitler be saying to his people a year from last Sunday? And what will the German people be saying to Hitler?"

We didn't seem to hold all German people to blame in quite the same way we did the Japanese. There were complications for Germans in McCook though during World War II, though, and some restrictions.

In looking for another bit of information, I ran across some comments that Frank Morrison made at a meeting of the McCook Rotary club in January of 1944. Morrison appealed to the men to "consider the prospects for peace negotiation without revenge, lest rancor pave the way for future wars; for individual racial tolerance in America and for partisanship without prejudice."

In a similar vein George Norris had delivered a lecture at the University of Nebraska which was published as a small book titled "Peace Without Hate" in 1943.

Norris said, "Here on our own soil we have not gone through all the agony that war brings when war advances directly to the fireside. But we also have changed in our hearts and in our soul. We feel different here at home than we once did. There is not one pattern existing today that was in existence 20 years ago. We are less divided into classes, less conscious of those barriers that formerly existed between groups here in the United States. If we are to follow our own pretensions to any degree, proclaim the standards that we ourselves have heralded to the world, we will reach the conclusion at the peace table that we will not enslave our enemies but help them to their feet."

McCook has produced absolutely wonderful role models in times of war for our young people.