Arizona newspapers ran headlines like “River Japs Take 600 Jobs” and “Resettlement of Japs in Arizona Protested.”
1. AZ: The History of Arizona podcast Episode 243, “Leaving the Camps,” centers on Mitsuye Endo and the closing phase of Arizona’s Japanese American incarceration.
2. Host David Rickhausen narrates the episode, corrects his earlier pronunciation of Tule Lake, and cites Densho, Andrew B. Russell, Thomas Fujita Roney, and the American Friends Service Committee.
3. The episode asks how Japanese Americans left Poston and Gila River through college, work, military service, and legal victory.
4. Arizona newspapers published hostile headlines such as “River Japs Take 600 Jobs,” “Resettlement of Japs in Arizona Protested,” and “Officials Forbid Japs to Leave Camps Lest Hostile Acts Occur.”
5. Rickhausen says some Arizonans were outraged that camp canteens at Gila River formed profit-making enterprises that funded barbershops, laundries, and radio repair shops.
6. He describes Army investigators arriving in Phoenix in summer 1943 to examine alleged sabotage tied to two produce packing sheds.
7. The Arizona Shippers and Growers Association pushed to remove all Japanese and Japanese Americans from the state, and one member told investigators they were “not interested in obtaining facts.”
8. The episode notes that before Pearl Harbor there were only 632 Japanese and Japanese Americans in Arizona.
9. Thomas Fujita Roney says the federal government removed parts of central Arizona, including Poston, Gila River, and Phoenix, from Military Area No. 1 in March 1943.
10. That change gave 241 people at Poston the legal chance to return to Phoenix.
11. The National Japanese American Student Relocation Council, formed on May 29, 1942, helped Nisei students find schools, housing, and funding.
12. By the end of the war, about 4,300 Nisei had left the camps for college after the relocation process started with roughly 250 students.
13. The government also created a seasonal leave program in May 1942, and workers from the camps took agricultural jobs in Nebraska, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming.
14. Fujita Roney says those workers earned $5 to $10 a day, compared with the $19 a month paid to professionals in the camps.
15. Hiro Nomura’s return to Phoenix after a year in camp led to a boarded-up garage, stolen tires, a stripped battery, and missing radio and farm equipment.
16. Rickhausen describes the loyalty questionnaire, the confusion over military service, and the mandatory registration of adults over 17.
17. He then explains that the draft reopened in early 1944, even as casualty rates in the 100th Infantry Battalion in Italy were high.
18. The episode’s tone mixes legal history, war policy, and local Arizona recollection, with Rickhausen using direct quotations and side comments to frame the story.
19. Listeners interested in Japanese American incarceration, Arizona wartime politics, and Supreme Court history would get the most from this episode.
20. Listeners wanting a short, present-tense military overview without legal or local context might skip it.
