#Black out martial law hawaii driver#

Kobata managed to escape arrest, but other American citizens on the Hawaiian Islands were not as fortunate. Being Buddhist-while being American-was a red flag for investigators.

In a military intelligence memorandum “prepared to assist agents investigating Japanese to evaluate properly the loyalties of the individuals investigated,” the 14 key factors identified for determining whether to intern kibei included their religious affiliation.

In the first year and a half of the war, the Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps focused on the “approximately 5,000” kibei living in Hawai‘i as well as the “large and active Japanese fishing fleet,” while simultaneously launching “projects involving Buddhist and Shinto priests, consular agents, and language school officials.” Ultimately, a select group of individuals, composed of roughly two-thirds issei and one-third nisei (almost all kibei), were rounded up in Hawai‘i, many of them influential members of the community. Young Japanese American adults like Kobata who had spent time living in Japan-the kibei-were deemed particularly suspect by the military authorities. He maintained his loyalty to the United States despite his ethnic, cultural, and religious connections to Japan. Nonetheless, like other American Buddhists at the time who persisted in believing both in their religion and in their American constitutional rights, Kobata was subjected to numerous interrogations by the Army, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the FBI. Kobata later recalled, “They let me go, but when I came out of the office I had cold sweat, because I thought that if this was in Japan and I had said that, I think I would be dead by now. “How can you take it as proof that if I step on the Emperor’s picture I am proving my loyalty to the country America?” “Even though it is President Roosevelt’s picture, I don’t believe that you are going to be disloyal to the President,” Kobata told the interrogator. If you do, I will step on the Emperor’s picture.” “You lay down President Roosevelt’s picture on the floor and you step on that, too. “Oh, yes, I will, but under one condition,” Kobata said. Can you prove it to me by stepping on the Emperor’s picture?” the Army interrogator asked. “You, David Kobata, say you pledge your loyalty to the United States. As a so-called kibei (an American-born citizen of Japanese descent, educated to some extent in Japan), Kobata was a target of the animus and suspicion directed toward anyone assumed to have dubious or split loyalties. Three of his brothers were living in Japan when war broke out, and his mother was stranded there, having recently traveled with his deceased father’s ashes to perform Buddhist rites in her husband’s hometown temple. Though American-born and raised, he had spent some years in Hiroshima Prefecture during his youth, living with his devout Buddhist grandmother.

#Black out martial law hawaii driver#

Kobata had been working as a truck driver at Pearl Harbor and other waterfront areas, but authorities had deemed him a security risk and swiftly confiscated his truck-operator license. Army had declared martial law on the islands of Hawai‘i, and rounded up not only enemy aliens or Japanese nationals, but also American citizens of Japanese descent. In Honolulu in December 1941, when an Army interrogator asked 21-year-old David Kobata, an American citizen, to step on an image of the Japanese Emperor to prove his loyalty to the United States, the parallel to the ancient Japanese practice of fumi-e was not lost on Kobata.Īfter the Japanese attack, the U.S. Just putting your foot on the thing won’t betray your faith, whatever it is.” “We’re not asking you to do it sincerely. Just one step, that’s all,” the official reassures him. The scene, witnessed by a Portuguese Catholic missionary named Rodrigues, unfolds with one of the officials telling the prisoners that their interrogations and tortures will end if they simply step on an image of Christ-a practice called fumi-e (literally, stepping on an image)-placed on the ground in front of them. A memorable scene in Martin Scorsese’s 2016 Academy Award-nominated film, Silence, set in 1670 near Nagasaki, depicts the interrogation of four prisoners by Japanese officials determined to stamp out Christianity in their country.