Author’s Note: This article was originally part of the WWII chapter of the Cruising J-Town book but was cut for length. However, it was a unique story about the role of cars during the WWII incarceration experience that hasn’t drawn much attention before. I wanted to keep it as a sidebar article via Discover Nikkei instead. There are many other stories that also highlight how, even behind barbed wire, cars/trucks were part of the Nikkei experience. —Oliver Wang
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While the fate of people’s automobiles paled in comparison to the larger tolls exacted on the Japanese American community during the WWII incarceration era, it is striking how various parties took interest in the cars that Nikkei households were forced to leave behind. Not only was the U.S. government keen to liquidate cars left in their care by incarcerees who drove themselves to detention centers in Santa Anita and Manzanar but anti-Japanese newspaper chains and politicians in California’s Central Valley would end up fabricating stories of “disloyal” Nikkei accused of hoarding over 100,000 car tires.
For context, rubber tires were scarce by the early 1940s. At that time, rubber primarily came from Southeast Asia but Japanese military incursions into the region disrupted the supply chain, severely limiting the ability to produce new tires in the U.S. Especially as military vehicles took precedence over civilian ones, U.S. officials had to institute strict control and rationing over tires for the general public. As the WRA wrote, discussing how incarceree vehicles were being mismanaged, “It is clear that before this war is concluded our Nation will have acute need for every automobile, battery, and tire it can secure.”1
Exactly how many Japanese American vehicles were left behind in storage is impossible to know. In 1943, the WRA claimed there were 8,000-10,000 Nikkei cars in storage, but it’s unclear where they came up with that estimate; the Pacific Citizen directly challenged the number as “excessive.”2 However, in the racialized climate of that time, even the mere rumor of tens of thousands of incarceree cars idling in storage was enough to ignite a politicized frenzy.
On January 28, 1943, a sensationalized article from Fresno Bee reporter Francis Goble claimed that “an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 Japanese owned automobiles and trucks…are believed to be stored for the duration of the war in public and private garages in the three Pacific states.”3 (This number was based on both flimsy math and grossly insufficient data and was never remotely substantiated.) Large photos of one of these supposed garages in Fresno accompanied Goble’s story, a caption reading “two West Fresno garages packed with scores of automobiles equipped with good tires” with Goble adding elsewhere, “the tires are useless on the stored automobiles and that is the way the Japanese want them” (emphasis mine).4
If the anti-Japanese sentiment wasn’t clear enough, the next day, another article from the McClatchy Service behind the Fresno Bee and other papers made things more plain, citing an unnamed WRA spokesman claiming that “the Japanese” possessed an “attitude of disloyalty…in not desiring to see their automobiles used in any manner to contribute to a United Nations victory in the war.”5
A March 28 follow-up story about State Senator Hugh M. Burns’s investigations into the matter was entitled “Burns Asks U.S. Action on Enemy Tires, Equipment” (emphasis mine).6
In Goble’s first article, he repeatedly stressed how most of the cars allegedly found in the Fresno garages were “late model” (i.e. newer and more valuable). Put all together, these articles about supposed Nikkei car caches implied that incarcerees were rich, greedy, and disloyal, a perfect trifecta of anti-Japanese propaganda.
Fanning these flames, the McClatchy Service continued to publish updates on their “investigation” into “Japanese tires” throughout the late winter and early spring of 1943. Notably, no other newspaper chain seemed interested in corroborating the story. The McClatchy Service articles rarely cited sources, didn’t interview any garage owners who could verify that “found” cars actually belonged to Nikkei owners, and certainly didn’t quote any actual incarcerees. Nonetheless, this campaign attempted to whip up continual outrage over the idea that the Nikkei were deliberately withholding “100,000 to 125,000 tires made out of good rubber.”7
Unsurprisingly, anti-Japanese politicians pounced on this manufactured controversy, calling for investigations into how to “seize and return” these phantom tires for military and civilian use. The U.S. Congressperson from Fresno, Rep. Bertrand Gearhart, went as far as to criticize FDR’s so-called “rubber czar,” William Jeffers, for failing to requisition the “estimated 100,000 serviceable tires on Japanese-owned automobiles and trucks now in storage.”8
By April 1943, politicians in California introduced bills to allow the government to claim “machinery stored by Japanese evacuees under eminent domain procedure.”9 While there’s no evidence that these bills were ever successful, their very attempt suggests how serious certain factions on the West Coast were about depriving the Japanese American community of their assets, cars included.
All of this was happening within a far larger context of anti-Japanese sentiment that was fomented in Western states well before the war.10 The success of Nikkei farms and other businesses created resentment amongst nativist groups, white agricultural interests, sympathetic press, and their political allies. Manufactured controversy that portrayed incarcerees in a negative light furthered this agenda, especially stories that painted the Nikkei as “coddled” or profligate, least of all with motor vehicles.
The Fresno tire story was one example of many similarly outrageous claims being levied against incarcerees. Following a labor strike and uprising at Tule Lake in the fall of 1943, Northern California Congressman Clair Engle spuriously claimed that at the facility, “on at least one occasion the Japanese staged a polo game by using the Fordson tractors on the camp instead of horses” and alleged that up to 1,500 camp residents were spectators of this game.11
A similar story circulated about Tule Lake incarcerees using “government owned” tractors to scare off geese.12 WRA officials had to go before Congress to debunk both stories but as ridiculous as they may seem in hindsight, they were part of an insidious, anti-Japanese movement that wanted to see the Nikkei community permanently exiled from the West Coast, and even American-born Nisei stripped of their citizenship. It’s no coincidence that Rep. Engle was already seeking to rescind citizenship from the Nisei as early as 1942, and infamously told Congress in 1944, “We don’t want those Japs back in California and the more we can get rid of the better.”13
However, this uproar never amounted to anything; there is no record of tens of thousands of incarceree cars being found in hiding, let alone being requisitioned for their tires. When WRA investigators followed up on similar rumors that “there are 500 pieces of Japanese-owned farm equipment stored in this Valley, they ended up finding only five.14 The WRA’s conclusion asserted these claims were based on “information [that] originated with people who are anti-Japanese returning to this territory.”15 In the end, the great Fresno Tire Fabrication was just one of many shameless attempts to stir up anti-Japanese sentiment as a way to take even more possessions from the incarcerated community.
Thanks to Tamara Palmer.
Notes:
1. War Relocation Authority. The Wartime Handling of Evacuee Property. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, 44.
2. Tajiri, Larry. “The Native Sons Case.” Editorial. Pacific Citizen, February 11, 1943, 4.
3. Goble, Francis. “Japanese Cars Offer Source of Good Tires.” The Fresno Bee, January 28, 1943, 1, 1-B.
4. Ibid, 1-B.
5. “Federal Agencies Act To Place Idle Japanese Tires In Hands Of Army, Public.” Fresno Bee, January 29, 1943, 1-2.
6. “Burns Asks U.S. Action On Enemy Tires, Equipment,” The Fresno Bee, March 28, 1943, 1.
7. “Federal Agencies Act To Place Idle Japanese Tires In Hands Of Army, Public.” Fresno Bee, January 29, 1943, 1-2.
8. War Relocation Authority. The Wartime Handling of Evacuee Property, 77.
9. “Jap centers hit in legislative report.” Daily News (Los Angeles, CA), April 10, 1943, 9.
10. As Morton Grodzins exhaustively detailed,“the most active proponents of mass evacuation were certain agricultural and business groups, chambers of commerce, the American Legion, the California Joint Immigration Committee, and the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West.” See: Grodzins, Americans Betrayed: Politics and the Japanese Evacuation, 1949, 41.
11. “FBI Enters Tule Lake Probe; Dies Action Is Sought.” The Fresno Bee, November 11, 1943, pp. 1, 2A
12. “Japanese Polo Games Mystify Congressmen.” The Register (Santa Ana, CA), December 9, 1943, 2.
13. “Lowrey, Engle Draft Resolution to Revoke Japanese Citizenship.” Colusa Sun-Herald, November 19, 1942, 4.
14. War Relocation Authority. The Wartime Handling of Evacuee Property, 77, 79.
15. Ibid, 79.
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Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community will be on view July 31 - November 12, 2025, presented by the Japanese American National Museum at the Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery at ArtCenter College of Design, 1111 South Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena, CA 91105. Learn more.
© 2025 Oliver Wang
