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THE CONCENTRATION IN MEXICO CITY: NEW FORCED EMIGRATION

When war was declared between Japan and the United States, the Mexican government decided to concentrate all Japanese and their descendants in the cities of Mexico and Guadalajara. At the same time, it broke relations with Japan and suspended all commercial and postal ties. ¹ Regardless of their age or sex, or whether they were already Mexican citizens, the decision made by the government of President Manuel Ávila Camacho was due to the demand of the US government to closely monitor the entire community in the face of an alleged invasion planned by the Japanese army. .

At first, in December 1941—a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor—the concentration immediately forced all those who lived along the northern border to mobilize, mainly in the cities of the territory. from Baja California. Later, in the first months of 1942, all Japanese residents living in other parts of the country were mobilized to the center of the Republic. The Secretary of the Interior, Miguel Alemán, announced at the end of that month the "strict control of the foreign population residing in the country", but also asked to "improve the services established against espionage and fifth columnism." ² As part of these measures, deposits in banking institutions were frozen, the meeting centers in the DF were closed and, finally, the cancellation of naturalization letters prior to 1939. ³

At the time of the war, the vast majority of Japanese emigrants were outside Mexico City, so the concentration actually meant a new migratory situation and a radical change in their living environment, with one more addition: being considered enemies of the country and as possible "fifth columnists" of the Japanese Empire, ⁴ which is why they had to be closely monitored.

From then on, they were racially stigmatized in a way that had not happened before. Statements such as those that Japan would invade the United States and the Panama Canal were spread lightly with the purpose of frightening the population, also pointing out that Mexico was the country that "the aggressors will choose." ⁵ Furthermore, it was summarily stated that the Japanese communities and those of the Axis countries settled throughout the continent "are directed from their countries of origin" ⁶ and that in particular the Japanese "belongs body and soul to the Japanese government." ⁷

To all this we should add that the United States and Great Britain published "black lists" with the intention of prohibiting business with Japanese-owned companies. These lists included The International Trading Company and other Kiso Tsuru companies, and Heiji Kato's New Japan warehouse. ⁸ Later, small grocery stores, pharmacies, stationery stores, bone stores, etc., which were confiscated based on a law that was issued in June 1942 — weeks after the declaration of war against Japan — on the properties and assets of the "enemy" and a commission was created in charge of executing it, chaired by Luis Cabrera. ⁹

For the Japanese community as a whole, the war between the United States and its allies across the continent against Japan represented not only a profound conflict between countries but also a complex personal breakup of mixed feelings between the nation that had hosted them and the nation from which they came. It also meant the separation of families and the distancing of their ancestors who were still in Japan. In some very painful cases, emigrants whose children were born in Mexico and who for some reason had sent them to Japan to visit or study, suffered an abrupt separation, with the permanent anguish of not being able to communicate until after the conflagration ended.

Farewell to the plenipotentiary minister of Japan in Mexico, 1935. Collection: Sergio Hernández Galindo.

There are statistics that disagree about the precise number of the Japanese population settled in the Republic and the group that moved to Mexico City for the concentration. As already mentioned, the estimated number of Japanese who entered the country was 14 thousand; However, the total numbers of Japanese who were there at the time of the war are around five or six thousand, according to various sources. The same community in Mexico ¹⁰ supports that figure, while the Ministry of the Interior gives a total of 6,232 people, ¹¹ the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 5,146 ¹² and Japanese intelligence reports, 5,470 . ¹³

Although it may be thought that the harassment, concentration and surveillance of the Japanese community was the result of the attack on Pearl Harbor, many years before it was already under surveillance, not only in the United States but throughout Latin America. The FBI and the naval and military attachés in the embassies of that country throughout the continent were in charge of maintaining that attention, but even President Roosevelt himself asked the American ambassador Josephus Daniels for a report on the situation of the Japanese in Mexico since the year of 1933. ¹⁴

The reason for the concentration in Mexico and the persecution are then related to the US national security policy that began to be implemented years ago and which meant the implementation of an entire strategy at the continental level in response to the conviction of the high military and from President Roosevelt himself that his country's security policy should take into account the possibility of an attack on the continent by Germany and, later, on the Pacific flank, by the Japanese army. The case of Mexico was treated in a special way because it was thought that the territory could be used as an attack point for the Japanese navy. The United States, through the Continental Conferences of the American governments that followed one another before the outbreak of the war, developed a continental defense plan that covered from the North Pole to the South Pole and that involved practically all the countries of the continent. ¹⁵ In these conferences the situation of the communities of the Axis countries was addressed and it was decided to limit their rights, through the cancellation of naturalization permits and other measures that controlled the flow and surveillance of the same and that reflected in modifications in the legislation of all the countries of the continent. ¹⁶

The confinement of more than 120 thousand Japanese-Americans in ten concentration camps, the transfer of two thousand members of the Japanese communities in Latin America (basically Peruvians) to the American camps and the surveillance and stalking policies in all the countries of the continent They were concerted actions on a multinational basis, under the pressure of United States politics. It is necessary to recognize, however, that due to the position of the Mexican government, no Japanese who lived in Mexico were sent to the northern nation; In addition, there was an arrangement with the same community that allowed the approximately 660 Japanese who concentrated in the Hacienda of Temixco, Morelos, to have a means of subsistence by cultivating the land. ¹⁷ Despite the above and the fact that the concentration in Mexico City did not take such violent forms, the human rights of the Japanese were flagrantly violated without taking into account the constitutional precepts, even when the suspension was decreed some time later. of individual guarantees in June 1942. ¹⁸

The Shibayama family in the Temixco concentration camp, Morelos, ca. 1942. Collection: Shibayama Family.

The most severe actions against Japanese immigrants included the imprisonment of some of them, as was the case of the young Masao Imuro, who arrived in Mexico City in January 1941. Due to the close surveillance of Japanese residents, letters addressed to his friends in Japan were seized from Imuro, in which he boasted that he would commit attacks against President Roosevelt and the Panama Canal, in addition to criticizing the Mexican government; This cost him to remain in prison for seven years as he was considered "dangerous", without any trial, and to be released until 1949, four years after the end of the war! ¹⁹

For his part, Mr. Heiji Kato of El Nuevo Japon was accused of espionage at the outbreak of the war, for being involved in mercury smuggling destined for Japan, which was discovered by the port authorities of Manzanillo; Kato left the country in February 1942 along with the diplomatic corps of the Japanese Legation. ²⁰ Mr. Kiso Tsuru was also accused of espionage, according to reports from the Directorate of Political and Social Investigations of the Government and the FBI; ²¹ However, he was never imprisoned.

To help the group of concentrates that arrived in the city, the government allowed the formation of a so-called Mutual Support Committee, Kyoeikai, under the direction of Messrs. Matsumoto, Kato and Tsuru. The Japanese embassy contributed nearly 200 thousand pesos as a fund for community aid expenses, which was used to rent a place in the Santa María neighborhood that would serve as accommodation for the concentrates. However, it was insufficient, so Mr. Matsumoto hosted some of them at his El Batán ranch, located in the current Independencia Unit, in Contreras.

Furthermore, in order to support people who did not have work, Matsumoto, thanks to the good relations he maintained with the President of the Republic himself, Manuel Ávila Camacho, and with his brother, Maximino, was authorized to purchase a farm in Temixco, Morelos, so that nearly 600 people could support themselves by growing rice and vegetables during the time the war lasted, as already mentioned. ²²

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Grades:

1. El Universal , December 10, 1941, p. 3.
2. El Universal , December 28, 1941, front page.
3. Official Gazette , December 17, 1941 and January 15, 1942.
4. El Universal , December 13, 1941, front page, second section.
5. Deployment of the National Peasant Confederation (CNC), in El Universal , December 13, 1942, second section, p. 5.
6. El Universal , December 25, 1941, p. 3.
7. El Universal , January 7, 1942, p.3.
8. Excelsior , December 14, 1941, front page.
9. For a more detailed review of the concentration, see my articles "The internal war against the Japanese", in Anthropological Dimension , year 15, vol. 43, May-August 2008; "Mexico in the fire of World War II: concentrated Japanese", in Diario de Campo , supplement no. 43, May-June 2007. Likewise, Francis Peddie, "An uncomfortable presence: the Japanese colony of Mexico during the Second World War", in History Studies
Modern and Contemporary of Mexico , no. 32, July-December 2006.
10. Takeshi Matsumoto (ed.), Nichiboku Koryushi [The history of relations between Mexico and Japan], PMC, Tokyo, 1990, p. 561.
11. El Universal , December 14, 1941, front page.
12. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. Harry L. Hopkins Papers, "Totalitarian Activities México Today 1942", September 1942. (Hereinafter, FDLR-LB.)
13. FDLR-LB, Harry L. Hopkins Papers, "Japanese Pre-war Colonization."
14. Josephus Daniels Papers, Library of Congress, cited in Greg Robinson, By Order of the President. FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2001, p. 51.
15. This strategy is very well explained by María Emilia Paz, Strategy, Security and Spies. Mexico and the US as Allies in World War II , University Press, Pennsylvania, 1997, pp. 9-24.
16. Edward N. Barnhart, "Citizinship and Political Tests in Latin American Republics in World War II," in Hispanic American Historical Review , vol. XLI, no. 3, August 1962, pp. 297-332.
17. Takeshi Matsumoto, op. cit.,p. 568.
18. Official Gazette, June 13, 1942.
19. The documents on the Masao Imuro case are found in the General Archive of the Nation , as well as in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Harry L. Hopkins Papers, which demonstrates the collaboration of both governments in concentration and surveillance. I am preparing a study on the Imuro case that will be published soon.
20. AGN, DIPS.
21. AGN, DIPS, box 377-28.
22. Teiji Sekuguchi, op. cit., pp. 11-13.

*This article was originally published in Carlos Martínez Assad (ed) The Cosmopolitan City of Immigrants . Mexico, Government of the DF. 2010.

© 2010 Sergio Hernández Galindo