(soft music)
- The Presidio has many
powerful stories to tell.
Stories that are embedded in
the landscape of this park.
Stories that relate to
collective triumphants,
and stories that tell of darker times
and of more troubling times.
And as a national park,
sharing those stories
with the American public is
a really significant thing
that we can do in the place, in the spaces
where those events unfolded.
(soft music)
- During World War II, the
Presidio of San Francisco
was a military post that
played a pivotal role
in the incarceration
of Japanese Americans.
In 1942, Lieutenant
General John L. DeWitt,
issued civilian exclusion
orders from his office
in Building 35 in the Presidio
that implement Executive Order 9066.
These actions forced Japanese Americans
from their homes along the
West Coast, and incarcerated
them in concentration camps
for the duration of the war
on the pretext of military necessity.
Japanese immigration to the
US began in the late 1800s,
and by the 1930s, people
of Japanese descent
had become integrated into
the fabric of America.
- You know foreigners,
particularly from Asia,
had not always been welcome here,
so despite the
discrimination of and living
in sort of ethnic enclaves,
Japanese Americans
really felt they did belong.
I mean they raised their children here,
they believed the American
ideals of freedom and liberty.
They sent their kids to American school,
their kids pretty much
were raised being American.
- Well American is a land of immigrants,
so people like my grandparents,
they built a business,
they raised a family.
- They thrived in the
horticulture business.
By 1940 they owned about 40 percent
of the truck farming industry,
bringing fresh produce
to fruit stands, like you see
at farmer's markets today.
- In 1939, World War II began,
and on December seventh,
1941, when the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor,
the US formally entered the conflict.
(bombing sounds)
The Presidio of San Francisco
was the headquarters
of the Western Defense Command.
Beginning in 1942, Commanding
General of the Western
Defense Command, Lieutenant
General John L. DeWitt
issued 108 civilian exclusion
orders from the Presidio,
implementing President
Franklin D. Roosevelt's
Executive Order 9066.
These orders led to the
incarceration of 120,000
Japanese Americans,
targeting Japanese Americans
on the West Coast, citizens
and non-citizens alike.
- Now you have to understand, that all
due process of law was denied.
The fourth and fourteenth
amendments were violated.
No one was charged with a crime.
No one had a day in court.
No one had access to an
attorney and that's wrong.
- So my great grandparents
came to the United States
in the twenties, opened up some hotels
in downtown Los Angeles, but
then Pearl Harbor happens
in 1942, and they were
incarcerated along with my
grandfather in rural Arkansas.
He ended up having a couple
of siblings born in the camps
actually, two sisters.
- Japanese Americans forcefully
removed from the West Coast
would spend the next
few years in far flung
concentration camps.
- In the Western deserts,
in swamps in the South,
where they were concentrated
for the remainder of the war
behind barbed wire, guard
houses and soldiers with guns.
- In the days leading up to Pearl Harbor,
the Presidio of San
Francisco was also home
to the Military Intelligence
Service Language School.
MISLS became the first
Army language school
in the United States, and
was housed in Building 640
along Crissy Field.
- One of the ironies
of the Presidio's role
in the mass incarceration
of Japanese Americans
is that less than a mile away from where
Lieutenant General DeWitt
is signing the civilian
exclusion orders, the
Army here at the Presidio
was running a military
intelligence language school,
training Japanese Americans
in the Japanese language
to act as part of the war effort.
- So a total of 60
students started right here
at the Presidio of San
Francisco under the eyes
of General DeWitt.
- After Pearl Harbor and
Executive Order 9066,
the MISLS was forced to
move out of the Presidio,
and was relocated in Minnesota in 1942.
But these soldiers made an impact.
They turned out to be
America's secret weapon
during the war, saving lives, and helping
to shorten the war by two years.
When the war ended, tens of
thousands of Japanese Americans
were released and allowed to return home.
- You know after the
war, you know in New York
and other places throughout the country,
people were erupting in hoops
of joy that the war was over,
ticker tape parades, et cetera.
But for Japanese Americans,
it was a whole other story.
- They felt ashamed.
They just wanted to get
on with their lives.
They wanted to prove that
they were good Americans
by building and rebuilding businesses,
and raising their
families and being a part
of the community in general.
- 40 years after the war
ended, the Federal Government
unequivocally stated that
race prejudice, war hysteria,
and a failure of political
leadership had motivated
this mass incarceration,
not military necessity.
In 1994 the Presidio
became a public park site
after 218 continuous
years of military use.
Today, the park welcomes
guests from around the world,
and is the proud home of both
the Military Intelligence
Service Historic Learning Center
and the Fred T. Korematsu Institute.
Lieutenant General John L.
DeWitt's office stands empty
in what is now the Bay
School of San Francisco.
- And that's the
uniqueness of the Presidio.
You have a nexus of war
and peace all together
in the stories that emanate from here.
Lessons learned from World
War II happened right here,
and it's right under our
noses, and we need to
dig deep and discover for ourselves
the truth and reality that goes on.
- The irony of being a
Japanese American student
and going to high school
in the same building
where they signed all the executive orders
incarcerating Japanese
Americans is not lost on me.
I think it's an integral
part of both American history
and Presidio history definitely.
- If people could take a
minute to try to put themselves
in that place that the
Japanese and Japanese Americans
had to endure during that time,
what kind of decision would they make?
Would they want their civil
rights stripped from them
just because they look like the enemy?
What would they do?
(soft music)
