アメリカのドナルド・トランプ次期大統領の政策顧問を務める作家のカール・ヒグビー氏が11月16日、イスラム教徒の入国を管理するには「第二次世界大戦中に日系人を強制収容した歴史が前例になる」と述べ、批判を浴びた。この発言から、第二次世界大戦中にアメリカ政府が設置した、日系アメリカ人の強制収容所の存在が改めてクローズアップされた。
1942年、真珠湾攻撃の動揺がまだ続く中、アメリカ政府は何千人もの日系アメリカ人に対し、自分の家を離れ、人里離れた収容所に移り住むことを命じた。彼らのうち約3分の2は、市民権をもつアメリカ市民だった。
最も有名な収容所は、カリフォルニア州オーウェンズバレーに置かれたマンザナー強制収容所（当時の訳語で「マンザナール戦時轉住所」）だ。
1943年の秋から、写真家アンセル・アダムスは、マンザナーに収容された人々の日常の暮らしを記録した。彼は、アメリカ市民の生活がそんな風に追い立てられたことを悲嘆し、非人道的な状況に直面した抑留者の人間性をフィルムに写し取ろうと努めた。「マンザナーに常にあるものと言えば、タール紙を貼られた粗末なバラック小屋に溜まる砂ぼこりだけだ。ただ、そこに住む数千人の人々に刻み込まれた、消えることのない印象を除けばの話だが」と、アダムスは記した。
アダムスと言えば、アメリカの広大な自然を捉えた写真で有名だ。しかし、あまり名前を連想されることがないのが、戦時中に日系人を抑留した強制収容所のドキュメンタリー写真だ。
この写真は、1944年にニューヨーク近代美術館で展示され、『ボーン・フリー・アンド・イコール：ストーリー・オブ・ロイヤル・ジャパニーズ・アメリカン（自由で平等に生まれて― 誠実な日系アメリカ人の物語）』というタイトルの書籍として発行された。本の序文で、アダムスはこう記している。
この本は、人々や彼らの抱える問題について社会学的な分析をしようとするものではない。これは、平均的なアメリカ市民を取り上げたものであり、人間をベースに、そして感情をベースに着想したものだ。
誠実な日系アメリカ人をあいまいで形のない少数派の集団ととらえるのではなく、1人の人間と、その環境についての真実に重きを置いている。
この本を通して、読者は、マンザナーで私と一緒に共にいた人々と出会い、収容所の雰囲気と環境を感じてもらいたい。その人たちに何らかの主義を押し付けたり、社会学的行動を主張するのではなく、読者自身が判断してもらい。
アメリカ政府は1988年、日系人の抑留について謝罪し、「人種的な偏見、戦時中のヒステリー状態、政治的リーダーシップの失敗が動機となった」と認めた。
現在、アダムスがマンザナーを訪れてから70年以上が経過したが、今なお私たちは、彼のレンズを通して収容所を見て歩くことができる。
ナカムラ夫人と娘たち
体操をする収容者たち
マンザナー強制収容所への入り口
ルイーズ・タミ・ナカムラ
昼食の行列
放射線技師マイケル・ヨネマツ（または、ヨネミツ）
看護師のアイコ・ハマグチと患者のトム・カノ
蓄音機の上の写真と思い出の品、ヨネミツ家にて
ケイ・カゲヤマ夫人
慰霊塔
農業労働者、ウィリアムソン山を背景に
バトンを練習するフローレンス・クワタ
高校で生物の授業を受ける、キヨ・ヨシダ、リリアン・ワカツキ、ヨシコ・ヤマサキ
トム・コバヤシ
ハフィントンポストUS版より翻訳・加筆しました。
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戦時中の日系アメリカ人
WWII North America United States Defense Aliens Japanese Internment Camp New York(01 of31)
Meal time at the hostel for Japanese-Americans in Brooklyn, New York June 20, 1944, is a pleasant experience. After the Rev. Ralph E. Smeltzer, director of the hostel, shown at head of table, says grace, the meal begins with an air of gaiety. The hostlers each other as members of their families. During Mead Time the Newcomers asked to give an oral history of themselves. The hostel, opened on May 10 by the church of the Brethren and the American Baptist home missions society, was designed to provide accommodation and readjustment guidance for Japanese-Americans from the Western Relocation centers until they could settle themselves in new lives. (AP Photo/TR) (credit:TR/AP)
WWII North America United States Defense Aliens Japanese Internment Camp New York(02 of31)
Everyone is expected to do his share in housework at the hostel for Japanese-Americans in Brooklyn, New York June 20, 1944, and even the director, the Rev. Ralph E. Smeltzer, does his stint. Here, left to right are: the Rev. Smeltzer, Henry Takahashi and Elbert Nagashima do the supper dishes. Every evening after dinner, the next dayâs work is planned, and all members of the hostelâs household volunteer for the one or more tasks. The hostel provides accommodations and re-adjustment guidance for Japanese-Americans from Western relocation centers until they can settle themselves in new lives. (AP Photo/TR) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII North America United States Defense Aliens Japanese Internment Camp Washington DC(03 of31)
Boyish â looking Richard Sakamoto is shown at work in a photographic studio in Washington DC May 25, 1944, where he was sent from the Granada Relocation Center in Colorado, in the program to relocate Japanese-Americans whose loyalty to the U.S. has been established. Sakamotoâs wife takes care of the child of a member of congress. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII US Internment 1943(04 of31)
New jobs, new homes and a return to normal living are bringing men, women and children of Japanese descent back into the stream of American life. About 110,000 Japanese Americans and aliens were moved inland from the Pacific coast for reasons of military security, several months after Pearl Harbor. Here, Cheiko Neeno, a nurse aide student at the Poston, Arizona, relocation center hospital, attends a young patient, June 21, 1943. The course consists of one year of intensive training. A number of nurses\' aides have been qualified to take outside employment. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Villainy Parade(05 of31)
** TO GO WITH STORY SLUGGED EEUU VILLANOS ** This June 21, 1943 file photo shows housing barracks at the internment center where Japanese Americans were relocated in Amache, Colo. during World War II A space of 20-by-25 feet was allotted for each family with a communal bath house and a mess hall to serve each block of barracks. (AP Photo, File) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII North America United States Defense Aliens Japanese Internment Camp Tule Lake(06 of31)
About 14,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans live at the nationâs largest single Relocation Center, living on a mile-square housing tract built almost under the shadow of Mount Shasta near Oregonâs border. The inhabitants are accommodated in army-type, tarpapered barracks. The land is government owned, Lake bottom soil, and project workers are mainly concerned with agriculture, with potatoes and grain plus some truck gardening the principle products. A furniture factory makes school and office equipment. There are central mess halls, laundries. A hospital, warehouses administrative buildings, school, stations and living quarters for the appointed staff. The war relocation authority, which operates the centers, is placing many Japanese on farms and in cities to aid with our war effort; those chosen for outside work are carefully chosen. Japanese inhabitants of the center at âStoopâ labor, engaged in weeding a field of onions. May 23, 1943. (AP Photo/FS) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII Japanese American War Dead(07 of31)
American war dead of Japanese descent are commemorated in this monument, one of the first erected in Arkansas in memory of the men who died in World War II, shown Nov. 9, 1945. Standing beside the monument is Koheigi Horisawa, evacuee resident who designed and constructed the memorial. The monument bears the names of 30 American soldiers of Japanese descent who were killed in action and whose families were relocated to the Rohwer internment camp. (AP Photo) (credit:AP)
Internment Camp Grants(08 of31)
FILE - In this file photo taken Sept. 21, 1942, relocated Japanese-Americans sit on small front porches on barracks at Rohwer Relocation Center near Rohwer, Ark. The National Park Service on Thursday, June 12, 2014, awarded nearly a quarter-million dollars in grants to projects in Arkansas that help preserve and interpret sites that were used to confine Japanese Americans during World War II. (AP Photo/Horace Cort, File) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII U.S. JAPANESE INTERNMENT(09 of31)
Japanese Americans get their hair cut in a crowded barber shop at the internment relocation center for in Tulelake, Ca., in May 1943 during World War II. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII North America United States Defense Aliens Japanese Internment Camp Michigan(10 of31)
Two of the Greening workers with Howard D. Fashbaugh, Vice President and General Manager of the nursery in Monroe, Michigan April 16, 1943. Left, Dean Ono, 19, of Los Angeles reads a book about MacArthur, while Harry Kaku of Lindsay, Calif., plucks at a guitar preparatory to American song perhaps, âRemember Pearl Harbor.â (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII North America United States Defense Aliens Japanese Internment Camp Colorado(11 of31)
There are 7,000 Japanese evacuees in the Relocation Center at Granada, Colorado, and two-thirds of them are Nisez, American-born Japanese, who have recognized the peculiar problem of war their ancestry makes for the United States government, and so they have adjusted themselves with relative cheerfulness to life in one-room barracks-type apartments and a few of the Issei. The alien-born and older Japanese, have been reconciled that close control over them is inevitable. A Japanese group, old and young, eats heartily in the Granada Center Mess Hall in Granada, Colorado on Feb. 23, 1943. (AP Photo/WAB) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII US Internment 1942(12 of31)
This is part of an advanced contingent of Japanese Americans evacuated from the West Coast to arrive at the Rohwer Relocation Center at McGehee, Arkansas, Sept. 21, 1942. This advanced group will get the big center ready for other West Coast evacuees. Here Agnes Uyesugi (center, bow in hair), recreation director explains to some of the boy and girls about the games they will play while in their new wartime home. (AP Photo/Horace Cort) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII US Internment 1942(13 of31)
These Japanese-Americans, part of an advanced contingent at the Rohwer Relocation Center near McGehee, Arkansas, Sept. 21, 1942, find time to play baseball. The batter is Tom Kinmotsu, the catcher is his brother, Yosh Kinmotsu, and Al Umino is doing the umpiring. The advanced group will get the camp ready for other West Coast evacuees who will make their home for the duration. (AP Photo/Horace Cort) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII US Internment 1942(14 of31)
An advanced contingent of Japanese-Americans has arrived at the Rohwer Relocation center near McGehee, Arkansas, to prepare it for other West Coast evacuees, Sept. 21, 1942. Here, two-year-old Kazuyoshi Ishigaki and his father, right background, watch Joe Sakasegawa as he builds a bench for his quarters. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII U.S. JAPANESE INTERNMENT(15 of31)
Members of the Chick-A-Dee Japanese American women\'s softball team, relocated from Los Angeles, practice at the internment center in Mandazar, Ca., on July 16, 1942 during World War II. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII North America United States Defense Aliens Japanese Internment Camp Santa Anita(16 of31)
This is a New Japanese family checking in at the big assembly center in Santa Anita, California July 2, 1942, that was established at the race track after the start of the war for West Coast people of Japanese descent. Some 18,500 men, women and children, two thirds of them American citizens, are housed in barracks at the center. They have their own schools under the grandstand in the long room lined with windows, where formerly bets were placed by race track visitors. The internees are fed well and though they live under military rules, their mail censored, and barbed wire surrounding them, various forms of recreation help to make their life more life more. Teams have been formed at the center, diamond fans are rabid. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII U.S. JAPANESE INTERNMENT(17 of31)
Internees prepare lunch meals for Japanese Americans held at the at the internment center at the Santa Anita Park race track in Ca., on July 2, 1942 during World War II. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII US Internment 1942(18 of31)
American-born Japanese and aliens alike registered in Portland, Oregon, April 28, 1942, in preparation to evacuate from this defense area. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
AMERICAN JAPANESE INTERNMENT(19 of31)
Perched high on a pile of baggage and with a military policeman watching, a little Japanese boy is awaiting the return of his parents, April 6, 1942, in San Francisco, California. More than 650 citizens of Japanese ancestry are evacuated from their homes and sent to Santa Anita racetrack, now an assembly center for war relocation of alien and American-born Japanese civilians. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT(20 of31)
As military police stand guard, people of Japanese descent wait at a transport center in San Francisco April 6, 1942 for relocation to an internment center at Santa Anita racetrack near Los Angeles. They were among thousands of people forced from their homes in the name of national security following the attack on Pearl Harbor. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII U.S. JAPANESE INTERNMENT(21 of31)
The Santa Anita Park race track is converted into an internment for evacuated Japanese Americans who will occupy the barracks erected in background in Arcadia, Ca., April 3, 1942 during World War II. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT(22 of31)
People of Japanese descent, relocated from the Seattle area, unload their belongings as they arrive at an internment camp in Puyallup, Wash., in April, 1942. They were among thousands of people forced from their homes in the name of national security following the attack on Pearl Harbor. (AP Photo/Paul Wagner) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII North America United States Defense Aliens Japanese Internment Camps Manzanar(23 of31)
Carpenters rushed work on the first of 25 blocks of barracks at Manzanar, in Californiaâs Owens Valley March 19, 1942 in preparation for the first group of Alien and American â born Japanese to be evacuated from Southern California cities beginning March 23. Each block will have 14 barracks, recreation hall, mess hall, laundry and other service units. In addition, a 150-bed hospital will be erected for the model community. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII US Internment 1942(24 of31)
Japanese truck farmers near Seattle, Washington must register with the Japanese-American Citizen\'s League, and as they must also keep working on their farms for the time being, representatives of the league come out to the farms to register them, March 11, 1942. A league official registers a Seattle truck farmer, making note of his family, transportation, farm equipment, etc., in preparation for possible future mass evacuation. (AP Photo/Paul Wagner) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII US Internment 1942(25 of31)
Expecting evacuation to inland areas but working in the meantime, two Japanese vegetable farm women in Washington state\'s Puyallup Valley are registered by William Hosohawa, right, of the Japanese-American Citizens League, March 11, 1942. The league is sponsoring the registration so American-born and alien Japanese can keep in touch with friends and relatives when they are moved. (AP Photo/Paul Wagner) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII US Internment 1942(26 of31)
In a move sponsored by the Japanese American Citizens\' League, Seattle Japanese registered for evacuation from military areas, March 10, 1942 - without waiting for official action. Here a group of Japanese filled out questionnaires for women of the league. Both American-born and alien Japanese cooperated. (AP Photo/Paul Wagner) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII US Internment 1942(27 of31)
Bargains, with articles marked down as much as 40 percent, were on everywhere in Los Angeles\' \"Little Tokyo\", March 5, 1942, as its Japanese residents prepare to leave following the issuance of orders for the evacuation of enemy aliens and American-born Japanese from specified combat zones along the Pacific coast. T. Horiuchi, proprietor of one of the largest Asian art stores in the district, posts a sale sign in his window. Alongside is a sign declaring, \"We are 100 percent for the United States.\" (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII US Internment 1942(28 of31)
Already \"For Rent\" signs are appearing in stores formerly occupied by Japanese merchants in Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles, March 5, 1942. Many of the Japanese have moved and others are getting ready in anticipation of government orders to leave the coast areas. Japanese children are coming home from American schools. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
AMERICAN JAPANESE INTERNMENT(29 of31)
This 1942 photo shows the evacuation of American-born Japanese civilians during World War II, as they leave their homes for internment, in Los Angeles, California. The sidewalks are piled high with indispensable personal possessions, cars and buses are waiting to transport the evacuees to the war relocation camps. (AP Photo) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII US Internment Camps 1942(30 of31)
In preparation for the evacuation of Los Angeles\' famed \"Little Tokyo\" section as a result of the ordering of 300,000 aliens and American-born Japanese from various Pacific coast combat zones, 20-year-old Yeichi Shoji, right, helps clear the shelves of the dry goods store operated by his parents, March 5, 1942. Shoji was born in the living quarters at the rear of the store, his elder brother is a soldier in the U.S. Army. (AP Photo/John T. Burns) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WWII US Internment Camps 1942(31 of31)
In preparation for the evacuation of Los Angeles\' famed \"Little Tokyo\" section as a result of the ordering of 300,000 aliens and American-born Japanese from various Pacific coast combat zones, 20-year-old Yeichi Shoji, right, helps clear the shelves of the dry goods store operated by his parents, March 5, 1942, as Taro Sasai, 7, looks on. Shoji was born in the living quarters at the rear of the store, his elder brother is a soldier in the U.S. Army. (AP Photo/John T. Burns) (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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