Draft Resisters

A couple of years after the United States declared war on Japan, January of 1944, the War Relocation Authority confirmed the military draft for Japanese Americans. Despite the obvious distrust of Japanese during this time, asking them to be soldiers seemed ironic and a bigger unjust act. Some Nisei men resisted the draft because they claimed that their constitutional rights of themselves and their families had been violated during the internment process (Hatta).

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Secondly, 315 Nisei refused to report for induction into the armed forces until their constitutional rights were restored. Overall, 267 men from the detention camps were convicted of draft resistance and sentenced to up to three years in federal prisons. Finally, over a hundred Nisei soldiers who were already in the armed forces participated in protest. They refused to complete combat training. At the same time, their families were still behind barbed wire in the internment camps (Ibid).