Title: The Internment of Indonesians in the United States: An Untold Story

Speaker: Dr. Greg Robinson, Professor of History, Université du Québec à Montréal

Date: June 23 (Monday), 14.00-15.30

Venue: Tonan tei (Room No. 201), Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, Kyoto University

Abstract:
The first visible community of Southeast Asians in North America grew out of the movement of asylum seekers from Indonesia in the 1940s, but this same movement also led to the first large-scale internment of Muslims in the United States. As is well known, during the years of World War II, the United States Army rounded up over 110,000 citizens and long-term residents of Japanese ancestry on the nation’s West Coast, and the government confined them in a set of camps in the interior of the nation. A portion of these people were then moved to a « family » internment camp at Crystal City, Texas. This camp also housed ethnic Germans and Japanese from Latin America who had been seized from their homes as potentially dangerous and transported to the United States. Less well-known is the group of prisoners of conscience from Java, most of them Muslims, who were sent there. In mid-1945, as the Pacific War drew to a close and the Indonesian War of Independence broke out, several dozen Javanese sailors working on Dutch ships became fearful that they would be sent back on the ships to fight against their countrymen seeking freedom from the Netherlands. They therefore jumped ship in New York. With the help of a group of American sympathizers, notably Black Americans, they sought asylum in the United States. However, while a first group was permitted to remain, the majority were sent for internment at the Crystal City camp during 1946-47, while their petitions were considered by the American courts, and eventually by the U.S. Supreme Court. The legal struggle over the question of refuge, and their official confinement by the government, foreshadow later political and legal movements by refugees from Southeast Asia.

Moderator: Pavin Chachavalpongpun, Titipol Thakdeewanich, and Satoru Kobayashi CSEAS, Kyoto University