Togo W. Tanaka was a newsman and American citizen of Japanese descent who in 1942 was sent with 100,000 other Japanese-Americans to relocations camps in the American west. He was born in Oregon and graduated from UCLA before working for a Japanese language newspaper in LA. He was sent to Washington DC prior to Pearl Harbor to ask if his paper would be allowed to continue publishing. He was held for 11 days with no contact with his family or employer before the War Department released him w/o being charged with any crime. He was taken into custody 4 months later and shipped to Manzanar in Death Valley. The interesting thing about his story is that he remained loyal to the US government while in the camps and became a target of camp residents who were angered by his pro-government position. A mob might have killed him at Manaznar if he had not hidden; two residents did die. He was moved from the camp to Chicago and went on to work for a book company after the war. The US government took away his rights and fellow Japanese Americans hated him: "he was truly in a no-man's land" said his son. (The US government took away his constitutional rights in 1942; are we doing the same to some of those being held at Gitmo today?)
(Source: "Togo W. Tanka, 93; chronicled life in Japanese camps during WWII" by Elaine Woo of the Los Angeles Times. In The Record obit page on 7/7/09).
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