”
Morgan Hill should be teeming with typical Christmas cheer and
goodwill this year as decorations are considered to be an important
adjunct to the Christmas spirit.
”
That’s what a front-page article in the Morgan Hill Times
promised readers on Friday, Dec. 5, 1941.
“Morgan Hill should be teeming with typical Christmas cheer and goodwill this year as decorations are considered to be an important adjunct to the Christmas spirit.” That’s what a front-page article in the Morgan Hill Times promised readers on Friday, Dec. 5, 1941.
The story focused on a winter holiday lighting contest planned by the Lions Club. Another front-page news item stated South Valley prunes had reached their highest price since 1929. Good news for local farmers indeed. And inside the newspaper, advertisements hawked merchandise for the Yuletide season. One local store pitched a portable Zenith radio on sale for $44.95.
Perhaps that Friday, some local person inspired by the ad bought one of the Zenith radios. And perhaps two days later on Sunday, that person heard on the set a terribly shocking broadcast – Japan had attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
That surprise assault of Dec. 7, 1941, no doubt turned the lights off on much of the “typical Christmas cheer and goodwill” proclaimed earlier in the Times – and not just in Morgan Hill, but across the South Valley and the rest of America, too. The country was now at war.
In Hollister, one family in particularly was devastated by the news. Joe Borovich dreamed of serving his country in the U.S. Navy. His parents and siblings learned he was one of 1,177 sailors who perished when the USS Arizona was hit and sank during the Pearl Harbor attack. His sister, a Catholic nun, once told me that despite her strict religious training, she couldn’t help but feel animosity toward the Japanese who caused the death of her brother.
She wasn’t alone, of course. Fear and hatred grew in the hearts and minds of many Americans toward those fellow citizens they suddenly labeled “the enemy.” Unfortunately, those bitter emotions would cause us to betray one value we truly cherish during the Christmas season – the dignity of our common humanity.
The Morgan Hill Times editor in December 1941 was a man named Robert Couchman. For the following Friday’s newspaper, he wrote an editorial calling for calm and reason as America faced an uncertain future. It appeared on Dec. 12, 1941, and was headlined: “We need more tolerance now than ever before.”
As we face the 65th anniversary of Pearl Harbor – as well as the upcoming holiday season – I believe Couchman’s editorial is particularly relevant for us today. Here’s an excerpt:
“As death and destruction seem to threaten this peaceful valley we have come to think as forever safe and secure from any active hostilities – for we have looked upon oceans as our greatest allies – it is natural that our passions should rise against those who have violated our peace.
“In our California communities are many of Japanese, Italian and German origin who are stricken numb by the developments of these last few days. Their presence here is proof of their love for our freedom, our opportunities, our way of life. They cherish these above the land of their origin, above their old allegiances, above all that binds them to the past.
“They know that some of their own race are here to sabotage, for espionage and they realize that the acts of a few may stir bitter hatred against the thousands of innocents.
“Let us remember that there is not a one of us who is not the descendant, recent or remote, of immigrants. Let us remember that it is not the color of skin, the slant of eyes, the peculiarities of speech which make a man an American or distinguishes another from a true American.
“We must be cautious, surely, to hinder the saboteur, the spy: but we must not ever let unrestrained passions bring needless suffering and hurt to any amongst us merely because they are racially akin to our enemies.”
We know now what Couchman couldn’t have known while writing those wise words. But he must have surely suspected what might soon happen. On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This allowed for the mass evacuation and incarceration of people of Japanese descent.
Our nation’s “unrestrained passions” of fear and hatred led the U.S. government to place 120,000 Japanese-American citizens in prison camps. The total number of Japanese Americans in the continental U.S. was about 126,000 – less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the nation’s population.
These men, women and children were incarcerated merely because they were “racially akin to our enemies.” Many of them were hardworking farmers who lived in the South Valley communities of Hollister, Gilroy, San Juan Bautista, San Martin and Morgan Hill. Some of them were immigrants. Most of them were second-generation American citizens who felt no real loyalty to the homeland of their heritage.
The advice of Coachman’s editorial seems to have been largely forgotten when it came time to decide on resettlement of the Japanese-Americans citizens after the war. According to Timothy Luke’s and Gary Okihiro’s book “Japanese Legacy: Farming and Community Life in California’s Santa Clara Valley,” on May 8, 1943, Morgan Hill’s City Council voted unanimously to oppose any Japanese returning to the town. Local farmers, however, later fought the decision by arguing they’d need Japanese laborers to pick strawberries and prunes during the summer harvest.
Dec. 7, 1941, seems so long ago now. Its flickers in memory like scratched newsreel footage of ancient history. But disturbingly, Americans still have not committed to memory the important lessons from that date’s historic impact. In our post-9/11 world, we have much to learn about who our “enemy” is – and who it isn’t.
Recently, a Harper’s magazine poll showed 39 percent of Americans believe all U.S. Muslims should be forced to carry special identification documents. The poll also ironically showed there’s only a 20 percent chance a Muslim U.S. citizen is Arab.
As we put up our winter holiday lighting decorations, let’s recall the headline of a 1941 Morgan Hill Times editorial: “We need more tolerance now than ever before.”
