A South Ender Remembers an Overlooked Piece of U.S. History: The Disciplinary Barrack Boys

In 1963, when Steve Itano was 15 years old, he set out to steal some change from his mother's closet. As he rummaged for coins, he came across a locked metal box. He picked the lock with a paperclip. In the box, along with a deed and insurance papers, was a thick set of documents that he remembers being titled "United States Army Vs. Henry Masami Itano." 

Henry Itano was Steve's father, who had passed away of stomach cancer when Steve was 9. "I started reading through it, and it dawns on me that this is a court martial transcript of my father being tried for treason," Steve said. "It was the proverbial skeleton in the closet." 

Steve had stumbled upon documents that told him something he never knew: His father was a Disciplinary Barrack Boy, or DB Boy, one of 21 U.S. citizens of Japanese descent (Nikkei) who, after choosing not to serve because of how they were treated, were sentenced to prison by the U.S. military. (Instead of Nikkei, some people use the term Nisei, which means second-generation Japanese American.) For Steve, the moment opened a chapter in U.S. history that, while recorded, isn't well known.

Who Were the DB Boys?

In 1940, the U.S. enacted the Selective Service Act, which required all male U.S. citizens and resident alien men 21 to 35 years old to register with the draft board. By the beginning of World War II, thousands of Nikkei were serving in the military. 

On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawai‘i. A few weeks later, Henry Itano married Yoshiye Ota, and then he enlisted for military service. But by the time he had enlisted, the U.S. military had reclassified selective service Japanese Americans as "enemy aliens." 

Some of these servicemen were discharged while many others were stripped of their weapons and given menial jobs. Henry was stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas, under security surveillance with about 600 other Nikkei military servicemembers, most of whose families and community members were forcibly removed from the West Coast and incarcerated en masse in concentration camps by June 1942. 

When there was a need for more soldiers, the U.S. Army restored the ability of Japanese Americans to serve. The Army created the 442nd Regimental Combat Team made up of Japanese American servicemembers based in Mississippi. Henry was not part of this regimental team and remained at Fort Riley.

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Fort Riley in April 1943, soldiers were ordered to fall out. A third of the Nikkei servicemembers, including Henry, were marched separately to a garage and reportedly held at gunpoint for 12 hours. There's no historical record for why some of the Nikkei servicemembers were taken to the garage, but when those who were held there complained about their treatment, the military dismissed those complaints.

Another year passed. Nearly half of the 3,000 servicemembers in the 442nd originally stationed in Mississippi suffered casualties on a mission in the European theater. When the military needed more Nikkei soldiers, Henry was called for military training at Fort McClellan in Alabama.

But Nikkei servicemembers had been affected by the incarceration of their families, had faced discrimination, and had been forced to work menial jobs. So when Henry and others reached Alabama, they complained about their past treatment.

The military's response? They sent some to the stockade, where they were given a choice: choose military training or not. But the soldiers knew if they didn't choose the training, they'd be court-martialed. Even so, Henry and 20 others opted not to pursue training.

They were court-martialed and received prison sentences ranging from 5 to 30 years. Henry received a 12-year sentence. They were all held at the Fort Leavenworth U.S. Disciplinary Barracks, a maximum-security military prison. When a clemency board reduced all service members' sentences to three years, Henry returned home in 1947.

Memories

After Henry was released from prison, he settled with Yoshiye in Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood, and the two ran a grocery store. Steve recalls his mother saying his father was never the same after the war, and his health had deteriorated. When Henry passed away in 1959, Yoshiye was left to raise four boys, ages 8 to 11, on her own. Joan Merrick, Steve's former longtime partner, says Yoshiye "was a strong woman who told you exactly what she thought." Merrick added, "She wasn't shy. She was reluctant to share some parts of that time because of the shame and isolation." 

Steve remembers growing up in LA and attending Japanese American picnic gatherings, which featured country music sung in Japanese, the community's koto traditional Japanese music ensemble, and traditional dance groups. "You'd lay out the tatami mats and bring bento lunches and sushi," said Steve. "Our family would be in one space with this other group of families who were really close with us, and then everybody else was further away." Steve says it took a long time before he realized that the family's very close set of friends were the families of other DB Boys. 

Steve has a lot of memories of his father. His dad supported Steve's jazz clarinet lessons and would take him to horse races. Steve remembers an incident that he now sees as connected to his father's past: He was with his dad at his brother's judo tournament and saw a group of older men wearing blue hats and military buttons with a Veterans of Foreign Wars sign. "I started going over to them, saying to my dad, 'Who are those guys?' And he grabbed me by the shoulder and said, 'We don't talk to them' and walked away," said Steve. "It was in that voice that made me feel really clearly like, 'Oh shit. Don't ask. Don't ask.'"

Piecing together his father's story has led to a series of memories and a desire to look over records. "My mom didn't talk about [hardship] during the war when I was growing up," said Steve. Then, in the 1980s, a movement for federal redress was gaining momentum. "[That] was when people started talking more."

Yoshiye Itano spoke out. Yoshiye was interviewed in 1986 by documentary filmmaker Loni Ding, who directed The Color of Honor: The Japanese American Soldier in WWII. In the interview, Yoshie said that her husband informed her he would be court-martialed and asked for a divorce to protect her from the impacts of his choice. She refused. She also said he told her he would have fought to his death for the country if his family hadn't been incarcerated by the U.S. government.

In 1982, after decades of work to overturn the dishonorable discharges of the DB Boys, the Army Board concluded an injustice had occurred, corrected the discharges to honorable discharges, and reinstated benefits for only 11 surviving DB Boys.

"When I first read the court-martial document, I was in shock and embarrassed. [When] I became politically involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement, I realized how heroic he was," said Steve. "With the context of what's happening to immigrants today, I understand what he faced 80 years ago, and it influences how I work in the community now."

Got an idea for a South End story you'd like to see us cover? Let me know: Yuko.Kodama@SeattleEmerald.org.