Title: Japanese Mexican removal | Densho Encyclopedia
Headings: Japanese Mexican removal
Japanese Mexican removal
Contents
Background
After Pearl Harbor
Refugees and Internees
For More Information
Footnotes

Content: Although two prominent Nisei merchants in the border community of Nogales, Luis Tanamichi and Ignacio Koba, obtained court injunctions preventing their removal, they were forcibly removed as a "protective measure" in November 1942). In early March the area around Manzanillo, in the state of Colima, was emptied of Japanese. In some areas, such Sinaloa and Chiapas, powerful local officials interceded on behalf of ethnic Japanese residents and forestalled their expulsion—there were rumors of bribes placed by local communities for such protection. Tomas Valles, state treasurer of Chihuahua, exiled 57 Japanese residents to his ranch, where they spent several months as forced laborers before being released. Refugees and Internees
By the end of 1942, some 5,000 ethnic Japanese were forcibly displaced. The large majority of them resettled in Mexico City, or to a lesser extent Guadalajara. Once they left the coast, the refugees formed caravans to make the long journey eastward. Members of the capital district's existing Japanese community, who were less directly affected than others by official actions, transformed the defunct Japanese consulate and Japanese Associations into the "Comité Japonés de Ayuda Mutua" (Bokuto Kyoekai), a mutual aid society that worked to aid the distressed migrants, as well as some locals fired from factory jobs. The community in Guadalajara followed suit on a smaller scale. Some 350 refugees in Mexico City were established on a ranch in Batan donated by a community member.