The incarcerees didn’t fail the test. The government did.
February 3, 1943: The War Department and the War Relocation Authority introduced the so-called loyalty questionnaire, forcing incarcerated Japanese Americans to declare allegiance under coercive and unequal conditions.
In early 1943, the War Department and the War Relocation Authority introduced a so-called loyalty questionnaire to evaluate Japanese Americans already imprisoned in U.S. concentration camps.
Officially, the questionnaire served two purposes. For the War Department, it was meant to identify Nisei men eligible for service in a proposed all-Nisei combat unit. For the WRA, it would determine who might be granted leave clearance to relocate outside the camps for work or school.
In practice, it did something else entirely. It placed people already stripped of their rights into impossible moral and legal traps — and then punished them for how they answered.
Designed with input from the Office of Naval Intelligence, which had long refused to admit anyone of Japanese ancestry into military service, the questionnaire formalized decades of racial suspicion into bureaucratic policy.
Civilian Exclusion Order No.1 being posted. Orders like this appeared on street corners to alert families had only few days to pack up and report for incarceration.
Courtesy of Utah State Historical Society
Government administering the ‘loyalty questionnaire’ at Topaz War Relocation Center, April 1942. A test of loyalty, given behind barbed wire.
Courtesy of Densho, the Ikeda Family Collection
Page 4 of the notorious Loyalty Questionnaire – Answer “yes” and submit to injustice, or answer “no” and become labeled a threat.
Claude Mimaki (right of the “Victory” banner) with teammates at the San Gabriel Judo Dojo, 1939. Activities like judo and kendo were later used to lower “loyalty scores.”
Mitsuye Endo was chosen to challenge the government because she fit their definition of “loyal.” She was Christian, spoke only English, and had never been to Japan.
The “Science” of Scoring “Americanness”
Most of the form’s questions appeared neutral on the surface. They asked about education, language ability, religion, recreational activities, organizational memberships, and ties to Japan.
But as scholars Emiko Omori and Eric Muller later demonstrated, these answers were quietly scored according to racialized assumptions. Speaking Japanese well counted against you. Practicing judo or kendo counted against you. Being Buddhist counted against you.
Being Christian helped. Being a Boy Scout helped.
“Americanness” and “Japaneseness” were not cultural descriptions. They were bureaucratic verdicts, encoded into policy.
Questions That Couldn’t Be Answered
Two questions — numbers 27 and 28 — caused immediate unrest across the camps. They were loaded.
Question 27 asked Nisei men whether they were willing to serve on combat duty wherever ordered. Everyone else was asked whether they would serve in other military capacities.
For young men behind barbed wire, this did not feel like a survey. It felt like forced volunteering.
For others, it brought a different dilemma. As former incarceree Ben Takeshita later explained, parents worried about abandoning children who had nobody else taking care of them. Others feared the question was designed to send them directly from camp to the front lines — a convenient way, some believed, to get rid of them.
Loyalty Question 27. It would have been one thing to ask this in freedom. But it was asked behind barbed wire, after they put you there without a chance to ask any questions.
What if you were a single mother? Would you say “yes” and possibly leave your children behind in camp if you were drafted?
Loyalty Question 28. For many Issei, answering “yes” meant becoming stateless. Answering “no” meant being branded disloyal. They were cornered.
Courtesy of Imperial Household Agency
Most Nisei had never even considered pledging allegiance to the Japanese Emperor. Being asked to forswear it implied they had one to begin with.
“Unqualified Allegiance”
Question 28 was worse. It asked whether respondents would swear unqualified allegiance to the United States and forswear any allegiance to the Emperor of Japan.
For many Nisei, the premise was absurd. They had never sworn allegiance to the Emperor of Japan.
For Issei, it was devastating. Japanese immigrants were legally barred from becoming U.S. citizens because of race. Renouncing their only citizenship would render them stateless.
As Ben Takeshita later explained, answering “yes” implied a loyalty they had never held — and answering “no” branded them disloyal. There was no right answer.
Resistance and Revision
Issei resistance forced the WRA to revise the questionnaire before they would comply. The original title — “Application for Leave Clearance” — falsely implied voluntary participation and was changed simply to “Questionnaire.” Question 28 was softened to ask whether respondents would obey U.S. laws and not interfere with the war effort. But the damage was done.
Out of nearly 20,000 Nisei of military age, fewer than 6 percent volunteered from the camps — far below government expectations. Thousands answered “no” or qualified their responses.
What shocked WRA administrators most was what followed: a surge in requests for repatriation and expatriation. By 1944, nearly 20,000 incarcerated people — many of them U.S. citizens — had asked to leave the country. The questionnaire did not produce loyalty. It produced alienation and anger.
Bettman Archive
After incarceration and coercive questioning, only 1,208 volunteered — far short of the 2,000 the government expected. Was that surprising?
Courtesy of Tule Lake Committee
After everything they were put through, thousands decided America was done with them and chose to leave.
Inmates at the Moab Isolation Center, 1943. They were already imprisoned. Answering “no” sent them farther away. For many, it meant being pushed further and further out.
Courtesy of University of Utah
After the loyalty questionnaire, those labeled “disloyal” were transferred to Tule Lake, including Issei men too old for military service.
Designated as a high-security camp, Tule Lake was surrounded by eight-foot fences, multiple guard towers, and armed patrols to isolate anyone labeled “disloyal.”
Attorney Wayne Collins in his San Francisco office, c1942. He worked tirelessly through stacks of case files as he worked through the legal challenges of the wartime years.
Segregation and Repatriation
Those who answered “no,” refused to answer, or qualified their responses were labeled disloyal and derisively called “no-nos.”
The War Department initially planned to isolate them in a small facility near Moab, Utah. When resistance erupted at Tule Lake, the plan changed. In July 1943, Tule Lake was reclassified as a segregation center. Twelve thousand people were sent there — openly angry leaders, organizers, and dissenters who made up roughly two-thirds of Tule Lake population. The rest were people already incarcerated there who were afraid to move. The result was turmoil, repression, violence — and a stigma that followed families for decades.
Meanwhile, politicians in Washington used questionnaire responses to argue that Nisei citizenship itself should be stripped and sent to Japan. This sparked a series of legal battles later taken up by civil rights attorney Wayne Collins.
“No-No” and the Making of Division
The loyalty questionnaire did not measure allegiance. It measured how much injustice a person was willing to endure quietly.
As playwright Hiroshi Kashiwagi later reflected, before incarceration he would have encouraged young men to serve their country proudly. After incarceration, he could not bring himself to say yes.
The questionnaire also created a lasting division within the Japanese American community. The JACL instructed members to condemn draft resisters and those labeled “disloyal.” The stigma endured for decades. The consequences were real. Some were sent to the battlefield. Others lost their citizenship and were deported. Many were treated as traitors long after the war ended.
The problem was not how people answered. It was that the government asked the wrong questions after taking away their rights.
A “segregant” being processed at Tule Lake, September 1943. Young men like him were transferred here and later tried in federal court for answering “no” and “no.”
For decades, draft resisters were condemned as traitors, even by the JACL. It wasn’t until 2002 that the JACL formally apologized for its role in shaming them.