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Sat 19 Feb, 2022 03:26 pm
Eric Jackson
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In Panama all those of Japanese ancestry were rounded up and briefly held in camps in the old Canal Zone. Those camps also held Japanese rounded up in several other Latin American countries. They were sent on to camps in the USA. Those taken from Panama were never allowed to return here.
Prior to the catastrophe that beset their community, a great many of Panama's barbers were Japanese, and the community here was largely composed of fishers and farmers. Before the US-sponsored roundups, in the fascist Panamanian constitution of 1941 those of Japanese ancestry, like all others tracing roots to Asia, were stripped of their Panamanian citizenship. Roosevelt sponsored a coup that ended the Arnulfo Arias presidency and called off his constitution, but Japanese-Panamanians never got their citizenship back and also permanently lost a lot of their property -- farms, boats, barbershops and other businesses.
Eric Jackson
Just before. June 1941, Arias strips Asian-Panamanians of their citizenship and moves were made to take their property. (The Asians were not the only ones.) October 1941, A US-sponsored coup ousts Arias and his constitution becomes a dead letter. December comes the attack on Pearl Harbor and a new wave of repression against the Japanese here.
Also rounded up were Italian and German citizens, including German Jews who were thrown in the same places as dedicated Nazis.
The German and Italian nationals continued to have some problems, but the Panamanians of those ancestries and the German Jews were let out rather quickly. However those who got out found that in the meantime much of their property had been looted.