So I love the Howling Commandos. This is not news to anyone who knows me in real life. While I have some issues with the MCU versions of them, they got them more right than wrong. I fistpumped in the theater (we were sitting in the last row) when I saw the bowler hat and I knew, I knew that it was Dum Dum Dugan. Then we got this moment and it thrilled me and punched me in the feels all at the same time.
It’s the moment, the blink and you’ll miss it moment, between Dum Dum and Jim Morita in the Hydra prison.
“We taking everybody?”
“I’m from Fresno, ace.”
This is so small but so very significant.
Jim Morita is a Japanese-American soldier.
If MCU world is tracking along the same grooves as our present world does and there’s no reason to think that it didn’t, this is what Jim Morita had to deal with prior to winding up in that Hydra prison.
Pearl Harbor happens on December 7th, 1941. The empire of Japan attacks the US and it’s bad. For a number of reasons, Pearl Harbor was one of the most horrific attacks on the US itself. Since he was considered elite enough to be considered for Steve’s squad, Morita is likely already a soldier.
December 8th 1941, the US declares war on the empire of Japan and as a side effect of this, all Japanese American men are disqualified from the draft (via the label of “4-C” or “Enemy Alien”) and any currently serving were removed from duty.
Then it gets worse. In February of 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This order gave the secretary of war to prescribe certain areas as military/exclusion zones, which cleared the way for the incarceration of Japanese Americans (and German Americans, and Italian Americans) in U.S. concentration camps.
Homes got searched for “contraband” by the FBI which took several forms including letters to or from people in Japan. All of it was seized. Community leaders including priests were rounded up and sent to camps in addition to people who were being deported to Japan for not passing a loyalty test. 122,000 Japanese-Americans were essentially told to sell their homes, businesses, and whatever else they could since they could only take what they could carry with them out of the exclusion zones. They were sent to concentration camps around the US on cattle trains (sound familiar?).
Since Jim was from Fresno, he would have wound up at Sunny Poston, Arizona. Conveniently built on an Indian reservation because the American government was terrible and why only persecute one minority when you could have a sort of two-fer?
Shortly after arriving at the camp, everyone had to answer this survey, simple stuff really, name, date of birth, hometown…and then you get to questions 27 and 28.
- Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered? 28. Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any and all attacks by foreign and domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or disobedience to the Japanese Emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization?
So okay, you answered yes to both? Congrats, you are now a member of the US army. If you answered no…hope you like prison and/or deportation.
All of this happens, yeah? All of this goes on.
Morita goes back to serve.
Gets captured, then rescued.
And Dum Dum says, “What, we taking everybody?”
Fork you, dude. I’m from Fresno.
References:
http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Questions_27_and_28/
