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History’s Out of the Ordinary Radicals

Khalid Elhassan June 29, 2020 33 min

Lebensborn - Schutzstaffel — Kidnapping of Polish children for the Lebensborn association. Wikimedia

38. Extreme Isolation

Japanese immigrants working in a Brazilian coffee plantation. Historic Museum of Japanese Immigration

In 1942, Brazil joined WWII on the Allies’ side. That further deepened the isolation of the country’s Japanese immigrants. All communication with Japan was severed, and no new Japanese were admitted. The immigrants’ radio sets were confiscated. Those living in the more urban coastal areas, where access to news was easy, were expelled and relocated to the more rural interior, where access to news was quite limited.

Cut off from the outside world and reliable news, Brazil’s Japanese immigrant community became ripe for, and ready recipients of, unreliable news. As a result, many in the Japanese immigrant community were hurled headfirst into a world of alternative facts – one in which Japan was winning WWII. By the time the war ended in 1945, many Japanese-Brazilians sincerely believed that Japan had triumphed. Those who disagreed or said any different were in for rough – at times lethally rough – treatment.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.