The African American community was divided in its response to the Japanese American Internment despite the long history of favorable relationships between Black and Japanese in the US. The Black community was invested in the war just as any other group was and at first, many didn't care or concern themselves with the plight of Japanese Americans, seeing them as enemies or potential enemies as many White Americans did. One group of leaders saw the internment as a boon to the black community, the Japanese American community had long held many positions related to agriculture and fishing on the West Coast, and with their presence significantly reduced, certain members of black leadership saw it as an opportunity for black economic advancement. The Los Angeles Chapter of the National Negro Business League saw it as "greatest opportunity ever offered by the State of California." Prominent and powerful African American figurehead Adam Clayton Powell even wrote "hordes of Japanese, maintaining the arrogance of their father land . . . virtually throttling California's million-dollar vegetable and produce industry." Though the idea would eventually be quashed by the introduction of huge amounts of Mexican and Hispanic labor, ameliorating the need for laborers in the West and Southwest United States and halting the hope that thousands of African Americans would find jobs in the West.

On the other hand, a second group of black leadership saw the internment of Japanese-Americans as unjust, racist, and as a sign of a potential future threat to African American rights. Harry Paxton Howard detailed this viewpoint in an article in the September 1942 issue of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP. "Americans in Concentration Camps." details the refusal to grant Asian immigrants citizenship due to classification as "Asiatic," (related to the 1923 Supreme Court Case Gong Lum v. Rice) the mistreatment of Japanese-Americans compared to the tens of thousands of Italian and German Americans who had come over at the same time and immediately received citizenship due to their classification as "White," and how the Internment of Japanese Americans should worry the African American community.

As many thousands of African Americans headed west (Part of the second phase of the Great Migration 1940's-1970's) to work in war industry jobs. They moved into homes formerly owned by Japanese Americans and what had been Los Angeles "Little Tokyo" became "Bronzeville" The bond between Black and Japanese Americans would hold strong and positive race relations flourished. In turn, this inspired other African Americans across the nation to speak out against Internment. Black leadership also opposed the idea of Japanese-Only segregated units decrying the unfairness that Japanese were forced to fight in segregated units, while German and Italian men were integrated.

Sources:

• African American Views of the Japanese : Solidarity or Sedition? by Reginald Kearney

• Double Cross: Japanese Americans in Black and White Chicago by Jacalyn D. Harden