Fort Bliss, TX: What WWII Incarceration Can Teach Us About Civil Liberties and Civil Rights Today

By Bill Staples, Jr., President, JACL-AZ, and Donna Cheung, Civil Rights Committee Chair, JACL-AZ

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Important: There’s a difference between civil liberties and civil rights. Civil liberties are the basic freedoms guaranteed to everyone by the Constitution. They protect individuals from government or other groups interfering in their lives. Civil rights are different — they’re the promises that the government will step in to make sure those freedoms are protected, especially for people in groups whose rights have been denied or ignored.

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In the middle of World War II, a little-known chapter of American history unfolded in Texas. At Fort Bliss, just outside El Paso, 113 Japanese American men were incarcerated under suspicion of being “enemy aliens.” Most of them were Issei—first-generation immigrants from Japan who, by law (due to the Immigration Act of 1924), had been denied the right to become U.S. citizens. Many of these men were long-time residents of Arizona, small business owners, farmers, and community leaders who had built lives and families in the desert Southwest. Their only “crime” was being of Japanese ancestry during a time of fear and hysteria.

The government classified these men as potential threats and sent them to Fort Bliss under the custody of the U.S. Army. Some faced hearings before the Department of Justice’s Alien Enemy Control program, but due process was limited at best. Takeo Frank Tadano, a grocer from Arizona, was among those caught in this dragnet. Despite having no evidence of espionage or disloyalty against him, Tadano was detained, transferred through multiple camps, and eventually sent to the Crystal City, Texas, concentration camp, where he remained incarcerated for the duration of the war. His story, like that of so many others, illustrates how fragile civil liberties and civil rights can become in times of national crisis.

Fast forward to today, and Fort Bliss once again holds people in confinement—this time through ICE detention facilities that house migrants and asylum seekers. The parallels between these two moments in history are striking. Then, as now, people are held behind barbed wire under the weight of suspicion and politics rather than proven wrongdoing.

The lesson from Fort Bliss is not just about remembering the past—it’s about recognizing the warning signs in the present. During WWII, fear of sabotage and disloyalty fueled decisions that devastated Japanese American families, stripping them of homes, businesses, and dignity. Today, rhetoric around immigration and border security risks repeating some of those same mistakes, where human beings are reduced to categories—“illegal,” “enemy,” “other”—instead of being recognized as individuals with rights.

Arizona has a direct connection to this history. Many of the men incarcerated at Fort Bliss were fathers, brothers, and community leaders from towns across the state. Their absence was felt deeply in Japanese American communities in Phoenix, Tucson, and farming towns along the Salt River Valley. When we acknowledge their stories—like that of Frank Takeo Tadano—we are reminded that the costs of civil liberties violations are not abstract. They are borne by real families, neighbors, and communities.

The role of history, then, is to shed light on the present. Fort Bliss stands as both a historic site of injustice and a living reminder of the choices we face today. Will we allow fear to override fairness again? Or will we insist that America lives up to its promise of justice and equality for all?

The stories of the Issei men at Fort Bliss, and of people like Tadano who endured incarceration despite their innocence, challenge us to look critically at current detention practices. History does not repeat itself in identical ways, but it often rhymes. If we fail to remember, we risk hearing the same refrain again, played at the expense of another generation’s civil rights.

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TABLE 1: Incarceration at Fort Bliss, TX – Comparison between Incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII and ICE Detention Today

TABLE 2: Issei Incarcerated at Fort Bliss, TX, during WWII

Learn more:

• Densho: https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Fort_Bliss_(detention_facility)
• Ireicho: https://ireizo.org/about 
• Texas Historical Commission Alien Enemy brochure https://www.thc.texas.gov/public/upload/publications/Alien_Enemy_Brochure_08_20.pdf