After Pearl Harbor, Americans Living in Japan Endured Imprisonment, Torture and a Lengthy Battle to Return Home

"The decks of the freshly painted Japanese troopship were crowded with America's top officials in Asia and some of the West's most prominent journalists, businesspeople and teachers. Also present were hundreds of missionaries and their families, many of whom had refused to abandon their posts or had been caught in remote locations when Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor six months earlier."

"After leaving Japan, the Asama Maru and a second vessel were scheduled to pick up more Allied officials and civilians-including the famed columnist Joseph Alsop, a distant cousin of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt-from a handful of Asian ports and take them to the east coast of Africa. There, on neutral territory, these individuals were to be traded for an equal number of people of Japanese descent."

"The stakes were high. The fate of more than 10,000 American men, women and children held in Japanese-occupied territories depended on the success of this trade, which the Americans hoped would be the first of many exchanges between the warring governments."

In June 1942, Japanese troopships departed Yokohama carrying American officials, journalists, businesspeople, teachers, and missionaries who had been held by Japan following Pearl Harbor. These Allied civilians were being transported to neutral territory in East Africa for an unprecedented wartime exchange. The mission involved trading these individuals for Japanese nationals being sent from North and South America aboard the Swedish luxury liner M.S. Gripsholm. The exchange represented high-stakes diplomacy, as its success would determine the fate of over 10,000 American men, women, and children detained in Japanese-occupied territories. American officials hoped this initial trade would establish a precedent for future exchanges between the warring governments.

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