SAN JOSE — Hours after Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the first person to be arrested — a half hour before the declaration of martial law — was Bishop Gikyo Kuchiba, leader of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist sect in Hawaii.

In the coming hours and days, the U.S. government would detain dozens of Buddhist and Shinto priests who had been identified as high-risk, “potentially subversive Japanese” in large part because of their religious affiliation.

That’s according to a new book published in February, “American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War” by Duncan Ryuken Williams, which chronicles how the U.S. government targeted Japanese American Buddhists during World War II for surveillance and deemed Buddhism a threat to national security.

“While Pearl Harbor was a surprise, since most intelligence agencies thought the attack would come on the Philippines, the plan was already in place for what to do (after),” Williams said Sunday, at a lecture at the San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin in Japantown. “There are a lot of books out there about the World War II Japanese American internment, but not too many about … religion, and how that mattered as well.”

American Sutra draws from more than 100 interviews, translated journal entries from priests and newly declassified government documents, to chronicle how Buddhists confronted and coped with their suffering in the camps through their faith.

Two months after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which turned the West Coast into a military zone and allowed for the forced relocation of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes to internment camps across the country.

But before then, American intelligence agencies were already compiling registries; one March 1922 report by an FBI agent listed 157 Japanese individuals from Hawaii, most who were Buddhist priests, Japanese language school principals, and prominent businessmen.

In 1940, the Department of Justice established a program to coordinate its espionage and national security projects, which put Buddhist and Shinto priests in the highest tier for risk of potential subversion, people to be arrested in wartime.

In the days and weeks after Pearl Harbor, Williams said some 70 percent of Japanese American Buddhist priests were arrested. Just about every Shinto priest was arrested, while Christian ministers had just a 17 percent chance of being taken away.

Midori Kimura, whose husband was the president of the Japanese Association in San Jose, noted her husband was not picked up despite the arrest of many other community leaders, pointing to membership cards the white pastor of her Christian church had given them.

“I remember thinking, ‘Is it right for me to have this card and expect different treatment?’ it seemed to me that it should not matter whether we were Buddhists or Christians. We were all Japanese,” Kimura said in the book.

Williams drew parallels to prejudice against immigrants and Muslim Americans in the United States today.

“This book is about this fundamental question, can you be both a Buddhist and an American at the same time? It was a live question back in December 1941,” he said. “And these questions are still relevant for us today.”

For people who had been ripped from their homes, businesses, and lives they had worked long to build, sermons from the internment camps focused on dealing with depression, loss, and communicating the Buddhist lessons about impermanence, Williams said. In early days of the camps, many infants, young children and elderly died, especially in rural camps.

Williams pointed to the Lotus Sutra, a popular Buddhist scripture that was repeatedly referenced in journals and writings he researched for the book.

The lotus is a common symbol in Buddhism, a pristine white bloom, representing purity and enlightenment through the Buddha, that floats on the surface of muddy water, representing a world of hatred, attachment, and suffering.

For many priests and others who had been arrested and sent to internment camps early on, the first Buddhist holiday they celebrated in the camps was Buddha’s Birthday, in April 1942.

In many of the camps, especially high security camps where priests were held, Japanese texts were banned and religious practices restricted. At a camp in North Dakota, a group of priests improvised the traditional Buddha’s birthday ceremony — which involves a ceremonial pouring of sweet tea over a statue of the newborn Buddha — by carving a Buddha from a large carrot, and pouring rationed coffee, sweetened with sugar, over the carrot Buddha.

Bishop Kyokujo Kubokawa had been arrested in Hawaii on the day of Pearl Harbor and taken to Camp McCoy in Wisconsin, still in his Buddhist robes. Many others were disheveled, having taken few clothes or belongings.

Kubokawa, tasked with giving the sermon for Buddha’s birthday, drew from the Lotus Sutra, and referenced his dirty robes.

“He said, ‘I haven’t had a change of clothes since December … but in the midst of the dirtiness, behind barbed wire, with our freedoms taken away … it doesn’t mean our hearts have to be broken,’” Williams recounted. “It doesn’t mean we can’t find a spiritual liberation in the midst of all of this.”

Contact Thy Vo at 408-200-1055 or tvo@bayareanewsgroup.com.