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A
SISTER'S GRIEF
Proclamations 3 & 4 placed travel restrictions on
Americans of Japanese descent. Right: Portland, Oregonian Hellan Yamahiro
Murao. Hellan's sister Mary was taken
to a Salem Hospital after a relapse of tuberculosis which occurred after
Dec. 7. Her mother and father had died within 3 years of each other a few
years earlier. |
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Right:
The Oregon State Board of Control established a number of tuberculosis
hospitals, including this one, at various points around the state. |
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At the
time of Public Proclamations #3 and #4, Hellan Yamahiro Murao was 15. Her 2 younger brothers were in a foster home,
as was she. Her foster family was Euro-American. She did not expect to
be affected by any 'evacuation'. The Army, however, had decided any one
one-sixteenth Japanese in ancestry, or more, would be imprisoned.
"The
plan was for her [Hellan's sister Mary] to go up with the
boys. She was going to take the 2 boys, and I was going to stay with this Caucasian family.
I was very attached to this family because - I don't know, I think there was
an affection or a show of affection or a sense of belonging that I just hadn't had. It was very important for me to keep this. I think Mary
sensed this, and so she said 'you stay there' and she would evacuate with the two boys and then she had her relapse and
went to the hospital and she died. So within a week's time I had to make a very serious decision...
I'm not fully aware how she died but she had tuberculosis and when she had her relapse, she went back to the
hospital in Salem and -- as she wrote to my younger brother -- in order to get well faster so that she could go to evacuate with them, she was going to take what she called
a gas treatment. I may be inaccurate but this involved collapsing a lung and then letting it inflate after
a period of time. Now whether this is medically sound or not I don't know.
She
was so anxious to have is done. Now remember, she was 20 years old, so she
may not have been terribly informed in her thinking. |
"Her doctor was
out-of-town and somebody consented to letting her have this gas treatment,
and it was a risky kind of thing but somebody consented to let her take
it. The morning that she took it, she wrote a letter to my younger brother
which, incidentally, I have kept all these years, until this last spring,
when I gave it to him. And in that letter she wrote that she was going to
get well quickly so that she could take the two boys to camp. And she had
just gotten her hair cut and shampooed and she had fixed her fingernails
and she was writing this letter to them, then she was going to walk over
to have this gas treatment. Well, that was a Friday and by six o'clock
that afternoon she was dead. So she went very quickly from being a well
person to being gone.
At that time there was a curfew for all Japanese and
Portland. We had to be in from 8 at night until six in the morning, I
think it was, and we could not travel outside of a radius of five miles
from our home. Early in the day I got a telephone call from Salem saying
that Mary was seriously ill and could I come? It happened that in my
foster family there was going to be a wedding. So my foster mother was at
the hairdresser's, and everybody was all excited about the wedding the
next day. But somehow I realized this was something very serious, and I
said "Yes I'llcome right away" knowing that it took in those
days a good hour and a half or so to get there. It's 50 miles away, but it
took a long time to get there.went immediately downtown to the Western defense command
or whatever office it was, I don't even remember, because I knew I had to get permission to go outside the five-mile radius. |
"I called my sister's boyfriend who
was maybe 21 or 22, and told him what the problem was. I said I would go
and get Roy and Harry, my two brothers, and we should go right away. It was the middle of a workday for him, and it wasn't convenient, but he somehow
realised that it was very serious too, and so we met at the office, th is Western defense command office, and started getting permission to leave. This involved a telephone call to
Salem to find out that this was. in fact. an emergency. The people at the office talked to doctors
and nurses who swore that, yes, she was ill, and yes, the family should come immediately. And then they hung up and they talked about it for awhile and decided that if we couldn't travel at night maybe we should have
a place to stay overnight. So then they called the hospital back again. This was a state tuberculosis sanitarium, and they didn't have facilities for
guests. So after much conversation, it was settled at the four of us would drive out, and yes someplace in the hospital they would find some kind of accommodation to keep
us off the road. |
"I can't remember how many other people they had to call, but even as a teenager, I thought my God, this is what they call
government red tape. It was just interminable, and I was getting more more upset. It was three to four hours minimum that we set
there on telephones, waiting and waiting. They finally let us go, and we didn't take overnight
clothe with usis because it just didn't occur to me. We just left,
drove to Salem and by the time we got their she was dead. Her room was empty.
Her name was still on the bed, so I knew we were in the right room. She was not there. The body was not there. In fact I didn't know she was dead, because I couldn't find her. I
couldn't find anybody who could tell me anything about her. Somebody, I don't remember
who, but somebody told us, yes, that patient had died. But they didn't know where the body was, and they didn't have any other information. I never did speak to a doctor or anybody who
was connected with it who could give me any kind of information. was so young then, but I felt so grown-up, because I was, you know, used to being independent. I certainly didn't
perceive of myself as being a child." |
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| Below:
a typical tuberculosis ward. Because of the risks involved, workers in TB
hospitals were often drawn from disenfranchised groups of the population.
My grandfather, a Cherokee from Oklahoma, was one. He met my grandmother,
the daughter of Swiss immigrants, there. She was also one. |
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| Above:
Pat Morita, one
of America's favorite movie stars, was picked up from a TB hospital and carried
off to Gila River concentration camp. |
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[ed.
note: 15 year old Helann was imprisoned at Minidoka, Idaho, as the head of
a family which included her 13 year old brother Roy and 11 year old Harry,
for the crime of having Japanese ancestry.] |
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"But I didn't think the treatment I got was right. I'm not sure whether it was because I was a child or what,
that we were treated in such a cavalier manner. It was yes, the patient has died, and they didn't know where the body was. No official confirmation,
no nothing. I turned to George, who was my sister's boyfriend, and said
" I'm not staying here" and he said " but we have to, the Army said we have
to". And I said "Not me. We're going to go home and with George
in tow - he was the chauffeur -- and my two younger brothers, we took off without telling anybody. It was as if the hospital, I mean everybody, had gone home for the day. I felt that there was nobody there to talk to us and I had no desire to see my sister's body once
I knew she was dead. And often thought why didn't I want to see her? But it was not important to me then."
- Helann Yamahiro Murao [ed. note: most texts print Ms. Murao's name as
Helen. In the camp archives, the spelling is Hellan Yamahiro] |
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"At
the end of April 1942, military orders were posted for all residents of
Japanese ancestry, aliens and nonaliens ( a euphemism for citizen)
to report for evacuation and processing at the North Portland Livestock
Pavilion. There was about a 5-day grace period. So again, I notified the
military authorities that I had no intention of conforming or obeying what
I considered to be absolutely unconstitutional, illegal and unenforceable
military orders, and that I was going home to Hood River, some sixty miles
up the Columbia River. It was again my thought that since I was testing
the curfew, I might as well test the validity of evacuation orders
too. I
received a call from the military offices in Portland saying that the MPs
would be coming to get me on May 12, 1942, and that they would escort me
to the Portland Livestock Pavilion. I indicated that I would cooperate but
would go under coercion only. " - UO alum
Minoru Yasui. Mr. Yasui and Portland - and Benton County - residents were sent
to Portland, while Hood River Oregonians were sent to Pinedale in
California, for unknown reasons. |
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Portland Assembly Center |
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A
few resisted: “I wasn’t a rebel looking for a cause...In fact, I was preparing to
go. But in the days before I was supposed to leave, I realized that I
couldn’t do it....We had Constitutional rights. I didn’t think
anything could happen to us. We had a rude awakening...When curfew came,
all my dorm mates were sympathetic to me.
Each day, as it neared 8 p.m.,
they would find me wherever I was on campus to make sure I made curfew. They
didn’t want me to get in trouble." |
"..One day as I was rushing back to the
dorm, I thought, ‘Why am I dashing back and my roommates are not?’ As
soon as the question came up, I knew I couldn’t accept the curfew. I
turned around and went back to the library. Nobody turned me in...But then
I thought, ‘If I couldn’t accept curfew, how can I accept this thing?
It’s even worse. I’m not going to allow my citizenship to be usurped
without my protest. I’m going to stand up for my rights.’ Immediately
I knew I couldn’t board the bus.” -Gordon Hirabayashi |
Below:
UW
alum Gordon Hirabayashi, currently professor emeritus at the University
of Alberta, Canada.
For his troubles, Mr.
Hirabayashi received
a prison sentence. He was a Quaker and was sentenced to a prison camp
in Arizona which housed other Quakers, Hopi Indians, Mennonites and
Jehovah Witnesses, all of whom were conscientious objectors. The
government refused to pay his transport costs and he hitchhiked to the
prison. |
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Above:
UW student Gordon Hirabayashi in 1942. Below Right: Mr. Hirabayashi today |
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There
were those who simply refused to budge, trying to "pass". In the San
Francisco Bay area,
22 year old Fred Korematsu had a Euro-American sweetheart and lived in a trailer
court, pretending to be Chinese. He was arrested, chose to fight it
legally, and his appeal
wound its
way toward the Supreme Court, alongside that of Minoru Yasui and
Gordon
Hirabayashi. |
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Above
left: Fred
Korematsu in the arms of his dad in the family nursery. Above right: Mr.
Korematsu with his parents, also in the nursery. ed. Note: Mary Ventura's
husband had written the Justice Dept. asking for an exception for his
wife, "either by making him
responsible for her acts or by his volunteering for military service."
He was refused. Mary was later taken from her husband's side and
imprisoned at Minidoka, Idaho. 1942 was the first and only time, since the
days of slavery, that families were forcibly broken up without a
crime being committed. In 2002, the process was again repeated with
Americans of Arab or Iranian descent. |
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"These
are critical days. To strain some technical right to defeat the military
needs in this vital area during this extraordinary time could mean perhaps
that the 'constitution, laws, institutions' of this country to which her
petition alleges that she is 'loyal and devoted' would be for a time
destroyed here on Puget Sound by an invading army. "... How many here
believe that if our enemies should send a suicide squadron of parachutists
to Puget Sound that the Enemy High Command would not hope for assistance
from many such American-born Japanese?" |
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| Above:
Seattle, 1942. In March, American-born Mary Asaba Ventura, who had married a
Filipino-American of Seattle filed for a writ of habeas corpus, pointing
out that the curfew violated her civil rights. The court ruled that, since
habeas corpus refers to imprisonment, she had no case. Her writ was
premature. The
court ruling in Ms. Ventura's case summed up succinctly the ridiculous nightmare - and the
racism - which many Euro-Americans had conjured up for a century: |
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The San
Francisco newspapers had reported as early as March 2nd that Mr. DeWitt, after
consulting with Oregon Governor Charles Sprague (above right) and other western
governors, had decided to permit Americans of Japanese descent to
live only in "concentration camps".
On March 24, the
Proclamations, No. 3 and 4, had been issued and everyone was largely
"frozen in place" according to news accounts. OSU students who
had returned to their parents' home would find it difficult to get back to
OSU. |
On
April 28th, all OSU students of Japanese descent were ordered to prepare
for evacuation, most likely to the Portland assembly area, the Portland
International Exposition Center or "Expo".
OSU students were
given handouts (click here) which
must have been standard Government Issue (GI), since none were parents,
nor were they likely to have been, in 1942 and yet there is an emphasis on
infant needs. |
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The
instructions specified that each must take bedding, toiletries and
clothing. Optional were pillows, bassinets, folding camp stools and coat
hooks but "only if
family is able to pack and transport with the required items". Those
students who were at their parents' homes were ordered to the Portland Assembly
Center or to the Pinedale Center (see later pages), depending upon their
location at the time the orders were issued. Those who remained in
Corvallis waited. |
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Portlander
Sam Sasaki with all he and his 2 sisters and widowed mother will be
permitted to take with them. |
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"No
pets of any kind will be permitted." -
Instructions to All Persons of Japanese Ancestry, from the office of Gen.
J. L. DeWitt
"Probably what I
remember most about that morning was that Lassie, our long-haired Scottie,
followed our pickup all the way down to Highway 35. I remember very well
for he had never followed us before. At our emotional parting, we had
patted Lassie and said goodby in the manner one might talk to a child. I
thought this was our final parting, and I can only guess that Lassie
sensed this too."
- Oregonian Misuyo Nakamura (above right), from Odell. Misuyo
Nakamura from Odell, Oregon. Mrs. Nakamura was imprisoned in Tule Lake concentration
camp, south of the Oregon border,
alongside many OSU alumni, for the crime of having Japanese ancestry.
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Perhaps
because people were stripped from their pets, there were, in the camps, a very
large number of art works devoted to animals, like that to the right: "Excepting
for the restrained carving of the head of this animal, and the squaring
off of his feet and tail, he is presented exactly as found in the
desert." - Allen
H. Eaton |
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Left:
A 'kobu', from Gila concentration camp in Arizona. "
Once dead bark and enveloping decaying wood is removed, the
cherished kobu is revealed - unusual in form, beautiful in grain,
often rare in color and no two of them ever alike." -
Oregonian Allen
H. Eaton |
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Left:
"...nothing
has been done to this nature sculpted bird except to remove surplus soft
wood and hand-rub the solid remainder."
- Allen H. Eaton |
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"One
day a resident of Minidoka, walking in the desert, spied a loose piece of
old sagebrush; he picked it up to see what might be imprisoned there, and
so was released a beautiful flying bird.... |
Left:
From
the context of Mr. Eaton's remarks, it's likely that the remarkable eagle
at left was "found" by OSU student Harry Abe's father. |
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Additionally,
the order to report to the Expo had occurred at harvest time for many
crops. A year's work and income were thus lost. Similarly, 7 OSU students
were in the last 2 months of their senior year. These 7 are indicative of
the talent thrown to the wolves in the imprisonments at a time of critical
need in the life of the nation. |
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Above:
Farmers list their assets for an official of the Federal Reserve in Forest
Grove, Oregon |
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For
others, leaving for the Assembly Center was not so simple. The Army had
advised people to sell their homes, their farms, their businesses.
Fire sales, however, are not ideal
circumstances for securing equitable prices. At most, people had 2 weeks
to sell goods they would not have chosen to part with under ordinary
circumstances. Some received as little as 4 days notice.
"Caucasians came
to us to buy our cow and calf. They told me 'This is forty dollars. This
is fifty dollars.' I would just reply 'all right'. We had a Fergie
tractor. We sold it" -
Oregonian Miyozo Yumibe, of Dee Oreogn. For the crime of having Japanese
ancestry, Mr. Yumibe, his wife, 12 year old daughter, 6 year old daughter,
and 2 year old son were sent to Tule Lake concentration camp.
Some were able to
find tenants for their farms. Sometimes this worked out. Often it did not.
In Oregon, the most common stories of the latter involved pillage and
neglect. Orchards barely survive the latter. Strawberries never do.
In California, the
stories are more often of outright fraud. Plundering - dispossession - of
the families was after all - and openly so in many instances - a primary
purpose of the imprisonments: |
Above:
"EVACUATION SALE
FURNITURE
ALL MUST BE SOLD" |
Above:
Everything else gone, a discouraged farmer rests on a piece of
firewood. |
Below:
Talent wasted. Henry
Ushijima, formerly a sound
engineer in Hollywood, plays dance records at a dance given by the Girls'
Recreation Committee at Manzanar" concentration
camp. -NARA |
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"George's
brother was given notice that he had 24 hours to vacate his land and that
he and George were to be taken by train to relocation camp somewhere in
the Southwest. George's brother gathered all his equipment, the tractors,
trucks and locked them up in the barns. Locked
up his farmhouse with the furniture inside. He then asked his neighbor, a
white farmer who owned the farm next to his, to please watch over his
property till he was able to return. He also gave this farmer a tractor, a
truck and other valuable equipment as payment for looking after his farm.
George and his brother spent four years in internment camp and he told me
what kept their spirits and hopes up was the dream of going back to their
farm and resuming their planting. Sadly, there is no happy ending here.
When the brothers went back to their farm, they were shocked to find the
white farmer has confiscated their land by claiming squatter's
rights." -
Donald Shishido |
The
US Congress' 'Tolan Committee', in 1942, reported: "A
typical practice was the following: Japanese would be visited by
individuals representing themselves as FBI agents and advised that an
order of immediate evacuation was forthcoming. A few hours later, a
different set of individuals would call on the Japanese so forewarned and
offer to buy their household and other equipment. Under these conditions
the Japanese would accept offers at a fraction of the worth of their
possessions. Refrigerators were thus reported to have been sold for as low
as $5."
After the war,
people's reported losses. alone. totaled $150 million, according to
the US Commission on Wartime Relocation - about fifteen dollars for every
man, woman and child living at that time in Oregon, Washington and
California, which is where the plundering took place. The bulk of this
wealth, of course, was stolen by a relatively small number of West Coast
residents, with the implicit permission of their neighbors. |
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waste: 4
OSU seniors were in Agriculture, where supplies were so critically short during the
War, that rationing was introduced and enforced. 2 were in Engineering and
the last in Pharmacy, all occupations in great demand after Pearl
Harbor. All 7 were American citizens, had signed the petition, and
were prepared to contribute greatly to the War effort. |
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| "Seattle architect George
Nakashima is conducting a workshop on decorating 'apartments' with
scrap materials"- the Bancroft Library |
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Throughout
the American gulag, not only farmers, technicians and professionals were
wasted, but talented artists of every category as well. A good share of
these went to the camps, sitting alongside the OSU students who reported
to the Portland Livestock Expo, where "there
were roughly two thousand people packed in one large building. No beds
were provided so they gave us gunny sacks with straw, that was our bed."
- James Fujii, Congressional Report |
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Above:
Yuriko Amamiya, who had danced since she was six and studied
with Martha Graham. |
Above:
The Norakuro dance band at
Minidoka concentration camp. Portlander Roy Matsunaga was the band
leader. |
Above:
The Tule Lake concentration camp's philharmonic orchestra. The camp also
had a swing 'Big Band'. |
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Left:
A man surveys the floor, which covered bare earth, at the Portland Expo on April 7,
1942. Mr. Fujii underestimated the number imprisoned in Portland. 4290
people were interned there, 3800 under this one roof. The first to
report, as ordered, was Junichi Doi (right) who took a break from his
reading, while waiting, for a photo. Mr. Doi was a saw mill worker and
farmer. |
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An overhead view of the Portland International Stockyards Exposition
Center, or "Expo", and parking lot. |
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Right:
Laying the floor down in April. Right Center: A frontal view of the Assembly
Center. Far right: the government-affiliated Council at the Assembly
Center. These Councils received mixed reviews, and from Corvallis, Oregon,
in 2004, it is impossible to discern the truth, if there is a single
truth. |
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Outlying
buildings at the Portland Assembly Center included a hospital, a laundry, other support facilities,
and the military police
compound (left).
Although simply working
in a German camp was grounds for revoking US citizenship, no
accountability has been demanded of those who worked in the US camps. |
Right:
At the Portland Expo, 11 year old Hiroko Terakawa, like her mother a California native. Her
father was a clergyman. Her friend is Lillian Hayashi. For the
crime of having Japanese ancestry, the Terakawas were shipped to Minidoka,
and the Hayashis to Tule Lake concentration camps. |
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Right:
the Portland assembly area, the Portland International Exposition Center
or "Expo", surrounded by barbed wire and with sentries.
"This
was the the county-fair grounds. All the places were very familiar to me
as a child, and I recognized the place where we were assigned as the
pavilion where they kept animals. They had these 1x6's or 1x9's, however
large the boards are, with big knot holes just over the pens. It was
a huge pavilion with 12-foot high plywood walls and with curtains as
doors. Row after row after row of these. My 2 brothers and I were assigned
one of these.... I didn't know a soul... You probably have not experienced
this yourself but in the late Thirties and Forties in my neighborhood
where I grew up with Causasian kids we were all just one big happy
family... When I went to camp I was just overwhelmed with the numbers of
Nisei [ed Note: children of Japanese
immigrants] boys and girls and
everybody. But also I remember taking walks with my sister's boyfriend
[ed. note: her late sister who had died of TB - see above] and telling him how angry I was at the Japanese
people, at the world, people in general, the country in general, the war,
the everything. And that I wanted to have nothing to do with the Japanese
people....And he would say, now you think about it. You may feel
different, but you aren't different. You're one of us. Like it or not, you
are here." -
Portlander Hellan Yamahiro Murao
(left) |
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Below:
15 year old Helann was imprisoned at Portland then Minidoka, Idaho, as the head of
a family which included her 13 year old brother Roy and 11 year old Harry.
See right. |
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| "May
5, 1942. The Evacuation Order was announced on the 28th of April. In a
great hurry, we packed up all our household goods and finally, in the
three days from May 2 (Saturday) to May 5, everyone in the Portland area,
to Montavilla and 120th was evacuated. One-fifth of the people had left on
Saturday...A soldier was standing guard at the entrance. It was cloudy as
we made our way to the stockyard"
- Diary of
Oregonian Saku Tomita |
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Left:
One of our local "potential saboteurs", who terrified the US
Army. 18 month old (Hiromu) Richard Sumida, was later sent to Minidoka
concentration camp along with his widowed grandmother, his mother and
father, and uncle, for the crime of having Japanese ancestry. Like his
father, he was born in Oregon. His mother was a native of Washington. |
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Above:
the staff of the Assembly Center's newsletter, the Evacuator. |
Above:
At the Assembly Center |
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"Our
quarters were above the manure of the livestock, so you can imagine the
smell. You can imagine the smell. That's where we lived. There were
ply-board walls about 10-foot high, and we could see the ceiling of the
exposition center. The lights were way above and were not for reading
purposes and we had no extra lights. There were no extra electrical
outlets. So, we lived with all of those extra people and everything was
communal. We went to the mess hall to eat and our bathroom facilities were
about a block away in one area. Our mother washed the clothes for us and
she had to go to a certain area. All of our toilets and showers were all
open, they did not have time to make them for privacy. I think there were
about 12 toilets and about that many showers. Some of us didn't want to be
seen by curious gawkers so we would shower at night. We existed more or
less, because there was nothing else to do but live day by day." -
Portlander Harue
Mae (Okazaki) Ninomiya. Ms Ninomiya, her brothers Tsutomu,
Minoru,Saburo,her father Hidkich, mother Tetsuno were all sent to Minidoka
concentration camp for the crime of having Japanese ancestry. |
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"Today
we did not have any bread for lunch or for dinner either. I did not have
enough to eat. I did not take a shower tonight because apparently it's not
good for my burn....I can not sleep well because of the children coughing
noisily in the next room with their whooping cough.
May 10 (Saturday). Temperature 59 deg. (1:30 p.m.). The sound of rain
in the morning. It is so very cold because we do not have any heaters."
- Diary
of Oregonian Saka Tomita ed note: Ms. Tomita, her husband Henry and 2
small daughters were imprisoned in Minidoka concentration camp, in Idaho. |
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| "There
is so very little to eat.
May 12
(Tuesday). Clear. Today, like yesterday, many new people arrived and with
all the newcomers, this place has suddenly become quite lively. " Diary
of Oregonian Saku Tomita
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OSU AT THE
ASSEMBLY CENTER |
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Among
other OSU students at the Assembly Center in Portland was Jack
Yoshihara, above left. Mr. Yoshihara is top right in the
photo. Jack
(Chiaki) Yoshihara is remembered for his superb play on the OSU team
which went to the Rose Bowl in 1942 but he was also a pioneer in
Oregon judo,
and is pictured in 1936, in the photo above right where Mr.
Yoshihara is at top, center, as a teen. Mr.
Yoshihara was sent to Minidoka,
and was not permitted to play in the Rose Bowl. The photo above
right commemorates the retirement of Bunuyemon
Nii, who had been teaching at the Foster Hotel since 1926. At
right is a pin from the 1942 Rose Bowl. |
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Above:
Tommy Toyota, of Cauthorn Hall, OSU. The sabotage of the war effort
wreaked by racism was evident often as
finely honed minds were thrown into the grinder in a moment of great need
for them. Tommy Toyota was a mechanical
engineering graduate whose new wife Lillian was a junior, the daughter of
a farmer from Parkdale, Oregon. |
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Leagues
were organized in most of the concentration camps of the 'gulag'. The
photo at left is from Tule Lake where many OSU students and alums were imprisoned.
In time, the Quakers were able to secure Mr. Takami's freedom in exchange
for a promise to move to Connecticut, where he played varsity ball. |
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Above: OSU Sophomore Marjorie
Horagami, who lived for a time at Waldo Hall and
then off campus. When she was 18, her mother told her she had been
born abroad, when her mother - denied citizenship for racial reasons -
visited relatives. |
Above:
Ralph
Takami,
on the varsity baseball team, was named by the OSU yearbook as a
prospective pitcher in the pro leagues. |
Baseball
is nearly as old in Japan as in the US. It came with the immigrants to
this country and merged with their children's love of the game, which was
a part of their birthright as Americans. |
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Life went on in the Assembly
Center. At right are Portlander Ms. May Saito and Ms. Fumiko Nunotani. Ms.
Saito was a seamstress and her husband Emil was a commercial artist. With
their 1 and 2 year old children, they were sentenced to Minidoka
concentration camp. Ms.
Nunotani was sentenced to Minidoka concentration camp too, where she met
her 66-year-old father who had been staying in... |
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...Washington when the
imprisonments were announced. He therefore was sent first to Puyallup
rather than Portland. Her mother had died earlier.
"In the
evening I plugged in the radio to listen to it, but it doesn't work until
the electricity comes on at 7:00 p.m." Diary
of Oregonian Saku Tomita
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Right: Ironing was
folded and placed on news papers on the floor since no racks were
available. Photos are from May 10, 1942 |
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Left: The "library at the Center
was this small area, shared by children and adults alike. Far
right: Men did much of the cooking. Photos are from
May 31, 1942 |
Saku Tomita's
diary speaks of a wedding of an OSU alum, Milton Maeda, to an OSU student at the center,
of a death, a birth, of a birthday celebration for OSU student Harry Abe's
sister May as well as for her own daughter. |
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"Miss
Gates, Mrs. Hodge, and Mrs. Walker came to visit (2:30 p.m.). We spoke to
each other from opposite sides of the fence, and they were glad to see we
were all well and happy. Someone who looked like a minister from somewhere
came into the wire enclosure, which struck me as unusual. A soldier stood
by, watching." -
Diary of
Oregonian Saku Tomita |
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Left:
"Jimmy Shiozaki sells a an Oregon Journal to R.
Maeda." The only R. Maeda listed in camp
records belongs to Richiki Maeda, and his young son Roy. Mr. Maeda was
father to OSU's Milton Maeda, who was married at the Portland Assembly
Center, to another OSU student, who in turn was sister-in-law of OSU's Ray
Yasui. OSU was well-represented in the camps. |
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There
is no record of Jimmy Shiozaki, listed in the caption for the photo above
right, in camp records. Jack, Ronald and Harry
Shiozaki are
registered. All were sent to Minidoka concentration camp. The newspaper
headline is of the Doolittle raid on Tokyo. The pilots were Oregonians, "from
the 17th Bombardment Group and the 89th Recon Squadron who were then based
in Oregon". The raid was made with B-25 bombers modified
for the one-way trip from a carrier (right). The pilots bailed out over
Asia after bombing factories and docks. |
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Above:
17 year old Bernice Iwata, at the Assembly Center's post office, had a
perpetual line of young boys asking if they'd received mail. She and 2
teenage brothers, and her mother, were all sent to Minidoka. The camp
records state that her mother was married, and the absence of her father
hints of one of the community leaders arrested in December and imprisoned
elsewhere. |
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| Above:
a B-25 on the Doolittle raid leaves the USS Hornet. |
Above:
the pilots crash-landed in China where guerrillas searched for them on the
mountainsides. |
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