At the beginning of November, Tetsuzo (Ted) Hirasaki, writing from Poston to Miss Breed in San Diego, talked about the weather as well, describing the dramatic desert temperature swings: “Brrr to have to get up in the morning. It is about 38 degrees in the morning and in the middle part of the afternoon, it is about 80+. The mornings don’t warm up until noontime.”
Hirasaki had a tubercular lesion in his biceps, but he wrote in his letter to Miss Breed that his arm was all right—though not much helped by the camp medical facilities. “The medical situation here is pitiful,” he reported. “The main and only hospital is at Camp I, 15 miles from here. Here in Camp III there is one young doctor with not too much equipment and one student doctor working in an emergency clinic. They are supposed to take care of 5,000 people!”
He scoffed, “And they (the Big Shots) wonder why we squawk.… If they don’t watch out there’s going to be trouble.” He said that one of his close friends had “got to thinking—and he went crazy. He tried to commit suicide by slashing his wrists. His roommates found him bleeding and immediately gave him first aid. He is still alive but his face is like that of a wild ape caged for the first time.” He went on, complaining again that the machine guns in the camp towers were pointing inside. “The Army had the gall to tell us that the purpose of the towers was to keep the white folk from coming to mob the Japs.… Ha, ha, ha. I’m laughing yet.… Enough of this before I go out and murder a white man by killing myself. God forgive us for the thoughts that are beginning to run amok in our brains.”
Then he added: “I am sending you a few things in appreciation of all the things you have done, as well as my sister and all the rest. The lapel pins are for you.… Have a nice Thanksgiving dinner.”
Ever cheerful, Louise Ogawa wrote back to San Diego that Thanksgiving dinner at Poston was wonderful. A couple of weeks later, as camp life became calmer at Poston, Louise wrote to Helen McNary, “After six weeks of school life in camp, everything has become similar to the life in San Diego.”
Perhaps not quite. She described their work:
I went cotton picking with my fellow school-mates to raise funds so the school will be able to have a school paper. We left home at 8:30 A.M. on a cattle truck. We were going bumpity-bump down the narrow dirt road when all of a sudden we came to a halt. We were surrounded by cotton plants. We flung the bag over our left shoulder and began picking the cotton. I often crawled on the ground to pick the fallen cotton. It certainly was a good thing that I wore slacks and a long sleeve blouse because you get scratched all over.… It certainly is a boring work. It is no wonder that the Negroes have developed such a talent in singing. I only picked 14 lbs. but I tried!… I see men with packs on their backs walking toward the east to the plateau for petrified wood or toward the west to the Colorado River to fish. This seems to be the main activity for the older folks.
* * *
On December 8, 1942, a year after the army first rejected him, Ben Kuroki was finally overseas. The kid from Nebraska had been scheduled to be left behind, peeling more potatoes or cleaning more latrines, when the Ninety-Third Bomb Group left the United States. He went to the squadron’s adjutant, Lieutenant Charles Brannan, and pleaded his case, tears rolling down his cheeks, begging again to fight. Finally, Brannan called in his secretary and said, “I’m going and Kuroki’s going, too.”
Now the Ninety-Third and its forty B-24 bombers were in Huntington, sixty miles from London. Kuroki was in Communications as a ground-bound clerk, pleading with officers to let him fly. Lieutenant Erik Larson, the armaments officer, listened as Kuroki told his story one more time, ending, “I want to prove my loyalty, sir. I can’t do it on the ground.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” asked Larson. He told Kuroki the average life span for members of B-24 crews was ten missions. Kuroki was sure. He was sent to gunnery school near London: five days of lectures about spotting enemy planes and firing just ten rounds of a .50 caliber machine gun on the ground. He was a gunner. Now he had to find a crew who would take him.
There were many openings; gunners died in crashes, gunners froze at their positions as German fighter planes buzzed around them like deadly bees, gunners got “flak-happy,” breaking down with combat fatigue. Kuroki went back to Larson, who called in Lieutenant Jake Epting, a Mississippian commanding a B-24 nicknamed “Red Ass”—its symbol was a mule kicking Hitler. He called his crew together and said, “If there is anyone here who objects to flying with Kuroki, let me know now.” No one did. The next day the Red Ass was ordered to fly to North Africa on temporary duty, with Kuroki manning a machine gun.
* * *
As the first Christmas of the internment approached, Louise Ogawa sent Clara Breed in San Diego a handmade card with happy drawings and the words: “With our Friends, the Rattlesnakes, / Coyotes, and Scorpions / We send you / SEASON’S GREETINGS / from Poston / The Oasis of Arizona.”
Fusa Tsumagari sent a more sobering report from one of the three Poston camps at the same time.
I guess you have been hearing over the radio about the riot in Camp 1. The version I heard over the radio was quite unlike anything that I have heard in camp.… I’ll tell you our version. The first outbreak occurred about two weeks ago on a Saturday night. A band of people were so sick and tired of “Stool-pigeons” going around and listening to private conversations and getting people into trouble that they went to the homes of the “Stools” and brutally attacked them. Then, two men were picked up on charges of “Attacking with Intent to Murder.” They were going to be taken to Phoenix by the FBI for a hearing. The people in Camp 1 heard this and balked. They did not want these men to be taken to Phoenix and tried for two reasons: first, they did not believe these men were guilty of the charges against them; second, if taken to Phoenix they probably would not get a fair trial. The people built large bonfires near the police station and parked all night to be on guard so that the men would not be taken out when everyone was asleep.
A week later, Tetsuzo Hirasaki sent Miss Breed a letter describing the end of the incident at Poston: “Because a Jap wouldn’t have a Chinaman’s chance in an Arizona court, the people of Camp I did not want the prisoner to be taken out, therefore the strike. After 5 days a compromise was reached and the man is to be tried here in Poston II with a Jap judge & jury.” He went on to report, “Most of the trouble was caused by misunderstandings between the people and the Chief of Police, who is anti-Jap, a big blustery fellow who likes to push a small fellow around.”
The Japanese American Citizens League was at the center of many of the troubles at the camps. Many internees scorned the league as a tool of the government and camp administrators, openly accusing JACL leaders and members of being spies and informants.
Still, the JACL continued to try to boost morale for those living in the primitive camps. Bent nails wrapped in old paper were given as gifts, valuable because the residents were building their own furniture with scrap wood left over from the hasty construction of barracks. In the autumn of 1942, the league sent out appeals to people and organizations to send more cheerful presents to the children in the camps. Thousands and thousands of Americans responded, especially through their churches. But there was a backlash, too. Newspapers around the country were bombarded with hate mail.
“Certainly the best present we give the Japs for Christmas would be a kick in the pants. Especially if they were near a large body of water.… Mae E. Collins”
“I could never look another serviceman in the face if I were to extend Christmas greetings to a Jap.… A Sailor’s Mother.”
“As to sending 40,000 Christmas presents to Japs, I feel that anyone who has the desire to do that should be living with the slimy devils.… A Mother”
Still there were thousands of Americans who obviously felt differently because packages were arriving every day. Before they were passed out, guards stripped paper, wrappings, and ribbons from the boxes; they looked and shook, searching for secret messages or contraband. Chocola
tes and other candies had to be scooped up with men’s caps. As for cards, like all mail in and out of the camps, they were routed through a post office box in New York City, where more than a hundred censors opened and read every letter and card. The censors used scissors, so letters looked like Swiss cheese or paper dolls—one more humiliation.
Even without wrapping paper or ribbons, residents were cheered by the gifts. “Yesterday night I got a X’mas present from someone I don’t even know,” wrote a seventeen-year-old internee at Heart Mountain, Stanley Hayami, in a new diary. “I got it from a lady named Mrs. C.W. Evans who lives way over in Minominee, Michigan. I got the present via the Sunday School.” All the presents sent to the camp, Hayami reported, were sent by the Presbyterian Union Church. “I really think it was a fine gesture,” he wrote. “I’m going to write to the lady as soon as I can.”
A few days later he wrote:
Far away in New Mexico in an isolated spot, there are a few very poor Mexicans who attended a certain Mission. There, poor people were told by the priest that the kids in Heart Mountain wouldn’t have a very good Christmas, because they didn’t have an income, and because they were uprooted from their homes and put into camp. Well these people were poor themselves but they wanted to help us anyway. They went to their priest and said that they didn’t have much money and the nearest store was about fifty miles away, what could they do? The priest answered by going to that store and buying some gifts and bringing them back. He exchanged these gifts for chickens, vegetables and such that they could spare and took these back to the store in exchange for the gifts. I think that I’ll remember this forever.
Hayami had begun his diary on November 29, 1942. Just a year before, he had been a sixteen-year-old junior at Alhambra High School in the San Gabriel Valley, ten miles east of downtown Los Angeles, before evacuation to the Pomona Assembly Center and then to Wyoming with his mother, father, two brothers, and a sister.
“It is no special day, but I have to start someplace,” he wrote on the first page of the diary. He described his family, which included his thirteen-year-old brother, Walt, and his nineteen-year-old sister, Grace, nicknamed “Sach.” He reported that Sach was trying to convince their parents to let her leave camp to study dress design. “Well I’ll be darned they’ve finally decided to let Sach go to college; it’s to be Washington U. in St. Louis, Missouri.” He mentioned his twenty-two-year-old brother, Frank, an engineering student at Berkeley. Then Stanley Hayami closed out the brief diary entry, saying, “Well that’s about all for now I guess. Gotta get up early tomorrow & get braced for the great bad news—report cards.”
He was obsessed with his grades, not unusual for Japanese American students. He had been a straight A student back home, but now was getting some Bs. The competition was tougher at Heart Mountain; there were just too many smart kids in the camps. The report card he was waiting for had three As and two Bs.
Two weeks later, he wrote of hearing news of the troubles at Manzanar.
Last Monday, December 7. The Isseis and Kibeis rioted at Manzanar. They were celebrating the Japanese victory at Pearl Harbor and some loyal American Nisei tried to stop them and they (rioters) killed one and injured several others. Among those that were injured and had to be taken away for his safety was Tad Uyeno. Tad lived across the street from us at San Gabriel and was our competitor. The internal police could do nothing so the Military Police were summoned into camp. The rioters charged the MPs with rocks so they threw tear bombs. When this didn’t work they shot the rioters and wounded a few. Now Manzanar is under martial law. During the riot in which there was a mob of about 4,000, one group tried to haul down the “Stars and Stripes” but failed as fourteen boy scouts stood guard with rocks and repulsed the attackers.
At one of those meetings of hundreds of people, an administration informer reported that a Kibei said, “If you think you are citizens, just try to walk out of the camp past the sentry line. If the sentries don’t shoot you, I’ll believe you are a citizen.” Two weeks before Christmas at Heart Mountain, Amy Imai walked along the fence with her five-year-old brother, who was chattering on about what Santa Claus might bring him that year. Amy couldn’t take it. She pointed to a guard tower and the spotlights and said, “There is no Santa Claus here!”
Actually there was a Santa Claus at Heart Mountain. He was the star of a Christmas carol celebration in the main hall. Hayami wrote that little kids went up to shake hands with Santa and get some candy and nuts from him, and “they looked as if they were in a trance.” They came back holding up their packages and looking intently at them.
There had been no snow so far in Wyoming, but “White Christmas” was a favorite song among the evacuees. Then at eleven o’clock the crowd started for their barracks. It was finally snowing.
Some of the carolers, almost as a joke, decided to go to the guard towers and continue singing. As Karo Kendo remembered the night, “I can still picture it. I was so cold and the [light] glistened on the barbed wire. After we sang, we heard this poor voice, almost choking with tears, saying ‘Thank You!’ How lonely he must have been up there.”
* * *
“Dec. 25, 1942,” wrote Hayami. “Merry Xmas!” He gave his mother five balls of wool yarn for crocheting, but “the presents I’m giving to Sach and Walt haven’t come yet.” He wrote:
This morning I went to church then went to Nishioka’s house with Walt, Tomo, George, and a bunch of other guys. We played a game of cards and Nishioka’s mother served us cocoa, cake, candy, and soup. When we left at around 2 o’clock we were so full, we could hardly move. Walt and I went home and got our coats, because it was beginning to get a little chilly, and then we went to see the football game. The game was between Pomona and Santa Anita which ended in a 6 to 6 tie.
After the game we came home and at four o’clock we had a nice turkey dinner; yum, yum!! At about 7:00 o’clock I went to our mess hall Xmas party. It was lots of fun! We played some games, one of which I had to eat crackers. Walt, Frank, and Dick Tomemura sang and played some Hawaiian songs …
The Christmas turkeys had been raised by residents, a good many of whom had been poultry farmers before the war. The same thing was true of all the trimmings. The evacuees made the western deserts bloom and drained some of the swamps of Arkansas. Many of the American Japanese, particularly the Issei, had real trouble eating American staples like macaroni and cheese, and other foods without vegetables. Many of them were farmers, extremely talented farmers, and they began growing vegetables and soybeans to make tofu. They created rice paddies in Arkansas. Men were catching fish in western rivers. Seeing what was happening, the WRA encouraged camps to exchange their most successful produce and soon enough local farmers were visiting the camps to find out how the Japanese were able to grow crops that had never been seen in their areas.
But when news of turkey dinners was picked up by newspapers around the country, readers reacted predictably. Letters to West Coast editors poured in from Americans outraged by the thought that the Japanese in the camps were eating better than American civilians suffering under rationing and combat soldiers who were getting by on packs of C rations. So when a group of ingenious young Nisei figured out how to capture wild ducks landing on a camp pond (they took the front windshield out of a small panel truck and drove headlong into the ducks, in the end trapping almost a hundred birds), camp administrators took the ducks. Three of the young men were accused of violating state fish and game laws and sent to the county jail.
Two days after the Christmas festivities, Hayami was already turning to more serious matters facing his fellow Nisei. He wrote of a Nisei who had joined the army immediately after the war started:
He was sent to Australia as an interpreter under General MacArthur. Soon he became tired of being a soldier with a pen, so he asked for a gun and permission to be sent into battle. At first they refused him because of the double danger he faces. He would be shot by the Japanese and because of his face he might be shot by his own men. Be
cause of his persistence however they sent him to the battle zone. They assigned an American as a bodyguard to lessen the danger, but the danger he faces is still great. So tonight in some jungle he is risking his life, so he can teach his parents’ people a lesson, and punish them for what they did. I don’t know this certain Nisei soldier, but I feel proud of him and what he is doing. He is showing that Nisei are loyal Americans.
* * *
By the end of 1942, after Colonel Bendetsen received the army’s Distinguished Service Medal for his legal work, exactly five hundred evacuees were released to return to their home communities on the West Coast under a Bendetsen-approved plan called “Mixed-marriage non-exclusive policy.” The colonel had become concerned that the children of mixed marriages living in the all-Japanese camps were becoming “exposed to infectious Japanese thought.” After the release, he reported that “mixed-blood adults predominantly American in appearance and thought have been restored to their families, their communities and their jobs.”
At the same time, Governor Charles Sprague of Oregon asked Hugh Ball, the editor of the Hood River Daily News, to visit Tule Lake and tell him what the camps were like. Ball stayed a few days and then wrote a letter to the governor that began:
For almost complete lack of objective, steady work, many of these young Japanese-Americans are rapidly degenerating into cynics, whose ideas are based upon what I believe is the utter hopelessness of their future. Some of them I have known for years, and in former days all white Americans who knew them rated them as fine, loyal American citizens. Today, a number of them with whom I talked scoffed when I suggested to them that it would be entirely in their own interests if they would regard their internment as “water under the bridge” and take this opportunity to live up to the oath they took and publicized just prior to their evacuation.
Infamy Page 14
