A Place for Remembering, Part 2

This post continues an earlier article about Poston Internment Camp.

(Click for the story.)

In Verlot, Washington, the logging community where I grew up, World War II seemed far away to us children. Though we Robe Valley people originally came from many places, we were a homogeneous group: Caucasian, mostly poor, and most men were loggers.

We were unaware that not far away, in communities near Seattle, descendants of Japanese immigrants cultivated truck gardens, greenhouses, and berry farms. Although the first Japanese immigrants had encountered much prejudice, still their willingness to do the heavy labor involved in railroad construction, sawmills, coal mines, and salmon canneries gave their next generation a foothold in farming or business. Our counterparts in these communities went to church and school with the children of Japanese farmers and businessmen in places like Bellevue, Seattle, the White River and Puyallup valleys, and Vashon and Bainbridge islands in Puget Sound.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, hostility and prejudice resurfaced. Although two-thirds of the 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry in our midst were loyal citizens and American born, many non-Japanese people panicked and considered every person of Japanese descent as a potential enemy.

Within two months of America’s entry into the war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the exclusion of “any or all persons” from “military areas.” At first, the intention had been to deport Japanese, but since there was no place to send them to, all these people were eventually gathered into ten hastily thrown together “internment” or relocation camps as far away from our vulnerable West Coast as possible.

A young mother from Bainbridge Island ponders an uncertain future as she awaits transport to the center at Puyallup.

My friend Peggy, who grew up in Seattle, told of her bewilderment and sadness at watching a playmate board a train with her family, lugging a suitcase that contained all she was allowed to keep from her life in Seattle. By April 1942, 2300 Japanese Americans had vanished from their Seattle- area communities. Many sold their homes and businesses for pennies on the dollar. Others, hoping to come back, refused to sell but found at war’s end that their properties had been looted or taken over by others. My friend said that the people she’d watched board the train were first sent to a temporary detention center at the Puyallup fairgrounds. Poor food and lack of privacy gave a foretaste of what life would be like for them for the duration of the war. Later most detainees from the Seattle area were sent to Camp Minidoka, in Idaho, while the majority of rural Western Washington internees went to Tule Lake, California.

But some from Washington ended up in the Arizona desert, at Poston.

 In all, nearly 20,000 Japanese Americans were sent to this and two other centers on the reservation of the Colorado River Indian Tribe. Most of the detainees were Californians, skilled in farming. It was the government’s plan to have them help develop tribal lands for later Indian use. The Tribal Council wanted nothing to do with the plan because they too had been "relocated" and mistreated by their own government. However, the work of the interned Japanese in clearing land, building irrigation systems, and building schools from handmade adobe bricks laid the foundation for the tribe to upgrade its living standard and to thrive financially, according to Michael Tsosie, director of the Colorado River Indian tribal museum.

The view from Poston Relocation Center today, with power lines, irrigated fields, and lambing sheep. The big birds in front are vultures.

When we visited Poston several years ago, we didn’t realize that the remains of some detainee housing still stood only a short distance from the monument and today's community. On our second trip to the monument, someone told us where to find the site. Though protected now by a tall chain-link fence, one can peer in and get a feel for what it must have been like to carry on community life in such crowded conditions.

This deteriorating building, showing mud bricks made by internees, was more suited to extremes of heat and cold than the original board construction.

Rows of 20' x 100' buildings housed the internees.

A building later used by tribespeople

On December 8, 1941, James Sakamoto, the editor of Seattle’s Japanese-American Courier wrote a statement about Japanese Americans’ loyalty to their country. He called his piece, "We Cannot Fail America." He said:

The list of Poston service people who died fighting for America

No matter what develops involving the United States in the present tragic world situation, we Americans of Japanese ancestry must be prepared and remember that there are certain fundamental truths from which we cannot depart. One of them is that we were born in these United States as American citizens. Now that we have become involved in the Far Eastern conflict that is going to test our worth and mettle as citizens, we cannot fail America.

There is a remote possibility of our becoming the victim of public passion and hysteria. If this should occur, we will stand firm in our resolution that even if America may "disown" us -- we will never "disown" America.

It is easy for us at this time to shout our patriotism and declare our loyalty. But we must do much more than mere lip service. Our biggest job, and the hardest, will be to go ahead, doing our work as diligently and as efficiently as we can, to contribute to America's defense. This is a time for calm thinking and quick action, in behalf of America.

It is amazing to realize that although America faltered in its responsibility to this large group of citizens, those of Japanese descent at Poston and in the other camps worked hard to carry on their lives as normally as possible. They left a great heritage of service and loyalty, even though when the Executive Order was repealed, hostility against Japanese Americans remained high. Some communities displayed signs telling evacuees to stay out. As a result, many scattered to other locations across the country.

More than 40 years after WWII ended, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. President Ronald Reagan signed the legislation apologizing to Japanese Americans on behalf of the United States.

Today, the crumbling remains at Poston seem to cry out, "Never again!"

Writer's note: Check my next blog for more about the reasons behind the anti-Japanese feelings of the time.

A Place for Remembering

Poston Camp #1 in April, 1942, just before the first internees arrived

Today the road through Arizona’s Parker Valley runs arrow-straight between flat green rectangles of alfalfa. Shimmering irrigation ditches carry water to them from the nearby Colorado River, the boundary between Arizona and California. Mountains hem the valley on either side.

    This part of Arizona is verdant now, but sixty years ago, it was a desolate desert reservation where Mohave and Chemeheuvi Indians lived in poverty. There were too few of them for the government to allocate funds to build irrigation canals so they could farm their barren lands.

    Then, when war-time hysteria forced Japanese-Americans from their West Coast homes and businesses, the Poston Relocation Center was hastily thrown up on the Colorado River Indian Reservation. Officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs saw an opportunity to bring in money from the War Department budget to make improvements and develop agricultural land. They also saw the advantage of thousands of “volunteers” to do the work, who could remain after the war and swell the reservation’s permanent population. The Tribal Council refused to be part of this plan, having themselves been “relocated” and forced to leave their homes and lands, but the BIA overrode the council.

    Starting in April, 1942, more than seventeen thousand Japanese-Americans were brought to the outpost at Poston, where they were crowded together in unfinished board-and-tarpaper barracks, twenty feet by one hundred feet. Depending upon the number of people per family, up to four families were assigned to each building.

    Actually, three complexes lay several miles apart, unofficially named "Roasten," "Toasten," and "Dustin" by their residents. Poston was not only the largest of the ten Western internment camps, it was also the hottest. Desert temperatures climbed to 115 degrees in the summer, exacerbated by humidity from the nearby Colorado River.

    When the first evacuees arrived, however, heat was not the problem.  Winter days were cool, the nights cold, and stoves had not yet been installed in the barracks. Winds stirred up blinding dust storms and whistled through the walls and floorboards. Sometimes torrential downpours turned the dirt streets and walkways into quagmires.

    Why were Japanese-Americans subjected to such treatment?

    When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, people along the West Coast panicked. Some thought that every person of Japanese heritage had the potential of being a spy - or worse. Soon, community leaders began to agitate for their removal.

    On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The order authorized the establishment of zones from which anybody could be excluded. Immediately afterward, the evacuation and internment of 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry began on the West Coast. Those sent to Poston came mostly from Southern California.

    During their three years of internment, the Japanese-Americans, many of whom were American-born and citizens, were forced to do the backbreaking work of building a working canal system, clearing fields, making their own adobe bricks for school buildings, and raising crops, pigs, and chickens for their own use. They established their own library, hospital, and other necessities. They even had a factory where they made camouflage netting for the war effort.

    While their families attempted to continue life in as normal a fashion as possible, more than twelve hundred men and women from Poston served with the United States military forces. Of the 117 casualties, twenty-five soldiers died for their country.

    Those twenty-five, and the other internees who suffered at the hands of their own country at Poston, are honored with a memorial near the site of the camp. Very little else remains to tell the story of their presence there, although in a way, the miles and miles of emerald alfalfa fields are a legacy. When the war ended and the evacuees were allowed to return to homes and businesses that in many cases no longer existed, the government lured members of the Hopi and Navajo tribes to the reservation with promises of good farming, running water, and other improvements to their lives.

    Dennis Patch, a council member of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, grew up in a house that used to be one of the barracks. He said of the Japanese, “They built the schools here, they built the roads here, they developed the acreage into fields here, they brought the power down the center of the reservation. So up until that time, we as Native people were without running water, restroom facilities, without electricity. From their suffering, we gained a lot.”

    As one stands at the Poston monument and ponders the story, one must ask, “Was the suffering worth it for America?” By the end of the war, only ten people in the entire country had been convicted of spying for Japan.

     And all of them were white.

This memorial is dedicated to all those men, women and children who suffered countless hardships and indignities at the hands of a nation misguided by mass hysteria, racial prejudice and fear. May it serve as a constant reminder of our past so that Americans in the future will never again be denied their constitutional rights and may the
remembrance of that experience serve to advance the evolution of the human spirit.

(Dedication on the Poston Memorial)

Those from Poston who fought and died for America

Alfalfa bales and fields, looking west from the Poston Monument toward the Colorado River.