During the month and a half of freedom in Idaho where we had worked as volunteers to help save a $16,000,000 sugar beet crop, Manzanar Relocation Center had undergone considerable transformation. When we returned to the barbed wire confinement, a mile square for 10,000 people, in the summer of 1942, we found the detestable semi-desert land actually blossoming in spots.
At twilight, the night checkers still made their rounds with pads in their hands to account for all occupants of the tar-papered barracks rooms. And as darkness fell, the powerful searchlights from the sentry towers probed over the camp like moving fingers.
In this new community progressively becoming formalized, parents were worried by the tendency toward family disintegration. Children went their own way, since the family table and the privacy of the family circle, both of which knit a family together, were taken from the evacuees.
The greatest change I observed in Manzanar was the settled atmosphere among the residents, with the great majority thinking they would be kept there for the duration, of the war. There was a feeling of despondency, of brewing bitterness and frustration, and also a growing sentiment to struggle and fight for human decency and constitutional rights.
Many evacuees felt that after the war we would be shipped to Japan, regardless of who won the war, because of the hysteria and anti-evacuee sentiment whipped up by special interest groups on the outside. There were others who were writing to their Caucasian friends and keeping democratic-minded groups on the outside informed as to conditions in camp, and telling them that they were fighting for freedom and civil rights from behind barbed wire.
So the evacuees were thinking of their future, having more time for thoughts because they had become more accustomed to conditions in Manzanar. We were not wholly engaged in fighting the elements and in getting adjusted, as we were in the beginning. The dust storms still prevailed but we fought them by planting grass and trees which someday in the future, would break the wind.
Asked To Organize a Civil Liberties Group
One week after my return from Idaho I learned what various Nisei leaders in camp were thinking. I was approached by a few of them to organize a group which would have as its program the fighting for civil rights and better camp conditions.
These Nisei leaders represented diverse elements. There were left-wingers who had unequivocally opposed Japanese militarism prior to the Pearl Harbor attack and whose outspoken stand had irritated and even embarrassed some of the other Nisei who now joined them in the civil rights struggle. There were leaders of the Japanese American Citizens League from the Los Angeles area, then sharply criticized by Manzanar evacuees for various reasons. The criticisms of the embittered people were in large part groundless, such as that which blamed the JACL leaders for the evacuation. This was a difficult period for local chapter leaders of the JACL in relocation centers and it is a credit to the organization that its national officers in Salt Lake City gave constructive leadership that eventually won the broad support of the Nisei.
I was told by these Nisei leaders in Manzanar that I was a logical choice to organize such a group, because of my recent record in helping the agricultural furlough workers in Idaho, which was well-known and appreciated by residents of the camp.
Evacuees Were Interested In Our Idaho Experience
I called the first meeting at the centrally located Block 16 mess hall. Because it was well publicized by the Manzanar Free Press and because many of the evacuees wanted to hear about our Idaho experiences, the building was packed long before meeting time, when it was overflowing. Many stood outside and some brought boxes on which they stood to get a better view through the windows. About six or seven hundred were there.
Shortly after the meeting was called to order, a World War I veteran took the floor to denounce the United States which he bitterly criticized for throwing even a veteran like him into a concentration camp. He said the victory of the Japanese army was a victory "for all of us." "Once a Jap, always a Jap!"
Why organize a group to fight for civil rights? We were all in a concentration camp, citizens and aliens, all being treated alike, he said.
Another World War I veteran, a super-patriot who boasted confidentially, that he was writing letters to the FBI, stood up and raved about "Americanism" in a 200 per center fashion.
The Meeting Was a Good Sounding Board
Others stood up to give vent to their bitterness and we all learned for the first time how individuals and groups of people felt toward the evacuation and life at Manzanar. There were expressions of frustration, anger and hope. The meeting was a good sounding board.
A few of us spoke on the need of organizing ourselves, in fighting for civil rights for the Nisei as well as for the Issei, to help improve conditions in camp and plan and work toward relocation and resettlement in inland communities.
There were Nisei who felt that the Caucasian administrators in camp should work closely with Nisei rather than always consulting Issei and letting them carry out policies.
As the night wore on the Manzanar Citizens Federation was born. Another meeting followed two weeks later and out of this preliminary work the organization set its roots into the community. Various blocks elected their delegates to establish the Federation on a grass roots basis.
Bitterness Caused Anti-American Sentiment
The World War I veteran who had spoken so bitterly at the very first Federation meeting, failed to stop its organization. He next resorted to threats and with two henchmen, came to me almost every day, warning me to disband the Federation, or else. . .
Theirs was a fanaticism engendered by bitterness. There was a danger of their turning the bitterness of numerous other evacuees to anti-America sentiment. Many months later, after we had gone to Idaho to top sugar beets and some of us had volunteered for the army, and the Federation was long since defunct because its active leaders had left the camp, there was a riot on the first anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.
The sentiment that had developed among a sizeable number of evacuees was not pro-Japanese militarist but predominantly anti-America—caused by bitterness and bungling of the camp administration.
Manzanar's Directors Wanted Credit At Our Expense
A striking example of bungling and bullying by the director and his assistant was the strike forced on the camouflage net factory workers who were producing far above the quota and who had been cited by army authorities for efficiency. We had an incentive system. Every gang produced its quota, which was jacked up a few times, and went home fairly early in the afternoon. We were paid $16 a month.
When word came to Manzanar that the army engineer corps inspector was coining to our camp to see the net project, the camp director and his assistant decided to keep the factory workers in the plant all day long. They anticipated that the inspector might come late in the afternoon and find the factory empty. When news got around that the directors were going back on their word on the quota system, all workers began talking of striking. Early in the morning of the day the director was going to announce the all-day work rule, I went to his office for the second time to discuss the matter. I told him that members of the Federation had asked me to discourage the administration from instituting the policy, which was intended merely to put on a good show.
We Were Told To Show Our Loyalty
The assistant director, who boasted that he could out-talk anyone in camp, told me that we must show our loyalty and that hostile Americans were watching our conduct from the outside. I told him his job was to help us, not bully us.
"What can we say when the inspector sees the idle factory?" he asked me.
"He knows we produce above quota."
"That's not good enough for him when he sees the racks idle part of the day. The government won't bring in other projects," he argued.
And the assistant director had a loud-speaker system rigged up between net factory buildings and announced the all-day work policy. The workers who listened to him were deathly silent and the stop-work demonstration was on.
"Don't Be a Damned Fool and Be a White Man's Tool!"
I was then working, in the late summer of 1942, in the camouflage net factory. Most of the workers returned to the factory and continued on the old quota basis, ignoring the administration's new policy order, after a stop-work demonstration that lasted a few days.
The ringleaders of the small pro-militarist group took advantage of this administration bungling. They intimidated the workers. They still came to me with all sorts of threats and told me to dissolve the Federation.
"Think it over. Don't be a damned fool and be a white man's tool!" they would tell me.
"We won't dissolve the Federation," I'd answer them.
"What the hell good is your citizenship in this concentration camp?"
A Pro-Militant Rally Was Followed By Secret Meetings
As was expected, these people called a meeting. It was a rally in support of Japanese militarists and war financiers and emperor worship, with plenty of "banzai!" The participants made wild charges of immoral behavior toward evacuees and misappropriation of funds by the Caucasian administrators. The camp administrators became excited when they heard about the meeting and sent police officers to suppress it. After this, the small and rabid pro-Japanese militarist group held secret meetings at night in the apple orchard.
My friend, the former longshoreman, brought the matter of the pro-militarist meetings before the camp council and criticized the behavior of its leaders. Subsequently, the administration, which was timid when it came to handling problems of this sort, said nothing when the pro-militarist elements appeared before the camp council to demand the retraction of the criticism made by the former dock worker.
The former longshoreman stood his ground and, ironically, he seemed to be on trial. He was a camp councillor himself and a militant fighter for better living conditions and civil liberties.
I remember that meeting, where Tomomasa Yamazaki, a man in his early thirties, with a keen mind and who perhaps was the most brilliant person on the council, supported his colleague on the council.
The Most Encouraging and Challenging Speech I Heard
Yamazaki spoke of the urgency of winning back constitutional rights, of defeating the anti-evacuee hysteria on the outside and to plan for resettlement, and to work closely with Caucasian committees being formed on the West Coast and elsewhere in our defense. He was practically alone among the intimidated councillors, but spoke in a clear voice and with proper perspective for the welfare of all, in supporting the stand taken by the former longshoreman. Yamazaki was an alien who had been brought to the United States when he was a child and educated here. Because of discriminatory laws against naturalization of Orientals, he remained an alien. His speech in that crowded camp council room, where intimidation and fear prevailed, was the most encouraging and challenging and impressive speech I ever heard behind the barbed wire confines of Manzanar.
Yamazaki later volunteered for military service and while on occupational duty in Japan, he died in an air crash. During the war, on numerous occasions, I recalled his speech—when I reviewed the bungling treatment of evacuees, particularly in the earlier period; when I saw the bitter renunciants of U. S. citizenship among evacuees preparing to go to the Tule Lake camp where they were segregated; when I saw treatment of Japanese prisoners of war on the Burma front in U. S. army camps; when I saw the atrocious treatment of Japanese POWs by Chiang Kai-shek's troops; when I was detailed to study the psychological warfare of the Chinese Communist troops as an American army officer, and observed the treatment of Japanese POWs, who were given better treatment than Chinese soldiers and rehabilitated and reeducated to rid them of the militarist psychology.
Manzanar was a great school. It gave me background and made me a more confirmed fighter for civil rights and against militarism.