A man in GI uniform, walking through the Manzanar Relocation Center in the winter of 1943, presented a strange sight. And so it must have been with me as I got off the bus at the gate, walked through the opening in the barbed wire fence and headed through the sandy fire-breaks between rows of tar-paper barracks for my home.
I remember the quiet evening and the feeling of emptiness which I experienced. Many of the youth had left the camp for employment or education in the mid-west and east. Some had volunteered for the army. Still others, frustrated and bitter because of the evacuation, were waiting to be segregated by the government and sent to a camp at Tule Lake in northern California. It was understandable for aliens to choose segregation, but a considerable number of young men and women over 17 had renounced their citizenship.
There were others too young to decide for themselves, who were also affected because their parents turned their faces away from America of the anti-Oriental racists and press, and the economic vultures of the West Coast who grabbed the properties of various evacuees.
I had a few days furlough to spend with my family before going overseas. It being suppertime when I arrived, I headed for the familiar mess hall of block 22 and as I had expected, my wife Taeko was there. We rushed back to the barracks room where our four-month-old child kicked and played in a makeshift crib.
I remember the long discussions we had during my furlough. Someday we would tell our daughter of this home in a concentration camp, in an America of democratic traditions. We hoped for better conditions, for the return of sanity through struggles of freedom-loving peoples.
Being born an Oriental in a nation with lashing waves and an undertow of racism meant the starting of life with several counts against her. Also, the fact that her birthplace was Manzanar Relocation Center gave us disturbing thoughts.
During this period, the West Coast press still howled at us like starved wolves. One day it wanted segregation of the "loyal" and "disloyal" in the camps. This was good propaganda to point out that "Japs" could not be trusted. But when the government set the process of segregation in motion, a howl rose against the program, too, for it might easily lead to the return to the West Coast of those cleared in the screening.
Hysteria Broader Today and Follows Axis Pattern
The atmosphere was no different from that prevailing today, only the hysteria and fear are much more widespread today. Then, it was Japanese aliens and Japanese Americans who faced the vicious attacks. Today, the attack is against the militant, organized and vocal left which criticizes the harmful, wasteful and dangerous war program, the striking down of civil rights and hits official graft and corruption. The Communists are the first targets, as in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy or Zaibatsu Japan, and as happened in these countries, the repression soon extends to progressives, liberals and trade unions.
We finally won to considerable extent in our struggle against the anti-Oriental elements and this is history. We have people who time and time again say that this could only happen in a democracy like the United States.
Such thinking is so commonly expounded that people actually take it at its face value. In times like this, it is dangerous thinking, for from it flows the disarming assurance that someday, despite how bad repression is today, conditions will improve automatically.
Limitation of Democracy Brought Out Sharply
The mere fact that such violations of constitutional rights as those perpetrated against us took place in a nation with democratic tradition shows up the limitations of our democracy. Fortunately, democratic-minded white people were able to speak out on the West Coast and they fought side by side with us while they were lashed as "Jap-lovers."
Today, the whole nation is being whipped up into war hysteria and fear of non-conformity to the war program and all its trimmings has silenced many, many people who spoke out yesterday. More must speak out for a constructive policy of peaceful co-existence with other nations.
At this stage, how can one say that someday all the repression will pass by, that "it can only happen in a democracy"? Without the freedom of the press, which means the right to read, without the freedom to assemble and to discuss, without the freedom to think and advocate, to lead or to follow and support causes and ideas, democratic rights cannot be won or preserved.
The Future Must Be Her Friend, Not To Fear, But To Look Forward To
There are times in a person's life when a great and rapid change takes place in him. Such a moment was my visit to Manzanar. When I saw my child in that tar-papered barracks, I yearned for a future which would be her friend.
Such a future must be a peaceful one, no more an era when man must choose between war or depression, or when a large segment of mankind lives in poverty while government subsidy buys "surplus" food to be stored in caves, and/or destruction of man's worldly goods goes on in order to keep prices high and guarantee profits for the few.
Is it a good and efficient system that operates best when it produces for destruction, either by plowing under when many people starve, or by killing and maiming millions in war? This gives neither security nor peace. It breeds fear, hatred, oppression and wanton death.
GI's Father Seeks To Go To the Enemy Country Because of Parental Love
While spending my furlough at Manzanar, I visited and received old friends. An old man whose son studied with me at Camp Savage, came by to ask me about the military intelligence school. I told him his son had become a sergeant and was already on his way to some Pacific island.
"I am going to Tule Lake Camp for segregees," he said. He wanted to be repatriated to Japan so that he could live with his youngest daughter. "I must look after her. My son is a soldier and he will take care of himself."
"Did you discuss this matter with him?" I asked.
"He will understand. I've been father and mother to both and now I must look after my youngest," he explained.
This was a tragic situation—a son in the U. S. army and his father planning to be repatriated to the enemy country. The man was speaking as a parent, with deep emotion and I understood his feelings.
The Youth Against Detention In Their Own Way
On a cold morning, I walked with Taeko to the gate. I was leaving Manzanar for the last time. As we waited for a bus, Ralph Merritt, the well-liked project director, drove up to the gate. How unfortunate, I thought, that he had not been assigned to Manzanar from the beginning, instead of a director who had been manager.
of an Indian reservation, a man with no deep feeling for the oppressed and the downtrodden.
A truck came by with young boys. Merritt gathered them together and lectured them for their previous day's conduct. The day before, this youth work gang had been cleaning the roadside by an adjacent military police camp. The boys had ridiculed and laughed at Manzanar's sentries who were being given close-order drill. An officer had complained to Merritt.
The director told the boys he could not let them work on the public highway outside the camp. The gang listened silently, then moved off to work. We saw this as a clear manifestation of inarticulate protest and rebellion against evacuation and detention. A year and a half ago, most of them were too young to perceive the full meaning of Manzanar. Today, they were nurturing resentment.
New Faith In Democratic Tradition Was Needed
Why couldn't our country rejuvenate them, instill new faith in the democratic traditions of Jefferson, Tom Paine and Lincoln? I asked myself. They would then participate in the broad struggle for democratic rights, coherently and in an organized manner, thus more effectively. In post-war America or Japan, a poisoned mind of this sort would not help the cause of democracy and this is clearly evident in Japan today where the former soldiers who were drilled with the militarist philosophy and not re-educated since V-J Day have become the strong core of resurgent Gumbatsu.
Silence Cannot Bring a Friendly and Hopeful Future
Manzanar itself is but a memory today. It is a symbol of prejudice, of shameful and dangerous hysteria.
Now camps like Manzanar are going up again. Manzanar and nine other camps for Japanese aliens and Japanese Americans set a precedent. The Justice Department announced January 1 that about 3,000 Communists would be put behind barbed wire. But months before, President Truman had asked for about 60,000 to 70,000 guards for the new concentration camps. How many hundreds of thousands of people is the administration contemplating on concentrating, to be watched by so many guards? There are reportedly about 50,000 Communists in this country. Who will be the others? Will the red-baiting and hysteria pay off or will decent and democratic-minded Americans win freedom's struggle?
To remain silent in a time like this, of festering fascism, of the corrupt and graft-ridden era of government, means only this —that the silent and the cowardly are not preparing a friendly future for our sons and daughters and for coming generations.
Lonely People In "Lily-White" Australia
We boarded a Liberty ship at San Pedro harbor and sailed southward, circling south of Australia through the rough waters of the Tasmanian Straits. We stopped overnight at Perth, in Western Australia.
The trip had taken us about a month, zigzagging day after day. Most of the members of my Nisei team hungered for rice and a good Chinese dinner. We looked everywhere in Perth and Fremantle for a Chinese restaurant. We thought Australia was completely "lily-white" but someone on the street informed us there were a few Orientals. Hopefully we combed the streets.
After what seemed several hours, we finally located a small Chinese restaurant. The sight of us thrilled its proprietor and his children almost indescribably. They crowded around us and asked question after question. They laughed incredulously when we said we were Japanese Americans.
The Chinese Family Seemed Proud of Us
Stop kidding, they said, and brought out hot tea and salted nuts and dried seeds.
"You boys arc Cantonese," the attractive daughter of the family kept insisting, sort of proud of us that we were In GI, uniform. Perhaps our presence gave them more prestige in the community, for during the last war, the GIs were generally popular and regarded as an army of liberation. This is not so today and even mothers of boys wounded in Truman's "police action" are turning down posthumous awards, a well as those presented to parents of POWs.
Fortunately, we had two Chinese American GIs from our ship with us. They spoke Cantonese and finally convinced the family that we were AJAs. But this information did not change the family's attitude.
Friendly People Seeking Comradeship But Socially Isolated Because of Color
The daughter said she had read accounts of the Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion in Italy. We talked of the 100th. She said she could hardly believe that Nisei were in the Pacific theater. Then she told us what it was like for lone Chinese families in Australia.
We gorged ourselves with rice, fried noodles and various choice dishes and said good-bye to this most wonderful of families. They begged us to return and talk some more with them. What special dishes did we have in mind? Yes, they would prepare anything for us. How reluctant they were to see us go. It seemed that they had realized at that moment how isolated and perhaps lonely their past years had been.