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in the dry conditions. There were little canals nearby and people wo catch live fish and bring them ba^„ to put in the ponds.^ Wakiji and his friends devoted most of their time to sports. "People in the Gila camp built two tennis courts and a golf course on sand." Ishimoto recalls that elderly people in the Jerome camp did wood- carving and other handcrafts: There were a lot of talent shows, some dances and movies." But gardens and talent shows didn't make up for all the other deprivations. The camp schools were substandard, says Wakiji. "We had fn W\ VfrH?" benches and tables. Some teachers were evacuees with no teaching experience. Some of the teachers from the outside probably were unable to get jobs at any of the other school systems." Adult evacuees worked and were paid $12, $16 or $19 a month, depending on skill level, says Bannai. Doctors who worked in the camp -fJiospital^earnedrthe top'wage of"$19; a month. Visit to the Camp Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) never was forcibly interned, but he knows something about the,camps', pall of frustration. ~ '->'■>■■' He was in the Hawaiian contingent of .the 442nd Japanese- American Infantry Regimental Combat Team. There was conflict be-' tween the Hawaiian and mainland [Japanese-American] contingents," says Inouye. "We used language dif- . ferently and came from different en- i vironments. Then somebody had the bright idea of sending a selected group of Hawaiians to one of the camps." Inouye and about 200 other Hawaiian GIs went by truck from Camp Shelby, Miss., to the Rohwer (Ark.) Relocation Center. The barbed-wire enclosure and high' towers with machine guns looked! ^-like Stalag 17. We were wearing) American uniforms, but bayonet- toting soldiers searched us. Normally that would be a signal to fight, but I didn't want to fight someone carrying a bayonet" I "We were told several of the stark rooms in the barracks were set j aside for us, and the families who lived there would spend two nights in the mess hall. When we saw what they had to live with — paper-thin walls — we all slept in the trucks." "We came to appreciate the mainland soldier — to think that he volunteered to serve a country that imprisoned him. I have searched my ■W anH to this day I cannot say The Bitter Legacy Ishimoto's mother, Mine Asaki, succumbed to her blood pressure ailment shortly after being relocated in ' Arkansas. Mother and daughter had' «; been very close. "Mother would talk / sabout how disappointed she was that the whole family was evacuated," says Ishimoto, whose father was a World War I Navy veteran. "Her death was traumatic for me. I knew it would not have happened if we were not going through the relocation." Like many evacuees, Ishimoto deeply resented her situation and periodically felt angry and bitter. "Being in camp made me hate everything Japanese," she says. "I thought if Japan hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor, then we wouldn't have to go through all this. When I came Out of camp, I couldn't even remember how'to speak the Japanese lan- " guage." _ , ■ ' The Issue of Redress There is no way to quantify this type of anguish, so "you can't put a price tag on it," says Inouye. "Putting a price tag on it would cheapen the whole thing." Inouye, therefore, does not favor. 3h§_direct-payment redress bill sponsored by Rep. Mike E. Lowry TjjT Wash.). / Rowe also opposes redress. "I think things happen in times of war i- that are regrettable," he says. "I | don't think anything should be done. ; Who would you pay and how would you put a value on their property?" , "I don't want the money," says Ishimoto, who now lives in Silver t Spring. "And I don't think punishment would make me feel better. , ' There's nobody around any more to take the punishment" She mentions 1 I the late Gen. John L. DeWitt, the .military commander who carried out the evacuation order and described evacuees as an "enemy race" — There was such a hatred for that man, people called him nitwit." Lowry's bill would provide each internee $15,000 plus $15 for every day of detention. The bill had_ 17 ^sponsors'of a*pretty"broad rangeT* Everybody I've heard has said the-, relocation was a terrible thing." "Besides the fundamental question of justice, redress has a deterrent factor," says Masaru Ed ■ Nakawatase, national representative of native American affairs for the £> American Friends Service Commit- ' tee. "In this most capitalist of na-"' , tions, it would be known that if this should happen again, there would be The commission hearings and redress issue have inflamed some people who sometimes don't differentiate between Japanese nationals and American citizens of Japanese ancestry. "Soon after I introduced the redress bill, the phone calls and hate mail were terrible, just unreal," says Lowry. People said why give money to "those who bombed Pearl Harbor." William Hohri, who will be testifying as chairman of the National Council for Japanese-American Redress, says Japanese-American acceptance of whatever resolution the government offers would be like their' acceptance of the evacuations in 1942. "A lot of us are saying we don't want to back off again — not twice." Says Wakiji: "Like most Japanese-Americans, I can forgive my country for what it did to me. But I can never forget." K"^ TheTiiaden History In 1974,1 was on the last leg of a three-month-long nebulous search for identity. I had roamed through South Korea and parts of Japan. And now I was standing in Tokyo's Haneda Airport, waiting for my plane to California, smiling and saying goodbye to a relative I had only recently become aware of — my grandmother's sister. But Great-Aunt wasn't smiling back. She was sitting straightbacked on a chair in the waiting area. Her voice crescendoed, and she started getting tears in her eyes as she spoke her parting words. I don't understand the Japanese language. So I asked her bilingual daughter, Kimiko, "What is she telling me?" Kimiko replied, "She says the American Army killed your grandfather." I was 24 years old at the time, snd I didn't know anything about how my grandfather had really died or what had really happened to my relatives during World War II. I had barely known about the camps. I had stumbled onto direction.
Object Description
Title | Shadows of War |
Description | Liz Nakahara writes about evacuation and the redresses that occurred many years later. |
Subjects | Redress and reparations |
Type | image |
Genre | Narrative |
Language | eng |
Collection | Hirasuna Family Papers |
Collection Description | 3 items |
Project Name | California State University Japanese American Digitization Project |
Rights | Rights not yet transferred |
Description
Local ID | csufr_hfp_1235 |
Project ID | csufr_hfp_1235 |
Title | Page 3 |
Creator | Nakahara, Liz:author |
Date Created | 1981 - 10 - 14 |
Subjects | Redress and reparations |
Type | image |
Genre | Narrative |
Language | eng |
Collection | Hirasuna Family Papers |
Collection Description | 8.38 x 10.91in |
Rights | Rights not yet transferred |
Transcript | in the dry conditions. There were little canals nearby and people wo catch live fish and bring them ba^„ to put in the ponds.^ Wakiji and his friends devoted most of their time to sports. "People in the Gila camp built two tennis courts and a golf course on sand." Ishimoto recalls that elderly people in the Jerome camp did wood- carving and other handcrafts: There were a lot of talent shows, some dances and movies." But gardens and talent shows didn't make up for all the other deprivations. The camp schools were substandard, says Wakiji. "We had fn W\ VfrH?" benches and tables. Some teachers were evacuees with no teaching experience. Some of the teachers from the outside probably were unable to get jobs at any of the other school systems." Adult evacuees worked and were paid $12, $16 or $19 a month, depending on skill level, says Bannai. Doctors who worked in the camp -fJiospital^earnedrthe top'wage of"$19; a month. Visit to the Camp Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) never was forcibly interned, but he knows something about the,camps', pall of frustration. ~ '->'■>■■' He was in the Hawaiian contingent of .the 442nd Japanese- American Infantry Regimental Combat Team. There was conflict be-' tween the Hawaiian and mainland [Japanese-American] contingents," says Inouye. "We used language dif- . ferently and came from different en- i vironments. Then somebody had the bright idea of sending a selected group of Hawaiians to one of the camps." Inouye and about 200 other Hawaiian GIs went by truck from Camp Shelby, Miss., to the Rohwer (Ark.) Relocation Center. The barbed-wire enclosure and high' towers with machine guns looked! ^-like Stalag 17. We were wearing) American uniforms, but bayonet- toting soldiers searched us. Normally that would be a signal to fight, but I didn't want to fight someone carrying a bayonet" I "We were told several of the stark rooms in the barracks were set j aside for us, and the families who lived there would spend two nights in the mess hall. When we saw what they had to live with — paper-thin walls — we all slept in the trucks." "We came to appreciate the mainland soldier — to think that he volunteered to serve a country that imprisoned him. I have searched my ■W anH to this day I cannot say The Bitter Legacy Ishimoto's mother, Mine Asaki, succumbed to her blood pressure ailment shortly after being relocated in ' Arkansas. Mother and daughter had' «; been very close. "Mother would talk / sabout how disappointed she was that the whole family was evacuated," says Ishimoto, whose father was a World War I Navy veteran. "Her death was traumatic for me. I knew it would not have happened if we were not going through the relocation." Like many evacuees, Ishimoto deeply resented her situation and periodically felt angry and bitter. "Being in camp made me hate everything Japanese," she says. "I thought if Japan hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor, then we wouldn't have to go through all this. When I came Out of camp, I couldn't even remember how'to speak the Japanese lan- " guage." _ , ■ ' The Issue of Redress There is no way to quantify this type of anguish, so "you can't put a price tag on it," says Inouye. "Putting a price tag on it would cheapen the whole thing." Inouye, therefore, does not favor. 3h§_direct-payment redress bill sponsored by Rep. Mike E. Lowry TjjT Wash.). / Rowe also opposes redress. "I think things happen in times of war i- that are regrettable," he says. "I | don't think anything should be done. ; Who would you pay and how would you put a value on their property?" , "I don't want the money," says Ishimoto, who now lives in Silver t Spring. "And I don't think punishment would make me feel better. , ' There's nobody around any more to take the punishment" She mentions 1 I the late Gen. John L. DeWitt, the .military commander who carried out the evacuation order and described evacuees as an "enemy race" — There was such a hatred for that man, people called him nitwit." Lowry's bill would provide each internee $15,000 plus $15 for every day of detention. The bill had_ 17 ^sponsors'of a*pretty"broad rangeT* Everybody I've heard has said the-, relocation was a terrible thing." "Besides the fundamental question of justice, redress has a deterrent factor," says Masaru Ed ■ Nakawatase, national representative of native American affairs for the £> American Friends Service Commit- ' tee. "In this most capitalist of na-"' , tions, it would be known that if this should happen again, there would be The commission hearings and redress issue have inflamed some people who sometimes don't differentiate between Japanese nationals and American citizens of Japanese ancestry. "Soon after I introduced the redress bill, the phone calls and hate mail were terrible, just unreal," says Lowry. People said why give money to "those who bombed Pearl Harbor." William Hohri, who will be testifying as chairman of the National Council for Japanese-American Redress, says Japanese-American acceptance of whatever resolution the government offers would be like their' acceptance of the evacuations in 1942. "A lot of us are saying we don't want to back off again — not twice." Says Wakiji: "Like most Japanese-Americans, I can forgive my country for what it did to me. But I can never forget." K"^ TheTiiaden History In 1974,1 was on the last leg of a three-month-long nebulous search for identity. I had roamed through South Korea and parts of Japan. And now I was standing in Tokyo's Haneda Airport, waiting for my plane to California, smiling and saying goodbye to a relative I had only recently become aware of — my grandmother's sister. But Great-Aunt wasn't smiling back. She was sitting straightbacked on a chair in the waiting area. Her voice crescendoed, and she started getting tears in her eyes as she spoke her parting words. I don't understand the Japanese language. So I asked her bilingual daughter, Kimiko, "What is she telling me?" Kimiko replied, "She says the American Army killed your grandfather." I was 24 years old at the time, snd I didn't know anything about how my grandfather had really died or what had really happened to my relatives during World War II. I had barely known about the camps. I had stumbled onto direction. |