Shadows of War

              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.