Hiro Nishikawi is printing out vocabulary words on the easel such as Nisei - second generation Japanese-Americans; and Sansei, the grandchildren of the Nisei.
Hiro is a sansei. He and his family were interned at one of three Japanese internment camps in Poston, Arizona.
His fascinating slide show featured mostly archived photos b/c cameras were not allowed in the camps.
The Nishikawas, residents of San Francisco, were part of the hysteria and suspicion the government and many citizens felt toward loyal Japanese citizens.
On Feb. 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed an order that led to the "evacuation" - one of many euphemisms used - for the roundup of about 120,000 loyal Japanese people, 2/3 of whom were citizens.
They were imprisoned in primitive barracks-style housing surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers where anyone attempting to escape would be shot dead.
He entered at age 4 and was released at age 7.
Just as WW2 soldiers rarely discussed their war stories, so, too, the internees kept silent about their captivity.
It was not until his father had died that Hiro discussed the internment with his mother, who recently passed away.
She had a series of photographs from the camps, taken by visitors, and Hiro used three of them in his presentation.
When Tom Brennan introduced the speaker, he said, Italians weren't interned, nor were the Germans. Why then the Japanese?
Racism. Here's a clip from the San Francisco Chronicle, May 21, 1942 (from a handout)
For the first time in 81 years, not a single Japanese is walking the streets of San Francisco...its stores were vacant, its windows plastered with "To Lease" signs. ...There were no Japanese with their ever present cameras and sketch books, no Japanese with their newly acquired furtive, frightened looks.I'd be frightened too! Here's where they were going:
Hiro mentioned that a Geneva Convention treaty said it's fine to round up 'foreign nationals' for security purposes.
The first country to have similar concentration camps was in South Africa, after the Boer War.
Hiro is active in JACL, Japanese-American civil rights. Living today with his wife in Haverford, PA, he's the president of the Philadelphia chapter, which has 16,000 members. Read more about Hiro here.
He showed a slide of all the internment camps in the US. Most were clustered in California but all the western states and Texas and ND also had them.
At the time of internment, Hiro, his two brothers and his parents were living on a farm outside San Francisco. The family tried w/o success to farm the land. That's when they were ordered to report to the buses that would shuttle them to Arizona.
All the camps were located in desolate areas. His camp in Poston, AZ, with its mesquite and sagebrush, housed 18,000 people. Back home, their bank accounts had been frozen and their businesses vacated. They lost everything.
The first nite of their incarceration they were told to attend religious services. Their captors, however, did not like when they held their own services in the Japanese tongue - Buddhist or Shinto - fearing they were plotting mutiny or spying. Terror was everywhere.
Each family was given a number, like the Jews in the Holocaust, said Hiro. The Nishikawas were 30406.
Boredom was the great enemy of the internees. The children found unique ways of playing - marbles, baseball - but once-active parents longed for work.
The breakdown of the family system cost parents a loss of their authority. Teenagers went off by themselves and often got into trouble. Their parents could no longer control them as they did back home.
Internal sentries marched thru the camps.
Many people found odd jobs around the camps. Hiro's father, always a good cook, was a mess hall chef and earned all of $19 a month. Below, these men are making bedding. At Hiro's camp, mattresses were stuffed with straw.
Hiro still remembers the "rumbling of the sand storms." Inside the barracks, the temps could get as high as 120 degrees in the heat, but get down to freezing in the desert nights. Outdoors it was 115.
There was no privacy in the communal showers. "Can you imagine showering with all the men in your family?" And there were outdoor outhouses.
Scary native animals abounded - lizards, scorpions, deadly rattlesnakes. "We soon got savvy and learned to protect ourselves."
Physicians and nurses had offices in the camp in unbelievably cramped quarters.
In February of 1944, Hiro's little brother was born. His birth certificate is unique: he was born in a place that no longer exists.
As a 5-yo, Hiro heard the word "suicide." There was a high suicide rate for the sansei b/c middle-aged and elderly men had lost everything and didn't want to be a burden on anyone if they ever went home.
The first death took place in May 1942. What to do with the corpses? Immolation, finally.
We also discussed movies that were made about dislike of the Japanese.
I didn't have a chance to say Bad Day at Black Rock, with Spencer Tracy as a one-armed Army veteran come to a little town in the west to investigate the disappearance/killing of a Japanese friend of his. Robert Ryan had the whole town so scared no one would talk. Great film if you haven't seen it.
After his talk, Hiro took questions. Nearly every hand went up, including my own.
I asked what happened to his family after the camps.
His father eventually bought a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown and did quite well. The whole family worked there.
From the Internet
Hiro received a bachelor degree in biochemistry at U.C.-Berkeley and later a Ph.D. at Oregon State University in Corvallis. He and his wife, Sumie, have a grown daughter and a son. He has a Eurasian grandson.
Hiro was engaged for nearly 30 years in biotech pharmaceutical drug discovery and development. He began as a bench scientist and retired as a group director in 1998.... A long time avid photographer and lover of classical music, he has also been a studious reader of Japanese American history. More recently he has become active in social justice and anti-racism causes.
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