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Japanese American Children of American Concentration Camps

 

I met these storytellers through attending pilgrimages, lectures, through friends of friends, and Facebook post inquiries. As many of theelders are getting up in age, many are ready to tell their stories. Some of them have been sharing their memories for a while, to educate the next generations on the wrongful imprisonment of Japanese Americans during WWII. 

My own father and his family were incarcerated at Tule Lake Segregation Camp and lost their home and livelihood, never to return to Washington. My mother’s father was taken away for a year to Sand Island on Oahu. 

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Ruth Ichinaga, 84 years old
Japanese American
8 years old, Topaz Concentration Camp, Utah

Written memories
My memory has faded but I’d like to share some bits and pieces that come to mind of the time my family and I were incarcerated at Topaz, Utah, when I was eight years old. We arrived at our new home, a 20’ by 20’ room, one of six rooms of various sizes within a barrack. A large scorpion with its tail curled upward, 
standing guard, greeted us at our open doorway. Inside the room was a pot bellied stove in the corner of the room and a bucket to fetch coal from the stack piled in front of the laundry room/bathroom building at the center of our block. 

The weather was extremely hot at times and when the sandstorms came we would struggle forward feeling the stinging pricks of sand on our faces as we ducked our heads covering our nose and mouth. It was hard to breathe! In the winter when it snowed, we slogged through in our boots and navy blue pea coats. 
When the snow came down hard, it was also hard to breathe. 

I took Japanese lessons from a woman in our block.  Since I had no book, my father borrowed one from my teacher.  He painstakingly and neatly copied the whole book, traced some of the pictures and colored them with a few color crayons and bound the book with string. To cover it he used an old children’s magazine cover with the date 1942 printed on it. I still have this precious book and I treasure it, though the cover is torn and a little dirty. 

I was a child when we were incarcerated so I was spared the concerns and worries that my parents and older siblings endured during this time. I am sorry that I didn’t ask my parents about how they felt when they had to move.  How did they decide what to bring? How did they pack for the children? How did they take care of their belongings? How did they deal with the inventory of the little grocery store they owned? It must have been a very scary time for them! They had been living in California for 18 years and ran a grocery store but their understanding of English was limited and navigating the system.

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Sadako Kashiwagi, 85 years old
Japanese American
9 years old, Tule Lake Concentration Camp, Newell, CA

Written memories
My name is Sadako Nimura Kashiwagi (85).  I was (8) when we were incarcerated first at Arboga Marysville, CA; I was (9) when we were transferred by train to Tule Lake, Newell, CA.

Having been so young, I did not experience the Loyalty Questions 27, 28. 
I remember attending schools—American school in the morning, Japanese school 
in the afternoon and Saturday morning, and Sunday School on Sunday.
I remember playing all kinds of games—dodge ball. board games, cards (go fish), jacks, pick up sticks, cats cradle. Reading in the library was a life saver.

Saturday nights were spent listening to Your Hit Parade. The song “Don’t Fence Me In” has a whole different meaning for me. Grade B movies shown in the mess hall were 5 cents; Grade A movies were shown at the school auditorium until it was burned down during the riots. These are some of my positive memories; however, the entire experience has left a lasting impact on my life.

More memories from archives provided by niece Tamiko Nimura
Departing for Newcastle…. lots of people with lots of luggage, various size and shapes. And my brother points out that we could take only what we could carry, 
and he remembers my sister Tomiye... oh, back up a little bit, Mrs. Fountain had given us Raggedy Ann dolls for Christmas, and this was the first individual dolls 
we had, 'cause we didn't have toys. And so Taka remembers Tomiye wanting to 
take that doll with her, and she knew she couldn't, so she kept running back and forth to the house, putting it down and coming back with it and then bringing it 
back in and putting it down, and ultimately she left it. 

But at one point I said to my father, "Papa kaerou yo," meaning, "Papa, let's go home." I was told that I said that. But, of course, we didn't. 

Okay, I remember going on a train, and Mother was in a Pullman car because she was pregnant. I remember going, you know, with shades drawn. 

 

Kiyoshi "kix" Kato, 77 years old
Japanese American
3 and ½ weeks old, Tule Lake Concentration Camp, Newell, CA

written memories
Born on January 24, 1942.  Executive Order 9066 was issued on Febuary 19, 1942, 
I was just 3 1/2 weeks old.

My parents Noboru and Chiyo Kato and my six older siblings were sent to camp.

We went to tanforan racetrack in San Bruno, temporarily, then to Topaz, Utah.  
We lived in San Leandro, ca.  Our house stood where the San Leandro Bayfair BART station is today.

We had to sell or give away everything that we had, but we kept the house that 
my father built and our neighbor rented it out for us.

My only memory of camp is the snow as the winters were very harsh in the Utah desert.

The camp experience made our family stronger as we lived by the credo "gaman" which means to endure with dignity.

I am so proud of my family that I bear a permanent tattoo of the word "gaman" on my arm.

Lawrence Yutaka Matsuda, 75 years old
Japanese American
Born in Minidoka, Idaho War Relocation Center

written memories

Incarcerated Children Questionnaire 
Thank you for participating in the Innocent Dreamer installation.
Your writing may be used in my art project. 

Your name or you can be anonymous. 
Lawrence Yutaka Matsuda

How old were you and where were you incarcerated?
I was born in the Minidoka, Idaho War Relocation Center-Block 26, Barrack 2.   I left when I was 9 months old. 

Did you have family or community members incarcerated with you?

My mother, father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and my brother were incarcerated.  Those who were not incarcerated remained in Hiroshima, Japan.  Our family home there was 1,000 meters from ground zero. 

Where did you live before being incarcerated?
My mother, father and grandparents lived in Seattle, Washington. My parents operated Elk Grocery at 9th and Seneca in Seattle. 

Write about events leading up to being incarcerated
Anti-Japanese propaganda was spread by the newspapers and encouraged fear and distrust about local Japanese based on stereotypes (sly, sneaky, inscrutable etc.).   Today these falsehood are called “fake news” or “alternative facts” and are aimed at different ethnic and religious groups. After Pearl Harbor the anti-Japanese agitation increased—curfew, round up of community leaders (FBI camps), and white customers no longer bought groceries from my father.  So his business collapsed. 
Government officials, community leaders, Elks Clubs, chambers of commerce, and others supported anti-Japanese activities and the forced incarceration. 

Write about an unhappy memory of being incarcerated. 
I was too young to remember but for years at every wedding reception, birthday party, Christmas and other family gatherings, stories of the incarceration were shared.  Foremost among my borrowed memories related to Vienna sausage.  My parents said they would never eat it because it caused an outbreak of dysentery in camp.  The lines at the latrines were so long in the middle of the night that the guards thought it was a demonstration or protest. 
Once I asked my late older brother what he remembered as a three-year old.  
He said that he remembered the bully who beat him up. 

Below is my poem—from my book of poetry, A Cold Wind from Idaho, Black Lawrence Press, New York.

Too Young to Remember

Minidoka, Idaho— War Relocation Center

I do not remember the Idaho winter winds,
knee deep mud that oppressed 10,000 souls  
or the harsh summer heat and dust.

I do not remember miles of clotheslines, 
mounds of soiled diapers, clatter of families crowded 
into barracks, the greasy closeness 
of canned Vienna sausage,
of pungent pork and sour brine 
exuding from mess halls.  

Floating in the amniotic fluid, 
tethered in salt sea, odors
nourished by fear and sadness—
my Mother’s anxieties 
enveloped and nurtured me.  

Maybe it was the loss of her home, 
the sudden evacuation, 
being betrayed by her country. 
Or maybe it was the stillborn child
she referred to as It,
sexless blob of malformed tissue,
a thing without a face that would have been
my older sibling.  
My aunt described it as budo,
a cluster of grapes.

I recall what Barry, my psychiatrist friend,
said about parents emotionally distancing themselves
from children born immediately after a stillborn. 

Sixty years later on drizzly Seattle days, 
when November skies are overcast, 
and darkness begins at 4:00 p.m., 
I feel my mother’s sadness 
sweep over me like a cold wind from Idaho. 

I search for Minidoka,
unravel it from the memories of others.
Like a ruined sweater, I untwist the yarn,
strands to weave a tapestry
of pride and determination—
the “children of the rising sun” once banished 
to desert prisons, return from exile 
with tattered remnants, wave them overhead, 
time-shorn banners salvaged from memories 
woven in blood and anguish.

I wish I could remember 
Minidoka.   I would trade 
those memories for the fear and sadness 
imbedded in my genes. 

Write about a positive memory if you have one. Write as much as you like and use more pages if necessary.

There are no positives among my borrowed memories about camp. 

How did being incarcerated influence your life?
To this day I find it very difficult to trust people and the government.    
Also another poem from A Cold Wind from Idaho

The Noble Thing 
Dad never talked about Minidoka.
That was the noble thing.

Before World War II,
there was Garfield High School for him,
ice skating on Greenlake,
dances at Lake Wilderness Lodge,
later his ownership of Elk Grocery 
on Seneca Street. 

He and my mother were
married in 1941,
ten months later to be removed
…forced… into the Minidoka concentration camp.

Mom was five months pregnant in August
with my older brother, Alan. 
With black-out curtains drawn, the train
left Puyallup and climbed the Cascade mountains
until the land flattened and the inescapable sun 
transformed the train cars into a moving sauna.
People gasped small, panicked breaths 
from the superheated air.

Shikataganai—“It can’t be helped.”

The train stopped by the side of an unmarked road 
in the Idaho desert, released
its passengers miles from any station.
Rumors spread they would be shot 
or marched to death – their bodies stacked, then
carted away to some awaiting ditch. 

Nowhere to run, they walk in their best shoes 
in the gritty sand as on the face of the moon.  
The heat caused some to faint 
as they carried all they could.   

Three years later, Dad returned 
to Seattle after the War, 
developed a bleeding ulcer,
lost his janitor job at the Earl Hotel. 

Depression took Mom away 
like invisible armed guards.  She was 
a stranger—a stick-like figure with arms 
and legs poking out of a white smock, 
pacing the sidewalk next 
to the Western State Hospital turn-around.

Dad never talked about it, none of it. 
I never heard him say the word Minidoka….

Gaman, “endure the unbearable with dignity.”

Shikatagani, my best friend’s mother chose pills for suicide.
After school, Randy my neighbor, opened the garage door 
and found his father in a black suit, his best, hanged 
by the neck, shikatagani, the same path other 
Seattle Japanese chose—
numbers unknown.   Shikataganai. 

We, however, never talked about it.
That was the noble thing to do. 

Lawrence Matsuda

Anything else you would like to share?
My mother used to say that “they took us and we didn’t want to go and when the war ended they released us and we had nowhere to go.”  Effectively being released was as or more stressful than being taken. 
At one of my presentations about camp, one person said that he was a rape victim and the forced incarceration was like the rape of a community.  The Japanese reacted like rape victims—denial, anger, suicide, silence, and trying to prove they were worthy people by becoming 110% American.

Robert A Nakamura, 83 years old
Japanese American
5 years old Manzanar Concentration Camp

written memories
Name:  Robert A. Nakamura

Age when incarcerated:  born July 5, 1936 so was 5 yo when taken from home in Spring 1942 - don't remember exact date - boarded train and then bus to Manzanar.  Caravan of buses  stopped at gas station, owner wouldn't let them use the restrooms so busses left.  Remember my mother being really upset.

Family: Went with parents.  brother later born in Manzanar.  remember his father making duffle bags and putting name on them

Memories before incarceration:  Kids used to play with chasing and throwing grass and dirt bombs at me after Pearl Harbor and before camp.  didn't understand why.

Memories of camp: Remember arriving at Manzanar, and sand blowing in headlights of the bus.  In camp, asked his mother when they were going to go back to America.  Got lost coming back to his barracks after going to latrine, crying, father finding him.  His father then found piece of wood and carved finger pointing to their barracks and their name: NAKAMURA.  Mother ironing and bursting into tears because got B on report card - feel that was release of her pent up emotion and fear.  Walking with mother near barbed wire and armed soldier looking at them. Positive memories of camp: Catching grasshoppers and crickets, putting them in jars.  Father had a lot of jobs including working in mess hall, so would bring back food that mother would warm up on kerosene stove.  Watching movies outdoors in sand wrapped in army blanket. 

Memories after camp:  barred from swimming pool with cub scout troop because 
he was JA.  Later as young man, not being served in restaurants.  Avoided, didn't like going to restaurants for next 20- 30 yrs, forced self to overcome by going to restaurants/not avoiding.  

Influence of incarceration on life:  Influenced everything - identity, choice of career, choice of friends, focus of his art.  Has spent a lifetime coming to grips with the incarceration. Before camp he was an all American boy.  At PH, overnight he became the enemy. As adult, realized a lot of the hurt was being betrayed by the country he used to feel a part of.  Right after camp, frustration/anger were turned inward:  felt self-hatred: resentful of being Japanese, of parents.  Tried to become whiter than white - needed to excel in everything - was editor of HS paper, on football team, on public speaking team.  Not feeling accepted in US, tried to move to Japan, but realize didn't fit in there either. Not trustful of white people - who put him into camp - most Caucasian friends have been Jewish, few WASPs. But also felt uncomfortable hanging out in all JA or AA social circle - because of self hate? -- until Asian American movement, when he found others who felt similar and articulated US history of racism - not just against Blacks but APIs, all people of color.  

Camp has been main subject  of his art.  way of working out incarceration - eg: made photographic cube installation of images of camp in 1970 for the Campaign to Repeal Title II for PSWD JACL - one of first time visual evidence of camps circulated.  Called it a product of Visual Communications, which became comte of first PSWD, then national JACL before incorporating.  Made first film on camp, Manzanar in 1971 and many more since. Now in Trump era, scabs of camp being torn off by injustices of intensified racism and targeting of Muslims, immigrants and refugees feels like deja vu, akin to PTSD.

 
Mimi Sasaki, 83 years old
Japanese American
3 years old, Amache Concentration Camp, Colorado

interview
Mimi and her mother were living in Los Angeles when Pearl Harbor was bombed. She was three years old when they packed up and moved to the Santa Anita Racetrack Assembly Center. It was the largest and the longest-occupied of 
the temporary Wartime Civil Control Administration camps. Its peak population 
was 18,719 people of Japanese descent. Mimi’s artistic mother created a painting of their horse stable room, documenting how she tried to make as cozy and homelike as possible. Eventually, they moved to Amache Incarceration Camp in Colorado, where Mimi was imprisoned from three and a half to five years old. Her earliest memory was the dust storms and when she and a couple of other youngsters sat 
in a room at the camp and a minister preached to them about the lion laying with the lamb. She recalled, as a young girl seeing the soldiers with their guns and 
a feeling overcame her that she now realizes was the sensation of fear. 

“I was about 4 at the time, and remember the adults always saying,” the government says....  we have to line up for ration stamps,... or we must report here for shots.  There was always something the government was ordering us to do.

One day, when my mother asked me to do something. I was busy playing,so I ignored her.  She asked again, and became impatient and said, “Mimi, when I ask you to do something you should do as I say!” My retort was, “Why? 
Did the government say so?”  

Instead of getting angry, my mother just laughed at my smart alec remark.” When Mimi and her mother were released from the camp, they boarded a train to go to Cincinnati to be reunited with her father who had begun his medical internship there. They stayed in the attic with a Jewish family, where her mom helped out in the household until finding an apartment of their own.

Looking back on her life, Mimi believes her childhood in the camp and being the only Japanese American in her school and community, resulted in feelings of insecurity and lack of self-confidence. It has taken her years to overcome this. 
Now she is a dancer and world traveler.

 

Hiroshi Shimizu, 76 years old
Japanese American
Born in Topaz Concentration Camp, Arizona

 

Written memories
Incarcerated Children Questionnaire 
Thank you for participating in the Innocent Dreamer installation.
Your writing may be used in my art project. 

Your name or you can be anonymous. 
Hiroshi Shimizu

How old were you and where were you incarcerated?
I was born in Topaz on March 19, 1943.
Did you have family or community members incarcerated with you?
My mother, father and mother’s father were in Topaz.
My father’s father was arrested by the FBI on Dec. 8 and initially interned at Ft. Missoula.
At the time of my birth he had been transferred to the POW Camp in Lordsburg, New Mexico.

Where did you live before being incarcerated?
My parents and grandfathers lived in San Francisco,
My father’s mother was in Japan in Kanagawa-ken.
My father’s younger brother was in the Japanese Army.
My mother’s mother died when my mother was a young girl.
She was raised by an aunt in Tokyo.
She, like my father was a Kibei, returning to the US in her early teens.
My mother returned in 1932 and my father in 1934.
Mother’s older brother was in the Japanese Army and died of illness in Manchuria.
She also had a younger brother who was young enough to not have been drafted.

Write about events leading up to being incarcerated
My father’s father was an active member of the Japanese Association of 
San Francisco.

Before Pearl Harbor, before Japan and America entered into a war, the Japanese Association of San Francisco would gather, from Japanese communities throughout Northern California, tooth brushes, tooth paste, soap, towels, cigarettes, and 
other things of that nature and put them together into individual packages, 
and then they would put these “imonbokuros” into crates and send them to Japan to be distributed to Japanese soldiers in places like Manchuria.  They sent dozens and dozens of those crates.  The Japanese Association also printed and distributed pamphlets they received from the Japanese Consulate that had titles like 
“What Is Japan Fighting For?”  Everything they did before the war was legal, 
but after Pearl Harbor their actions were considered to have been in aid to a hostile country and all of the active members of the Japanese Association were arrested by the FBI and sent to DOJ Internment Camp such as Missoula.

My father was on the editorial staff of the Shin Sei Kai, or The New World Sun newspaper in San Francisco.  His job at the newspaper put him close contact with the staff at the Japanese Consulate and also with notable people visiting from Japan.  He was not arrested by FBI.  He and my mother were temporarily incarcerated at Tanforan before going to Topaz.   

It was probably those connections the led to my father’s name being placed on 
the list of people the Japanese Government would accept in exchange for American’s who were in Japan when the War began.

Initially, my father did not want to return to Japan.  He was a Kibei and had 
a relatively successful childhood in Japan.  He went to the College of Physics, Butsurei, which was not then, but is now, a part of the Tokyo University, from Middle School.  While going to the Butsurei, he took up Judo and was accepted into the Kodokan Dojo and became a 2nd Dan blackbelt before he left Japan to return to the U.S.  He returned to America to avoid conscription into the Japanese Army.  
So, he was not of mind to return to Japan, but his father, who was arrested by 
the FBI, confined in a DOJ Internment camp, with a wife and a 2nd son in Japan, wanted very much to return and convinced his son to take advantage of being placed on the list and elect to be in the Prisoner Exchange.

Most of this happened before I born, while my mother was pregnant with me in Tanforan and Topaz.  Because of my timely birth, 3/19/1943, we missed 
the opportunity board the 1st exchange sailing of the Gripsholm.  We, the 4 of us, 
did go from Topaz to Ellis Island in August of 1943, for the 2nd exchange sailing of the Gripsholm.  It turned out that we were on the waiting list for that sailing.  
On the 1st sailing there were a few families that decided at the last minute to not return.  The US government had not anticipated this and did not have a waiting list of replacements.  For the 2nd sailing they prepared for the possibility, but as 
it turned out, no one decided to turn back and the people on the waiting list were not needed.  They were all sent to the nearest WRA concentration camp which was Rohwer in Arkansas.  We were there for 4 days and sent by train to Tule Lake.

 

Write about an unhappy memory of being incarcerated. Write about a positive memory if you have one.  Write as much as you like and use more pages if necessary.

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One of the strongest memories I have was leaving my final camp, my final place of incarceration in September of 1947 when I was 4 and a half. I’ve found that not many people have memories from age 4, but I do, I have a lot.  Perhaps it was because Crystal City was a more pleasant environment than Tule Lake.For me Crystal City was brighter, sunnier and more open for kids like me. I remember running around with a group of boys, some maybe 2 or 3 years older.  
It was a thrilling experience.  I was too young at Tule Lake for my mother to allow me to. When the Germans left, their school was empty.  I remember going through the empty classrooms with my friend Mamoru, who was from Peru.  We were looking for this wonderful thing that had been left in some of the classrooms.  
With it you could make white marks on the concrete, but it did not last long, in a short time it was gone, worn away.

But the memory that is the most indelible is of the day we left Crystal City.  
I did not know what my father did at Crystal City, but I do remember my mother saying to him: “you are getting everybody else out; what about us?”  I heard from 
my mother some years later that Dad was the Group Spokesman at Crystal City.  
I understood that to mean he was the leader of the Japanese group at Crystal City.  Many years later around 2002 at the Tule Lake Pilgrimage I met Bill Nishimura 
who came from Southern California.  I forget how he discovered that Iwao Shimizu was my father, but somehow we found each other and he said to me that he was 
my father’s typist at Crystal City, it had me a little confused.  “Why did my father need a typist?”  I asked him.  “Oh, your father was the manager of the camp, he made all of the decisions and the white guy in charge just okayed everything he decided.”  It’s strange how you discover unknown tidbits of history.  

I don’t know how many people were left at Crystal City when we left in September 
of 1947, but I do remember that moment vividly.  We were on the back bed of 
a truck, on the way to the train that would take us to Los Angeles.  There were 
a group of people at the gate waving and seeing us off.  I think my mother and 
two younger sisters were riding in the cab of the truck.  I remember I was dressed up a bit, I’m pretty sure I didn’t know exactly what it meant that we were “getting out of camp”, but I knew in some kind of way I would no longer be confined, although I know I didn’t know that word…well, maybe I knew it in Japanese 
because that was the only language I spoke at the time…it’s funny, all of these experiences that I had at Crystal City happened to me in Japanese, but I remember 
it now in English.

So, I was riding on the back of that truck with my dad and I was wearing this cap that I really loved and was very proud to be wearing on this long trip that my mom had told me about.  I remember the truck had not gone too far just beyond the fence of the camp when my cap blew off and on to the side of the road.  I yelled out and 
my dad saw it all.  He yelled out to the truck driver, but he couldn’t hear him.  
When dad realized he couldn’t be heard, he turned to me and said, “Shikata ga nai, 
I will get you another cap.”  I don’t remember getting another cap but if I did I would not have had the same feeling for it.

How did being incarcerated influence your life?
Being imprisoned from birth to 4 yrs & 6 mon. totally shaped the boy I became through grammar school.  My mother wanted me get started and get on with school almost as soon as we got to San Francisco in November of 1947.  We had been release from Crystal City in September.  I was still only speaking Japanese and 
was just getting used to living without being fenced in.  My mother found out that 
I could be enrolled into kindergarten for the Spring semester of 1948 which began in February as long as I turned 5 yrs of age before the end of the term.  When 
the kindergarten teacher discovered that I didn’t speak English she had me wear 
a little sign that hung from my neck by string.  The sign said, “Do Not Speak English”.  I remember thinking I wanted to learn English so that I won’t have to wear a stupid sign.  I don’t remember the details of what happened around that event.  I don’t remember for certain, but I think I wore the sign for 2 or 3 days.  I don’t remember why I stopped wearing it.  Perhaps one of the teachers or the principal interceded, 
I don’t know.  I am pretty sure my mother didn’t go to the school to protest.
I am not even sure she knew about it, though I was not into hiding such things.  
I think the lack of a protest shaped my psyche to some degree.  My mother had just spent the previous 5 and a half years imprisoned in Tanforan, Topaz, Ellis Island, Rohwer, Tule Lake and Crystal City.  She and my father had been rejected for release in January, 1946 and had been given orders for deportation.  A lawsuit filed by Wayne Collins prevented the deportation and we were sent to Crystal City, 
the last remaining concentration camp in America.  For a year and a half my parents were not sure if they would be able to stay in the US or be deported.  Their status was ‘native American enemy aliens’.  When the peace treaty with Japan was signed they became, ‘Native American Aliens’.  When they returned to San Francisco and until they regained their citizenship in 1958, I think that they did not want to raise their profile by overtly protesting a very badly conceived sign that they hung on me.  I surmise now that if my mother had raised some sort of protest at that time I might have been more inclined to be more outspoken in the face of injustice.  After that incident I was determined to learn English.  I didn’t reject Japanese, but it didn’t have the importance that English had.  I don’t ever remember wrestling with speaking English with a Japanese accent.  As the years went by I forgot most of 
my Japanese.  My mother regretted that.  She said I spoke Japanese with a distinct Tokyo accent.

Anything else you would like to share?
I went on my 1st Tule Lake Pilgrimage when I was 51 yrs. old.  For 25 years since that 1st pilgrimage, Tule Lake has been one of the primary focuses of my life.  2 years after that 1st pilgrimage I went on my 2nd Tule Lake Pilgrimage and became a part of the planning committee on the outer circle.  Over the course of the next couple of Tule Lake Pilgrimages I gravitated to the inner circle of the planning and eventually found myself chairing the planning committee.  During this time I was delving into the history of Tule Lake and my father’s role in that history.
Through this work with the Tule Lake Committee I have been fortunate to have 
been a part of the effort that granted the Tule Lake Segregation Center site 
the designation “National Historic Landmark”, and a few years later, through 
an Executive Order, by President George W. Bush, it became a National Monument.  Next year the restored Tule Lake Jail will be open to the public.  This is a project that we, the Tule Lake Committee, started years ago and through donations and grants got it started.  It is being finished off by the National Park Service.  We have always felt that they, the government, should do and pay for everything.