On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law Executive Order 9066 designating the West Coast a “Military Exclusion Zone” prohibiting the presence of all persons of Japanese ancestry and authorizing their evacuation and internment in locations away from the West Coast.

The Issei, first generation Japanese immigrants, never spoke of their time in camp during the war. In fact most Nisei, second generation Americans born of Japanese parents, we didn’t speak of what happened either. There were reasons why not that involved cultural elements, and shame and embarrassment over being held behind barbed wire. However for the past 20 years I have broken my silence to share the story of my family’s forcible evacuation and internment in an American concentration camp following Pearl Harbor.

MY STORY: WWII INTERNMENT OF JAPANESE AMERICANS

I shared my talk about my family’s evacuation and internment during WWII on YouTube in five parts. There are two bonus videos: A collection of personal stories and a question and answer session.

Part One: An American Story (11:00)

Part Two: The Japanese Community in Exile (22:00)

Part Three: How Did All This Happen? (6:00)

Part Four: Implications For Today (14:00)

Part Five: Pilgrimage to Amache (5:00)

Part Six: Personal Stories (26:00)

Part Seven: Questions and Answers (30:00)

ORIGINS OF MY TELLING MY INTERNMENT STORY:

I have a deep respect and appreciation for those who tell stories. They are the bearers of the truths of a people, of their inner journey as they traverse the landscape. I think of myself as a sort of storyteller but not in the oral tradition, more of the one who scribbled images of mammoths in charcoal and chalk on the walls of caves, a writer.

I’ve always been a closet writer and speaking in public has always been difficult. Virtually all adults of my parent’s generation did not speak of their experiences during the war because they were embarrassed, ashamed, and it was too painful to think about. Most of my generation also didn’t discuss what happened for similar reasons.

This changed dramatically for me when a dear friend and fourth grade teacher, Diane Lohman, invited me to her class to share stories about my family’s WWII experiences during the war. She had developed a unit on California state history examining the evacuation and internment of Japanese from the West Coast and wanted her students to experience a real person who had lived through those times.

This began a ten-year collaboration with my friend to impart through stories what had happened to me in those dark days of WWII. In the beginning it was an interactive encounter with me sharing experiences, students asking questions, and together examining what it meant to be behind barbed wire and how it felt to be interned because we happened to look like the enemy. Not incidentally we touched on race and prejudice and in general the varied makeup of the people of our nation. We examined our form of government that had done this dark deed, but ended up viewing it in a different light, a government that took an unusual step and righted a terrible wrong and issued a formal and public apology to every surviving internee. This was beautifully something these fourth grade students were able to grasp.

In terms of learning I gained a lot in these sessions.

With the sudden and unexpected death of my friend the day after New Years in 1998 a young teacher took over the class midyear and she and I agreed to continue the storytelling adventure in my friend’s memory and especially for her former students. We carried on our joint venture for some eight years until my family moved in 2007 with my grown children and grandchildren to Eugene, Oregon. Once here I established a similar relationship with a fifth grade teacher at my grandson’s school and resumed my storytelling journey in my new home community.

In 2009 I decided to take my storytelling to a deeper level by preparing a major talk about the evacuation and internment experience for an adult audience with slides to amplify the stories I shared. Thus came this 60-minute PowerPoint presentation titled, “Camp Amache: An American Story – WWII Internment of a Japanese American Family.”

In 2015 I modified this presentation shortening it to 40 minutes and began sharing my story with the classes of a social studies teacher at Meadow View Middle School in the Bethel School District, and in 2017 with six sections of 11^th grade students at North Eugene High School. I also re-established contact with the woman who had taken over the 4th grade class of my dear friend back in Albany, CA, now in her new home of Corvallis, OR with her 3rd graders. Her class is the youngest I’ve given my talk to but they were most enthusiastic and asked a lot of questions.