Enduring Communities
Enduring Communities: The Japanese American Experience in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah is an ambitious three-year project dedicated to re-examining an often-neglected chapter in U.S. history and connecting it with current issues of today. These articles stem from that project and detail the Japanese American experiences from different perspectives.
Stories from this series
Resisting Incarceration in Concentration Camps
Aug. 22, 2008 • Hideo Yonenaka
On May 8, 1942, I moved from South Palo Alto in Santa Clara County, California, to East Palo Alto in San Mateo County to be with my grandmother, who was then ill. Between May 9 and September 1943, I was detained at the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, California, just south of San Francisco. I was angry about being incarcerated on May 9 because that was the day before the high school track and field finals, and here I …
Leupp, Arizona: A Shared Historic Space for the Navajo Nation and Japanese Americans
June 28, 2008 • Debra Redsteer
On April 27, 1943, at 7:00 a.m., Harry Yoshio Ueno and five other Japanese American men arrived at Old Leupp, located on Navajo land in northeastern Arizona, after a thirteen-hour ride from Moab, Utah, in a box in the back of a pick-up truck. The cramped box had but a two-by-two-foot opening for entry and exit. Ueno lamented that it was “Hot! Humid! We really had a hard ride.”1 The Leupp Isolation Center, administered by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), …
Dysentery, Dust, and Determination: Health Care in the World War II Japanese American Detention Camps
June 21, 2008 • Gwenn M. Jensen
On February 19, 1942, less than 74 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which set in motion the subsequent exclusion and detention of all Americans of Japanese ancestry, whether aliens ineligible for US citizenship (Issei) or their U.S.-born citizen children (Nisei) and grandchildren (Sansei), living on the West Coast. The military began rounding up Japanese Americans as early as February 27, giving some as little as 48 hours to pack up. …
Four Hirabayashi Cousins: A Question of Identity - Part 5 of 5
June 14, 2008 • James A. Hirabayashi
Part 4 >>Henry (Hank) Nobuo HirabayashiHank Nobuo Hirabayashi was born in Seattle on April 29, 1923. His father, Hamao, appears in many early photographs taken during the first decade of the 1900s with his bachelor cousins and friends. He was one of the earliest to emigrate and urged his cousins to join him. The families were to maintain close relationships throughout the pre-war years. Beginning in a day job in a hotel in Tacoma, Hamao saved his money and eventually …
Little Tokyo’s Bronze Age
June 11, 2008 • Martha Nakagawa
The Bronzeville era of Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo lasted about three short years during World War II. But before I talk about Bronzeville, it should be noted that African Americans occupied the area that we now call Little Tokyo more than 100 years ago. To illustrate this point, the modern Pentecostal movement, which was started by Rev. William J. Seymour, an African American minister from Texas, had its beginning in 1906 in an abandoned warehouse on Azusa Street in the …
Four Hirabayashi Cousins: A Question of Identity - Part 4 of 5
June 7, 2008 • James A. Hirabayashi
Part 3 >>Robert (Bob) Taro MizukamiBob Taro Mizukami was born in 1922 in Star Lake in the hills above Kent, Washington. His mother, Isami, was the youngest sister of Gordon’s father, Shungo, and attended the academy Kensei Gijuku, before emigrating to America. Gordon’s mother, Mitsu, served as an informal “go-between” in his parents’ betrothal. Raised during the Depression, it seemed to Bob that the family was moving almost once a year. The Mizukamis lived and farmed in Thomas right next …