Interviews

1. Family nursery business

2. Living through the Great Depression

3. Hearing about Pearl Harbor

4. Traveling to Manzanar

5. Jobs in Manzanar

6. The riot in Manzanar

7. Sugar beet and potato farming in Idaho

8. Sugar beet farming process

9. Being inducted into the army

10. Being called out of Reserves

11. Fort Snelling

12. Traveling from Manila to Tokyo

13. Serving in Tokyo

14. Visiting Hiroshima

15. After being discharged and returning to the nursery business

16. Meeting his wife, Eileen

Fukuhara,Jimmy Ko

(b. 1921) Nisei veteran who served in the occupation of Japan

Jobs in Manzanar

Since I wouldn’t go to work, they gave me a pick and shovel with by brother-in-law. I didn’t know he would be my future brother-in-law at the time. We were working together, we went out there and had to clear the land to build more barracks. We went out there and chopped sage brush and the like.

We didn’t do that very long, and then we got on another job assignment - unloading trucks that were coming in. What we were unloading was all paper wrapped. So finally one, I don’t know if somebody purposefully cut one open. Anyway, one fell out, cylinders like that. This is burlap, and it’s different colors. We couldn’t figure out what this is going to be used for.

Next thing we knew, they had built a camouflage factory outside the camp. All you had to do was go through the fence and walk to that wall right over there, and that’s where the camouflage factory was. It was a great big shape like the barrack but only higher. Because you had to put up these here camouflage netting, the fish net and all that. The girls would weave these different colors of burlap. That’s where I worked in there as more of a supplying the girls. We had to cut that in four or five feet strips.

barracks California concentration camps Manzanar concentration camp United States World War II World War II camps

Date: February 6, 2015

Location: California, US

Interviewer: John Esaki

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Jimmy Ko Fukuhara was born on September 21, 1921 in Los Angeles, California to Japanese immigrants, Ume and Ichisuke Fukuhara. In 1927, his father moved the family to Santa Monica, California, and got started in the nursery business. After graduating from Santa Monica High School, Jimmy worked at the nursery, until 1942, when he and his family were sent to the Manzanar concentration camp.

Jimmy was able to leave camp early, and moved to Pennsylvania with his younger brother, George. Within sixty days, Jimmy was drafted into the army, and volunteered to serve in the Military Intelligence school. After going through basic training, Jimmy was sent to Tokyo, Japan. There he worked for the labor department in General MacArthur’s headquarters. Before leaving Japan, he visited Hiroshima in hopes of connecting with his parents’ relatives. After being discharged, Jimmy returned to Santa Monica and the family nursery business. Jimmy continued to work in the nursery with his four brothers, until he retired in 1986. (May 2016)