Debra Redsteer
Debra Jean McCabe Redsteer is a full blood Navajo, whose clans are Red Bottom born for Bitter Water. McCabe Redsteer was born in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were among the thousands of AmerIndians relocated to the Los Angeles area and other big cities during the 1950’s in the federal government’s controversial relocation program. A Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, graduate of History in 2007, McCabe Redsteer currently works as administrative support assistant in the Department of History at California State University, Fullerton.
Updated June 2008
Stories from This Author
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), …
