Internment camp survivors remember the past
Grace Oshita was one of thousands of Japanese Americans forced to leave their homes during World War II to live at internment camps that the U.S. government developed, she said in a speech Tuesday, Feb. 24, in the TSC Sunburst Lounge.
Oshita and Rick Okabe, who also spoke Tuesday, are members of the Topaz Museum Board of Directors. Okabe said the Topaz Museum is a volunteer nonprofit organization whose mission includes preserving the site of the Topaz internment camp near Delta, Utah, where Oshita was held for three years. Okabe said the main goal is to educate people about the injustice that happened during World War II with Japanese American citizens and residents.
Okabe said there were 10 internment camps across the Western half the U.S. that held anywhere from 8,000 to 12,000 Japanese Americans shortly after Pearl Harbor. Oshita said the camp she stayed at was in Delta and held 8,130 people.
Okabe said on Feb. 19, 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an order to set up camps and remove people of at least one sixteenth Japanese blood and take them to these camps. He said Oshita was born and raised in San Francisco and was 17 at the time she was forced to leave her home.
“These people just looked like the enemy, but they hadn’t committed a crime,” Okabe said.
Oshita said he was afraid of possible consequences after Pearl Harbor.
“I was in high school at the time and the day after Pearl Harbor I went to class and I sat in the back and just whimpered because I was so afraid,” Oshita said. “My teacher told me that nothing was going to happen to me and that I shouldn’t have any problems.”
Okabe said soon after Pearl Harbor he was told he and his family needed to go to the Tanforan Race Track in San Bruno, Calif., where she was to stay until the camp in Utah was built.
Oshita said the day she and her family were told to move was not a happy one.
“It was a sad day. We took our mattresses and other heavy belongings to a warehouse and we able to bring only a few blankets and linens with us and whatever else we could carry in our suitcases. It was a very hard time for families with small children,” she said. “We then were given name tags with our names and numbers on them.”
Okabe said she lived at the Tanforan Race Track for six months, and then all the people being held at the race track got on a train and made the three day trip to Delta. She said once they arrived in Delta they got on buses and went to the Topaz desert, where they stayed for the next three years.
Okabe said the camp was one square mile and was surrounded by barbed wire fence. He said there were guard towers with soldiers with rifles inhabiting them. He said there were schools inside the camp, kindergarten through 12th grade; there was also a hospital, and even an orphanage. He said the children in the orphanage at the camp were kids who were previously in orphanages and who were at least one sixteenth Japanese.
Oshita said that each family was given a room to live in at the barracks. She said a family of four would have lived in a small one-bedroom area in the barracks. She said there were buildings in the middle of the camp and that was where the bathrooms, laundry rooms and showers were.
Oshita said the bedrooms the families lived in had only metal cots to sleep on and if anyone wanted more furniture, they had to build it from the leftover wood that was used to build the barracks. Oshita said most people kept busy in the everyday life in the camp.
“We would find jobs. After I got my high school diploma I worked on knitting and embroidery,” she said. “We were given wages of around $16 a month. There were also activities and such to occupy the time.”
Okabe said the only things left at these sites now are concrete foundations and other small reminders, such as toy dolls or glass vases. He said the Topaz Museum has gone back and reconstructed the barracks to the exact measurements and monuments are now displayed there, as well. Okabe said the area is now a national historic landmark.
Okabe said it’s important for people to realize this actually happened and that everyone can be educated about this unjust event in American history.
-s.k.b@aggiemail.usu.edu