Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Resilience: The Long Days of Camp Life

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

Today on Resilience, we continue our exploration of the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. By the fall of 1942, the military had moved most of the imprisoned Japanese Americans from temporary camps into long-term incarceration barracks; camps in isolated locations where they would spend the next few years behind barbed wire fences and stripped of the lives and homes they worked so hard to create for themselves before the war. Joining us today is author Kimi Cunningham Grant who reads from Silver Like Dust. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome, welcome back. Today we continue our exploration of the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. By the fall of 1942, the military had moved most of the imprisoned Japanese Americans from temporary camps into long-term incarceration barracks, camps in isolated locations where they would spend the next few years behind barbed wire fences and stripped of the lives and homes they worked so hard to create for themselves before the war. The years of incarceration were full of hardship, but many Japanese Americans endured and persevered. One incarcerated woman said, we carried with us strength, dignity, and soul. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting.

By the time she arrived in Wyoming, my grandmother had technically been a prisoner of the U.S. government for five months, but she recognized that this new phase was different. I think before, when we were at Pomona, it didn't hit me that this was a long-term situation, Obachin says. We were so close to LA. We were still in California, our home state. Plus, we knew all along it was only temporary. And then when I got to Heart Mountain, I think I realized we were going to be there for a long time, maybe for years, maybe forever. The WRA made no promises regarding the future of the Japanese who'd been evacuated from the West Coast. My grandmother and her family only hoped they would be freed when the war ended. For Kimi Cunningham Grant's grandmother and for so many other Japanese Americans, their transfer to long-term camps from the short-term assembly centers

diminished many of their hopes that they would soon be free to return to their homes. Their incarceration had only just begun. To the imprisoned who were used to living in mild weather conditions along the western coastal regions, the intense desert conditions of the camps came as a shock. They were not accustomed to the rapid temperature changes that could stretch to reach well over 100 degrees during the summer and fall to lows in the 30s during the winter months. And the dust? The dust was ever-present. The wind whipped up the sand that made it hard to see and to navigate, especially in a place where all of the squat, crude buildings looked the same. Most of the flimsy housing barracks, unsealed and uninsulated, were often

coated inside and out with a thick layer of desert dust. In an oral account, Ise Sedo Hashizume, who was incarcerated with her family in Idaho's camp Minidoka, said, the dust was incredible. The army convoy trucks would go and this dust would follow us in these big swirls. And everything you said, you had to do it between gritting, all this grit in your teeth. There was no vegetation, so there wasn't anything to hold down the dust. It was really bad. And then when it would rain, the dust became mud, thick mud. Until they put the planks down so that we could walk, we were losing our shoes and getting stuck and screaming for help.

Eight out of the ten camps were built in desert regions, and the two outliers were built in the subtropical Delta region of Arkansas. For work during their incarceration, many Japanese Americans at camps Jerome and Rower were given the task of draining and clearing the unrelenting swamp lands surrounding their barracks. One woman later recounted, when the rains came in Rower, we could not leave our quarters. The water stagnated at the front steps. The mosquitoes that festered there were horrible, and the authorities never had enough quinine for sickness. And the authorities never had enough quinine for sickness. Rohwer was a living nightmare.

Most of the camps were set up similar to army camps. Barracks were arranged in blocks, with each block containing about a dozen barracks. Six barracks on one side with a mess hall, laundry facilities, and latrines in the center, and another six barracks on the other side. It was not uncommon to have 30 to 50 or so of these grid blocks set up in each camp. The camps also had other buildings, military administrative buildings, general stores, recreation centers, schools and health clinics, or makeshift hospitals. But don't mistake the large number of buildings for extra space. Camps were rarely larger than a few square miles, and people were forced to live in overcrowded quarters.

Barrack buildings were hastily constructed out of rough green wood that would shrink after a few months and create spaces for the dust to get in. The outside walls were covered with tar paper, and each apartment was equipped with nothing more than a small potbelly stove and a few cots and blankets. Often 20 to 30 people lived in spaces that were meant to house only four to six. That first night, we could hear people settling in all around us. She frowns. That was the thing about those apartments. You had absolutely no privacy. You could hear everything. The walls that divided one apartment from the next did not reach the ceiling, so there was a foot of open space at the top of each divider.

On one side, Obachan heard a din of male voices, men introducing themselves to one another. She later learned that her family lived next to one of Heart Mountain's bachelor quarters. On the other side, a mother hushed the questions of a child who asked why the floor was so rough and whether it was going to get warmer in their room and when they were allowed to eat dinner. Somewhere, not right next door, but maybe a few apartments away, a baby was crying. In such cramped conditions, privacy was non-existent, and illness spread quickly. Three camps, Topaz, Jerome, and Minidoka, were plagued by outbreaks of dysentery caused by poor sanitary conditions. There were also reports of tuberculosis from every single

camp. People were getting sick and not often getting the care they needed to recover their health. Medical centers were short-staffed, and there were less than a handful of doctors stationed at each camp. There were even fewer trained nurses, and so many young Japanese-American girls were hastily trained to be nurse's aides. One woman who was incarcerated at Topaz in Utah remembered her time there as a teenager and said, I took three weeks of instruction from one of the five registered nurses assigned to Topaz and went on duty as a nurse's aide. I didn't even know the names of the instruments. I felt terribly inadequate to care for some very sick people there. Dentistry was hard to come by in camps, and small ailments like toothaches were dealt with by pulling out teeth unnecessarily. And if adequate physical

health services were difficult to get resources for people suffering from anxiety, despair, depression, and exhaustion were non-existent. In a Minidoka Sena newsletter, a Nisei editor wrote, We are not here by choice, but it's not likely that protest will alter the fact that we are here. but it's not likely that protest will alter the fact that we are here. We can have but one resolve, to apply our combined energies and efforts to the grim task of conquering the elements and converting a wasteland into an inhabitable community. Our goal is the creation of an oasis. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office

with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! next to me is Steve. It is my girl in the studio. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests.

And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode.

Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Many incarcerated did just that. They began cultivating a land that was different from the land they had known on the West Coast. They planted small shrubs and surrounded them with rock gardens, pathways, and gazebos. They created vegetable gardens to subsidize the foods they were given to eat in the mess halls. Inmates were not allowed to own their own tools, so they often created them out of scraps, metal or wood they scavenged from the campgrounds. In Manzanar, under the direction of a few inmates who had been professional gardeners and landscapers before incarceration, the community built a large, tranquil lagoon. When we entered the camp,

one man's in our nisei said, it was a barren desert. When we left the camp, it was a garden that had been built up without tools. It was green around the camp with vegetation, flowers, and also with artificial lakes. And that's how we left it. Meals at camps were served in block mess halls. Often young incarcerated people got jobs there, either cooking or serving meals. One Minidoka resident remembers some of the trials of the mealtime. There was a war happening, so food rationing meant they rarely had fresh foods or simple delicacies like butter. She said, we couldn't stand when they would make things like mutton stew, and it smelled so bad and no one could eat that. My sister worked as a waitress in the dining room for a little while, and she would bring back some bread,

and remember we had this little pot-bellied stove? Then we would make toast on it. The kitchens did have milk, so what she would do is heat these five-gallon mayonnaise jars, you know the big ones? She would put some milk in there and she would shake it until it would separate and there would be a little bit of butter on top and we would put that on our toast and it was the best tasting toast. In 1943, the War Department and the War Relocation Authority worked together on a project with a goal of assessing the loyalty of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in camps. They created two forms for inmates to fill out. One form was created for Nisei men who were of draft age.

The second form was for all other adult camp inmates. These questionnaire forms were misleadingly called the application for leave clearance. And while nearly 75,000 people filled out the questionnaires, they were not so easily tricked. Many worried that filling out the second form might put them in a bind. If their answers proved to the WRA that they were loyal to the U.S., then they were worried they'd be forced to leave the camp. And while many people wanted out, of course, the war was still being fought, and Japanese Americans were still forbidden by law to return to their homes in the West Coast military zones. These were people who had very little money, no resources, and no hope of finding new work.

Without support or a change in the laws that kept them from returning to their previous lives, most Japanese Americans knew they might be better off staying together with their families in camps. On both forms, Question 27 asked if the individual would be willing to serve as a combat soldier, nurse, or in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. Many Japanese Americans hesitated with their answer. Volunteering for military service would mean that many would leave behind their parents and other family members to fend for themselves in the harsh conditions of the camps. Plus, Japanese men had been told they would be required to serve in a segregated combat unit. It didn't sit well with

them being asked to prove their loyalty but still being forced into military unit segregation. Question 28 also set off alarm bells for camp inmates. It asked, will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor to any other foreign government, power, or organization. If inmates answered yes, they worried it would be taken to mean that they had once sworn allegiance to Japan, even though Nisei were American-born and had never considered Japan their home nation. Almost 7,000 camp inmates refused to answer or answered no

to questions 27 and 28 on their loyalty forms. It was a small act of defiance. And these men and women were nicknamed the no-nos. One man's in our inmate said, well, if you want to know, I said no, and I'm going to stick to no. If they want to segregate me, they can do it. If they want to take my citizenship away, they can do it. If this country doesn't want me, they can throw me out. What do they know about loyalty? On the other hand, many Japanese American men did end up volunteering to serve in the armed forces during the war. More than 22,000, in fact. I've mentioned this before, but when the Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor,

the islands of Hawaii were home to a large population of Japanese Americans. They made up almost a third of the territory's population. And while General DeWitt began to tighten up the west coast by creating military zones and implementing racist exclusion orders, Hawaiian General Dillis Emmons took a different approach. General Emmons was against the idea of mass removal of Japanese Americans into incarceration camps. Instead, he worked with military leaders to form the 100th Battalion, an all-Nisei infantry battalion. The battalion was made up of about 1,400 Nisei men who trained together on the mainland at Camps McCoy and Shelby. On September 22, 1943, the 100th Battalion landed on the beaches of Salerno, Italy,

with the goal to fight their way inward to the town of Monte Cassino, which was held by the enemy. The battle was one of the bloodiest of the war, and while the battalion was ultimately successful in capturing the city, their numbers had been drastically reduced. the city, their numbers had been drastically reduced. The 100th continued to fight in mainland Europe, even as another all-Nisei combat unit was forming back home. The U.S. had reinstated a draft for Nisei in the early days of 1944, and over 1,500 men from incarceration camps and 2,000 more from Hawaii were sent to Camp Shelby to train as the 442nd Battalion. The 442nd arrived in Italy in June of 1944, and they began fighting alongside the 100th Battalion. Eventually, the 100th merged under the 442nd, and the troops united with a new motto, Go for Broke.

As American-born sons of Japanese immigrants, the Nisei soldiers were ready to put everything on the line to win big. They were fighting two wars, the war against the Germans in Europe, two wars, the war against the Germans in Europe and the war against the racial prejudice that kept their families incarcerated in the United States. One soldier succinctly said, we had to prove we were loyal. We had to prove we would fight. prove we would fight. In September 1944, the 442nd participated in the invasion of southern France, successfully liberating several small French cities from Nazi occupation. In October, the 442nd, which had been gaining ground for weeks, was finally granted a well-deserved rest. One of the units that relieved them was a Texas National Guard team made up of approximately 275 white American soldiers. The Texans marched four miles ahead to gain ground and occupy two hills outside a small town in northeastern France. But their

progress was a trap. The Nazis allowed the unit to pass through the hillsides and then sprung. They attacked the column's rear and sealed off any retreat or resupply by setting up landmines and machine gun nests. They had the Texans trapped. And the next day, when the Texan unit sent out a 36-man patrol to attempt a breakout of the Nazi stranglehold, only five men returned. Two days later, the Nisei soldiers of the 442nd began to mobilize up both hillsides in order to rescue the lost Texas battalion. The rescue efforts were slowed by the German landmines, thick underbrush, dense forest, and constant enemy fire. Soon, the Nisei battalion received a radio message that the Texan situation had become desperate. Even though a platoon of tanks arrived to provide support by firing cannons at the Germans, they just weren't able to cut

through their ranks. It meant that the Nisei would have to continue their advance up the steep bluffs that the battalion had dubbed Suicide Hill. 442nd veteran James Matsumoto in an oral history interview said there were so many dead people on the road that they had to bring a bulldozer to push them off the road. We lost a lot of men there. Another veteran said we yelled our heads off and shot the head off everything that moved. We did not care anymore. On October 30th, a few days after the 442nd began their rescue mission, a portion of the unit made first contact with the lost battalion. The radio message from the Texans said, patrol from 442nd here. Tell them that we love them. Approximately 211 soldiers of the Lost Texas Battalion's original 275 survived the siege. But the 442nd wasn't done yet.

They continued to forge ahead and captured the ridge that had been the lost battalion's original mission. The unit went on to fight with the 92nd Infantry Division, which was a segregated African-American unit, and together they steadily worked on driving German forces out of northern Italy for the duration of the war. The 442nd Battalion earned over 4,000 Purple Hearts, along with many more military decorations for their wartime bravery. Pauline Sato, the daughter of the fallen Nisei 442nd soldier Robert Soto said, what they did transcends their race. They had to prove that with their blood. We can't forget that. A special unit of the 442nd called the 522nd Field Artillery spent their wartime efforts supporting over two dozen other army divisions with their expertise in shelling enemy lines.

In the last days of the war, the unit approached the German industrial town of Dachau. At the time, very few American soldiers fighting in Europe were actually aware of the magnitude of the humanitarian catastrophe that was happening inside Nazi concentration camps. The German guards at Dachau fled as the troops approached and left behind more than 30,000 weak and malnourished prisoners. The unit was supposed to wait for orders as military leaders scrambled to decide what to do. But the soldiers refused and shot off the locks to the prison, making their way inside. A group of Jewish prisoners stood in the yard, lined up, blindfolded, and waiting silently for shots from the firing squad that never came.

One man remembered his liberation, saying, suddenly someone was tugging at my blindfold. He tugged this way and that way and he pulled the blindfold off and I saw him and I thought, oh, now the Japanese are going to kill us. And I didn't care anymore. I said, just kill us and get it over with. He tried to convince me that he was an American and wouldn't kill me. And I said, oh no, you're Japanese and you're going to kill us. We went back and forth and finally he landed on his knees crying with his hands over his face and said, you are free now. We are American Japanese. You are free. A number of Nisei women also became wartime volunteers. Over 100 Japanese American women were allowed to leave incarceration camps to serve in the Women's Army Corps.

There they received training and took on assignments on military bases. They often served as typists, office clerks, or even camp drivers. served as typists, office clerks, or even camp drivers. In September of 1943, about 50 Nisei Women's Army Corps volunteers were accepted into John Iso's Military Intelligence Service Language School at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. They were put through the same rigorous program as the men, and when they graduated, many of them worked at the Pacific Military Intelligence Research Station in Maryland. There, they translated captured Japanese documents and interpreted the enemy's military plans and moves during the war. The highly trained Nisei scanned

any and all captured documents in order to find information that could help the U.S. military's strategic planning. They discovered an important book containing the Imperial Army Ordnance Inventory, which provided details on all the weapons the Japanese were using. It was a huge find, and the book's information was used to help the U.S. carry out bombing missions against Japan. Other Nisei women volunteers found their place in the Cadet Nurse Corps. Around 350 Japanese American women went through rigorous and accelerated nursing training. During the war, so many nurses were called overseas to staff military hospitals that civilian hospitals here

in the U.S. were severely understaffed. Many were on the brink of closing their doors, in fact. In 1945, the Cadet Nurse Corps program, funded by the government, provided about 80% of the nursing care in U.S. hospitals. Incarceration camp hospitals were also staffed, mostly with Japanese-American medical professionals who were imprisoned themselves. At Manzanar, almost a year to the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the medical ward would be put to the test. An angry group gathered outside the hospital determined to find an injured patient.

outside the hospital determined to find an injured patient. And the events that followed would end in violence, death, and a declaration of martial law. I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. If you enjoyed this episode, would you consider leaving us a rating or review or sharing a link to it on your social media? All of those things help podcasters out so much. Here's Where It Gets Interesting is written and researched by executive producer Heather Jackson. Our audio engineer is Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon.

See you again soon. you