Their Best Way to Show Loyalty
Their Best Way to Show Loyalty
An Editorial
The San Francisco News
March 6, 1942
Japanese leaders in California who are counseling their people, both aliens and native-born, to
co-operate with the Army in carrying out the evacuation plans are, in effect, offering the best
possible way for all Japanese to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States.
Many aliens and practically all the native-born have been protesting their allegiance to this
Government. Although their removal to inland districts outside the military zones may
inconvenience them somewhat, even work serious hardships upon some, they must certainly
recognize the necessity of clearing the coastal combat areas of all possible fifth columnists and
saboteurs. Inasmuch as the presence of enemy agents cannot be detected readily when these
areas are thronged by Japanese the only course left is to remove all persons of that race for the
duration of the war.
That is a clear-cut policy easily understood. Its execution should be supported by all citizens of
whatever racial background, but especially it presents an opportunity to the people of an enemy
race to prove their spirit of co-operation and keep their relations with the rest of the population of
this country on the firm ground of friendship.
Every indication has been given that the transfer will be made with the least possible hardship.
General DeWitt’s order was issued in such a way as to give those who can make private moving
arrangements plenty of time to do so. All others will not be moved until arrangements can be
made for places for them to go. They may have to be housed in temporary quarters until
permanent ones can be provided for them, but during the summer months that does not mean
they will be unduly uncomfortable.
Their property will be carefully protected by the Federal Government, their food and shelter will
be provided to the extent they are not able to provide it for themselves, and they will be
furnished plenty of entertainment and recreation. That is not according to the pattern of the
European concentration camp by any means.
Real danger would exist for all Japanese if they remained in the combat area. The least act of
sabotage might provoke angry reprisals that easily could balloon into bloody race riots.
We must avoid any chance of that sort of thing. The most sensible, the most humane way to
insure against it is to move the Japanese out of harm’s way and make it as easy as possible for
them to go and to remain away until the war is over.
2nd article
A STOLEN YOUTH
Julian Guthrie, OF THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER STAFF
Published Sunday, April 20, 1997
A faded yearbook photo of 17-year-old Masaru Kawaguchi shows a gentle young man wearing
wire-rim spectacles, a slightly askew bow tie and a tentative smile. Kawaguchi’s soft expression
reveals nothing of the anguish and tumult of the time. The yearbook was dated 1943, two years
after Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Kawaguchi was one of 120,000 people of Japanese
ancestry who were forced by the U.S. government to hastily sell or store their belongings,
evacuate their homes and relocate to internment camps encased by barbed wire and watched over
by armed guards.
“High school years are supposed to be the best of your life,” said the American-born Kawaguchi,
who was a junior at George Washington High School in San Francisco when informed he would
have to leave school. “We had our youth stolen from us.”
In a symbolic gesture intended to return a slice of lost adolescence, the San Francisco Unified
School District in May will honor an estimated 60 former students who, like Kawaguchi, were
plucked out of high school and forced into the camps for no other reason than their
Japanese heritage.
On May 6, at a ceremony at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, the former internees will be
awarded honorary high school diplomas. Witnessing the event will be some 2,000 high school
juniors and seniors who have studied World War II, taken U.S. government classes and read the
classic relocation tale “Farewell to Manzanar.” For these students, history will come to life. At
72, Kawaguchi, a retired Caltrans engineer who lives in San Francisco, still has the lankiness and
gentle ease of his youth.
Returning to Washington High for the first time in 55 years last week, Kawaguchi walked
through the long, concrete halls and found himself surrounded by memories of school days:
standing by a locker talking to a friend, dashing to his homeroom class, bouncing basketballs on
the gym floor.
With the afternoon sun streaming through the windows, Kawaguchi smiled as he talked about his
days on the school’s winning basketball team. But the smile faded, and his mood
turned melancholy. “I was taken from school mid-season,” he recalled. “I would’ve liked to have
played in the finals with my teammates. They went on to be champions.”
Kawaguchi, joined by three former Washington students who were also interned and still live in
San Francisco, has tried to push certain memories from his mind. Still, he’s not able to forget the
day his teacher told him he could not return to school.
He had seen the posters plastered around his Japantown neighborhood, informing Japanese
residents they had a 6 p.m. curfew, and instructing them not to venture beyond a few blocks from
their homes.
“It was really strange,” Kawaguchi said. “Here I was, born in America. I was an American
citizen. I had attended school in San Francisco all my life. When I was told I couldn’t come to
school, none of my classmates said a word to me. No one said (they were) sorry. No one said
they didn’t want me to go.” The school was carrying out Executive Order 9066, signed on Feb.
19, 1942, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The order called for all Japanese Americans living
in the Western United States to be uprooted and placed in camps because they were considered a
threat to security.
As 10 internment camps were constructed around the country, a large majority of Japanese
American families from the Bay Area were temporarily placed in what was called the Tan Foran
Assembly Center, at a racetrack in San Bruno. “Our family had to live in a stable,” Kawaguchi
recalled. “The luckier ones got to live in barracks.” The toilets and showers had no dividers.
Family members were given two blankets each. They made their bedding by filling mattresses
with straw. Items like cameras, radios, knives – and family heirlooms – were taken and
never returned. After six months in Tan Foran, Kawaguchi, his six siblings and mother and
father, were put on a train and sent to a camp in Topaz, Utah, where they would live out the war.
Peter Kitagawa, 73, who was a junior at Washington High when he was sent to Tan Foran – on
Mother’s Day 1942 – walked the high school halls with Kawaguchi. He’s happy to be recognized
with an honorary diploma but remains angry. “Where were the bleeding hearts in 1942?”
he asked.
Kitagawa, a mail carrier for 37 years, leafed through his Washington High yearbook, dated 1941,
his sophomore year. He smiled over the messages penned by classmates: “The best of luck in
’42,” “You’re a swell guy,” “I hope you’re at my study table next term,” and: “Take it easy on
the girls.”
Bette Takeshita, 72, also returning to Washington for the first time since she was forced to leave,
laughed when she saw her own photo in the yearbook. Posing with other members of the
California Scholarship Federation, the young Bette stood in the front row, arms by her side,
wearing a plaid dress with dark bobby socks and white tennis shoes. “We all went into the
camps,” explained Takeshita, who turned sweet 16 at Topaz, “because being a minority back
then wasn’t what it is today. We didn’t have people to stand up for us like minority groups do
now, and we didn’t have the clout to stand up for ourselves.”
George Yano, a Washington High senior when he and his family were sent to Topaz, added,
“Our authority figures were our parents. Our parents were not yet American citizens. So they
didn’t have many choices.”
While there are 11 former Washington High students who will attend the May 6 ceremony, there
will also be former high school students from Lowell, Commerce, Mission, Polytechnic, Girls
and Galileo. One former student, Jiro Nakamura, who would have graduated from Commerce
High School in 1943, is flying from his home in Tokyo to attend the event.
Michi Kobi, a Lowell senior when interned, will fly in from New York. “I’m going to the
ceremony because I want there to be closure,” Kobi said. “When I was interned, it was like the
end of the world for me. I had led a good life. I was going to graduate with good grades and go
on to UC-Berkeley. I had my dream shattered.” In a shaky voice, Kobi said she had gone into a
“serious, zombie-like depression” at Tan Foran. “I lost my sense of identity. I had thought I was
an American. When I was incarcerated, suddenly I wasn’t an American. I didn’t know what
I was.”
She said it had taken her years of psychotherapy to come to terms with what happened. “I’d like
to tell high school students that this could happen again, that their civil rights could be taken
from them like it was from us,” Kobi said. “When times are bad, human beings have to find a
scapegoat to blame. That is human nature.”
Locating former students as far flung as Tokyo and New York was the task of Dr. Steven
Hirabayashi, principal of John O’Connell Technical High School. Hirabayashi began his search
in November by contacting Japanese American newspapers across the country and asking for
help in publicizing the event. Hirabayashi sees the ceremony as a way to “seek forgiveness for
what happened and make amends.”
Leland Yee, a San Francisco supervisor and former school board member who proposed the
measure to the Board of Education in November, said he saw it as a “nice gesture for our former
Japanese students to come before us and accept their diplomas. And, just as the government has
made redress to Japanese Americans, we need to do our part to recognize what happened
was wrong.”
In March, the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund announced that it had allocated $2.7 million
to 100 organizations or individuals in 20 states to establish educational programs about the
World War II internment of Japanese Americans. This was part of the 1988 Civil Liberties Act
passed by Congress, which set aside $1.2 billion in redress payments to those interned. About
60,000 camp survivors have been paid $20,000 each.
“The government started the healing process, and for the City of San Francisco and the Board of
Education to do this is another way to make amends,” said Harry Kitano, a professor of
sociology and social welfare at UCLA. A freshman at Galileo High School before being sent to
Topaz, he will be the featured speaker at the May 6 ceremony.
“For a long period of time,” Kitano says, “I felt shame that I had been in one of these camps. It
left a lot of scars. It made me cynical about government, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
It may mean something for someone, but it didn’t provide much protection for me.”
With time, Kitano said, the pain has eased, the trust has been restored. “It’s taken a long time for
that to happen,” he said. “But apologies must be accepted. And the high school diploma may be a
perfect symbol of the healing.”
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