Former Internee Recalls Life During WWII

Maria Langlais, Aging & Disability Services

Betty Okamura of the City of Seattle's Human Services Department enjoys reading about her contemporaries in Seniors Digest, so this month she agreed to share her own story of being a Japanese-American during and after WWII.

Betty grew up on King Street in the Central Area, where many Japanese lived. Her father was an outgoing fellow who belonged to several social clubs, including Hiroshima-Ken, a group of men from Hiroshima. New immigrants felt most at ease with others from their own hometowns, so there were many of these clubs. Initially, most Japanese immigrants did not intend to stay their plan was always to return to their homeland. But many decided instead to remain in their new country.

Betty was seven years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Following the attack, the U.S. government started gathering lists of names of club members and other groups. The male leaders in the local Japanese community were promptly rounded up, and some were not to return again until after the war. Betty's father was taken in February 1942. She still wonders why he was taken, when some of her friends' fathers were not. He was confined at a detention center for a few months before being sent to work camps around the country. Betty still remembers the clang of the cell door being shut after visiting her father. She says, "It was traumatic seeing my father in prison." 

Her father was sent to work camps throughout the south and west from Montana to Louisiana, and Arkansas to New Mexico. Betty remembers receiving a vine of dried grapes that her father sent. She'd never seen anything like that before. Then, in May of 1942, FDR issued Executive Order 9066, and Betty's family were forced to join their neighbors in Camp Harmony in Puyallup and later at the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho, where her father was finally reunited with them. Betty's mother thought about moving inland, but was worried about her little daughter in the climate of intolerance and felt the camp might be a safer place for her family to endure the war. "Why the government would be worried about a seven-year-old kid, I'll never know," says Betty.

Betty's family was lucky in that they decided not to sell their home before evacuating. Her father wrote to them to "sell the house," as he had heard that everyone would be sent back to Japan in exchange for POWs. Betty's mother, who was born in Hawaii, considered selling, but then changed her mind after a chance encounter with a German immigrant in downtown Seattle. The immigrant approached her mother and asked if she was Japanese and if she was preparing to leave for the internment camps. He had survived a similar internment in the U.S. during WWI, and told her, "Do not sell your home you will come back."

Life in the Camps

At Camp Harmony in Puyallup, Betty's family lived in Area C, in the spot that is now the parking lot just opposite the entrance to the Puyallup Fairgrounds. Years later, when Betty and her husband took their children to the Western Washington Fair, they would park in the old Area C and say to their children, "This is where we used to live." 

Betty recalls that the "lucky kids" were the ones in Area D, which was right on the fairgrounds so the kids got to have the fair as their play area. Betty loved to visit friends in Area D, although you needed to get a pass to do so, since each area was enclosed, with barbed wire and armed soldiers. After a few months in Puyallup, the family was moved to Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho. "It was like being in the Army," Betty says. "We slept in barracks on army cots. A lucky few got a fold-up bed with a small mattress spring. At first we used outdoor latrines, but eventually they had a building."

The food in the mess hall was awful, except for the rice. Betty's mother worked there and was often able to bring home portions of food and cook them up on a hot plate in their bunkhouse. Her mother's food always tasted better than the mess hall meal. They also received coupons, like food stamps, which they could use to buy items at the camp store.

Her block had three places of worship, one Buddhist, one Catholic and one Protestant. She and her friends would go to all three. Betty recalls, "The Catholic Church always had the best treats." The small village of 10,000 had many weddings and funerals, and the kids attended them all. They had other diversions: clubs, hobbies and school. Here Betty learned how to quilt, knit and crochet.  Betty smiles and says, "In general, the Japanese are very busy!"   

Betty says that the government did do some good things. Most neighborhoods were kept together so that you knew most everyone in camp. Her best friend, Katharine, was always on the same block with her. Katharine now lives in California but they are still best friends. 

The ACLU and the American Friends (Quakers) are two groups that Betty remembers as helping the Japanese internees. The Friends were instrumental in establishing schools for the children in the camps, and though Betty was afraid of falling behind in her schoolwork, when she returned to Bailey-Gatzert Elementary, she found that she and her friends were actually ahead of the other kids.  

Returning Home

Betty's family was allowed to return to their home on King Street in the spring of 1945. Her brother had just been drafted but received a deferral so that he and her mother could return to the family home to prepare it for their arrival. They returned to find many family treasures gone. The family's pre-war memorabilia, which had been stored in the basement, had been stolen. But at least they had their home.
 
Betty fondly remembers celebrating VJ day with some German neighbors. Neither family dared to venture outside, still afraid of what might happen to them, but they were joyful that the war was over.   

For years Betty hated Pearl Harbor Day. Whether people have now forgotten, or whether younger generations aren't learning about it, she isn't sure, but she does feel that the stigma of being Japanese on December 7th is slowly fading. 

Betty is concerned that now, September 11th has taken on a similar place in the collective American memory, and she fears that it is now a bad time to be a Muslim. She wonders when we will learn that an entire group of people should not be blamed for the acts of a few fanatics. 

Betty went to Hiroshima in 1999 to visit the city where her father was born, as were her mother's parents.  She says it's a beautiful city, in many ways a lot like Seattle. It's bustling and modern, although they have preserved one building that was devastated by the bomb. Her memory of that day in August 1945 is that she didn't feel surprised when the US dropped the atomic bomb. However, she does feel that 100 years from now, people will look back and say, "How could they have done that?" 

Betty isn't bitter about her wartime experience, but she says that she will probably never fully trust the government. And she still hates the desert.

Betty reminds us that her memories are those of a child, so some things may not have happened exactly as she remembers them.  But most of all, she wants people to remember that this happened in our country...and to never again let it happen to any group of people.

For More Information

Minidoka was made into a National Monument in 2001. The National Park Service's Minidoka Internment website contains information and links about this and other internment camps.

Photos: Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives; The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley