Thanks for the photos and the great story. While I think the US was wrong in what they did to the Japanese during WWII, at least they were treated humanely and allowed freedoms like the photographer. In many other countries citizens were executed or made to do forced labor. Look at how the Germans treated the Jews -- before the death camps, many were made to do slave labor. Other countries like Cambodia simply killed off large portions of the population they felt did not comply with their governmental policies. Some people point out that Germans were not treated the same way but how would they have identified Germans? Walking down the street, can you pick out a person of German descent from one from England, France, or other Caucasian countries? Besides, the internment would have required millions rather than 120,000 since a large portion of the US can trace their ancestry back to Germany.

The real events are coming out by a few, Thank you for your information. In the 1960s I had a Japanese friend who was convinced that all Japanese in the U.S. were sent to internment camps. He was astounded and hardly believed me when I told him that was not so. There were three groups. All the Japanese on the west coast west of the Cascade Mountains had to relocate or go to a camp. Japanese that lived east of the Cascades to about 100 miles could remain there but not travel and those that lived about 150 miles or more east of the Cascades could live there and travel but not to the west coast. I lived and went to grade school and high school in Spokane, WA and went to school with several Japanese kids. We had a lot of Japanese truck gardens in Spokane and a couple of Japanese restaurants and churches. One of the Japanese kids was a good friend of mine and I visited his home and family often. We used to go fishing together a lot and he kept the fish.

This past January, my wife and I met some friends in Lone Pine, California, located up in the Owens Valley region of the state. This was the first time I had been there and I took advantage of that to visit the Manzanar National Historic Site, dedicated to the memory of when it was one of 10 War Relocation Centers where individuals of Japanese ancestry were interned for the duration of World War II. In total, these camps were home to over 120,000 people.

Now this has special meaning for me as one of my first bosses after I graduated from engineering school was of Japanese decent. He was born in Los Angeles and his family ran a truck garden, supplying vegetables to local markets and restaurants. His parents were born in Japan, but Paul and his older brother, were born in LA.

Now Paul never talked much about what happen back then, but I knew a few things. I knew that he was in high school when the war started and that he and his family were forced to leave Los Angeles as part of the displacement of Japanese-American families. I also know that he eventually joined the Army and served in the 442nd Infantry Regiment, which consisted of mostly Americans of Japanese ancestry. This unit served in Europe and was the most decorated regiment in the army. Paul was wounded twice while fighting in France and Germany.

Because of this, I had always wanted to visit Manzanar as it's the only one of the 10 camps where the government has tried to preserve any of its history.

For the next few posts, I'm going to present some of the photos I took that day and at the end, I'm going to relate a bit more information about my old boss and what happened to his family.

Now for that more detailed story about my boss and his family.

One of the things that I found amazing was that while I was talking to one of the Park Service employees, I mentioned that my old boss was Japanese-American and that his family had been displaced from Southern California but I wasn't sure where he and his family were sent. That's when I learned that they have a master database of ALL of the 120,000+ internees with details as to where they went and so on. I gave them my bosses name and where he was born. They were able to find his records and that's when I learned something about what happened when the order was issued requiring people of Japanese decent to leave the West Coast area and were moved to one of the 10 interment camps. Now it turns out that my boss and his family were technically never interned at one of the camps. Note that I knew he hadn't been interned at Manzanar because my boss told me he had graduated from high school in Wyoming, but that was one the states where there was a camp, so I just assumed (like I said, he never talked much about that part of his life).

Anyway, it turns out that in January 1942, when the internment order was issued, people were given two weeks to report to a processing center. But, and this is what I had never knew before, if during those two weeks, a person voluntarily left the West Coast areas and moved to a state that would accept them, they were not subject to being interned. What appears to have happened is that Wyoming, before the war, had a rather substantial population of Japanese residents and since it was nowhere near anything strategic, the government never concerned themselves with this group, despite eventually establishing one of the smaller camps there. Well, it seems that my boss's father knew someone in Wyoming so they moved there and were never interned. Paul graduated from high school that spring (1942) and he enlisted in the Army as I had mentioned earlier, serving in Europe in the 442nd Infantry Regiment. When the war ended, he returned to Wyoming and attended engineering school on the GI Bill. Which is where he met his wife, who was also of Japanese decent, but who had been born and raised in Wyoming (I can remember Paul telling me that his father-in-law was a railroad engineer). After graduating, Paul went to work for a company in Chicago, which was eventually acquired by a British Company that had their American operation in Saginaw, Michigan. Paul was transferred there and eventually became one of the department heads and that was where I met him years later when I joined the company in 1971 and for awhile, worked in his department as a machine designer. It was interesting the data that they had, which only went up to when he left for the Army, but they were able to give me a copy of his draft registration, which he had to fill out when he turned 18, just a few months before he graduated. Of course, this registration card had the date and place of his birth as well as his address in Wyoming, which was in Laramie. That's when I also learned his Japanese middle name, which I had never heard before.

Now there's a twist to this story that involves Paul's older brother, who it turns out was interned during the war, but not here, but rather in Japan.

When Paul's brother graduated from high school a few years before Paul, the family sent him to Japan to live with an uncle who happened to be a Methodist minister. This was so that he would get a chance to learn his families culture and become proficient in the language. Of course, when war broke out he was immediately arrested since he was an American citizen, along with is uncle's family since he was part of the Christian-backed antiwar movement in Japan. They spent about three years in prison but were eventually released as it was get too hard to feed them, so they were released under house arrest for the duration, depending on their former parishioners for food and housing. Now when the war ended, here was this American young man who could speak the language and so he went to work for the occupation forces. He eventually married a Japanese girl and stayed in Japan, first working for Army and later, with the help of his uncle, getting a job in the church and eventually the World Council of Churches in their Tokyo offices, where he worked until he retired.

Now comes a bit more of the twist. I can remember when Paul and his wife would have their nieces and nephews from Japan come and stay with them for a year or so to learn about their American heritage since they were American citizens. This also gave them a chance to prefect their English language skills. In fact, I think at least one of these kids stayed and went to school in the US and never returned to Japan.

Anyway, I thought some of you might enjoy this story.