Finally, the families of Sumi and Yae were escorted to their assigned quarters. As they walked to the northeast quadrant of the camp, they were surprised to see so many Germans. While no physical barriers separated the German and Japanese sections, each group generally kept to its own area.
That first night, Sumi and her family were taken by truck down Airport Drive to what was known as the T section. The housing here was much different from Heart Mountain, where Sumi had stayed in a crowded dormitory. The T section stood for “triplex”—720 feet of floor space divided into three small apartments. Each had a kitchen with running water and a toilet, with a community shower. The prospect of living with only two other families brightened Sumi’s outlook. Nobu would be able to shop for food in the Japanese store, pay for it with camp money—which Sumi called “funny money”—and prepare all of their meals. Even though they still lived behind a fence, without liberty, an important part of their family structure was restored: eating together.
On the first morning after arriving in Crystal City, Sumi looked outside and saw the strange sight of mounted guards on horseback, something that did not exist in Heart Mountain or other camps. Then she saw a Japanese woman pulling a creaking wooden cart, which stopped at the bungalow and delivered bottled milk. A little while later, two men in a truck delivered ice for the cooler. At breakfast, her mother and father were seated together, no longer worried about each other’s whereabouts. “The countryside was bleak and the weather was hot and humid,” recalled Sumi, “but that first morning in Crystal City, we were together again. I was happy.”
On the morning of September 20, 1943, Sumi left her triplex, numbered T-37-B, located near the citrus orchard on the southernmost edge of the camp. She walked a short distance to the Federal High School, also known as the American School, where she would start ninth grade.
Everything about this first day of school felt different. The student body at Sumi’s new school numbered about 150, a group made up mostly of Japanese Americans from the continental United States. Here, unlike on any first day of school in Los Angeles, Sumi knew none of her classmates. All of the students were strangers to each other, every student in the room a transfer from some other camp.
It often took months for new students’ transcripts to arrive from different camps. The wait did not stall the steady pace of the school year. A Hawaiian girl who was a senior that year received her transcript just one week before graduation. Every student, including Sumi, was placed in a grade on the strength of his or her word. As a measure of how honest the Japanese American students were despite the humiliation of internment, camp records show that once transcripts finally arrived, less than 1 percent of students were demoted for misrepresentation.
As the students in Sumi’s class filed into the prefabricated building that housed the Federal High School, all were headed into the unknown with no choice but to quietly take their hard seats in the used school desks. The first class was English. Sumi stared at the tall, willowy woman with the soft brown hair who stood in front of the blackboard. The woman had a straight spine and a confident air, as if she was used to getting her way. In clear, graceful cursive, she wrote her name in chalk on the blackboard: Miss Goldsmith.
By the time she stood before Sumi’s class, Kathryn Goldsmith, a graduate of North Texas Teachers College in Denton, Texas, had been a classroom teacher for twelve years. On the first day of class, Miss Goldsmith read several long assignments aloud. Like all of the other students, Sumi understood English, but Miss Goldsmith’s thick Texas drawl was unfamiliar. Her rolled r’s and dropped g’s were confusing. A phrase like taking a bath on the printed page sounded like takin’ a bath in Miss Goldsmith’s mouth. Fixing was chopped to fixin’. She said y’all instead of you guys. The cadence and rhythm of Miss Goldsmith’s voice struck Sumi as comical. “Her Texas accent sounded so funny,” recalled Sumi, “the whole class laughed.”
Miss Goldsmith’s English class was Sumi’s favorite: “She was strict, but she was fair and went out of her way to make us feel like normal kids in a normal school.” To capture their interest, she directed the students in plays—Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Night Owl, and The Wizard of Oz.
R. C. (Robert Clyde) Tate, a former high school principal in Crystal City and the supervisor of education at the internment camp, had recruited Miss Goldsmith. A native Texan, Tate had a storied record as a football and baseball coach in a number of rural South Texas schools. Even in midlife he was built like a quarterback, with strong, blocky shoulders and long, springy legs. A Christian man, Tate read his Bible through wire-rimmed glasses. He was early to rise and late to rest. His players called Tate by his nickname: Old Warhorse. As supervisor of education at an internment camp, Tate had a multifaceted job, overseeing both the German and the Japanese schools, which had their own internee-elected school boards and hired their own teachers from within the ranks of internees. But the structures of the Federal High School and Federal Elementary School were different. None of the teachers or administrators in those schools answered to the parents or to a school board. From his office in Philadelphia, Harrison held ultimate responsibility for the American schools. In the camp records, O’Rourke was listed as “president” of the school board and Tate as “superintendent.”
Tate’s most challenging job was recruiting teachers, given the nationwide teacher shortage during World War II. He had to find public-school teachers, most of whom had relatives fighting on the fronts in Europe and Asia, who were willing to educate the children of prisoners of war in sweltering South Texas. Unlike other school districts, Tate could not offer potential internment-camp teachers firm contracts. As employees of the INS, teachers might be transferred with little notice.
Indeed, Old Warhorse was worried about job security himself. Tate had three boys. One was in junior high, and the other two attended Crystal City High School, where they were mainstays on the football team. “The job uncertainty was a concern,” he said in an oral history. “Who knew when I might be transferred from Texas to the Canadian border. The INS network was large. My job was uncertain.”
What did help, however, was that the INS was willing to pay higher salaries than other Texas schools. In 1942–43, the average yearly pay for a teacher with a four-year degree at an accredited school was $877.50. The INS offered internment-camp teachers in Crystal City more than twice that. The higher wages attracted good teachers, such as Miss Goldsmith. Tate was paid $3,200 a year, equivalent to approximately $45,000 today, a salary sufficient to make the risk of transfer worth his while.
Over time, Sumi and the others settled into a familiar pattern. School began at 8:00 a.m., Monday through Friday and Saturday mornings. The Federal School required two years of math for graduation. As ninth-graders, Sumi and the others studied algebra. Later, Sumi took plane geometry. Basic science was taught, but physics and chemistry were not offered. As superintendent, O’Rourke had decided that a fully equipped chemistry laboratory in an internment camp was too great a security risk. He didn’t want to take the chance of malcontents blowing up the lab. That first year, Tate offered home economics for girls and agricultural training for boys, but few signed up. When Tate learned that the issei Japanese fathers suspected he was attempting to make domestic laborers out of their daughters and farm laborers out of their sons, the vocational classes were canceled. This decision was another example of caution against inciting complaints from Japanese fathers that might result in reprisals against Americans held in Japan.
Unlike in the German section, where many of the fathers were laborers and craftsmen, the fathers in the Japanese section were, as Tate described it, “the cream of the crop”—Buddhist priests, wealthy businessmen, accomplished farmers, and well-educated teachers. The majority of their children were straight-A students. Sumi struggled to keep up with the others; she was happy with Bs.
The parents of the Japanese American students pushed them to study, to follow the rules of the school, and to show respect for the Americ
an teachers. Like Sumi, most strived to be accepted as Americans and to be normal. “Yet the attitude of most of the people in town was that all Japanese were damn Japs,” recalled Tate in his oral history. “And they ought to all be hung.” The aftermath of Pearl Harbor still hung thick in the air.
Some Japanese American students approached their internment with a kind of gallows humor. For instance, Tai Uyeshima, who was from Los Angeles, like Sumi, and who played football for Tate at the camp high school, often gathered his buddies in the evening for “razzle-dazzle” football drills, more commonly known as “out of sight” plays. When they were tired from exercise, Tai and the other players serenaded the guards in their towers along the barbed-wire fencing. Night after night, they crooned many choruses of one of the top tunes on the hit parade, “Don’t Fence Me In.” That song became the most popular tune in camp.
Sumi spoke and heard from her classmates American slang, the words of marginalized Japanese Americans striving to be more American than Japanese. The September 1943 issue of Jiho, the English-language version of the school newspaper, printed expressions commonly heard in school. Sid Okazaki’s favorite expression was “No! It can’t be!” Rose Taniguchi’s signature was “Watcha know.” Hollywood Sawamura greeted everyone with “Check, check.” And then there was “Lover” Yasuda, whose signature phrase was “Hello, sweetheart.”
Every day at 4:00 p.m., Sumi left the Federal High School and studied Japanese at the Japanese School, where the atmosphere was old-world Japan. Her instructor—sensei in Japanese—was the Reverend Kenko Yamashita, a Buddhist priest from Hawaii. The short walk between the two schools represented the mammoth divide between two worlds. The full-time students enrolled at the Japanese School were mostly from Hawaii, Peru, or other Latin American countries. The structure of the Japanese School was rigid; no small talk about sweethearts or American movies was allowed. After morning calisthenics, students were required to stand at attention alongside their desks. When the teacher entered the room, they bowed deeply. All of the full-time students took sushin, a class on ethics that emphasized respect for elders, especially fathers and teachers.
From time to time in class, Sensei Yamashita reminded Sumi and the other Americanized nisei, who were born and educated in the United States, that they lacked the traditional Japanese virtues of honor, sacrifice, and courage. Wagamma no tairiku no nisei, he called them, which meant “spoiled American nisei.”
Like the other nisei in camp, Sumi was torn between the opposing stereotypes of her generation, American-born children of Japanese parents: Were they 100 percent loyal to America, or were they a racially marginalized minority with questionable commitment to the United States? Though framed as a black-and-white choice, the issue of loyalty was less certain, more a riddle than a given. As with other nisei in the camp, Sumi’s answer to this conundrum had to be found in personal circumstances far beyond her control, as much rooted in Japan as in the United States. On November 11, 1943, Tokiji sent a message through the Red Cross to his daughters in Japan: “All reunited in good health. Will repatriate. Wait and be good. Be obedient to Uncle and Aunt. Take good care of Grandmother until we join. Regards to relatives.”
Sumi’s fate was decided. In his petition requesting repatriation, Tokiji made plain his reasons. He described the “mental shock and disappointment” of years of harsh internment in all-male camps. “I am sixty-seven years old and I have no other desire than to be repatriated to Japan to spent the rest of my life in my father-land,” he wrote. Sumi’s desire to stay in America counted for nothing. Nobu realized that her husband needed plenty of space and time to heal from the effects of internment. The only way for Tokiji to become sound in mind and body was to leave America and return to Japan. Nobu supported his decision.
In Crystal City, Sumi felt bewildered and alienated. As part of the Texas curriculum, Sumi and the other students had social studies, which included lessons in citizenship. It was baffling to read the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights—the freedom of religion, of speech, of the right to assemble, of protection against unwarranted searches and seizures—from inside the confines of what the Japanese called the Crystal City Concentration Camp. Everything about her life seemed a contradiction of the promises of citizenship. “None of it added up,” said Sumi. “I thought of it as another lesson in gaman. Nothing to do but persevere.” Many people, maybe even most people, would have become embittered by Sumi’s circumstances, but she made it a point not to struggle unnecessarily with unresolvable dilemmas.
CHAPTER NINE
Yes-Yes, No-No
After Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans serving in the US military were reclassified as 4C—enemy aliens—and many were discharged. Their weapons were taken from them, and they were imprisoned in internment camps, as were their disgraced issei parents. Then, on February 1, 1943, Roosevelt lifted the military ban on Japanese Americans and approved the formation of the 442nd all-nisei combat team. “No loyal citizen should be denied the democratic right to exercise the responsibilities of his citizenship, regardless of ancestry,” Roosevelt said.
The key word in Roosevelt’s statement was loyal. Only nisei were eligible for military service. After Roosevelt’s decision, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) distributed loyalty questionnaires to every internee over the age of seventeen in all of the camps, issei and nisei alike. The tests were mandatory, and the purpose was twofold: to identify dedicated nisei for military service and to determine the loyalty of both issei and nisei. The list of questions was long, but the ultimate test of allegiance came down to yes-or-no answers to the final two questions, 27 and 28.
Question 27, distributed to nisei men, read, “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?” For women and all issei internees, question 27 was slightly different: “If the opportunity presents itself and you are found qualified, would you be willing to volunteer for the Army Nurse Corps or the WAAC?”
Question 28, worded the same for all respondents, read, “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance to the Japanese Emperor, any foreign government, power or organization?” Japanese nationals were asked to give up allegiance to the country of their birth and swear allegiance to a country—the United States—that had imprisoned them. Some wondered if they would be without a country if they answered yes, since Japanese were not allowed to be naturalized citizens of the United States.
If respondents answered those two questions yes-yes, it was considered proof of their loyalty to the United States. If they answered no-no, they were considered disloyal. Prior to the mandatory tests, the two reasons given for the mass incarceration of the Japanese were that military advisers believed they posed a security threat, and Roosevelt needed a pool of internees to trade for Americans in Asia. With the implementation of the tests, the government added a third: recruitment of Japanese American soldiers to join the fight in Europe and Asia. For issei parents, the prospect of their American-born children fighting for America against Japan represented a crucible. Nisei wrestled with their allegiance to the country of their birth and their duty to their parents. Despite the conflict, more than 75 percent of nisei answered yes to both questions and were forever branded “yes-yes boys.” Many joined the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the all-Japanese unit whose slogan was “Go for broke.” Those in the less than one-quarter that answered the questions no were equally branded “no-no boys.” Inside the camps, the loyalty tests became the most acrimonious chapter of the Japanese internment.
In the winter and spring of 1943, as military recruiters poured into Crystal City and other camps to register nisei men for the 442nd, internees were indignant and defiant. In every bungalow, parents of drafted nisei viewed the recruitment as a conspiracy to deprive them of their children. Mary Tsukamoto, a nisei teenager, wrote, “People walked the roads, tears str
eaming down their troubled faces, silent and suffering. The little apartments were not big enough for the tremendous battle waged in practically every room.” On the walls of camp barracks, anonymous poems appeared. One poem read:
The cream of the crop—
Nisei soldiers—raised
By wrinkles on the parents’ brow.
In Crystal City, the battle between father and son and of brother against brother was particularly evident in the quarters of the Uno family of Los Angeles. George Uno, a native of Sendai, Japan, was nineteen years old when he immigrated to the United States in 1905. In 1912, he married Riki Kita, and they had ten children.
When war broke out, their eldest son, also named George but known as Buddy, was working for the Japanese army in Shanghai as a liaison between the army and foreign correspondents. Like the other Uno children, Buddy was born in the United States and had a typical nisei upbringing. He went to junior high in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles, not far from where Sumi grew up in Little Tokyo. He loved Hollywood movies. At the age of nine he saw his first film, Three Jumps Ahead, starring Tom Mix and his horse, Tony. As a senior at Compton High School, a primarily white school, Buddy worked for Rafu Shimpo, the Japanese newspaper of Los Angeles. His column, “A Nisei Melodrama,” which offered opinions on social and cultural matters, was published in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle.
The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Page 15