Traveling Boy’s Memory Lane Invites all writers to share their stories to the world. As long as websites in the internet are accessible, these stories will be your footprint of your life adventures. They may be happy, sad, playful, religious, political, narrative, poetic, etc. The more creative and the more honest, the better. Years … centuries from now, some alien ship will find this website and will wonder what mankind was all about. Your articles will answer a lot of their questions.
Part 3
Written by guest writer Frank Koo Endo in 1994
On December 7, 1991, I was in the twelfth grade, my father was still working the rice business in Japan, and soon I was going to graduate with the class of summer 1942. I heard on the radio that morning that Pearl Harbor had been attacked by the Japanese. I really didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was, but was shocked by the news. I wondered if this would have any effect on me. Early that afternoon I decided to go see a movie in San Pedro. I boarded the ferryboat that I took daily to school. Upon docking in San Pedro, I was taken into custody along with other Japanese Americans by armed soldiers. We were put into a temporary barbed wire enclosure. I told them that I was an American citizen, but they stated that they had orders to stop all Japanese. After being detained a couple of hours, we were told to return to the island.
Attending school became difficult because other students started to look at us differently. One day, all of the Japanese American students were told to assemble in the auditorium. The school principal advised us not to speak in Japanese nor gather in groups. With this hate and discrimination, I couldn’t work out or perform in gymnastics very well. I had only four months to go before graduation.
The Japanese American Citizen’s League (JACL) made each person an identification badge at the fisherman’s hall. Mine had my photograph along with verification that I was a student and an American citizen.
Soon, many FBI agents came to the island and started searching our homes to look for anything that may connect us with Japan. They wanted to know what my long antenna was used for. I showed them the crystal radio set and told them that I listened to music at night. The agents searched everybody’s home and looked everywhere, and asked lots of questions. One day, without notice, all of the Issei men were gathered in trucks and taken away to an unknown destination.
A curfew was in effect starting from December 7. Brand new P-38 fighter planes began appearing over Terminal, Island, and jeeps carrying Military Police patrolled fish harbor. Everyone feared for their lives. People started moving out to Los Angeles and anywhere where friends or relatives lived. We moved to my uncle and aunt’s house in Los Angeles. However, within three months, all Californians of Japanese descent were ordered to designated locations for evacuation. My mother, brother and I were sent to the Santa Anita Assembly Center in Arcadia, California on April 24, 1942.
We lived in wooden barracks built on the parking lot of the Santa Anita Racetrack. The barracks were hastily built for temporary use with wide wooden cracks between rooms. To have some privacy, we taped up newspapers on the wall. The three of us shared a room, probably only twenty feet wide by twenty feet long. The bathrooms and showers were shared by the community. We ate our meals at a designated mess hall within our area. There were more than 10,000 Japanese internees from all parts of California. Many people worked making camouflage nets for the war. I volunteered to work at a mess hall located by the horse stables. I also worked as a gymnastics instructor in the recreation department below the grandstands. My assistant was Tak Kawagoe who was Los Angeles City tumbling champion. During our short stay in Santa Anita, we put on a gymnastics exhibition as a part of a variety show. During the exhibition, I saw the hundreds of private vehicles that belonged to the internees parked inside of the race track. I don’t know whatever happened to those vehicles, since our stay there was for only a few months. We were then ordered to leave by train for an unknown destination. Due to military orders, we were not permitted to look where we were going and shades were pulled down. After an overnight trip, we arrived at a newly constructed relocation center in Granada, Colorado. The camp was called Amache. About 7,600 evacuees spent several years there. The wooden barracks were better constructed than those at Santa Anita. They had to be able to withstand the blowing desert sand and cold climate. Our room was a little bit bigger, too. We had a coal stove to keep warm in winter. I applied to teach gymnastics at the junior high school, and was asked to coach basketball as well. I was paid the professional wage of $19.00 a month while most of the others received $16.00. After six months of teaching, my brother and I were offered a job through my mother’s friend to work on a railroad at the open pit copper mine in Bingham Canyon, Utah. This was a job related to the war effort. The amazing thing I learned was that my grandfather had worked at the same copper mine as a cook at the turn of the century. Later, he brought my father to work there around 1917. My brother and I worked six months and returned to our mother at Amache Relocation Center.
End of Part Three. Stay tuned for Part Four, the final chapter.
