After the war, churches and other service organizations banded together to help with the work of resettlement. The exodus began as a trickle, but would become a torrent by the war’s end. “Beginning in mid-1942, the Protestant Welfare Council [in New York City] assigned one of its specialists to locate jobs and housing for Japanese Americans so that they could leave the camps, while the American Baptist Home Mission Society dispatched workers to greet and look after the newcomers.”[1] Around the same time in Detroit, “WRA resettlement director Thomas Holland and George Rundquist of the Protestant Council of Churches organized a Detroit Resettlement Committee under the lead of Father James McCormick to help locate housing and jobs for the resettlers.”[2] Then on October 7, 1942 a group of representatives meeting in New York established the Committee on Resettlement of Japanese Americans.[3] Thomas W. Holland, a former WRA Chief of Employment, evaluated the committee’s effectiveness:
Representatives of various church organizations and service committees were among the very first to recognize the implications of the evacuation and were early in encouraging and assisting the evacuees to find new homes in other parts of the country. Clergymen and other church workers have been, and still are, a powerful influence in shaping the receptive public opinion which has made the relocation program possible in the middle west and the east. Through hostels and other forms of practical assistance the churches have made possible the relocation of large numbers of evacuees who would not have been able otherwise to have left the projects.[4]
Hostels Across America
As early as December 1942, representatives from the Church of the Brethren and the AFSC[5] had approached Dillon Myer, the WRA director, with a proposal to help with the resettlement process. They had intended to establish an urban hostel program which would allow the Nikkei to relocate in certain areas, then find permanent housing and employment with the help of agency people. Prior to this, WRA policy had required internees to secure housing and employment or acceptance to a school before leaving the camps. Thus, the AFSC proposal increased the likelihood of resettlement by offering temporary housing assistance. Once the WRA agreed, Thomas Temple left for Chicago on January 10, 1943 with thirteen young men of Japanese descent. Their future job prospects were unknown and unplanned. The only certainty was that the group would be temporarily housed at Bethany Theological Seminary (a Church of the Brethren school).
With the support of the Brethren Service Committee, Ralph and Mary Smeltzer became the directors of the Brethren Hostel on March 4, 1943. . . . At first the Brethren Hostel operated out of its temporary facilities on the campus of the Brethren seminary. The interest in the hostel program grew and by the end of August over 500 Japanese had been assisted. A new location was found.[6]
As in Chicago, a Cincinnati hostel opened in the spring of 1943. Kate and Arthur Brinton directed this establishment at 2820 Winslow Avenue after it was started up by Raymond and Gracia Booth:
The hostel, a former fraternity house, was a square, three-story building with spacious first floor rooms, a broad staircase, several bathrooms, and many bedrooms. . . . The hostel became a convenient center for visiting, sharing news, finding a letter, or just resting. . . . As the hostel was established to operate cooperatively, there were always willing hands to help with meal preparation, washing dishes, and cleaning.[7]
Another AFSC hostel opened in Des Moines, Iowa, came under the direction of Ross and Libby Wilbur in late 1943. During its two-year existence, they welcomed over 700 guests.[8] Most residents, between the ages of 15 to 35, had been granted early departure from the camps for education or employment. Wilbur described his duties as “welcoming, caring of evacuees, meeting trains, collection of baggage, arranging for appointments with prospective employers, landlords, and interested individuals, and the gradual introduction of evacuees into this community. . . . Ends were met with the help of the Des Moines Relocation Committee and its local coalition of churches, schools, and individuals.”[9] Yuriko Katayama, 14-years old at the time, recalled, “When we arrived, Mr. Wilbur took us to the Friends meetinghouse. After meeting, we had Easter Breakfast. I must say, I never tasted such delicious food. Real eggs and butter and bread, all those good things.”[10]
The ten-room boarding house was leased by the American Friends Service Committee in September 1943. . . . The Des Moines Relocation Committee and a local coalition of churches, schools and individuals contributed to the hostel’s upkeep. . . . To pay for a Christmas Eve turkey, the Wilburs had to take up a special collection from residents and visitors. The holiday meal occasioned mixed feelings, since almost everyone still had family behind barbed wire.[11]
Rev. Shunji Nishi described the situation in Cleveland:
There are now over 900 new citizens in Cleveland of Japanese ancestry. The plan is to encourage interested churches and church groups to sponsor at least one family, finding adequate housing for them, finding suitable employment for the family, assisting them to become integral, contributing parts of the church as well as the ongoing life of the community. . . . The Issei are not neglected in Cleveland. Under the leadership of the Rev. Kengo Tajima, there is a Japanese language, service on the second and fourth Sunday afternoons of the month at the Old Stone Church.[12]
Shiro Masuda was neither Buddhist nor Christian during his stay at Manzanar, but he stayed at the Brotherhood House when he resettled in Denver, Colorado. This three-story house was managed by Dr. John Foote and his wife Margaret, American Baptist missionaries who had returned from Japan during the war. Masuda stayed at the Brotherhood House for several years and tells how he became a Christian:
Dr. Foote conducted Christian fellowship on weekends. Fellowship was open to residents and anyone who wished to come from outside. . . . I came to know and associate with Christian men and women. With Dr. Foote’s help and encouragement and with everyday contact with Christians, I soon decided to accept the Christian faith.[13]
As housing slowly became available, Japanese Americans still in the camps needed assurances that it was safe to set out. So in June 1943, Rev. Daisuke Kitagawa received a two-month leave from Tule Lake to scope out potential areas where the WRA was hoping to relocate the internees. He attended “the national conference of the student YMCA and YWCA at Estes Park, Colorado, [then] went on to visit Minneapolis; Chicago; Madison, Wisconsin; Detroit; Cleveland; Columbus; Cincinnati; St. Louis; and Kansas City, and Salina, Kansas, before returning to Tule Lake via Reno.”[14] In Minneapolis, he met the ever-capable Genevieve F. Steefel who had volunteered with the Minneapolis Committee on Japanese American Resettlement to help over 1,000 Nikkei secure employment in Minnesota. In Chicago, Kitagawa visited
the Bethel Theological Seminary of the Church of the Brethren. A part of the student dormitory was then being used as the first resettlement hostel established for the benefit of the Japanese American evacuees. . . . The hostel, directed by the Rev. Ralph Smeltzer, had as its objective two seemingly contradictory ends: protection of the Japanese American resettlers from abuse or exploitation by the American public, and the integration of the Japanese Americans into the general stream of American life. . . . The Chicago hostel soon proved so successful that the Church of the Brethren opened a second hostel in Brooklyn; the United Lutheran Church, one in Minneapolis; the American Baptist Church, one in Cleveland; the Friends, one in Philadelphia and one in Des Moines.[15]
Not every location Kitagawa visited was ideal for resettlement, but he discovered many exciting possibilities: “I was also heartened everywhere I went in Ohio,” he reported, “to find churchmen taking a very active part in the community efforts to help the Nisei in their resettlement.”[16] Upon his return to Tule Lake, he counseled many families struggling with the decision to resettle who were split across generational lines:
I have come to a firm conviction, as a result of my two months’ trip away from this center, that this is no place for anybody who wants to remain a wholesome human being. Life outside . . . is, I am sure, no picnic to anybody, but if I were asked to choose either to vegetate in safety in the relocation center or to live as a man by risking my personal safety in the midst of the unknown American public, I would not hesitate to choose the latter.[17]
Kitagawa desired to leave Tule Lake himself, but was asked by Dr. Clarence Gillett to remain in the camp until its transition to a segregation center. His bachelor status left him relatively free (1 Corinthians 7:6-8) and he was already familiar with the administration at both Tule Lake and the WRA. Kitagawa admitted, “Those who would be coming to Tule Lake might require the ministry of the church far more than those who were eventually going to find their way back into society.”[18] He would only move on from the camp after Rev. Shozo Hashimoto came to replace him. At that time, Kitagawa would begin helping Japanese Americans to resettle in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Among the groups that assisted him were the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota and its bishop, the Rt. Rev. Stephen Keeler; the Minnesota Council of Churches; and the Minneapolis and St. Paul Council of Churches. . . . The Lutheran Church sponsored a hostel that provided temporary shelter for the incoming resettlers. . . . In 1949, a large mansion was purchased by the national Episcopal Church to serve as a community center for the rapidly growing number of Japanese Americans.[19]
As the hostels started filling up, directors had to be creative about providing affordable food and employment for their residents. They greatly discounted costs to assist resettlers who had not received an income for years. According to Blankenship,
Hostels functioned as community living spaces where resettlers paid minimal fees, usually a dollar a day, for room and board. They helped with chores, such as gardening and cooking. Hostelers stayed for a week and a half on average before securing permanent employment and housing. Most hostels housed around thirty people at a time, though some had room for up to one hundred Nikkei. Since each hostel had a limited capacity, incarcerees had to apply for admission.[20]
Resettlement taught the church to creatively meet the needs of others. Some hostels reduced operating costs by producing their own food or living cooperatively. “Members of Media (Pa.) Meeting helped supply sponsors and find places and jobs for members of ten Japanese American families. There were three houses on orchard land owned by Herman and Edith Cope, all of which were used to help house people.”[21] In some cases, these simple acts of kindness led to lifelong spiritual friendships. After nine months at Granada, Takashi Moriuchi recalled, “I was fearful. . . . I was tracked by the FBI, picked up by the local police, stopped by state police, and finally stopped and questioned by naval intelligence.”[22] Moriuchi settled his family in the Philadelphia area where Quaker, Mary Patterson, introduced him to Lew Barton, who hired him to work on his farm. Two years later, Barton made it possible for Moriuchi to start farming on his own and another Quaker, Maurice Haines, provided him with a tractor. Tom DeCou showed him how to cultivate apple and peach trees, then Charles and Helen Collins sold Moriuchi his first orchard. Takashi and his wife, Yuri, sent their four children to the Moorestown Friends School at the urging of headmaster, Chester Reagan, and the Moriuchis eventually became the first members of the united Moorestown Meeting.
Return to the West Coast
On December 17, 1944, President Roosevelt announced Public Proclamation 21, rescinding the West Coast exclusion orders for most Nikkei. One day later, the WRA announced that all the relocation centers were scheduled to be closed by the end of 1945. The Brethren Service Committee (BSC) and the AFSC, now faced with the resettlement of over 80,000 people still residing in the camps, turned their focus to the West Coast. Ralph Smeltzer urged local churches to help internees who wished to return home:
Although the B.S.C. is not encouraging many Japanese Americans to return or to resettle on the West Coast, it is anxious to assist those who have a desire to return. West Coast Brethren will be able to help most by providing a friendly welcome and seeing to it that returnees are neither embarrassed nor persecuted. Brethren should visit those evacuees who settle in their communities, invite them to church, entertain them in their homes.[23]
“The Brethren Ministry to Resettlers offered counseling, made home visits, assisted in securing housing and employment, and continued a vital public relations program with religious, business, educational and civic groups.”[24] The Northern California District Office of the Church of the Brethren also reaffirmed a resolution which had been passed by the annual conference in June 1944: “We recommend, with respect to Americans of Japanese descent, that our churches welcome into their services and fellowship those who are resettled in their communities; and that, as opportunity arises, we support the early return to their rightful homes of those who wish to resume residence on the Pacific Coast.”[25]
Many Japanese Americans were also resettled through the help of sponsorship programs. Although the General Conference Mennonite Church did little to assist in the resettlement process, individual members such as Jake and Bonnie Auernheimer did what they could. The Aurenheimers personally sponsored three Japanese returnees to Reedley, California. Jake also encouraged his Sunday school class to write a letter of invitation to their friends at Poston. That letter greatly encouraged the Nikkei to return home.
Rose Honda was a teenager when her family moved from Manzanar back to stay at a hostel in the West Los Angeles Methodist Church, which was reconstituted in 1945. She recalled,
The church had always been an important social institution for many prewar Japanese Americans. It offered youth activities for children and reached out to bring the Issei and their families together. Important social functions like weddings, funerals, family gatherings, Bible study, and Sunday school brought many of its parishioners together. The Honda family had been active in the West Los Angeles church prior to the war. At Manzanar, where they lived among many members of the West Los Angeles church, efforts were made to recreate a church that offered spiritual and social functions to the incarcerated community.[26]
Gerda Isenberg “set up a hostel near the San Francisco Bay to accommodate the Japanese American returnees.”[27] “Isenberg, along with Josephine Duveneck, was a member of the Palo Alto Friends Meeting. . . . In 1945, she served as the first chair of the Fair Play Council, which helped pave the way for internees to return to their homes by promoting positive public opinion and helping find housing and employment.”[28]
Many Japanese Americans returned home despite threats of opposition. In September 1944, Kaoru Ichihara, a Nisei Christian woman, was the first internee to return to Seattle.[29] The Seattle Council of Churches, with which Ichihara had served as a secretary prior to the war, soon
established a program to house returning Nikkei. It recruited church people to sponsor returnees and provide temporary or permanent quarters, noting that the use of a spare room for even a few days would help families to make the transition. . . . In April 1945, it created the United Church Ministry to Returning Japanese (UCMRJ) . . . , which handled services as diverse as meeting returnees at train stations, providing private counseling, securing medical care, translating for older Issei, and helping Nikkei reestablish their positions in the community.[30]
The Quakers also supported Nikkei resettlement and assisted them during that time of tremendous need.
The Christian Friends for Racial Equality worked through political and educational channels to reduce racial discrimination in hiring practices. Floyd Schmoe and [Emery] Andrews created the Japanese American Relocation Project Work Camp, an interracial group of student volunteers. University of Washington students ran a weekly Saturday Work Party that helped Nikkei reopen their businesses. The AFSC continued to help Nikkei as well; their members cultivated fields, moved belongings, and scrubbed racist graffiti from houses and storefronts.[31]
Saichi and Yone Takemoto and five of their children were the first evacuated family to make a permanent return to Bainbridge Island. The Bainbridge Review reported,
The family arrived to find their former home at Rolling Bay a shambles. Windows were broken and much of the family’s personal property, which had been stored at the home, was gone. The Rev. Charles P. Milne, pastor of the Winslow Congregational Church, and other Islanders aided the family with emergency donations of bedding and other household necessities after the family spent its first night sleeping under overcoats. The Takemoto strawberry farm was filled with weeds. It was doubtful if a crop could be produced before next summer, if then.[32]
“Three weeks later, after the Takemotos had reclaimed two acres, twenty members of the American Friends Service Committee, mostly students at the University of Washington, spent a day working on the Takemoto farm. ‘Despite the rainy weather, an acre of ground was prepared and planted with strawberry plants.’”[33] Christians demonstrated the love of Christ to many for whom resettlement was often more traumatic than evacuation.
[1] Greg Robinson, After Camp: Portraits in Midcentury Japanese American Life and Politics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012), 58.
[2] Ibid., 50. Jobs were plentiful since everyone was looking for cheap labor, but housing was the problem.
[3] George E. Rundquist, a Quaker businessman who had given up his publishing work to volunteer “with the New York Church Committee for Japanese Work, was invited to become executive secretary of the Committee on Resettlement of Japanese Americans” (Matsumoto, Beyond Prejudice,55). Toru Matsumoto served as Rundquist’s assistant secretary, spoke in many churches to promote resettlement, and later became the director of the Home Missions Council. In March 1945, Matsumoto visited the centers in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Arkansas to assess the mindset of the internees (Toru Matsumoto and Marion Olive Lerrigo, A Brother is a Stranger [New York: The John Day Company, 1946], 264-68).
[4] Letter from Thomas W. Holland, cited in George E. Rundquist, “The Churches Role in Resettlement,” Resettlement Bulletin (October 1943), Elgin, IL: Brethren Historical Library and Archives.
[5] The primary leaders of this group were Ralph Smeltzer, G. Raymond Booth, and Thomas Temple, a staff person with the community service section of the WRA at Manzanar.
[6] Lord, “Peace Churches,” 92. “Although the Quakers and the Church of the Brethren were the first group to establish hostels for the resettlement process, by November 1945, there were over a hundred hostels supported by groups like the Unitarian Service Committee, American Baptist Home Mission Society, Japanese Methodist Church, Lutheran Church, Buddhist Brotherhood in America and JACL” (ibid., n43). The Smeltzers would also open other hostels in Evanston, Illinois and Brooklyn, New York. Rev. Toru Matsumoto lists many of these hostels along with their sponsoring organizations in Matsumoto, Beyond Prejudice, 144-45.
[7] Kate and Arthur Brinton, “Many Willing Hands,” Friends Journal: Quaker Thought and Life Today 38, no. 11 (November 1992), 28.
[8] Tom Walsh, “An Open Door for the Wronged of a War,” Friends Journal: Quaker Thought and Life Today 38, no. 11 (November 1992), 25-27.
[9] Ibid., 26-27.
[10] Ibid., 25.
[11] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 199-200. “In March 1945, WRA photographer Hikaru Iwasaki shot a series of photos of the hostel and of former internee who had resettled in the area. The glossy photos and chattily informative captions were intended to encourage internees back at the camps to take a leap into the unknown.”
[12] Shunji F. Nishi, “Excerpts from the Resettlement Bulletin—Cleveland,” Rivers Christian Church Tidings 74 (12 May 1944).
[13] Shiro Masuda, “Transitional Life Experience,” in Triumphs, 74.
[14] Kitagawa, Issei and Nisei, 124.
[15] Ibid., 128-30.
[16] Ibid., 130.
[17] Ibid., 134.
[18] Ibid., 139.
[19] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 221.
[20] Blankenship, Social Justice, 182. For a list of hostels, see Brian Niiya, “Hostels,” accessed at https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Hostels.
[21] Fred Swan, “Memories of Struggle,” Friends Journal: Quaker Thought and Life Today 38, no. 11 (November 1992), 12.
[22] Takashi Moriuchi, “Memories of Struggle,” Friends Journal: Quaker Thought and Life Today 38, no. 11 (November 1992), 9-10.
[23] Ralph E. Smeltzer, “The Japanese Americans NOW,” Gospel Messenger (17 February 1945), 6.
[24] Lord, “Peace Churches,” 97n1. “This ministry, staffed by Virginia Asaka and Dean Frantz, continued to work with those who had previously made contact with the hostel and with the needs of the newcomers.”
[25] Ralph E. Smeltzer, “The Church of the Brethren’s Contribution to Resettlement” (28 December 1944), in the Brethren Service Committee Japanese Relocation Collection (Elgin, IL: Brethren Historical Library and Archives), Boxes 1-6.
[26] Rose Honda, Regenerations Oral History Project: Rebuilding Japanese American Families, Communities, and Civil Rights in the Resettlement Era (Los Angeles: Japanese American National Museum), introduction to interviews conducted by James Gatewood (17 March and 5 April 1998), 61. The Honda family had been active in the church at Manzanar.
[27] Sugimura, Quiet Heroes, 90.
[28] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 285.
[29] Douglas Dye, The Soul of the City: The Work of the Seattle Council of Churches during WWII (Ph.D. dissertation, Washington State University, 1997), 130.
[30] Dye, “For the Sake of Seattle’s Soul,” 134.
[31] Blankenship, Social Justice, 191.
[32] Walter Woodward, “Takemotos Return to Island Home,” The Bainbridge Review (April 1945).
[33] Mary Woodward, In Defense of Our Neighbors: The Walt and Milly Woodward Story (Bainbridge Island, WA: Fenwick Publishing Group, 2008), 115, 118.
