Before the war, the Rev. Emery E. Andrews (1894-1976), affectionately known as “Andy,” had been the active and well-liked English-language minister of the Seattle Japanese Baptist Church (JBC).[1] He had been hired by the American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS) to pastor the JBC from 1929-1955, but he reached out to all the Nikkei in Seattle regardless of religion.[2] According to Paul Nagano, “His friendly smile and his willingness to lend a helping hand caught the eyes of the young and old alike, and he was soon loved and trusted by the whole Japanese community without regard for their religious affiliations.”[3] As Brooks, his son, recalled, “[My father] was very active in the community . . . going out and visiting the families, encouraging them in their faith, finding out what their needs were, whether . . . physical or spiritual.”[4]
He organized and led a variety of programs at the ethnic church, including English language classes, basketball tournaments, religious services, and Christian education seminars. For thirty-eight years, he held the position of scoutmaster for the first Nisei Boy Scout troop in Seattle. . . . When the eviction from the coast became imminent, Andrews and the other pastors of Japanese churches helped their congregants prepare for eviction physically and spiritually and waited with each group at their departure sites.[5]
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Brooks vividly remembered how “the JBC’s Issei pastor Rev. [Shozo] Hashimoto came to the Andrewses’ house in tears to apologize.”[6] Japanese Americans experienced a deep sense of ethnic shame even though they had no part in the bombing. “Andrews and his coworkers resolved to stand by their flock. As the congregation prepared for eviction, storage facilities promised by the government failed to materialize. Andrews marked off the floor of the church gymnasium into ten-foot squares where each family could stack its belongings.”[7] He also spoke out boldly against the internment even though the mainstream Baptist leadership did little to oppose it.
On eviction day, Brooks watched his friends board the train, “I don’t recall any conversation. We just stood there [with] . . . this blank, empty feeling of unbelief that this [was] happening.”[8] Later he reflected more fully,
These American citizens were herded like animals to a holding site named, ironically, Camp Harmony, otherwise known as the Western Washington Fair Grounds in Puyallup, Washington. . . . No time was given to sell farms, equipment, homes . . . in an equitable fashion. Property was abandoned, sold for bargain basement prices, or simply given away. There were a few sympathetic Caucasians who tried to oversee property until the Nisei returned, if they ever would. My friends were only able to take with them those articles they could steal away in a suitcase or two. . . . No chairs, no lamps, no furniture of any kind; only a few boxes or containers that could be carried by hand. . . . I watched from the bridge as I saw my friends, my people board the train, unknown to me that I was witness to a pale shadow of other trains, half a world away [in Nazi Germany].[9]
Mother’s Day 1942 was the first Sunday the JBC was completely empty: “Sunday school classrooms that were usually filled with laughter and energy were cold and silent. The minister climbed the pulpit and stared out at the empty sanctuary, his eyes lingering on each pew as he envisioned the men, women and children of his vanished congregation.”[10] During the internment, Andrews would continue his pastoral ministry to the Japanese Americans by making almost daily trips to the Puyallup Assembly Center (35 miles south of Seattle) where his congregation would be incarcerated for four months. Brooks recalled how visitors were not even permitted to enter at first:
[W]e would stand outside the barbed wire and . . . reach through. . . and shake hands or try to give hugs. And if we brought gifts they were immediately taken from us by the guards . . . looking for weapons. . . . One of my sisters . . . started crying and she said, “Oh, my friends, my friends, they’re all gone.” . . . It was a heart-wrenching . . . time of separation.[11]
Andrews also served on the Evacuees’ Service Council, made up of representatives from the AFSC, YMCA, and other groups. This organization set up a part-time school and library facilities at Puyallup. Then once his congregants were relocated to the more permanent camp in Minidoka, Idaho, Andrews moved his entire family to the nearby town of Twin Falls to continue his work.[12] When asked why he would uproot his family to be with the church behind barbed wire, he replied, “It didn’t enter my mind that I would do otherwise.”[13] They rented a large house about fifteen miles from the camp, using spare rooms as a hostel for those coming or going to the Minidoka Relocation Center. An average of 167 visitors per month stayed in their home, including Nisei soldiers returning to visit their families behind barbed wire before embarking for Europe to fight for America. Andrews visited Minidoka nearly every day, often taking his children with him on weekends so they could play with their Japanese American friends. Yosh Nakagawa, who later became vice president of the American Baptist Churches USA, was only a young boy when his family was sent to Puyallup and then to Minidoka. He recalled how the Baptist community, especially Rev. Andrews, came to his family’s aid: “When my country turned from me, let it be said, the church stood beside me.”[14] Andrews ministered faithfully to his flock behind the fence, but it came at great personal cost. He was called a “turncoat,” “traitor,” and “Jap lover.” One time, a café owner with a sign in his window, “No Japs allowed,” refused to serve Andrews and threw him out on the sidewalk.
Between 1942 and 1945, Andrews also drove the “blue box” (an old, beat up, Chevrolet bus mounted onto a 1930s Ford chassis and motor) 56 times to Seattle (over 1500 miles round trip).[15] Each time, he brought back supplies or attended to business for the internees. In addition, “Rev. Andrews probably performed more Nisei wedding ceremonies and conducted more funerals than any other single minister.”[16]
Once Nikkei began leaving Minidoka, Andrews drove incarcerees’ cars from Seattle to Idaho, so families could “drive off on their own power” to new jobs and homes. He retrieved not only furniture and cars but specific household items from warehouses, “pots of soil from the old place back home,” or “a couple of bottles of shoyu from [a] basement.” He escorted incarcerees to Seattle for the burial of family members, once driving two incarcerated members of the Salvation Army whom he had never met to Seattle and back, interring the body of a Nikkei he had not known, and performing a funeral service.[17]
Then after the war,
Andrews was constantly busy—finding jobs for returnees, reviving the prewar ski trips, ferrying church members to conferences. He was a member of the local JACL chapter and an honorary member of the Nisei Veterans Committee. He started English classes for postwar brides from Japan, and counseled new immigrants as they struggled to adapt to a strange new country. He even went to Hiroshima twice to help rebuild bomb-devastated housing.[18]
In 1970, the nation of Japan awarded Andrews the prestigious “Fifth Order of the Sacred Treasure”[19] and he was considered a great friend of the Japanese for the entirety of his life. He was a man who considered the interests of others as greater than his own (Philippians 2:4).
[1] For more on Rev. Andrews, see Janice D. Tanaka, Act of Faith: The Reverend Emery Andrews Story (2015), accessed at https://vimeo.com/143207317.
[2] The Seattle Buddhist Church paid tribute to Andrews with the following words: “The memory of his selfless concern for all of us during the wartime hardships cannot be forgotten even by our successive generations. His love and devotion to all our people have left us forever indebted. We are truly grateful to this man of compassion” (Tsuyoshi Horike, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Seattle Buddhist Church at the Appreciation Banquet, “To Andy With Love” [Unpublished Program, Olympic Hotel, 14 February 1976]).
[3] Paul M. Nagano, “Reverend Emery E. Andrews: Northwest’s ‘Man for Others,’” American Baptist Quarterly 17, no. 3 (September 1998), 194.
[4] Brooks Andrews, interview conducted by Tom Ikeda (Seattle, WA: Densho interview, 24 March 2004), segment 5.
[5] “Biographical Summary” (10 May 1946), Box 2/Fld 4, Andrews Papers (1908-3), UW.
[6] Andrews, Densho Interview, segment 7.
[7] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 156.
[8] Andrews, Densho Interview, segment 9.
[9] Brooks Andrews, “The American Exile Experience,” speech at the Minidoka reunion in Seattle (2-3 August 2003).
[10] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 158.
[11] Brooks Andrews, Densho interview, segment 9.
[12] They were joined by three missionary women from the JBC with whom Emery and Mary Andrews had served: Florence Rumsey, May Herd Katayama, and Esther Mary McCollough (Baptist missionary to Japan for twenty-eight years and teacher at the Winslow Japanese Baptist Church on Bainbridge Island). Other Caucasian Seattleites who followed their flocks to southern Idaho included Nora Bowman (former missionary to Japan), Ethel Hempstead (former missionary to Japan), Marie Juergensen (Assemblies of God), Gladys Kaiser (Presbyterian), Margaret Peppers (former missionary to the Philippines and the Navajo in Arizona), Everett & Zora Thompson (Baptist), and Leopold Tibesar (Catholic).
[13] Nagano, “Northwest’s ‘Man for Others,’” 192.
[14] Yosh Nakagawa, “My American Story,” American Baptist Home Mission Societies, accessed at http://abhms.org/about-us/mission-stories/my-american-story.
[15] Andrews, who kept meticulous records, calculated that he had traveled a total of 151,413 miles (“Biographical Summary” [10 May 1946]). See E. Brooks Andrews, Balancing on Barbed Wire (Vancouver, Canada: VPGI Enterprises, 2015), 43, 99-100.
[16] Schmoe, “Seattle’s Peace Churches,” 120.
[17] Blankenship, Social Justice, 129, citing Everett Thompson to Gertrude Apel (18 June 1943); Andrews, Summary of Tasks (n.d.), and Andrews to Thomas (6 January 1943 and July 1944), Box 2/Fld 4, Andrews Papers (1908-3), UW.
[18] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 165.
[19] Sugimura, Quiet Heroes, 114. Sadly, Emery’s marriage would end in divorce as he committed his life to ministry and neglected to care for his wife, Mary. Brooks recalled, “I think my father had a huge amount of love and commitment to give, but it wasn’t to his family. [I]t was to the [Nikkei] community” (Brooks Andrews, interview by Tom Ikeda and Joyce Nishimura [7 October 2006], Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community Collection, DDA).
