Dear Miss Breed
Clara E. Breed (1906-1994) grew up in a Christian home[1] and was a children’s librarian in San Diego at the time of the evacuation. Her library was the branch closest…
A Family Picnic
According to the 1940 census, nearly two-thirds of Japanese Americans had jobs related to agriculture. Such work brought them into contact with members of the farming community. E. C. Loomis…
Plain Talk About Exclusion
Walter C. Woodward (1910-2001) and his wife, Mildred (1909-1989), lived on Bainbridge Island across Puget Sound from Seattle and were among the only courageous souls who spoke up for the…
The First Church to Close
Virginia Swanson’s ministry had begun in 1932 when the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Minnesotan had been sent by the Women’s Baptist Home Mission Board in New York to serve as a missionary…
Flashlights in the Dark
On February 27, 1942, the residents of Terminal Island (twenty-five miles south of Los Angeles off the coast of San Pedro) were the first Japanese Americans to be evicted from…
The Truck-Driving Missionary
In 1915, Rev. Herbert V. Nicholson (1892-1983) arrived in Japan after committing his life to serve the Japanese people. Born in Rochester, New York, he had received a call to…
The Cost of Resistance
Supporting the Nikkei during the internment was unpopular and viewed as anti-American. Rev. W. Sherman Burgoyne served as minister of the Asbury Methodist Church in Hood River, Oregon where approximately…
Voices of Protest
Nikkei Voices Rev. Daisuke Kitagawa spoke out against wartime injustices, asserting that his fellow Episcopal churchmen “opposed evacuation as a matter of principle, but nothing was done beyond that. .…
A Shameful Silence
Prior to World War II, pacifist groups like the Church of the Brethren, the Mennonites, the FOR (an interfaith pacifist group committed to social justice), and the Religious Society of…
Afghanistan, Vietnam, and the Sovereignty of God
Last week’s horrific images and accounts of America’s military retreat from Afghanistan raised many comparisons with the Fall of Saigon in the 1970’s. My wife was less than a year…