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 their homes. Most of them were simple fisherman whose lives would be changed forever. Baptist missionary, Virginia Swanson (1907-1999) recalled those chaotic days in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor:
December 7, 1941, was a day I will never forget. Soldiers fanned across the island. Japanese aliens who were crossing the ferry to return to their homes in the city were temporarily interned. Soon came news that all Japanese who were trying to take the ferry were in an enclosure and guarded by soldiers. I rushed down there and found them caged and terrified, some of the soldiers were near drunk to ease the pain of the realization of war. Older Japanese were herded into big army trucks and taken to the federal prison and immigration building. Little children were not allowed to go home until late in the evening, when a high official came to issue an order. People flocked to church, hoping to find comfort. That week was a dark one. The phone was dead, and food was hard to come by. Lights were blacked out in the evening, and it rained torrents. Wednesday evening, we had our prayer meeting in the dark.[1]
One member of the church wrote,
Immediately after the infamous day, Terminal Island became literally an enemy territory. Since there were only two places to enter and leave the island, sentries were stationed at both points and people were stopped and questioned. . . . Money deposited with Japanese banks was frozen. We were not allowed to converse in Japanese over the telephone. We had to turn in all contrabands: guns, swords, short-wave radios, binoculars, etc. Frantically all large social gathering ceased except for religious services. Registration with the government became mandatory. All of us of Japanese ancestry, whether American citizens or not, were re-categorized as 4C: enemy aliens. Ominous clouds hovered over all West Coast Japanese communities.[2]
The final service in the Terminal Island Baptist Church had been held on the evening of February 22. Ralph L. Mayberry, Executive Secretary of the Los Angeles Baptist City Mission Society, had preached the sermon from Luke 9:23, “And [Jesus] said to them all, if any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” Then Rev. Jitsuo Morikawa had baptized six young people and Revs. Kurao Tsuchiya and Morikawa conducted the Lord’s Supper. In its final order of business, the church had been dissolved and all of its members transferred to the Los Angeles Japanese Baptist Church. Dr. Mayberry had closed with a benediction from Hebrews 13:20-21: “Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”[3]
For the next few days, the island community had waited tensely for the order to evacuate. Then on February 25, the deadline for the evacuation of Terminal Island had been suddenly changed from three weeks to twenty-four hours. The Los Angeles Church Federation had to fight to extend the deadline to forty-eight hours.
The American Friends Service Committee had been making some preparations for an evacuation, but the change in the deadline quickly called all their available resources into action. People and trucks were mobilized to help the Japanese move their possessions. The hostels which were also being prepared for this time were opened and ready to accept these people who were grateful, given the situation, to have at least a place to go.[4]
Many of the men had been taken away in FBI sweeps shortly after Pearl Harbor as their families huddled together sorrowing and weeping. Thus during the evacuation, mothers and children were left to fend for themselves:
On February 26 the narrow streets between the little shacks were jammed with trucks and milling women and children. Second-hand dealers, descending like wolves to prey on the helpless, flocked in to take off the things people could not carry with them. They were reported to be giving a nickel on the dollar. . . . The women cried awful. . . . Some of them smashed their stuff, broke it up, right before the buyers’ eyes because they offered such ridiculous prices.[5]
Journalist Bill Hosokawa painted the scene:
Near panic swept the community, particularly where the family head was in custody. Word spread quickly and human vultures in the guise of used-furniture dealers descended on the island. They drove up and down the streets in trucks offering $5 for a nearly new washing machine, $10 for refrigerators. . . . And the Japanese, angry but helpless, sold their dearly purchased possessions because they didn’t know what to do. . . and because they sensed the need in the uncertain time ahead for all the cash they could squirrel away.[6]
Ralph Smeltzer, a minister in the Church of the Brethren, described those first frantic hours as he transported forty Japanese Americans from Terminal Island to a Japanese language school in Norwalk:
The atmosphere was one of tension, nervousness, speed and confusion on the part of the evacuees and suspicion on the part of the army men who were riding up and down the streets with their machine guns and fixed bayonets. The Baptist Mission and Miss Swanson the missionary were assisting as the nerve center for the proceedings-making trucks available, keeping a check upon unmoved furniture, and trying to make order out of chaos. . . . You can imagine the exhaustion of these people who had worked all day Thursday, Thursday night, and all day Friday. And you can also imagine the nervousness they felt as they made their rounds seeing so much good property being left behind in the rush, seeing a great number of Mexican looters and others stealing right and left, seeing little or no pretense of protection being given inside the buildings by any law enforcement body, and finally realizing that the midnight deadline was fast approaching.[7]
Swanson and her compatriots could not imagine how to assist over 3,000 evacuees who were given forty-eight hours to leave their island home. The task seemed overwhelming, but then the Lord intervened:
At that moment, a Quaker friend [Nicholson] came in and, understanding what had happened, said, “Let us pray.” All that came to my mind was this: “O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” We got on the telephone and asked for the volunteer help of Japanese and Caucasians. A number of volunteers came forth: Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Nicholson, who were Quakers, Dr. [Allan] Hunter and some Congregational church members, Methodists, a Catholic priest, and a Caucasian Buddhist priest [Julius Goldwater]. But for the most part, most of the helpers came from our church including Reverend Jitsuo Morikawa, Reverend Kurao Tsuchiya, and Clifford Nakadegawa. All of us worked together to get the residents ready.
There was much to be done. We typed and mimeographed sheets on which the families were to list their furniture, four blanks for each family. We had to divide the names and place them in the different hostels that we hoped were ready. Children came to church to volunteer, so we sent them from home to home delivering these blank forms, tags, and instructions.
All night long, the residents worked. The women packed through the night, but when the trucks came the next morning, some were not done. They would say, “Give me more time; take my neighbor first,” but we had to take them, ready or not. In some cases, we had to pull them from their houses crying and rush them off to hostels that were not always ready. In one case, the hostel was not at all prepared for the people who arrived after midnight. The residents had no lights, no gas, no water. But before the forty eight hours were up, so far as I know, every Japanese was off the island with the exception of the five who had helped.[8]
Margaret Matsunaga recalled with a thankful heart, “The Reverend and Mrs. Gurney Binford were Quaker missionaries in Japan when my mother was a girl in Mito, near Tokyo. They retired and settled in Los Angeles around 1939 or 1940, and our family was greatly aided by their many kindnesses.”[9] Despite working through the night, Matsunaga’s family was unable to finish packing. So “the Binfords said, ‘Go, we’ll finish the rest.’ They cleaned up, stored, sold what they needed to (even our house), and took care of the many details.”[10]
Such acts of kindness reminded the Nikkei that the love of Christ transcended their turmoil. In the words of the apostle Paul, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).
As night of the second day of the evacuation of Terminal Island drew on and the deadline drew even nearer, little groups still toiled feverishly in an effort to load and move the last remnants of all the disrupted homes within the allotted time.
The empty houses were dark, as the electric current had been cut off. Unable to carry flashlights, which were contraband, they finished their tasks in the gleam of flashlights held steadily for hours on end in the hands of Caucasian friends who flocked to their aid.
In this area of vital defense, no light shone from factories, stores or ships—all was total darkness. But looking upward now and again, one could always pick out the same sure stars in their same sure places, and be strangely reassured. Suddenly, out of the darkness, a clear young voice said: “Well, at least, you can’t black out the stars!”[11]
Swanson expressed her heartbreak over saying goodbye to the church once all the families had been evacuated:
It was a solemn moment, knowing that within a few minutes we would leave our church forever. As we stood there, we thought of the wonderful days God had given us on the island. How beautiful the building looked with its patio of green grass, the fine chapel, and the young people’s parlor. We thought of the three or four hundred children who had attended our Sunday school and the five young people who were in Christian training. We thought of the year we gave five hundred dollars to missions. . . . Another memory flashed in my mind, another fear: what about the children? I would always remember them singing with all their hearts while Hazel (Takii) Morikawa played the piano. What would happen to them? Our work now finished, it was time to leave. The days of the Terminal Island church had come to an end, though the memory of it will live in our hearts always. I turned out the lights, put my key on the table, and left the door open for the army, which occupied the building within days.[12]
[1] Virginia Swanson Yamamoto, “Terminal Island Days,” in Triumphs, 163-64.
[2] Sadaichi Asai, “The Four Seasons of My Life” (12 August 1994), 67.
[3] Report on Northern Baptist Convention (New York: Baptist Headquarters, 162 Madison Avenue, 17 June 1942).
[4] Lord, “Peace Churches,” 24.
[5] Girdner and Loftis, The Great Betrayal, 112-113.
[6] Bill Hosokawa, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (New York: Morrow, 1969), 310-311. The Quakers recognized this problem and sought to help: “One very real problem the Japanese have had to face has been the determination of unprincipled profiteers to take advantage of this emergency situation and make capital of the need of the Japanese to liquidate their assets in a hurry. All up and down the coast Friends have endeavored to prevent this exploitation of the helpless by counsel and advice, but in spite of all efforts there has been a great loss on the part of many of them. Fear and uncertainty caused them to sell for whatever they could get in numerous cases” (Japanese American Relations Committee, Pasadena AFSC Information Bulletin 3 [1 April 1942]).
[7] Letter from Ralph E. Smeltzer to Dan West (17 March 1942), Brethren Service Committee Japanese Relocation Collection (Elgin, IL: Brethren Historical Library and Archives), Boxes 1-6. Ralph and Mary Smeltzer served coffee and sandwiches to the evacuees and arranged for their transportation. They would work tirelessly throughout the internment to improve the conditions of the Japanese American internees and would later teach at the school in Manzanar to better assess the situation and need.
[8] Yamamoto, “Terminal Island Days,” 164-65.
[9] Margaret Matsunaga, “Memories of Struggle,” Friends Journal: Quaker Thought and Life Today 38, no. 11 (November 1992), 12.
[10] Ibid. The Binfords would deliver the proceeds from the sale of the home to the Matsunagas when they arrived at the relocation center. Margaret eventually received a church scholarship from the Episcopal Church and graduated from the conservatory of music at Oberlin College in 1948.
[11] Japanese American Relations Committee, Pasadena AFSC Information Bulletin 2 (15 March 1942).
[12] Yamamoto, “Terminal Island Days,” 165.
