The Manzanar Relocation Center was the first to receive occupants, yet it was not welcoming by any measure. As Yuri Tateishi wrote,
You felt like a prisoner. . . . You had to stay within the confines of the camp, not in the sense that you’re in a jail or anything, but you’re kept inside a barbed-wire fence, and you know you can’t get out. And you don’t know what your future is, going into a camp with four children. You just have to trust God that you will be taken care of somehow. It’s scary. . . . You don’t know how you’re going to be able to raise the children.[1]
A five-strand barbed-wire fence and eight watchtowers surrounded the camp to remind the residents that they were prisoners in their own country. The forty blocks in the camp each contained twelve barracks (20 by 100 feet) divided into five rooms apiece (20 by 20 feet). Mary Sakaguchi could not forget the mess hall: “The food was so bad, we called it ‘SOS food’—Same Old Slop. Everybody would get diarrhea. We called it the ‘Manzanar Twins’—Diar and Rhea. Everybody had twins.”[2] Sohei Hohri cast her own vote:
The most unpleasant thing about camp was the dust. We had a tin cup and a bowl with milk. A dust storm would blow sometimes for hours, and dust would seep into everything. I would see the dust forming on the milk and I’d try to scoop it away. It got to the point where I said, “Aah, just close your mind to it and say, ‘Dust is good for you,’ and drink it.”[3]
The Christians, however, continued to gather for fellowship as they had done previously. William Hohri recalled,
On April 4, 1942, the remainder of our family went by bus under armed guard to the Manzanar War Relocation Center. The next day was Easter, which we celebrated outdoors in the early morning at the foot of the mighty Sierra Nevada and its inspiring Mount Williamson. At the same time, the disorder and desolation of concentration-camp existence were beginning to engulf us. We were living a parable whose meaning it would take the rest of my life to understand: the reign of God is here, within us, in our midst, for us to enact in our own lives and history, just as Mount Williamson stood in its majesty alongside our disorder and desolation. God be with us.[4]
The church began to meet as ministers arrived from various assembly centers.[5] Then on August 23, 1942, Dr. Frank Herron Smith preached on “The Place of Religion in Manzanar” at the dedication of the Manzanar Christian Church. Nikkei Christians offered prayers and special music as the leaders declared, “To make God a reality in daily living is a main purpose and function of the Manzanar Protestant Christian Church.”[6] The church was ecumenical, even though some mainline Protestants disapproved of the boisterous “excesses . . . and abnormal conduct” of certain Holiness and Pentecostal Christians.[7] The order of worship was fairly uniform each week. After a call to worship and invocation, the church would sing a hymn,[8] then recite a responsive reading, followed by The Doxology. Each service would include a short Scripture lesson, pastoral prayer, and offertory, followed by the sermon and more hymn singing. The service would close with a benediction and a time of silent meditation. A typical Sunday schedule included morning prayer, a devotional meeting, Sunday school, adult Bible studies, worship services in both English and Japanese, then an evangelistic meeting and a young people’s fellowship in the evening.[9] In one sermon, the main preacher, Rev. Junichi Fujimori explained, “The word ‘neighbor’ has a peculiarly significant meaning for us in Manzanar, where we live so closely together. Let us learn to love our neighbor.”[10] Internees had to move past petty squabbles in the camp and learn how to love one another with the example of Christ.
Each summer, the church hosted a Daily Vacation Bible School (DVBS)[11] and also launched the Young Adults Christian Forum to address the intellectual and educational aspects of religious life in Manzanar. One such topic was “The Christian’s Responsibility in Problems of Racial Minorities.” They also formed a Young People’s Christian Fellowship (YPCF), stating:
The main purpose of the Young People’s Fellowship is to make God real to ourselves. A transforming knowledge of Christ as one’s personal Savior is the necessary foundation. This end is achieved through singspirations, inspiring messages, enlightening discussions, hearty socials, and most of all, in common Christian fellowship. The second purpose is to make God real to others. This is done by our awareness of the fact that each Christian is an ambassador for Christ. It is the ambassador’s principal obligation to create favorable impressions for his country and its ruler. So, the Young People’s Fellowship seeks to serve in the same capacity.[12]
The most commonly recurring entries in the Manzanar Christian Church Bulletin were long lists of residents leaving each week to resettle outside the camp for work or school. At times, a prayer would be included such as, “We pray not so much that God will take care of them, but that God will lead them into new paths of usefulness. Just to ask for God’s care is selfish, but to ask for God’s leadership in Christian service is our true aim in life.”[13]
Many Christians at Manzanar turned to the Bible for comfort and encouragement during these difficult times. Marian Kadomatsu had been actively involved in Sunday school and youth activities at the Los Angeles Holiness Church. She was a senior in college when Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor and remembered asking herself: “‘Where is God to protect me and my family from our enemies?’ God faithfully responded, ‘Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand’” (Isaiah 41:10).[14] Then when Kadomatsu had been dismissed from her civil-service position for “reasons of national security,” she again laid claim to the limitless resources of the limitless God: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for I the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9). Once again, she turned to the Lord for answers when she arrived at the desolate Manzanar Relocation Center: “I remembered that the divine Jesus was still human and had compassion for me. Had He not suffered for us all? . . . As I wondered about God’s watchcare over our needs, I was reminded of Psalm 55:22, “Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you. He will never let the righteous fall.”[15]
The Manzanar Christian Church also maintained good relations with outsiders (Colossians 4:5-6). Rev. Herbert Nicholson, a Quaker missionary to Japan for twenty-five years and English pastor of the West Los Angeles Methodist Church, faithfully ministered to the Nikkei: “In June, as the internees began to be transferred from assembly centers to permanent internment camps, Nicholson rented a truck to take ‘about a ton of cast-off books’ from the Los Angeles Public Library, along with pianos, pulpits, benches and prayer books, to Manzanar.”[16] Mr. Yamamoto, a grocer from Terminal Island, would donate his one-and-a-half ton stake-bed truck to Nicholson so he could bring goods and possessions to internees in the camps. As Togo Tanaka, the pre-war English editor of The Rafu Shimpo, recalled,
Nicholson brought to the camp truckloads of things, but mostly he brought good cheer—and hope. When help was needed he was there. He [was] very earthy and pragmatic, the kind of person who pitches in and does things. I never met anyone who, having met him, didn’t remember him with a smile. The evacuees liked and respected many people, but they loved Herbert.[17]
These errands were not always without incident. One close friend of Nicholson’s noted with humor, “On one occasion he brought in what was purported to be vinegar, but which turned out to be sake, contributing to his exclusion from Manzanar for six months.”[18] Nicholson spent many days on the road, logging thousands of miles in that old truck and making the 400-mile round trip to Manzanar some thirty times. He was often accompanied by Quaker workers such as Kirby Page and Esther Rhoads, or missionaries E. Stanley Jones and Roy Smith. Besides Nicholson, Manzanar would benefit from the ministry of other visiting preachers. In October 1943, Dr. Jones even headed up a Christian Mission Week at Manzanar and exhorted many to follow Jesus.
Some Caucasian Christians also ministered inside the camp itself. Margaret M. D’Ille[19] was the daughter of a Methodist minister who had “taught school before joining the national staff of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in 1903 to develop programs for adolescent girls.”[20] In the summer of 1942, after a full life of ministry (including ten years in Japan), D’Ille began to serve as Manzanar’s director of community welfare and head counselor. Under her watch, the AFSC delivered a truckload of material, including a piano and also stocked a toy loan center with donated toys.[21] D’Ille recalled when, only a few months later, Ralph P. Merritt became Manzanar’s new project director during a time of great turmoil in the camp. Martial law had been imposed after the deadly “Manzanar riot” in December 1942 and in the subsequent days the internees refused to show up for work.
It was a dead city. No children came out to play. No lights burned at night. Days went by and Ralph could find no way to bring about the normal way of living, where children played and went to school, and people went about their daily routines. Two weeks following the riot, Ralph was sitting in his office listening to telephoned instructions to “get tough.”
Kindly, I asked him what he planned to do. “Ralph Merritt, have you forgotten your Christian upbringing?” I asked. “Have you forgotten that this is Christmas and what Christmas means?” I said there was a warehouse full of presents that had been shipped to Manzanar by churches and friends who wanted to give Christmas happiness to the more than 1,000 children living behind barbed wire. I suggested Ralph send trucks and men to the mountains to cut trees and bring them back to the camp to set up in front of each barracks, decorated with lights; and that presents should be distributed the day before Christmas so people could prepare Christmas trees for Christmas morning. I reminded him there was a Children’s Village at Manzanar, which was under my department. The babies and teenagers had [been] picked up by the Army from Alaska to San Diego as “security risks.” I proposed we arrange a great children’s party at the Children’s Village on Christmas Eve.
That night, Ralph, his wife Varina, and I walked through the dark, dead camp to our Children’s Village where happy voices welcomed us. We sat Japanese fashion on the floor surrounded by excited, happy children while the Christmas scene of shepherds and wise men was enacted upon a little stage. Then, there was Santa Claus and presents and we began to sing Christmas carols. As we sang, we suddenly realized that there was more singing than the voices of the little children gathered in that room. Ralph got up and quietly walked out into the night. The clear moon and stars were shining over the Sierras. From out in the darkness, Christmas carols were being sung by children outside the village. Ralph looked out on the upturned faces of boys and girls of Japanese ancestry, born in America, American citizens, from our own schools, who were standing there in the night singing Christmas carols along with the children of the village. We called out to wish everybody a Merry Christmas and they wished all of us a Merry Christmas. Then Ralph, Varina and I stood alone watching the star that was above us. Ralph turned to me. He said, “Peace has come again to Manzanar.”[22]
Peace came to Manzanar as on that first Christmas when Jesus Christ was born and an angel from heaven had announced God’s message of peace on earth:
And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:10-14).
Manzanar received countless boxes of gifts every Christmas thereafter from Christian organizations such as the Mission Band Evangelical Churches, the Home Missions Council of North America, the YWCA, the YMCA, and various Ladies Aid groups. The Presbyterian Board of Southern California also helped them set up a DVBS in August 1943 with the theme: “Adventures with God.” In countless ways, the Nikkei Christians experienced Christ’s love through brothers and sisters they had never met.
The church also learned how to rejoice together in the midst of suffering (Romans 5:3-5). On Easter Sunday 1943, they proclaimed songs of victory such as “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” “He Lives,” and “Christ Arose.” Mary Takemura later wrote down a moving testimony about her time at Manzanar:
When I arrived in Manzanar on that cold, dusty evening in April, I wondered how a kind and loving heavenly Father could send us to such a place like this. Through these eleven months I have realized his purpose. I have had many wonderful experiences during my stay here. I have come to know the Lord Jesus Christ better. That through life’s storms there is always peace and rest to be found if we but yield to Him. It’s really a wonderful feeling to know that “Jesus Never Fails” those who love and trust in Him. May we be a source of inspiration to some lost soul as in Isaiah 32:2, “And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind . . . as rivers of water in a dry place. . . .” I pray that the Lord Jesus Christ will use me to bring someone to the knowledge of Christ.[23]
In like manner, Rev. David Jacobsen reminded the Manzanar Christian Church about the brevity of life and the urgency to live each day for God.
All about us are things which have the stamp of being temporary. Our buildings are temporary, our organizations are temporary, even our friends are temporary. We travel this path but once and each day brings us nearer to the time when, we will leave Manzanar to take up our lives on the outside. Change is the law of life and God doth ordained that these earth attachments all must have an end. . . . Only God is eternal and unchanging. God is never arbitrary or unreliable and when we put our trust in Him, we look at our changing lives as filled with opportunities rather than uncertainties. We know not how long it will be before the opportunities which we have in Manzanar will be gone forever. Let us make the most of the time we have left.[24]
The war was coming to an end as the Manzanar Christian Church recited the Apostles’ Creed at its third-year commemoration service and sang two of their favorite hymns: “Love Divine” and “Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone?” Rev. Henry G. Bovenkerk, the young people’s pastor, preached on “Redeeming the Time” and Rev. Seiya Sakai on “The Church is the Body of Christ.”[25] Finally, on December 9, 1945, the church held a farewell service to celebrate their time of fellowship in the center.
[1] “Yuri Tateishi” in Tateishi, Justice for All, 24.
[2] Mary Sakaguchi, oral history cited in Ellen Levine, A Fence Away from Freedom: Japanese Americans and World War II (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), 53.
[3] Sohei Hohri, oral history cited in Levine, Fence, 51.
[4] William Hohri, “A Parable,” in Triumphs, 28. Hohri’s father, a former pastor of the West Los Angeles Methodist Church, had been arrested by the FBI and recommended for internment by the Enemy Alien Hearing Board: “The Board feels that whereas the subject is a preacher and it is a hardship to deprive his church of its minister, still that very fact, coupled with his membership in the Veterans’ Association above referred to, and the fact of his trip to Japan, Korea and Manchuria in 1940, makes him potentially more dangerous than if he were a farmer, a storekeeper, or the like.” William Hohri would later serve as the chairman of the National Council for Japanese American Redress (NCJAR).
[5] The first to meet were the Methodists on March 29, 1943. Rev. Frank Herron Smith of the Methodist Board of Home Missions preached in Japanese with Rev. Hideo Hashimoto translating.
[6] Manzanar Free Press (17 February 1943), 5.
[7] Letter from Bovenkerk to Chapman (6 May 1943), Box 1/Fld 1, Chapman Papers, GTU. “In the end, ‘ecumenical’ services in every camp resembled those of the Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists. Leaders did not welcome contributions that highlighted the diversity within Protestantism. Mainline Protestants claimed unity by preserving the practices they saw as normative” (Blankenship, Social Justice, 114). This uncertainty regarding Holiness pastors seems to have shifted by the end of the war as Chapman expressed his pleasure “with the fine attitude . . . demonstrated again and again by . . . Holiness ministers” in the camps (Letter from Gordon Chapman to Roy P. Adams [16 May 1944], Box 1/Fld 31, Chapman Papers, GTU).
[8] Many of these hymns, such as Great is Thy Faithfulness, are still sung in churches today.
[9] See a typical schedule of religious services in Suzuki, Ministry, 113, 117. Catholic, Buddhist, and Nichiren (a branch of Buddhism) services would meet concurrently. Rev. Fujimori reported that the Protestant church held Sunday schools for 800 students at eight buildings, and had 500 youth and 500 adults at Sunday services, besides holding daily morning services and nine weekly Bible studies throughout the camp. He wrote to the PCC, “We are always faced with a lack of proper rooms and buildings for the church meeting. If such a church is built for us, we are confident we can carry on our work more efficiently” (Letter from Junichi Fujimori to Gordon K. Chapman, n.d., Folder 51, Chapman Papers).
[10] Manzanar Christian Church Bulletin (14 March 1943).
[11] Manzanar Christian Church Bulletin (29 July 1945). Another ministry to children was the Children’s Village where 101 orphans or foster children of Japanese ancestry from Alaska to San Diego were confined during the war (Densho Encyclopedia, “Manzanar Children’s Village,” accessed at http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Manzanar_Children’s_Village).
[12] Manzanar Christian Church Bulletin (14 March 1943).
[13] Ibid. (29 October 1944).
[14] Marian Maruko Kodomatsu, “The Spiritual Tapestry of My Life,” in Triumphs, 48.
[15] Ibid., 49.
[16] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 53. See also Suzuki, Ministry, 115. Roy Nash, the first director at Manzanar, was a friend of the Quakers and gave the Nicholsons free access to come and go from the center as they pleased (Nicholson and Wilke, Comfort All Who Mourn, 89).
[17] Samuel Nicholson, “Truck-Driving Missionary,” Friends Journal: Quaker Thought and Life Today 38, no. 11 (November 1992), 18. Tanaka’s mother was a follower of Christ, but his father followed Confucian principles. Tanaka was released from Manzanar after being offered a position in the Office of War Information (OWI). On his way to Washington, D.C., he wrote, “We were allowed to stay at the Quaker hostel on Belden Avenue in Chicago, and there, for the first time, I encountered people who, in the midst of war and bloodshed and all of this hating, seemed somehow to have a tranquility and a serenity and a kind of peacefulness that impressed me so much that I volunteered to work with the Quakers for the next several years” (Togo W. Tanaka, “How to Survive Racism in America’s Free Society,” in Voices Long Silent, 99). The Quakers also helped Tanaka’s father-in-law, who had been wrongly arrested by the FBI and shuffled through various Department of Justice detention centers, to be reunited with his family in Manzanar (Ibid., 107).
[18] Weglyn and Mitson, Valiant Odyssey, 25.
[19] In 1946, Miss D’Ille would marry George Gleason, a long-time supporter of the Japanese Americans. The Gleasons remained active participants in the Mount Hollywood Congregational Church, which was led by peace activist Allan Hunter.
[20] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 110-111. Both the YMCA and YWCA were active in the camps, hiring Nikkei “to operate clubs or gyms in several centers, the first opening at Manzanar in August 1942. The YMCA hired Masao Satow to integrate Nikkei into established clubs as they resettled across the country. The YWCA also visited every camp to advise administrators on the importance of supplying recreational activities for girls and encourage local chapters to visit the camps (Blankenship, Social Justice, 73). “Esther Breisemeister was sent by the YWCA to visit all the centers, establish YWCA programs, and give help to the evacuees. ‘She was really remarkable,’ Dorothy Tada remembered, ‘She was one of us. She worked with us. She ate with us in the mess hall and shared the endless menu of turnips’” (Girdner and Loftis, The Great Betrayal, 304).
[21] Gerald H. Robinson, Elusive Truth: Four Photographers at Manzanar (Nevada City, CA: Carl Mautz Publishing, 2002), 100. Due to baggage limitations during evacuation, very few children had been allowed to bring their toys to the camps.
[22] National Park Service, “Margaret D’Ille Gleason” (May 2004), 3-9, accessed at https://www.nps.gov/manz/learn/education/upload/MDille.pdf.
[23] Manzanar Christian Church Bulletin (14 March 1943).
[24] David C. Jacobsen, “A Sermonette,” Manzanar Christian Church Bulletin (6 August 1944).
[25] Manzanar Christian Church Bulletin (30 July 1944). Rev. Bovenkerk himself had endured imprisonment and interrogation for his service as a missionary to Japan. He insisted to the church: “You look at me and see a white face and you say that I am an American but if you cut open my heart, you would find that I am Japanese” (“Ex-missioner’s Memories of Japan Mix the Pleasant with the Painful,” The Daily Journal [Elizabeth, NJ: 21 April 1980]).
