Families from the Seattle area were mainly sent to the Puyallup Assembly Center on the grounds of the Western Washington State Fairgrounds.[1] According to Floyd Schmoe,
In Seattle, the orders came to leave for the Assembly Center at Puyallup on March 2, 1942. On that morning when the people were to gather at designated loading points with only the baggage they could carry, some of us had organized canteens, serving coffee and pastry, and had provided cars for the very old or ill, those for whom the two-hour drive to Puyallup in crowded buses or trucks would be too exhausting.[2]
In her biography, Monica Sone recounted her family’s departure by bus:
When all the busses were filled with the first contingent of Japanese, they started creeping forward slowly. We looked out of the window, smiled and feebly waved our hands at the crowd of friends who would be following us within the next two days. From among the Japanese faces, I picked out the tall, spare figures of our young people’s minister, the Reverend Everett Thompson, and the Reverend Emery Andrews of the Japanese Baptist Church. They were old friends, having been with us for many years. They wore bright smiles on their faces and waved vigorously as if to lift our morale.[3]
Puyallup was poorly misnomered, “Camp Harmony.” As Yoshito Fujii would observe, “Everybody gave up and accepted the situation as wartime misery.”[4] A major problem was simply not having enough time to adequately prepare the camp facilities. In late March, just prior to evacuation, Tom Bodine and Floyd Schmoe of the AFSC had gone to observe the progress: “They found it a madhouse of swarming carpenters. . . . Untar-papered, boxlike buildings had been thrown together on a huge field that was formerly the fairgrounds parking lot.”[5] “There will be approximately forty rows of these rabbit hutches,” they had reported, “four hutches to a row, six rooms to a hutch. . . . Army barracks are palaces by comparison.”[6] Their barnyard analogy was not far off as some evacuees were even housed in converted pigpens, while others initially mistook Puyallup for a chicken farm.[7]
There were two kinds of buildings: one was clapboard, the other just plain board. They looked like chicken coops, a long row of them, and inside they were divided into cubicles. There were no ceilings, so that if a baby cried 150 feet down on the other end of this long line of cubicles, the crying could be heard throughout the entire building. Of course, there was no running water, so that for water, you had to go to the central washroom. There were other units in the central fairgrounds that were under the fairground stands. They had concrete floors and were very cold and dank. These, again, were partitioned into cubicles.[8]
According to the AFSC, “One washroom must accommodate 100 families. Mass feeding will be carried on. There is no shade and very little open space between the buildings. An eight-foot barbed wire fence surrounds the camp.”[9] Under these conditions, Rev. Daisuke Kitagawa received a special permit to make his final pastoral call to congregants from St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Seattle. Kitagawa himself would be evacuated to the assembly center at Pinedale, so he would not see many of his flock until reunited at Minidoka. He reported that
They were herded into the fair grounds, confined behind barbed wire, and guarded by armed sentries. It was all too brief a visit, but no visit was ever more profoundly appreciated. I shall never forget how struck I was by the smiles on people’s faces when they saw me coming through the gate. Children flocked to greet me. And those people, who little short of two weeks before had been under such tension and anxiety, were now completely relaxed, even though they had lost, however temporarily it might prove to be, all the comforts of human habitation. To be sure, the eyes of the women who saw me off were filled with tears, but we somehow knew that it was not the last time we would see one another. I knew that once they reached their destination, it would not be too bad for them. No comfort or pleasure would be awaiting them, to be sure; but certainly no concentration camp like those in Nazi Germany.[10]
Rev. Kitagawa would entrust his flock to the care of other shepherds in Puyallup. Residents were provided no church buildings, pews, or hymnals, yet within days of arrival they had mobilized an ecumenical Federated Christian Church to organize worship services, religious education, and social programs. From the very first week, they held Sunday worship services and Sunday school. The camp itself was divided into four districts by foreboding barbed wire (uncreatively designated A, B, C, D), so Protestants formed an ecumenical church in each quadrant of “Camp Harmony.” As Blankenship stated,
Nikkei volunteers, Issei pastors, and white church leaders soon organized Sunday services and other activities. Six hundred Nikkei attended the Protestant service on 10 May, less than two weeks after the camp opened. Attendance nearly tripled the following week as more people entered camp. . . . By June over 2,500 incarcerees [two-thirds of the population] attended a Protestant function each week. . . . Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Holiness Issei pastors conducted Sunday worship services, prayer meetings, and weekly Bible study in Japanese. Sunday school, worship, youth fellowship, and a Sunday school teachers’ training class also filled the weekly schedule. Catholics attended daily mass offered by Father Tibesar.[11]
Many of the young Nisei clergy, like Tsutomo “Tom” Fukuyama, were pushed forward into ministry despite limited experience.[12] Yet what they lacked in ability, they made up with zeal. According to the Seattle Council of Churches,
Like parachute troops who are fighting almost as soon as their feet hit the ground, the young people in the Puyallup Assembly Center began setting up Sunday School the very day they landed. Working efficiently, they mobilized their forces of experienced teachers, drafted new ones where necessary, adopted graded lessons, [and] secured the supplies necessary.[13]
The Puyallup Christians also organized their own chaplaincy system, headed by Tom Kobayashi, to address sick calls and other ministry requests. They even developed a ministry of music:
One choir using robes [lent by Seattle churches] and a processional and recessional and another numbering seventy voices, and a third using instrumental solos as well as their vocal selections became regular parts of their respective worship services. In addition, a number of special quartettes and special choirs sang on various occasions. These choirs were not merely groups of people singing but trained organizations taught to sing with consecrated devotion and with skilled technique. The Council of Churches made possible the purchase of music so that these choirs could have adequate material with which to work.[14]
Although initial support for the internees was tepid, Christian ministers in the camps still remained connected to their larger denominations and fellow Caucasian ministers. Friends from outside would deliver equipment helpful for ministry such as bicycles and mimeographs. Local churches raised funds and donated books to the Puyallup library until “the total was well over 3,000 volumes of books and a ton or two of recent magazines.”[15] “The Seattle Council of Churches organized a vacation [Bible] school for Christian children at Camp Harmony, and they were urged by the area chaplain, Reverend Thomas Okabe, to open it to all children.”[16] Seattle churches also helped them “to procure pianos, Sunday School curriculum, reading material, hymnals, music, clothing, and personal items, and to process the paperwork for day-passes and security checks for the Caucasian Sunday School teachers and guest preachers who were needed to keep the Puyallup programs staffed and operated.”[17] Visiting ministers, such as Revs. Andrews and Thompson, were frequently invited to preach in the worship service.
On most Sundays, white pastors from Seattle, Tacoma, Puyallup, and Sumner drove to the camps—often without remuneration for their time or gas, a rationed commodity after April 1942. Over the summer, more than fifty different clergy worked with the four new congregations. . . . Guests could preach only if invited by incarcerees.[18]
Monica Sone recalled this blessed memory of home life:
In the morning we went to church to listen to our Reverend Everett Thompson who visited us every Sunday. Our minister was a tall and lanky man whose open and friendly face quickly drew people to him. He had served as missionary in Japan at one time and he spoke fluent Japanese. He had worked with the young people in our church for many years, and it was a great comfort to see him and the many other ministers and church workers with whom we had been in contact back in Seattle. We felt that we were not entirely forgotten.
With battered spirits we met in the dimly lighted makeshift room which served as our chapel under the baseball grandstand, and after each sermon and prayer, we gained new heart. Bit by bit, our minister kept on helping us build the foundation for a new outlook. I particularly remember one Sunday service when he asked us to read parts from the Book of Psalms in unison. Somehow in our circumstances and in our environment, we had begun to read more slowly and conscientiously, as if we were finding new meaning and comfort in the passages from the Bible. “The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God of Jacob defend thee [Psalm 20:1]. . . . Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help [22:11]. . . . The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” [27:1]
As we finished with the lines, “Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness; to the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto thee forever” [30:11-12], the room seemed filled with peace and awe, as if walls had been pushed back and we were free. I was convinced that this was not the end of our lives here in camp, but just the beginning. . . . The evacuation had been the biggest blow, but there was little to be gained in bitterness and cynicism because we felt that people had failed us. The time had come when it was more important to examine our own souls, to keep our faith in God and to build that way of life which we so desired.[19]
Rev. Thompson attributed Christian soul care to be the basis of the Nikkei church’s perseverance: “One very large reason why there was not more bitterness and sense of frustration in the face of flagrant injustice was the constant steadying influence of the Japanese churches in sermon, worship service, discussion group, and pastoral calling.”[20] The church gave her people strength to endure and to be a witness to others.
[1] “Besides the usual grandstand, stables, racetrack and other buildings common to fairgrounds, Puyallup had a rollercoaster, which made it distinctive as an assembly center” (Okihiro, Encyclopedia, 222).
[2] Schmoe, “Seattle’s Peace Churches,” 118.
[3] Sone, Nisei Daughter, 171.
[4] Eileen Sunada Sarasohn, ed., The Issei: Portrait of a Pioneer: An Oral History (Palo Alto, CA: Pacific Books, 1983), 180.
[5] Girdner and Loftis, The Great Betrayal, 154.
[6] Seattle Office American Friends Service Committee Report 8 (2 April 1942), Conrad-Duveneck Collection, Hoover Institution Collections of War, Revolution, and Peace (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University).
[7] Sone, Nisei Daughter, 173. Sone also recalled the “carnivorous Puyallup mud” (Ibid., 180).
[8] “William Hosokawa” in Tateishi, Justice For All, 19.
[9] Japanese American Relations Committee, Pasadena AFSC Information Bulletin 4 (27 April 1942).
[10] Kitagawa, Issei and Nisei, 56-57.
[11] Blankenship, Social Justice, 53.
[12] Tom Fukuyama, My Spiritual Pilgrimage: Autobiographies of Asian American Baptist Ministers, compiled by the Asian American Baptist Caucus (1976), Box 10/Fld 8, PACTS Collection, GTU 2001-9-01, GTU. Rev. Fukuyama grew up attending a Congregational Sunday school on Bainbridge Island and was deeply influenced by Seattle JBC missionaries Florence Rumsey and Esther McCullough. He was not yet twenty-five when he was ordained on April 30, 1942.
[13] Report by the Washington Council of Churches and Religious Education, “Japanese Assembly Center at Puyallup” (8 September 1942), Box 15/Fld 4, CCGS, UW.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Taylor, “Fellow-Feelers,” 125, citing SCC papers (19 May 1942), UW.
[17] Duntley, “Minidoka,” 3. Over fifty non-Japanese clergymen from the Seattle-Tacoma area participated in at least one church service at Puyallup. The Council of Churches and the Baptist Publishing House supplied Sunday school materials, choir robes and sheet music. Prior to the eviction, twenty non-Japanese church workers had served the area’s seven Japanese Protestant churches, and most continued to devote much of their time to the internees. About half were former missionaries to Japan who spoke some Japanese. Eight Caucasian teachers helped Nisei internees organize Sunday schools and youth forums (Seigel, In Good Conscience, 159).
[18] Blankenship, Social Justice, 53.
[19] Sone, Nisei Daughter, 185-86.
[20] Matsumoto, Beyond Prejudice, 15. “The Seattle Council of Churches called Everett Thompson to act as a full-time minister for incarcerated Protestants. Thompson spoke fluent Japanese, having spent years conducting missionary work in Japan before moving to Seattle” (Blankenship, Social Justice, 54).
