Teachers Behind Barbed Wire

In addition to college opportunities for some, many Christians saw the need to provide education for children behind the barbed wire. This ministry of school teachers deserves special mention as many friends of the Nikkei taught in the relocation centers to care for interned families both academically and spiritually. Classroom conditions were less than ideal and resources were scarce, but many considered teaching as their vital role in serving the Nikkei. Estelle Ishigo commented on the conditions at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center,

On the 30th of September drab barracks with drafty windows and doors began to fill with children ready for school. . . . There were as many as 60 children in a classroom 16 by 20 feet and there were very few books. . . . At first there were no desks; some sat on benches, some on the floor and some stood leaning against the walls to write their lessons.[1]

The atmosphere of unrest cultivated in the camps also made teaching difficult. As John Embree wrote, “The way of a schoolteacher in a relocation center is almost impossible. To begin with there is a basic dilemma of trying to teach American democracy to children in an undemocratic situation.”[2] According to Rev. Daisuke Kitagawa,

The schools came to reflect this low community morale. Children did not show enthusiasm for, or interest in, school work. Parents did not seem to care about it, either. The place . . . was not conducive to study . . . and the fact that they had to be there simply because they were of Japanese descent made the children question whether there would be any use for their education in America at all.[3]

Children throughout the centuries have tried to skip school, but teaching in the camps posed even greater difficulties. In order to succeed, teachers needed a willingness to sacrifice their own comforts for the good of their students. They also needed the wisdom and skill to address the swirling emotions in the classroom. Only those who viewed their job as a calling were able to serve effectively.

Robert Coombs

Robert W. Coombs began his career as a school teacher in Sacramento, California during the same month that President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. Coombs recalled saying good-bye to his Japanese American students on their final day of school before evacuation to the assembly centers:

The tears just flowed . . . the hugs and the kisses goodbye . . . [b]ecause these . . . kids had started kindergarten together. Some of them . . . were arm-over-each-other’s-shoulder pals. . . . [The next day,] when I walked into my room and the first class came in, to see all those vacant chairs. And the rest of the day, all five periods, vacant chairs. . . . [I]t was hard. . . . [W]e were not an isolated area where there might have been three or four [Japanese American] families that could be exposed to anger and bitterness. . . . There was a goodly population in Sacramento. And when you start kindergarten with youngsters and you grow up with them, you don’t see differences. . . . [Y]ou’re pals, you’re buddies.[4]

As a child, Coombs’s Christian mother had taught him how to love people of diversity. He spoke of her highly: “We adored her. She had the capacity to explain to us what it meant to be human and love, no matter what people looked like, . . . what their nationality was, what their racial characteristics were, the human being inside was the most important thing. . . . [T]hat’s the way my twin and I were raised. . . . And we loved all people.”[5] As a poor child growing up in Sacramento, Coombs also experienced the love of others. During the Depression, many students like him would come to school hungry, so the PTA would provide free meals of hot, nourishing soups for lunch. One Issei farmer, Mr. Miyao, faithfully contributed vegetables from his truck farm for the hot-lunch program. Coombs said, “It was one of my first experiences with someone of a different race and [I] was aware that . . . he was doing . . . an outstanding kind of thing. Ever since then, I have always thought of the way he helped in the community.”[6] Many of Coombs’s classmates were the Japanese American children of farmers in the Sacramento region.

When Coombs accepted the opportunity to teach high school at the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho, he was called a “Jap-lover” much like Jesus had been called “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34). His mother, however, supported his decision: “You are helping young Americans. . . . There are no hyphenated Americans. We are all Americans.”[7] In addition, unlike many of his fellow teachers who lived in the nearby town of Twin Falls, Coombs chose to live in the camp itself.

He wanted to participate as fully as he could in the life of the internee community and to be available to his students in the evenings. As he approached the camp for the first time, “the desolate area gave me a jolt,” he remembered. At the camp itself, the wind whipped freshly bulldozed earth into clouds of dust. Barbed wire and sentry towers ringed the raw new compound, and a guard inspected everyone at the gate.[8]

In the classroom, Coombs faced many challenges such as lack of supplies, freezing winters, dust storms, and class sizes of over fifty students due to the shortage of teachers. His Nikkei students, however, were eager to learn and quickly made up the months of education they had lost in the assembly centers. Coombs also counseled many of his students through their rage and bitterness against the injustice of the camps. At times, he encouraged them to speak with other men of faith: the Catholic priest Father Leopold Tibesar, the Methodist minister Thomas Machida, and the Episcopalian priest Joseph Kitagawa.

Classroom conditions gradually improved as school supplies came in from around the country. Coombs planted a flower garden outside his classroom to help his students connect with the Japanese people’s love for nature. He also partnered with his fellow teachers, former missionaries Ecco Hunt and Elma Tharp, who could speak Japanese with the Issei parents. Coombs then showed kindness to his newfound friends by purchasing sewing supplies on his weekly visits to Twin Falls.

One Christmas, Coombs’s mother visited her son in the camp. As Coombs explained, “[T]here was no mission involved [in my mother’s Christmas visit], but there was love involved. . . . [T]he kids just loved visiting with my mother.”[9] She later recounted to the ladies in her Presbyterian church how she “loved every minute.” As a godly mother, she had taught her son to avoid the blindness of cultural racism.

Coombs would marry a fellow teacher from Minidoka, Marguerite Askew, then continue to work as a teacher, counselor, and administrator in the Sacramento school district until his retirement. At the forty-year reunion of Hunt High School, Coombs told his former students from Minidoka: “Your future life was very important to us and it is my hope that we were able to assist you so that your lives have been successful and happy. No matter how cold it was or how warm, windy or dusty, we all grew up in many ways with each other. My life was fulfilled because of my service to you.”[10]

Eleanor Gerard Sekarak

Eleanor Gerard volunteered as a teacher and student counselor at the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah, but did not experience a favorable first impression: “Dust storms and the sticky, slippery mud that followed rain. With a sudden crack of wind, the dust storms seemed to whirl up and around in blinding fury, leaving a talcumlike film on everything—clothes, hair—even sifting into clenched mouths and gritting between teeth! One simply learned to endure dust and mud.”[11] Miss Gerard, however, made sure her students received a quality education and was instrumental in helping many of them transition into college.

Paul Tani, who graduated from Topaz High School in 1943, recalled how [Miss Gerard] Sekerak braved the dust storms of the Utah desert and taught with little to no teaching supplies in a campus enclosed by barbed wire. We were prisoners of war. That’s essentially what we were, he said. She had to convince us to forget about that: “You’re going to get out of here some day,” she would say, “and you’re going to be good American citizens.”[12]

Gerard was also unashamedly Christian in her faith. On her first Sunday at Topaz, she remembered being the only Caucasian teacher at her breakfast table planning to attend worship services that morning:

I was told, “The only church is the one the residents have.” “I know,” I said, “but since I went to the Rev. Tsukamoto’s church in San Francisco, why not here?” As an active Episcopalian in Berkeley and in Oakland, I had met many Bay Area clergymen. So, seated on a makeshift bench in the first row of a tar-paper “rec hall,” I listened to Rev. Tsukamoto’s sermon and to Goro Suzuki (who later became television’s Jack Soo) sing the Lord’s Prayer.[13]

During Gerard’s three years at Topaz, only a few of the staff attended church with her, but Eleanor eventually married one of them, Emil Sekarak, who had visited the service with her on that first Sunday. After the war, Eleanor continued to teach for the next thirty years at Hayward High in California.

Joseph Goodman

As a Quaker, Dr. Joseph R. Goodman was a conscientious objector during the war and felt strongly his call to serve the Nikkei. So in 1943, he volunteered to be a teacher and advisor at Topaz High School, claiming that “this group of students included some who could become scientists, doctors or leaders in society if they were encouraged to continue their education even under adverse conditions.”[14] He informed his young charges:

I believe the evacuation is unconstitutional. You are American citizens . . . incarcerated against your will without due process of law. I’m not going to whitewash the circumstances that put you here, but you can choose to be bitter or you can choose to look for the positive. You have a unique opportunity that students at an established school do not. You can choose your school colors, your mascot, and create songs, cheers and other school traditions.[15]

Goodman had grown fond of the Nikkei even before the internment. Immediately following Pearl Harbor, Goodman had sought opportunities to serve the Japanese American community. In addition to working as a scientist at the prestigious Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco, he partnered with the JACL and volunteered

his evenings and weekends at the [Japanese] YMCA, helping organize youth activities. He also helped put together a mimeographed community information sheet to explain new developments affecting Japanese Americans. Churches, labor organizations and social groups were invited to join a community council to work on Japanese American concerns.[16]

He was shocked when many of his friends were relocated during the war. Then in July 1942, Goodman married Elizabeth “Betty” Baker and they “stopped on the way back from their honeymoon at the [Minidoka] internment camp being constructed near Twin Falls, Idaho.”[17] Both were offered jobs at Minidoka, but eventually accepted employment at Topaz—Joe as a teacher and Betty as head of the social services department—where they served for two years from 1942 to 1944. Goodman later recalled:

Dust permeated everything, your hair, eyes, clothes, books, the rooms at school and . . . the homes in the barracks. When the wind blew strongly, it was difficult to see farther than two or three housing blocks. In the summer the temperature could reach well over 100 degrees F. In winters it dropped to below 0 [degrees] F and on occasion it snowed. These extreme conditions imposed restrictions on various activities and frequently made for very uncomfortable living.[18]

Goodman became a mentor and inspiration to his young students. According to the 1944 school yearbook, Ramblings, he brought exuberance to their lives as a science teacher, football coach, mud wrestler, and yearbook advisor. His students testified to his influence in their heartfelt dedication:

Doc Joe . . . served as faithful teacher and friend. . . . Our problems were his problems. He thrust himself beyond his responsibilities; he worked with the community as advisor to youth groups and with the church. Yes, “Doc” leaves a record of great activity and an intense interest in students and student affairs. To those of us fortunate enough to have fallen within his friendly circle, he left inspiration and faith in man.[19]

Helen Ely Brill

Another Quaker, Helen Ely, turned down a tenured teaching position in Los Angeles to follow her Nikkei students to Manzanar. She had grown to love the Japanese American people and had helped Esther Rhoads serve meals to the evacuees from Terminal Island. As Ely recalled her decision: “I had the great delight of going to the superintendent and telling him I was leaving. . . . [H]e said, ‘Helen, you’re crazy! You’re going to the Japs?’ And I said, “Yes, they’re going up to a place called Manzanar, and I want to go with them.”[20] Even her own family thought she was crazy to “go off to that desert,” but Quaker activist Josephine Duveneck encouraged her, “If you don’t go—if you wait for a perfect society, you’ll never get it! They’re going to need teachers. . . . You go ahead—get to Manzanar!”[21]

Miss Ely had been impressed by the courage of her students on the day after the U.S. declared war on Japan: “I’ll never forget them. They came to school; they didn’t stay home. But their heads were bowed, and they were terrified. Many of them had had their fathers picked up by the FBI the night before. And their mothers were terrified—but the other school kids put their arms around them and they were just wonderful.”[22] She would also never forget the morning of the mass evacuation as the Japanese American families departed, dressed in their Sunday best.

Most of Ely’s students were transferred from Santa Anita to Manzanar where she chose to join them as their teacher. Ely described the condition of her classroom:

My school room is typical of most. . . . A linoleum covering on the floor and a Coleman stove constituted the only “furnishings” the first day my classes were held. For two weeks everyone sat on newspapers on the floor, but soon each room was given 20 folding chairs, and these plus a few orange crates now enable the majority of pupils to have seats, though of course, not desks. My 8th-grade Social Living class helped to make curtains and artificial flowers for the room, and later . . . an insulating material was installed over the walls. . . . [E]ven with our stoves the rooms are very cold . . . and pupils and teachers alike wear coats and mittens until the sun warms up the buildings about 11:00.[24]

Ironically, she had been assigned to teach the U.S. Constitution to eleventh graders who were actively being deprived of their Constitutional rights. Then on December 6, 1942, the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, one of her students, James Ito, was shot and killed during the “Manzanar riot.” Ely pleaded passionately with her supporters back home:

Remember many of these boys and girls have been evacuated not once, but two or three times, they have seen their homes and possessions sold, often at great loss. . . . [E]verything that they loved—their homes and schools and playmates—they know they will probably never see again. Coupled with all this is the fear of the future—economic and social—and their intense desire for security. So it is no wonder that they are confused and embittered. It is a real challenge to interpret democracy to these children, and I am sure that in the process we teachers have gained far more than we have given.[25]

Ely was “[t]erribly overworked” but shared a mutual devotion with the students as she helped them get into colleges to continue their education.[26] Her students praised her in the school yearbook for “working continuously in order that we, who are behind barbed-wire fences, can in some way further our education by relocating to some college.”[27]

Helen Ely married Bob Brill in 1944. Then together they helped the Los Angeles AFSC assist returning internees at the Evergreen Hostel in Boyle Heights: “We charged a dollar a day to keep somebody at Evergreen, and the Japanese did all the work. . . . [T]hey cooked and they cleaned up and they kept the place wonderfully, but we had sometimes 150 people there. I know it was against all health rules and everything, but those wonderful Japanese knew how to run things.”[28] Helen and Bob Brill later moved to the east coast where she continued to teach high school history and their family remained active in the Society of Friends.

Ralph and Mary Smeltzer

Two married couples from the Church of the Brethren also volunteered to teach at Manzanar: Marvin and Beulah Crites and Ralph and Mary Smeltzer. Ralph described that first day of school:

After several days school finally opened on Thursday, October 8. No equipment was provided except a bare room and a make-shift teacher’s desk. There were no desks, chairs, tables or blackboards. Pupils sat on the floor. A few teachers had enough books for one class. Mrs. Smeltzer and I were two of these fortunate people. Forty books didn’t go far among my six classes or 240 students, so we decided to leave them permanently in the classroom for each class to use. In a nearby town I found several orange boxes, old crates, and apple boxes, almost enough for the girls in my classes to sit on. My room then was luxuriously furnished in comparison to others. A few blackboards came soon. Mrs. Smeltzer and I each received one because our subjects were mathematics and science.[29]

The Smeltzers attended the Protestant church in Manzanar and helped provide leadership for the youth since the camp did not have a Nisei minister at the time. They too were present during the December 1942 incident as recounted by Mary:

The Japanese American Citizen’s League (JACL) had just held a conference in Denver which some of the residents of Manzanar with American citizenship attended. This intensified the continuing conflict between pro-American and pro-Japanese factions in the camp. A mass rally protesting government treatment of Japanese Americans was held on a Sunday afternoon near the gate and administration buildings of the center. The soldiers on guard tried to disperse the crowd with tear gas. As the residents were leaving some trigger-happy soldiers shot into the crowd. Two Japanese Americans were killed, one a high school boy shot in the back. That evening the camp became very tense. The anti-American faction vowed to kill pro-American leaders.[30]

During resettlement, Ralph and Mary Smeltzer would continue to serve the Japanese American community by opening hostels in Chicago and Brooklyn. Their enduring friendship with the Nikkei was a model of Christian love.

Other Educators

Other Christian educators volunteered in the school camps as well. Charlotte DeForest, missionary to Japan and president of the Kobe Women’s University, had been unable to return to Japan during the war, so she served as a counselor at Manzanar from June 1944 until the camp closed in December 1945.[31] Quaker, Lily Raudenar, was also commended for her service as a teacher and counselor at Manzanar.[32]

Enoch and Margaret Dumas, along with their six-year-old son, lived for three years among the internees at Amache in Colorado. With Dr. Dumas in charge of the elementary education program, Mrs. Dumas recalled, “We did not approve of the relocation. We thought it was un-American, unconstitutional, unnecessary, and immoral but it was happening and my husband felt that he would like to see that the youngsters got the best possible education while they were there.”[33]

Cecile Lancaster had served as a Baptist missionary in Japan. Since she was unable to return during the war, she served as a teacher at Gila River for two and a half years. She also taught Sunday school for the Nisei and led a fellowship group for the Issei.[34] Mary Jesse had been an American Baptist missionary to Japan since 1911, serving as a teacher and superintendent at the Sendai Shokei Girl’s School in Miyagi Prefecture. While on furlough, she taught at Poston from February 1943 to May 1946.[35] Winifred Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s cousin, was another Quaker who taught at Poston. Miles Carey gave up his position as the principal of McKinley High School in Hawaii to be the head of schools at Poston Camp. As he explained to Herbert Nicholson, “‘This whole business’—and he waved his hands toward the barracks—‘was caused because people were emotionally upset by what happened at Pearl Harbor and by the lies that were told about our Nisei from Hawaii. Those Nisei are the most patriotic, loyal Americans that we have. That’s why I gave up my job.”[36]

Florence Auernheimer was the only Mennonite who taught in the camps and one news article described her class at Tule Lake: “In this camp was a young Mennonite woman, who had come there to teach and share life with some troubled people. The barrenness of the environment and the tragedy of it all seemed to sweep the color out of life.”[37] Auernheimer begged her friends in Reedley, California, to send geranium cuttings for a class project and later described the impact this gift had on her class: “The children, of course, were very happy to get the slips. Outside contacts mean a lot to them since they cannot go outside the fence. Every kindly act from the outside gives them a greater sense of security.”[38] In many ways both large and small, Christian school teachers ministered to young people in the relocation centers. They showed by their sacrifice and commitment that they loved the Japanese people, thus resulting in many opportunities to share words of biblical wisdom and comfort. They also offered academic education and emotional support which would prepare the young Nikkei for resettlement. By entering into suffering behind the barbed wire, these dedicated believers were able to demonstrate the gospel in word and deed.

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[1] Estelle Ishigo, Lone Heart Mountain (Los Angeles: Anderson, Richie and Simon, 1972), 21-22. Ishigo was a Caucasian woman who remained with her husband, “Arthur” Shigeharu Ishigo, when he was interned at Pomona and then Heart Mountain.

[2] John Embree, “Outside Employment Offers,” JAER Records, BANC MSS 67/14c, Reel 325, Pt. II, Sec. 5, Minidoka Idaho Folder P.3.00, Frame 187, BANC.

[3] Daisuke Kitagawa, Issei and Nisei: The Internment Years (New York: Seabury Press, 1967), 92.

[4] Robert Coombs, oral history conducted by Alice Ito (24 March 2004), Densho interview, segment 8.

[5] Coombs, Densho interview, segment 4.

[6] Robert W. Coombs, Oral History Interview with Robert W. Coombs (Sacramento, CA: Florin Japanese American Citizens League and Oral History Program, California State University, Sacramento; 1995), 4.

[7] Cited in Seigel, In Good Conscience, 172.

[8] Ibid., 171 with a quote from Robert W. Coombs, “A Unique Experience,” appendix to Oral History Interview with Robert W. Coombs. When the camp first opened, the barbed-wire fence had been electrified.

[9] Coombs, Densho interview, segment 20.

[10] Jean Bilodeaux, “Teacher at World War II Internment Camp Tells about His Experiences,” appendix to Oral History Interview with Robert W. Coombs.

[11] Eleanor Gerard Sekerak, “A Teacher at Topaz” in Relocation to Redress, 39.

[12] Katy Murphy, “Former Students Remember Teacher,” East Bay Times (19 July 2005), accessed at https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2005/07/19/former-students-remember-teacher.

[13] Ibid., 40.

[14] Joseph Goodman, “Topaz” (unpublished memoir, 1991), 1, cited in Seigel, In Good Conscience, 132.

[15] Ibid., 4.

[16] Ibid., 3.

[17] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 136.

[18] Goodman, “Topaz,” 5.

[19] “Our Dedication,” ‘44 Ramblings, Volume II (Topaz, UT: The Associated Students of Topaz High School, 1944), 5. Other Christians on staff at Topaz included Emil and Eleanor Gerard Sekerak, Victor and Mildred Goertzel, and Patricia Bond (Seigel, In Good Conscience, 144-51).

[20] Helen Ely Brill, oral history conducted by Karen Will (University of Connecticut: 18 November 1999), 1. Ely had a Presbyterian background, but was drawn to the Society of Friends because of their pacifist stance. She first became involved with the Quakers in college when she volunteered her summers among the poor at the AFSC work camps.

[21] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 93.

[22] Brill, oral history, 6.

[23] Ibid., 8. Helen and another teacher were the only ones to say goodbye to their students. She brought them chewing gum for the journey which was prohibited at the school.

[24] Helen Ely, “On Manzanar,” 1942, unpublished essay, cited in Seigel, In Good Conscience, 100.

[25] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 101.

[26] Notes on Student Relocation Counselors (25 January 1944), Counselors Letters and Memos (I), Box 33, NJASRC, HI.

[27] Cardinal and Gold (Manzanar, CA: High School Publications, 1943).

[28] Brill, oral interview, 14. The Quakers were able to open about 100 hostels throughout the U.S. which gave respite to the 5,000 Japanese Americans returning from internment.

[29] Ralph E. Smeltzer, “Report No. 6 – To the Brethren Service Committee Upon Japanese American Relations” (6 November 1942), in the Ralph Smeltzer Collection (Elgin, IL: Brethren Historical Library and Archives), Box 23.

[30] Mary Blocher Smeltzer, “Japanese American Resettlement Work,” in To Serve the Present Age: The Brethren Service Story, ed. Donald F. Durnbaugh (Elgin, IL: The Brethren Press, 1975), 126-27.

[31] Sugimura, Quiet Heroes, 119-120. DeForest later returned to Japan as a missionary in 1947 and was awarded the “Fourth Order of the Sacred Treasure” in 1950.

[32] Schmoe, “Seattle’s Peace Churches,” 119.

[33] Margaret Dumas, “Reflections on Life in the Camps” (San Francisco: Northern California Conference, UCC, 6 May 1982), cited in Clifford Alika and Miya Okiwara, Sho-Chiku-Bai: Japanese-American Congregationalists, United Church of Christ history, accessed at https://www.ucc.org/about-us_hidden-histories_sho-chiku-bai.

[34] Sugimura, Quiet Heroes, 126. In 1920, Lancaster had helped to establish the Seinan Jogakuin (Women’s) University in Kokura city of Kita-Kyushu. After the war, she returned as a missionary to Japan and was awarded the “Fifth Order of the Sacred Treasure” in 1952.

[35] Sugimura, Quiet Heroes, 123-24. Jesse also returned to Japan as a missionary in 1947.

[36] Cited in Nicholson, “A Friend of the American Way,” 133.

[37] “Saying It with Flowers in a Relocation Center,” The Mennonite (6 February 1945), 10.

[38] Ibid.