Tulare
Between May 12-14, 1942, non-Japanese Christians from Pasadena ministered to evacuees departing for the Tulare Assembly Center housed on the county fairgrounds:
Friends, cooperating with other church workers, were up at an early hour each morning, driving Japanese families from their homes to the assembly center and helping to serve breakfast of hot rolls, coffee, orange juice and milk. A committee composed of representatives of local churches supporting the Japanese Union Church handled the transportation to the station and the preparation and serving of the food.[1]
Local Christians continued this ministry once the internees arrived at Tulare. According to Charlotte and Royden Susu-mago, “Two couples came faithfully almost every Sunday, bringing iced watermelon and iced tea, and ice-cold figs or peaches—rare treats on those afternoons of 110 degrees in the shade! We would round up all the young people we could find and take them out for this second-hand breath of freedom”[2] Such small kindnesses sustained the hope of Nikkei Christians and gave them the strength to begin their own church.
Over the next four months of occupancy, the Christian Religious Council[3] coordinated the Tulare Christian Church with the help of six Protestant ministers and thirty-two lay teachers.
Besides the Sunday School, the Young People’s Worship Service, and the Vespers on Wednesday nights, the Council, planned the 6:30 a.m. Quiet Hour for both the issei and nisei, the various Bible and prayer meetings for the issei and the recent, very popular Youth Fellowship, where problems which immediately concern the young people are discussed. One of the most outstanding and inspiring features of the worship has been the ethereal singing of the choir under the skillful direction of Ayako Matsumoto.[4]
Rev. Royden Susu-Mago organized a community chorus and assisted the church choir.[5] He also described how they overcame the challenge of constructing a church building:
We wanted to erect a church, but these bare, barnlike structures were only the skeletons of churches. There remained the task of dragging scrap lumber several blocks in the hot sun from the scrap pile to the church sites, and of building platforms, benches, pulpits, lecterns, and altars, wooden candlesticks, and crosses. The barracks had no inner walls or ceilings, and in the first church we set a spotlight behind the last rafter beam, which lighted the cross on the altar. The women of the church bought wine-red material for a curtain to hang behind the altar—and behold, a house of worship![6]
Hatsuye Egami ministered in her own way by recording in her journal instances of kindness and generosity she observed in the camp even as she herself battled depression. Egami pleaded that all of man’s efforts at goodness “should be returned to our Creator as a perfect sacrifice upon God’s altar.”[7] Although a Baptist, she attended the church pastored by the Methodist, Susu-Mago, and wrote in her journal,
We are to have Sunday morning service in Camp. I change my clothes, take my bible and hymnal and start for the grandstand. The sky above is a vivid blue. It is indeed a radiant morning. The young girls have abandoned slacks and their weekday camp attire and this morning I see them in their Sunday best. The young men too are in their suits, but their fineries of normal days are not to be seen. Little tots in red or yellow sweaters flit about full of life and gaiety like colorful butterflies. . . . The service has begun. “Holy, holy, holy . . .” comes the familiar strain. Everyone is singing. They are singing with all their might. Their faces are very earnest. The very heights and depth of spiritual feeling radiates their countenance. I too, strain my voice to its limit and sing. Others in Santa Anita, and Manzanar too, must be singing just as we are. Prayers of deep reverence are being uttered in their midst too. . . . Reverend [Allan] Hunter, a minister from Hollywood and one who is also a famous writer, has come today to speak to us. . . . Tears well up from the deep recesses of my soul. At the same instant, I thought, “There must be a number of American prisoners confined in Japan—Americans in combat on the battlefields of Asia. There must be some lying mortally wounded out on the fields or confined in hospitals. Just as the people must suffer from this war, Christians the world-over, I know, are joined in song and prayer at this very hour.[8]
As residents prepared to leave Tulare, Nils Aanonsen, the camp’s manager, expressed his appreciation for their courage:
Soon you will be leaving the Tulare Assembly Center. For only four short months has it been my privilege to know you; but never before in my life has such a wealth of experience been crammed into so short a period of time. It has been a revelation to me to see how you have adapted yourselves to this strange and difficult life, and to watch the many ingenious ways in which you have found outlet for your energies. I have admired your willingness to do the menial tasks as well as those that brought ready recognition. I have marveled at the educational system which you have developed in the face of innumerable obstacles so that you might make yourselves more useful. Through it all, in your work and in your play, you have maintained your dignity and your happy disposition. In this way I have learned from you how to become a better American, and for that I shall remember you always in humble gratitude.[9]
Harry Miyake replied on behalf of the residents, most of whom would be transferred to the Gila River Relocation Center:
Now that we are about to depart from the Tulare Assembly Center, we can look back to see what we have come through. We were necessarily confined to a small area with military regulations governing our daily conduct and movement. The housing facilities and feeding system were not like those to which we had been accustomed back home. Certainly, these were conditions that could depress and demoralize the staunchest optimist. But man does not live by bread alone [Matthew 4:4]. The truthfulness of these words were never better proven than by our manager, Mr. Nils Aanonsen. His kind, understanding, thoughtful and intelligent management has made our enforced stay much easier, much happier. To him, we owe a large measure of gratitude. The time has come to say good-bye, Mr. Aanonsen, but you shall be long remembered. Our association with you will be a guiding light in striving to be better Americans in a greater America.[10]
Pomona
The Los Angeles County Fairgrounds housed the Pomona Assembly Center. Shizu Hayakawa remembered that the journey from San Francisco took two entire days because their low-priority train had to wait every time another train passed. The train windows were covered so they could not see where they were going.[11] Like all the other camps, Pomona was noticeably sparse. Bacon Sakatani, who was only a child when he arrived, recalled his impressions:
We were placed in tarpaper-covered army-type barracks in a room around twenty feet by twenty feet for our family of six. (My father was still incarcerated at Santa Fe when we arrived at Pomona.) We were each given canvas bags, and we filled them with straw for our mattresses on army cots. There was a high chain-link fence with guard towers around the camp, making it impossible to escape.[12]
The Pomona church, as in the other assembly centers, relied upon the cooperation of Protestant ministers all working together. Alvin Laughlin, the camp welfare director, helped coordinate these interdenominational worship services and the recruitment of prominent guest speakers.[13]
Religious services were held in two barracks each seating about 185 people. In May, there were one Roman Catholic, four Buddhist and eight Protestant services each weekend. By the end of June four barracks were needed to hold 17 services for a total of about 2,700 inmates. Japanese was not spoken during religious services unless the use of English prevented the congregation from comprehending the service. In these cases the camp director had to sanction the use of the Japanese language. Caucasian religious workers were allowed to enter the camp during the day. Prominent visitors included Dr. Frank Herron Smith, Bishop Reifsnider, and famous interdenominational preacher E. Stanley Jones who addressed the camp inmates during the Fourth of July celebrations.[14]
[1] Japanese American Relations Committee, Pasadena AFSC Information Bulletin 5 (18 May 1942). Similar stories were repeated wherever there was need: “When some 300 souls were evacuated from Santa Barbara to Tulare, transportation and warm food were provided by local church groups.”
[2] Charlotte and Royden Susu-Mago, cited in Matsumoto, Beyond Prejudice, 27.
[3] Membership on the Council was “composed of all the Christian Ministers and two Issei and two Nisei representatives from each evacuated community in the Center and the President of the Choir, George Nikaido” (“Tulare Christian Church,” in Tulare News: Relocation Review 1.3 [19 August 1942], page L).
[4] Ibid. In Tulare, the Christians and Buddhists often cooperated by holding joint music programs and even joint worship (Sugimura, Holiness Church, 56).
[5] Although Susu-Mago maintained his faith in God, he struggled to maintain his faith in America as he vented angrily in a letter to a Caucasian colleague, Dr. Richards. Susu-Mago “blamed well-meaning, European-American Christians for being naïve and for sitting by while opponents of the Japanese in America mounted a drive that successfully ‘rounded up [Nikkei] like cattle and placed them in concentration camps.’ The pastor decried a ‘prostituted America driven by hate, greed and racial animosity . . . the dictatorship of Roosevelt has undone all that we had learned to love and admire’; in response, he offered up a prayer: ‘God grant that the blinded eyes of our politicians may be opened that they may see the wrong that they have done and set it straight soon’” (Yoo, Nisei, 119, citing JERS, T5.091).
[6] Cited in Matsumoto, Beyond Prejudice, 28. The church faced opposition when first requesting a designated chapel from camp personnel and was instructed to continue using the open-air bleachers and platforms for religious services (“Facilities for church groups,” n.d. [1942], Reel 20, p. 77, BANC MSS 67/14c, JERS).
[7] Gorfinkel, Evacuation Diary, 93.
[8] Ibid., 35-36.
[9] “Aloha,”in Tulare News: Relocation Review (19 August 1942). The final edition of the Tulare News also included many well-wishes from the rest of the camp staff.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Okihiro, Encyclopedia, 222. The army required that shades be pulled down for the evacuees’ safety so that rocks would not be thrown at the windows when the train pulled into various small-town stations.
[12] Bacon Sakatani, “A Youngster’s Life Behind Barbed Wire,” in Eric L. Muller, ed., Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 25.
[13] Suzuki, Ministry, 94.
[14] Densho Encyclopedia, “Pomona (Detention Facility),” accessed at http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Pomona_(detention_facility).
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