It Can Happen Here: Japanese Relocation Camps, 1942-1946

Almost immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, most Japanese-Americans were rounded up and transported to concentration camps across the United States. Nearly every Japanese family in my home town of Kent, Washington was removed. Less than half returned following World War II. I am not proud to say that one of the most famous images of Japanese relocation was this photo, taken in Kent, in January, 1942:



In our war hysteria, we didn't want any Japanese Americans near the west coast. They would form cells and assist soldiers and pilots from the motherland in attacking The Pacific Coast. The number of Germans and Italians placed in the camps is only a fraction of their total population compared with the Japanese, virtually all of whom were locked up.

After the war only about thirty families returned to the valley area. I remember the Miyoshis, Yamadas, Nakaharas, Koyamatsus, Hiranakas, and Okimotos. Some of them got back into farming (not on their old farms, which had been confiscated and sold). I worked on the Yamada's farm a couple of springs, cutting and boxing rhubarb, and I worked for a couple of weeks on Kart Funai's farm one summer, bunching radishes and scallions.

Sinclair Lewis wrote a well-known novel "It Can't Happen Here," and Frank Zappa penned a song by the same title. As you can see, and as you just read, it can 't happen here. This is the map of the Japanese-American concentration camps run by the W.R.A.:




click to enlarge

Link to an earlier, and far more detailed, post on the internment camps, and the story of the Japanese-Americans in Kent, Washington. A link to an article here explaining how this might have happened (Growing Up In Kent, Washington: Tarheels, Hayseeds, Hicks, Hillbillies, and Crackers).
---o0o---

Four more images of Kent, Washington in the 40's and 50's

This is perhaps the most ignominious picture of Kent, Washington to have ever appeared. The photo was taken days after the Pearl Harbor bombing, and shortly before the entire Japanese population of Kent was rounded up and shipped off to concentration camps (a/k/a relocation centers) in Idaho and California. I do not know who the moron pointing to the sign is, but I suspect he was still around when I was young and roaming the streets of Kent. I have seen this photo on more than one blog and web site. It is often used on sites about the internment camps, and about discrimination against the Japanese.

Click to enlarge this photograph of a pond and house 24804 128th Place SE in the middle 1950s. This site is very close to where my Uncle Romey's doomed "farm" was, and not far from my Great Aunt Ruth's place (about which I remember little except for her amazing fields of blueberries). It is also close to where my fabulous friends Dave Hokit and Maureen Roberts live, near Lake Meridian (which was ringed with one room cabins and fishing shacks when I was young). In his memoir of growing up in West Seattle, the poet Richard Hugo wrote about going on vacation to Lake Meridian every year, renting a cabin, and fishing for trout.

This is what the area surrounding Kent proper looked like when I was growing up. It does not look like this now, even as far out as Cumberland, Black Diamond, Ravensdale, Enumclaw, Lester, Four Corners, or Hobart. Those are the Cascade Mountains in the distance. One thing that hasn't changed: the pale grey to leaden nimbostratus clouds that have hung over my head most of my life.

Another flood in the Green River Valley. When I saw growing up, we had floods in the Valley every year. The valley was fed by several rivers. The White River and the Green River flowed out of the Cascade foothills to the east, and joined in a confluence near downtown Auburn. From there, the river traveled north and was met by the Black River (an outflow from Lake Washington) near what is now Tukwila. The combined rivers formed the Duwamish River which flowed (and still does) north into Elliott Bay.

South of the White/Green river confluence, was the Stuck River which flowed to Commencement Bay in South Puget Sound. The Stuck and the White rivers flowed so near to each other that during spring floods, the two rivers would sometimes merge, spilling water far to the north and south.

I grew up two blocks from the Green River. The floods never reached our house, but usually came right up to the block before ours. I do remember seeing moving vans roll up and haul people's furniture away when a flood was about to strike. That would be for people who could afford it. Most of us poor folk couldn't. We hung in, got out our prams and dinghies, and crossed our fingers. The floods ended in 1962 when the Howard Hanson dam was built upstream:

The Howard Hanson dam. The dam was built to save the farmers, and us, the hapless lowland residents of Kent. What really happened was that the valley was now safe for industry. And the rest, as they say, is history.
---o0o---