The Train Ride: Excerpted from Last Dance
by Brenda Wong Aoki

Hunting Blackbirds:
The Yamasaki Shooting, Heart Mountain, 1944
by Shizue Seigel

Strength & Diversity 10th Anniversary Celebration

Symposium: Strength & Diversity: the Legacy
U.S. Rep. Patsy Takemoto Mink
Honorees: Ruth Asawa and Michi Onuma
Jan Yanehiro, Suz Takeda, Gen Taiko with Melody Takata

New Members, Donations, National Drawing Winners

New from NJAHS: Clifford Uyeda’s Memoirs!

SF State Students and NJAHS’ Oral History Project
by Michelle Lau

Over 120,000 Japanese Americans lost their freedom as a result of their incarceration behind barbed wire during World War II. For some, the impact reached far beyond the deprivation of homes, livelihood and property.

In “Shot Dead” Dr. Clifford Uyeda presents the cases of seven Nikkei inmates of concentration camps and FBI detention camps who were shot and killed by American sentries. Dr. Uyeda gleaned the information not only from published sources, but from government memoranda, reports and letters obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

These dramatic and tragic cases are only the tip of the iceberg, however. A comprehensive record has yet to be made of the numerous internees were shot and injured, but survived. Many victims never spoke publicly of their experiences. “Shooting Blackbirds” is the story of an internee wounded while picking crops outside Heart Mountain.

Countless other casualties are even more difficult to document. The official cause of death – childbirth, suicide, disease, or old age – may appear innocuous enough. It is only through anecdotal information that it becomes clear that a number of deaths were hastened by the trauma of incarceration. For the survivors, the loss of a loved one during the camp years was often so painful that it was never discussed. Brenda Wong Aoki shares one such story in “The Train Ride.”

The cover photo depicts a homemade cross bearing the inscription “Tsutsui, Jon Poru (John Paul), Nov. 27, 1942.” In her book, Japanese American Women: Three Generations, 1890-1990, Mei Nakano quotes the mother, June Tsutsui at Amache camp in Granada, CO: “The photograph of my first-born son’s grave brings painfully vivid memories of his loss at birth in camp. I carried my baby full-term, but the camp’s inadequate medical care, including the doctor’s late arrival, intensified a complex birth. A better-staffed hospital environment might have prevented the hemorrhaging aggravated by a hasty, fatal delivery on a hard flat table while I endured indescribable pain.”

There are numerous documented cases of poor medical care in the camps. In his book, the Governing of Men, Dr. Alexander Leighton wrote about the Poston camp: “Many of the nurses were of very poor quality. The Japanese nurses were average, but there were not enough of them, and the white nurses, with one or two outstanding exceptions, were largely what the Army, Navy Red Cross and civilian hospitals would not accept in spite of their great need.

Some readers may wonder, “Why keep dwelling on the past? Let’s move forward.” Dr. Uyeda reminds us that “Discussing past atrocities is not ‘whining,’ as some critics allege. Historical memories are short. We all have an obligation to the coming generations to keep our fellow citizens informed of past abuses. Otherwise, we as a people will keep repeating the same mistakes.”

– Shizue Seigel, Managing Editor