As most of us area residents who spent formative years in the greater Puget Sound basin, the advent of fall and the annual opening of the Western Washington State Fair in Puyallup was a welcome event on the family calendar.
Back in the sixties, most every kid had been to the fair in Puyallup at one time or another. During September, we’d talk of it constantly up and down the block. It was almost your duty as a kid, and not going was well - unpatriotic. Thankfully my folks made sure that my younger brother and I were not deprived of this classic Northwest experience.
Our trips to the fair were much the same as our neighbors, with one unique twist. At some point during these semi-annual pilgrimages my Dad would never fail to recall he had lived at the fairgrounds for a few months back in World War II.
A picture of my Dad (right) about nine or ten years of age with his slightly older sister (left) from the family album when they were growing up in Seattle, WA prior to the outbreak of World War II.
I had occasion to travel with my husband on the second day of this year's celebration (September 7 - 23) at the Puyallup Fair to celebrate the fact a mixed media collage I created exploring memory loss issues such as Alzheimers disease called: “Hanging by Plaques” was accepted into this year’s fine arts show.
This happy occasion gave me a chance to simultaneously reflecting on my personal good fortune at landing a spot in the show, Dad's temporary wartime residency and the contributions that his family has made in my life when I was growing up.
Dad was born in Seattle in 1927. He was the youngest of four children born to a upper-middle class father with several years of secondary education under his belt who immigrated from Shizuoka Prefecture. Dad's mom was from Tokyo. Her dad was a Chinese scholar who'd taught two of Dad's uncles. The scholar was also personally acquainted with the family of the great twentieth century writer of Japanese literature Natsume Soseki.
Dad's family shared two rooms in a two-story rental house in a neighborhood above the present International District . This area is known today as Yesler Terrace. His mom and dad slept one room. Dad and his three siblings shared the second room. Dad attended Bailey Gatzert Elementary and Washington Middle School. Before World War II broke out, he had just started ninth grade at Franklin High School.
His parents worked hard to put food on the table. Grandpa worked for a grocer at Pike Place Market. Grandma was on the housekeeping staff at two local hotels. Dad's boyhood was fairly ordinary. When Dad and his friends were little they played kick the can and other games. When they were bigger at least once, he recalls they tried to sneak into the local movie theater, but they were quickly noticed and had to make a hasty exit. On occasions, he met his mom at the Pike market and helped her carry several bags of groceries home on the streetcar. Dad delivered newspapers on two routes which helped him earn enough money to buy a bicycle and small radio.
Everything in his world came to a stunning halt when the forces of Imperial Japan bombed our Naval Base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Dad and his family were only six in a group about 2,500 Americans of Japanese ancestry from Seattle - men, women and children all, who were rounded up by military personnel on orders from the Western Defense Command to leave their homes, schools, jobs and businesses and report to temporary quarters which were hastily built for them on the grounds of the annual Western Washington State Fair.
When my younger brother and I were kids, no one in our neighborhood could brag that their relative actually lived at the Puyallup Fair, but we didn't even try to boast of this connection. Dad didn't share the details. In fact, all we were told was that he had lived at the fairgrounds for a while before he went to "camp". Now you might ask what was camp? We didn't exactly know then ourselves, but we knew not to ask. It was one of those topics that had a hush about it, like asking your teacher how old she was back then.
Despite that fact, "camp" was a code word widely used by my parents, aunts and uncles and basically everyone we knew in the Japanese-American (Nikkei) community at the time. So desu ne? (Isn't it so?) I eventually gathered everyone in those circles had all been there. If you didn't know another Japanese-American from your childhood, there was a good chance you met them in camp. If they were in another camp, chances are someone you knew was there as well, so everyone eventually knew almost everybody.
In these conversations, our folks and their friends particularly referred to themselves as Nihon-jin (of Japanese ancestry "literally Japanese people") as opposed to Haku-jin (mainstream population, literally "white people") as a way of comparing and contrasting their different upbringing and wartime experiences. But the details of this story were not forthcoming. I didn't learn more until I was junior high age and saw something in the local library about government internment camps on the West Coast during World War II and pursued it then with a more forthcoming aunt.
To this very day, I don't know the full details of my Dad and his families experiences at Puyallup or at the Minadoka Relocation Center in Hunt, Idaho where he would continue his high school education. When he was alive, Dad used to claim that with the exception of a handful of memories, he couldn’t remember.
In hindsight, Dad and other members of Japanese-American communities up and down the West Coast were targeted for this kind of treatment because they looked too much like the enemy to a frightened mainstream community who were led by our leaders to believe a grave threat existed and extraordinary measures were required.
Understandably, at the time Japanese-Americans even older and more experienced in life than Dad had no prior experience as individuals or a whole group for that matter, on just how to pick up the pieces of their lives after having been singled out and branded by their own government as possible terrorists and saboteurs, not trustworthy enough to be allowed to live and work among decent people.
While it can be argued by some in present times the fears of their fellow citizens and blowing of political winds that led to their imprisonment can be easily understood on an intellectual basis, in truth accepting the fact your life has been ripped to shreds because of an image reflected in the mirror is and was far more problematic. And my family history will be irrevocably intertwined with Area A, Block 10, an address at the Puyallup Assembly Center during World War II on the grounds of the Western Washington State Fair.
(Note: Information for this article pertaining to the Puyallup Assembly Center and its Japanese-American residents was gleaned from the excellent on-line exhibit on "Camp Harmony" at University of Washington Libraries at the following web address: http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/harmony/exhibit/index.html)
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