"A \o7combined \f7\o7throng of 600 dance lovers jammed the coronation ballrooms ... to pay tribute to queens Kideko Maeyama and Chiya Sokino in the Farm Management-sponsored 'social of the year.' " -- Gila (Ariz.) News-Courier, Nov. 28, 1942
\f7\o7"On tiny \f7\o7suede \f7\o7match covers bearing the inscription, 'It's a match -- Ruby and George,' the engagement of Miss Ruby Kanaya to Pfc. George K. Suzuki of Ft. Sam Houston, Tex., was made known before a group of 16 girls at the betrothed's home."-- Minidoka (Idaho) Irrigator, Feb. 27, 1943
\f7\o7"Little 2-year-old Virginia Fujii of 33-13-4 and her neighbor, 2 1/2 -year-old Kingo Hankawa, got the wanderlust last Sunday morning and gave their parents a nerve-wracking two hours.... The two kiddies were finally located at noon -- placidly eating their lunch in Mess Hall 21." -- Manzanar (Calif.) Free Press, Aug. 5, 1942
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The items are redolent of Small Town U.S.A., but the newspapers that carried them weren't exactly published in Mayberry.
They were written and edited in the desolate internment camps of World War II -- fenced-off patches of desert that suddenly became home for the 120,000 Japanese Americans torn from their West Coast communities after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Each of the 10 camps had its own newspaper, staffed by people known in the bureaucratic parlance of the day as "evacuees." Published as often as three times weekly, the papers covered events great and small, featuring humble notes about flower shows as well as ringing locutions on the timeless themes of democracy.
Over the last few months, the papers' nearly 4,000 editions have been given new life on the Internet, posted by Densho, a Japanese American advocacy group based in Seattle.
"Our hope is that this will open up a new wave of interest and research in the camps," said Tom Ikeda, a retired software engineer who heads Densho, which translates from Japanese as "to leave a legacy."
The legacy many in the camps wished to leave was frustratingly similar to that of others in America's "greatest generation."
"We have steadfastly evinced our desire to be true, loyal citizens," an editorial writer at Manzanar's Free Press observed in 1944. "Buffeted by the vitriolic and unceasing attacks against us ... we admit that we, at times, have wondered whether the principles of democracy upon which our nation is founded are real and existent, or whether we are embracing and cherishing principles built upon the shifting sands of empty, meaningless words."
