Relocation Camp

Re "Barbed wire and free press," Column One, May 3 How strange and wonderful to see my father, Chet Sakura, quoted in The Times' article about relocation camp newsletters, 64 years after the fact and 32 years after his death. My father and his three brothers all returned safely from the war and went on to live successful and full lives. From the difficult conditions in the relocation camp, my mother moved to Milwaukee and was joined by my father after the war. There they stayed and raised four sons.

Lawson Sakai modestly recounts his life's accomplishments: He was awarded a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars during World War II. He helped run a vegetable farm and worked in the food-processing business. Then he launched a successful travel agency. But the one thing that eluded Sakai for almost 70 years was a college diploma. "I have four children and seven grandchildren, and I am the only one without a degree," said Sakai, 87, a resident of Morgan Hill, southeast of San Jose.

In November, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the Japanese-American citizens sent to internment camps during World War II may sue the government for billions of dollars in lost property. A ruling is expected by July. "It would be good for the United States generally, and I think it would be good from the standpoint of the Japanese-Americans themselves, to be scattered over a much wider area and not to be bunched up in groups as they were along the coast. . . .

A plaque near the entrance on the sprawling grounds of the Santa Anita racetrack is the sole reminder of the track's place in World War II history as the nation's largest assembly center for Japanese Americans on their way to internment camps. Although the prestigious Breeders' Cup World Championships unfolded Friday and Saturday at the landmark racetrack, 67 years ago a darker chapter unfolded at the site. The horses were moved out, the track was shut down and the park's extensive grounds provided the massive space needed by the War Department to temporarily house thousands of people of Japanese decent.

It was the pigtails that caught the attention of Kazue Tsuchiyama as she gazed at a black-and-white photograph of Japanese-American internees at an Arizona relocation camp. "There I am," said Tsuchiyama, motioning to a beaming teen-ager posing with about a dozen other World War II internees. "I always get tickled when I see it. We were the first graduating class, the summer of '44. We had our commencement outdoors. Right in the middle of it, we had a big dust storm. That ended it right there."

U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi, a survivor of a World War II relocation camp for Japanese Americans who was known for his compassion for victims of injustice and his calm demeanor in the face of sometimes outrageous courtroom antics, has died. He was 78. Takasugi died Tuesday at a Los Angeles nursing home after battling numerous ailments over the last year, said his son, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Jon Takasugi.

Relocation camp: An article in Tuesday's California section about Japanese American internees sent to Poston, Ariz., during World War II misspelled Mary Higashi's name as Hayashi.

In regards to the article "The Turning Point" (by Itabari Njeri, Jan. 1) about the Japanese-Americans' concern over their culture's future. As a third-generation Japanese-American, I found this article to be somewhat overblown. My father was in a relocation camp and my parents are Buddhists. I'm non-religious. My wife and I do not observe any Japanese customs in our household and we will not force our two small children to attend Saturday morning Japanese-language school as many of our peers were forced to do by well-meaning parents.

Newport Beach author Jack Williamson calls his novel "But Not Warriors." It's about the lame, the hard of hearing and the vision-impaired. They have bad backs, fallen arches and "debilitating orthopedic mis-alignments." They are the men of the 575th Military Police Escort Guard Company--136 "unfit for combat" World War II draftees from the hills and "hollers" of West Virginia and Kentucky. But that doesn't matter to their commanding officer, a combat-hungry World War I veteran who has never forgiven the Germans for surrendering on the very day that he set foot in France.

Teruto Nomura is ready to forget about the time he spent interned in a relocation camp during World War II, even though he lost almost everything he owned when he was told to pack his belongings and leave his home and the restaurant he had run for 10 years. Nomura, 84, was one of 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were herded into 10 relocation camps at the height of the war. He and 60,000 survivors are waiting for long-promised reparations from the federal government.

U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi, a survivor of a World War II relocation camp for Japanese Americans who was known for his compassion for victims of injustice and his calm demeanor in the face of sometimes outrageous courtroom antics, has died. He was 78. Takasugi died Tuesday at a Los Angeles nursing home after battling numerous ailments over the last year, said his son, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Jon Takasugi.

Grace Obata Amemiya was a pre-nursing student at UC Berkeley in 1942 when she, her family and 120,000 other Japanese Americans were forced from their schools and homes and sent to federal internment camps. The wartime relocations destroyed her childhood dream of a University of California diploma. Amemiya, now 88, joyfully returned to UC on Thursday and was named a graduate six decades late.

Relocation camp: An article in Tuesday's California section about Japanese American internees sent to Poston, Ariz., during World War II misspelled Mary Higashi's name as Hayashi.

Re "Barbed wire and free press," Column One, May 3 How strange and wonderful to see my father, Chet Sakura, quoted in The Times' article about relocation camp newsletters, 64 years after the fact and 32 years after his death. My father and his three brothers all returned safely from the war and went on to live successful and full lives. From the difficult conditions in the relocation camp, my mother moved to Milwaukee and was joined by my father after the war. There they stayed and raised four sons.

Every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day we mourn the loss of millions of innocent Jews, Catholics, Gypsies, homosexuals, Communists and political opponents who were murdered by the Nazis. The themes of loss, remembrance and sacrifice resonate with greater power than usual this year in light of Sept. 11. While we mourn the loss of loved ones, we should also recall and celebrate the heroism of those who risked everything in the name of confronting and defeating unspeakable evil.

Though letter writer Ken Hirsch (Saturday Letters, June 2) is offended by the term "concentration camp" when applied to this country's World War II internment of its Japanese American citizens, Webster's nonetheless defines such a facility as "a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners or refugees) are detained or confined." To be sure, Hitler turned them into death camps as well; we did not. However, a day trip to Manzanar--with the remains of its barbed-wire fences and watchtowers (where Army personnel stood guard 24/7 with their rifles pointed in)

Every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day we mourn the loss of millions of innocent Jews, Catholics, Gypsies, homosexuals, Communists and political opponents who were murdered by the Nazis. The themes of loss, remembrance and sacrifice resonate with greater power than usual this year in light of Sept. 11. While we mourn the loss of loved ones, we should also recall and celebrate the heroism of those who risked everything in the name of confronting and defeating unspeakable evil.

Students of the Stephen S. Wise Middle School had a memorable experience Tuesday when famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal visited their Bel-Air campus. The story he told them was not new: His relentless, lifetime search for Nazi war criminals has been told many times. But for the children, a teacher said, it was a dramatic look at a historical event that had been little more than just words in a book.

The Historical Assn. of Parker, Ariz., will host members of the San Diego Japanese American Historical Society and their associates at a public forum later this month. This is because Poston (also known as "the Colorado River Relocation Center") was built in the early 1940s near Parker. Today's residents are interested in hearing, firsthand, what life was like in the Poston camp between 1942 and 1945 from those who were incarcerated there. I respect these Parker residents: They are taking the time and the trouble to ask about what happened, and they are willing to listen to the stories of those who lived through this injustice.

Fifty years after World War II, Bacon Sakatani finds serenity in resurrecting a barracks--one of hundreds at the internment camp where he and 10,000 other Japanese Americans were forced to live by the federal government. On a recent, breezy Sunday morning, the West Covina resident and several volunteers from across the city sawed and hammered the three-unit barracks into shape after Sakatani and others brought the pieces back on flatbed trucks from the former camp in Wyoming.