by Seiji Aizawa, as told to Ann Tamaki Dion
“…we hadn’t seen our father since the day he was arrested in December 1941 nearly two years earlier.”
My father was taken away by the FBI on December 10th, three days after Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. I was scared and worried because we lost all communications with him and, therefore, had no way of knowing where he was and if he was all right.
At the time, I was a sixteen-year-old high school student and lived with my family above Goshado, a bookstore located at Post and Buchanan Streets in San Francisco’s “Japantown.” On December 7th, I had attended church and gone home when I heard about the bombing. I was in shock when I found out what had happened. After the news of the Pearl Harbor attack came over the radio, my father lectured the family about what the implications of the War would be on our lives. He said, “Just remember, the Japanese are not going to win the War, and you must also remember you are Americans first of all.” Although my father was loyal to America, he was nonetheless picked up by the FBI. He hadn’t done anything wrong.
They didn’t tell us why he was arrested. But our store sold only Japanese publications and my father, being a Waseda University-educated man, was known to hold informal get-togethers at the bookstore in order for the elderly Issei (first-generation immigrants) to discuss world events. I think that must be why the FBI took him away.
After my father was taken away, my mother, sister Kashiwa, older brother Hatsuro and I continued to live in the house until we were removed to Tanforan Assembly Center, and in the fall of 1942, Topaz Relocation Center. In Topaz, my mother finally received a letter from my father. We found out that he had been initially held at an Immigration and Naturalization facility before he was sent to Missoula, Montana as a prisoner of war. Later he was transferred to a U.S. Army-run detention facility in Lordsburg, New Mexico, and finally, imprisoned in a Justice Department camp in Crystal City, Texas. He had never been allowed to live with us in Topaz.
My mother and sister were eventually allowed to join my father in Crystal City when a government order was issued allowing internees to remain together by letting the families voluntarily join fathers who were interned. However, Hatsuro and I stayed in Topaz in order to finish high school, so our family remained separated.
In early 1943, Hatsuro left Topaz to attend Mission House College in Wisconsin as a participant in the Nisei Student Relocation Council placement program. A half year later, through the generosity of the Evangelical Church, of which I was a member, I was accepted as a student at Elmhurst College in Illinois, run by the church.
I was allowed to leave Topaz in late August with plans to visit my family in Crystal City before my school term started in September. When I got off the train in San Antonio, I headed off to catch a connecting bus, and there in the San Antonio bus station was my dear brother! I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was pure coincidence! We hadn’t communicated since he left Topaz. I didn’t know he had left Wisconsin and transferred to Tulsa University in Oklahoma. He didn’t know that I had been accepted to college in Illinois. But, like me, he was on his way to see our family. So together, we happily boarded the bus to Crystal City to finally rejoin our family.
We walked up to the gate side by side, and I told the guard, “We’re here to visit our folks.” We both realized we hadn’t seen our father since the day he was arrested in December 1941 nearly two years earlier. We were allowed to stay with our family and cherished our time together for about a week before Hatsuro and I had to leave for college. On our return trip, we tried to get lunch in San Antonio before we got on the train, but the people in the restaurant refused to serve us. We had to go foodless. We weren’t welcomed there.
About the contributor: Seiji Aizawa was born in 1926 in San Francisco, CA and was interned in Tanforan and Topaz. He graduated from Topaz High School and attended Elmhurst College in Illinois. Seiji was drafted in 1951 and served in the Army’s Military Intelligence Service in Korea and continued working in military intelligence in Japan as a civilian. Seiji returned to California after retirement and taught Japanese at a local state college. He passed away in 2020.