Food was a primary source of conversation in Topaz and we were allocated 20 cents a meal. In January 1943, all the mess halls were instructed to equip and systemize the preparation of all infant and soft diet foods. There were only two babies in our half block and we were refused food for the babies by the workers in the mess hall, as they said the babies were not included in their statistics. The claim was made that there was a shortage of whole and powdered milk. No amount of pleading or reasoning with the mess hall chef or steward would make them bend, and we brought back portions of our own meals, which we mashed or watered down.
When we were brashly told to buy our food from the outside, a growing suspicion began that there was a conspiracy afoot and we made a friendly visit to the apartments of the chief steward and the mess hall chef and found their apartments were well-stocked with eggs, milk, flour, sugar and coffee; they had been taking home the leftovers. We threatened to expose them to the project steward or else give, and they gave. For the babies, we had to fight for their daily milk and eggs and we grated the raw potatoes or carrots given to us and cooked them on our hot plates. Man’s inhumanity to man was being expressed. Ingenuity is a blessing and I made a grater from a discarded sardine can to prepare the baby food; to this day it serves its purpose.
Things were in a turmoil at the hospital for lack of supplies and the severe winter was taking its toll. The white administration would not heed the request of the doctors and nurses and in January 1943 a general strike of all hospital employees was declared. It was a short-lived strike as there were so many patients involved. My husband, the assistant hospital administrator, was labeled a troublemaker and agitator and relieved of his job. He went to work for the motor pool.
The administration began pressuring him to leave camp, and when the final notice became a demand, he left for Philadelphia on January 18, 1944. Why Philadelphia? We knew someone else on the outside and the Pacific coast was closed to us. When the American Friends Service Committee sent their representative to our camp, assuring students of placements in colleges and jobs for those who would relocate, we were impressed by the representative’s sincerity. Our funds were depleted and we were expecting another child in April, so it was decided I would remain in camp with our daughter and rejoin him after our second child was born.
It was a bitterly dark, cold day and heavy, giant icicles in jagged array framed our doorway on April 16, 1944. The temperature had fallen below freezing. That night the labor pains began. I enlisted the aid of my friend to take care of my daughter, and his wife and I began trudging through the dark over gullies and ditches, helping each other as we tripped and fell. The emergency telephone wires were inoperable as the lines were down and we could not get through to the hospital. Breathlessly, we made it on time and a son was born.
My mother had written from Gila and said she had received permission to visit me for a month. She arrived a week after our son was born. She was a shock to behold. I had not seen her for two years and she was as thin as a rail, her skin just covering her frame. Her once beautiful skin was weatherbeaten. We cried on each other’s shoulders and she said in her quiet way she was thin only because she couldn’t take the oppressive heat and her appetite was nil because the food was so miserable. We spent the night talking, catching up with the news of the family. In the morning after breakfast, she attempted to carry a bucket of hot water from the washroom to our apartment to bathe the babies and could not carry it, and I determined she was seriously ill. She had all intentions of assisting me after the birth, but in reality it was her last goodbye. She refused to see the medics at Topaz and was busy daily, visiting former church members and old friends.
About two weeks later a letter came from dad in Gila asking my mother to return to bid farewell to her second son, who was leaving for service in the Army. He was married and had two children, and the irony of it grated on your nerves. He served in the medics with the famed 442nd regiment and came back alive, but has never mentioned a word of his war experience.
Meanwhile, my husband lived in a hostel provided by the American Friends in Philadelphia and wrote he was having difficulty finding a home for us and was working as head of a produce section in a market. At the same time, notices were being sent to me to leave camp and many excuses were made by me to defer it as our finances were low and the underlying question of whether one could live on the outside simmered in the pit of your stomach. Crates had to be made for our belongings—our personal property had increased as the government had forwarded some of our personal effects from California to Topaz, and the crates had to be roped. Lumber and ropes were allocated to me and they enlisted the aid of my friends to make them up. There was not enough rope so I requisitioned for more. The bureaucratic system works slow and when the notice finally came that there was now rope for me, I walked to the issuing office, blocks away, and confronted a white man, who jeeringly said, as he dropped the rope at my feet, “So you’re Mrs. Minamoto! Here’s enough rope to hang yourself with.“ I looked at him straight in the eyes, and with venom in my voice and loud enough so all could hear said, “You go to hell.” I picked up the heavy rope and dragged it wearily back to the apartment.
The two children and I reached Philadelphia on a hot, sultry day and the stench of decaying garbage filled the streets as there was a garbage strike going on. A kindly Caucasian lady had opened her house for the evacuees and we rented one bedroom and shared the kitchen and bathroom with two others from camp. For the first time I saw silverfish wriggling beneath the sink and stove and saw a horse-drawn milk wagon that clattered daily over the cobblestone streets, and yet this was not far from Temple University. Here, too, we encountered extremes in weather compared to the Bay Area, and adjustments had to be made in attire and lifestyle.
In March of 1945, my dear, sweet mother died of cancer in Gila, Arizona and my bereft, bitter father felt her death was caused by inadequate medical care. I was able to see her in her comatose condition before she died and the thought she had to pass away so young under such circumstances rankled me. During my short stay in Gila I received a telegram that my husband was drafted and I hastened back to Philadelphia. The war was still going on actively in Europe and the tide was turning in the Pacific. It was decided the children and I would go back to Oakland to my father’s house as the Pacific coast states had opened up and people were being dispersed from camp. The government paid our train fare back and the helpful Travelers Aid workers met us at two transfer points.
Then the nightmare began.
This is the fourth of five excerpts from Harue Minamoto’s memoir (with minor edits).
Part 1: Forced Removal
Part 2: Tanforan
Part 3: First Winter in Topaz
Part 5: The Aftermath (soon to be posted)
About the contributor: Harue Hirai Minamoto was born in Oakland, CA in 1916. A graduate of Oakland Technical High School, she completed bookkeeping and secretarial courses at Merritt Business School and was hired by the U.S. Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services in 1937. After Executive Order 9066 was issued, she was forced to resign. She married Toshiro Minamoto in February 1942, shortly before they were incarcerated in Tanforan. Two of her three children were born in Topaz. Sponsored by a Quaker family, the Minamotos resettled in Philadelphia in 1944; but when Tosh was drafted in 1945, Harue and the children returned to Oakland. Harue often spoke of the injustices of incarceration to her children and grandchildren and never hesitated to inform others of what EO 9066 did to American citizens. She passed away in 1999. Her story was shared with us by her family: Melyssa Minamoto, Gay Kaplan, John Minamoto, Ed Minamoto and their children.
© 1999, Harue Minamoto. All rights reserved.