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.
