by Jon Yatabe
Reading was my salvation in the three and a half years that I spent behind barbed wire. Though my body was imprisoned, there was no limit to where my mind could go through books.
In 1942, my father carried a few beloved books to the relocation camps, like Kent’s N by E, Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and Santayana’s Philosophies. When the people being relocated took only what they could carry, he carried these in his bag and kept them throughout relocation on a small shelf he made. He couldn’t take them with him to the army so they remained in our room in Topaz to remind us of him. In the army, he carried a paperback of Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers that friends had given him before he went overseas. He also read the compact paperback classics that the army published and passed out to all the troops. That is where he began to read William Faulkner.
He also taught me about the joy of reading a book. He taught me to always have a book to read when there was a break at work, in bed, and even in the bathroom. It’s a habit he instilled in me and I read anything that was available in Topaz—some from neighbors and some that my parents obtained, like Tom Sawyer, which they first read to me and then had me read by myself. At Desert View School in Topaz, we had a small library of kids’ books that a kind kindergarten teacher let me take home and bring back the next day. I became used to taking a book home, sitting with my parents after dinner while they read by the light of a bare electric bulb and tracing the words to try to recognize them. I was learning by osmosis, helped by the lack of modern day distractions like radio, television, or the newspapers; and long before the advent of video games, cell phones and the Internet. We sat in the glare of the unshaded electric light where we talked and read, and my mother would knit scarves for the coming cold. It was an environment for learning that got me reading at an early age. When my dad joined the army in 1943, my mother took over reading to me and with me.
Being a reader in Topaz posed challenges similar to getting enough kite string to fly your kite over the barbed wire fences. You had to improvise. I borrowed books from the family, from the neighbors, and from the school, but by the first grade I was running low. The school had only a few donated books and no more seemed to be coming in when we received a heaven-sent gift. A library was being started from donated books coming from outside camp. Several charities and churches had recognized the need for books in the camps and had begun to donate boxes of books. We had several qualified librarians and soon one of the barracks was converted into a lending library.
It was a good walk to the library but one that I gladly took because the librarian handed me the greatest read of my young life—L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz.
It was pure magic to see the young girl escape from a dreary Kansas to the wonders of Oz. I read it in long evening sessions until lights out and then picked it up when the sun came up in the morning. When I finished it I was a little sad, until the librarian said that they had several others in the series, like Glinda, the Good Witch of Oz. I was in heaven after learning there were four other books that expanded the story. I read them all. I also realized from the bibliography of L. Frank Baum that there were others, but they weren’t available at our library. So the same librarian wrote to the Salt Lake City Library and they were kind enough to provide two of the others.
Reading was my salvation in the three and a half years that I spent behind barbed wire. Though my body was imprisoned, there was no limit to where my mind could go through books. I have never stopped reading; and it has given me a lifetime of delight.
About the contributor: Jon Yatabe was born in Berkeley in 1937 and grew up in Redwood City, where his father (Tak Yatabe) grew flowers. He was four when his family was sent to Topaz. His father joined the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and fought in Europe. The Yatabes settled in Berkeley after the War. Jon graduated from UC Berkeley and received a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. After a long career in Washington and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he retired and divides his time between Alaska and Colorado (where he loves spending time with his grandchildren).
“Escaping Topaz” was excerpted with edits from Chapter 17 of Jon Yatabe’s memoir, A Letter to my Grandchildren. Copyright 2019, Jon Yatabe. All rights reserved.