by Frank Kami
“When we parted, she promised me, ‘We are going to meet again!'”
I was a junior at Berkeley High School in 1941. I was dating a girl I knew in school named Miyoko Akimoto. We went to the movies and spent time together; I guess you could say she was my girlfriend.
Both of our families were sent to Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, but in the first month, the Akimotos left as part of a diplomatic exchange. The US government needed people to trade for American diplomats, and Miyoko’s father worked for Pacific Trading, a Japanese company.
When we parted, she promised me, “We are going to meet again!”
In camp, I didn’t socialize much. To distract myself from thinking about Miyoko, I started making furniture from scrap wood after we were transferred to Topaz.
When the War ended, I was drafted and went to Germany while my mother returned to our home in Berkeley. There she received a letter from Japan addressed to me, and she forwarded it on. To my amazement it was from an American serviceman in Japan who had written, “If you are interested in getting in touch with Miss Miyoko Akimoto, I can deliver your letter to her.” Miyoko was working as an interpreter in Japan after the war.
I wrote to Miyoko, and she wrote back in Japanese and I couldn’t read it, so I had to have my mother translate. After leaving Tanforan, her family had been sent to New York City, Rio de Janeiro, South Africa, and Singapore before arriving in Japan. Through all that time, she had remembered me.
Six years later, my family enabled Miyoko to return to the United States, and we were reunited in San Francisco. She worked to put me through dental school at Marquette University, and we got married in Chicago while I was taking a summer course there.
In later years, Miyoko let me in on an old disappointment: “You didn’t even kiss me when I left for Japan!”
About the contributor: Frank Kami was born and raised in Berkeley until his family’s removal to Tanforan, and later, Topaz. He graduated from Topaz High in 1943 and was drafted and sent to Germany just as the War ended. He went to UC Berkeley and dental school at Marquette University in Wisconsin. He and his wife Miyoko then returned to Berkeley, where they raised two sons. Frank, a long-time supporter of the Topaz Museum, served as a barracks consultant for the exhibit.
Copyright 2016, Frank Kami. All rights reserved.