by Ruth Sasaki
“We’ve been sweeping & mopping but still the dust won’t go away…“
In September of 1942, Tanforan internees began to be transferred to Topaz Relocation Center in the Utah desert. They wrote from ancient trains carrying them to an unknown and unknowable future, drawing comfort from the kindness of Pullman dining car waiters:
September 21, 1942
To Tomiko Takahashi, Bldg. 80 – Apt. 3, Tanforan Assembly Center, San Bruno, CA
From a friend, en route from Tanforan to Topaz, Utah
What a night on this antique pullman…
The colored waiters are so nice & thoughtful…
Enjoying the luxury of our first civilized meal (breakfast) in 4 months: tomato juice, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, pork sausages, milk or coffee…
Nothing but miles of sage & desert now. They’re going to let us off for 30 minutes about 9:30…
They wrote from hastily constructed Topaz barracks coated inside and out with dust:
September 22, 1942
To Tomiko Takahashi, Bldg. 80, Apt. 3, Tanforan
From a friend, 23-4B, Topaz, Utah
What a hot bed of extra fine dust, the kind that flies up like a smoke screen & takes forever to settle. It’s just like powder of a dirty white color. Right now the streets aren’t made yet so the road is terrific, about 1/2 ft. in dust. No use polishing shoes…
It’s so hot don’t feel like doing anything. We’ve been sweeping & mopping but still the dust won’t go away…
September 20, 1942
To Tomiko Takahashi, Bldg. 80 – Apt. 3, Tanforan Assembly Center, San Bruno, CA
From a friend, Block 5, Bldg. 2, Apt. 3, Central Utah Relocation Project, Topaz, Utah
How are things in Tanforan now? I have been here a little over a week and I feel as if I have been here for months…
About the contributor: Ruth Sasaki was born and raised in San Francisco after the War. Her mother’s family, the Takahashis, were incarcerated in Tanforan and Topaz. A graduate of UC Berkeley (BA) and SF State (MA), she has lived in England and Japan. Her short story “The Loom” won the American Japanese National Literary Award, and her collection, The Loom and Other Stories, was published in 1991 by Graywolf Press. She shares her more recent writing via her website: www.rasasaki.com
Copyright 2017, R. A. Sasaki. All rights reserved.
Educated folks wrote each other often and described their feelings in letters to friends.
there were no telephones to call them.
the hot bed of extra-fine dust, floating up into the air and staying there…the road being “terrific”
I looked the word up in the dictionary, and subsequently, the word “terror” meaning extreme fear….
use of terror to intimidate people, especially for political reasons, as in terrorism, and weapons of
terror. how fitting for our government to put Japanese internees up in horse stalls, then send them to the dust bowls of the American desert.