by Ruth Sasaki
“‘The recreation halls where we held the school were empty barracks.'”
After my mother died in 2011, my sisters and I were clearing out boxes in the basement of her house in the Richmond District in San Francisco when we found a dusty old box labeled “Topaz.”
In it was a worn photo album, along with papers, letters, a few mementos, and simple paper scrapbooks of paintings and drawings that had been done by preschool students in camp.
We knew that my mom had been in Topaz, and that she had worked in the preschools.
(Berkeley, CA), 1939
We knew that she had graduated from UC Berkeley in 1939 with a degree in education.
What we didn’t know was that in 1939, public schools in California were not hiring Asian-American teachers.
Which is probably why she was working in her parents’ retail store, the Kisen Company on Grant Avenue, and hanging out with Nisei (second- generation) friends, when the War began.
My mother was 23 years old when her family was incarcerated in Tanforan Assembly Center in April, 1942.
In Tanforan, Kay Uchida and Grace Fujii, graduates of Mills College, were concerned about the younger children in camp, and called a meeting of internees who were college graduates to organize the preschools.
Tomi and Takako Tsuchiya Endo became co-leaders of one preschool, working with 2½- to 5-year-olds. Yoshiye Sekino and Teru Kanba were on the staff.
Upon arrival at Topaz, they had to begin all over again. Tomi became the head teacher of the preschool in Rec Hall 9. Yoshiye Sekino, Miye Yamada and Midori Fukuchi were her teaching staff.
She later recorded her memories:
“The recreation halls where we held the school were empty barracks. We had to put pictures on the walls. We had to take the children out of the building to the latrines. This was very difficult during the dust storms and icy winter weather. But we provided a well-rounded program of activities and the children soon became adjusted and happy.”
When Kay and Grace received permission to leave camp in June 1943 (Grace resettled in the Midwest and Kay on the East Coast), they chose Tomi to take over for them.
My mother’s family lived in Block 4. From the preschool and elementary office in Block 8, highlighted in blue, my mom recalled having to visit each preschool (located in Blocks 9, 13, 27, and 37), walking in the summer heat, through dust storms, and winter snow.
As the Supervisor of the preschool department, she attended Education Board meetings with Dr. Noble, Superintendent; Mr. Nuttall, High School principal; and Miss Wanda Robertson, Elementary School principal. She wrote: “I was now responsible for the preschool department, 4 preschools and 2 pre-kindergarten, teacher training, interviewing and hiring teachers, teachers’ meetings, the running of the schools and parent relations.”
In November 1942, my mother wrote of the peculiar challenges facing children and teachers in camp: “A concentrated minority group, forced to leave their homes with minimum essentials to lead a life of existence, to settle in an entirely new environment, a new type of daily living, facing the problems of this new adjustment in a community far removed from other communities.” These circumstances gave rise to “difficulties in family life, emotional upsets and instability in the family.”
She saw the camp preschools as “a place where the children can let themselves go–to express themselves freely in their individual ways and yet to gain the experience of playing with other children of their own age, learning to respect the rights of others, learning to get along with others… The preschool age group is a group during which rapid development takes place and it has taught us to be alert, treating each child as he is today, not as he was yesterday.”
My mom married my dad in 1943. After the war, with glowing recommendations from Topaz administrators, my mother found work at preschools in San Francisco. She remembered returning home from work at 6:30 and helping her mother serve dinner in three shifts to Japanese-American friends and families who had gotten out of camp with nowhere to go.
“My mother…never worked as a teacher again, instead, channeling her passion for early-childhood development into–us, my sisters and me.”
My dad got out of the Army in 1946. They started a family and moved out to “the Avenues” in 1954. My mother packed away her Topaz memories, and never worked as a teacher again, instead, channeling her passion for early-childhood development into–us, my sisters and me.
* * * * * *
One day in 1992, I received a letter from a woman in Michigan named Grace Kikuchi. Grace had written to my publisher in Minnesota, asking them to forward the enclosed letter to me. She had read my book, The Loom and Other Stories, which had been published two months earlier, and wondered if I was related to her old friend from Topaz, who was a Sasaki. They had worked together in the preschools, she said, but had lost touch after the war.
I showed my mom the letter, and sure enough, it was her friend Grace, whose maiden name was Fujii. They began corresponding, and a few months later, Grace came out to San Francisco and we had lunch. As a testament to Nisei modesty, I came away from the lunch with no idea how instrumental Grace had been in getting the camp preschools set up.
I imagine, like my mom and so many other Nisei women of the time, she went home after the war and packed all those memories away in order to get on with her life.
When I read my mom’s memoirs, and saw the contents of that dusty old box in the basement, I realized how proud she had been of all that she had accomplished during those dark times. Yet, she never wanted to revisit them. When my sister Joan and I visited Topaz in 2003 for the first time, we asked her if she wanted to go with us, and she said she had NO desire to go back
* * * *
When I read accounts of camp life, there are many references to the schools, and how unqualified many of the teachers were.
I’m sure there were some who should never have been in a classroom; but there were also those, like my mom, Kay, and Grace, who were amply qualified if lacking experience denied to them before the war by a racist system.
“Their own lives were in disarray, but they worked to create a safe place for the children of the camps…”
I think of all those young Nisei women who stepped up and dedicated themselves to the young children. Their own lives were in disarray, but they worked to create a safe place for the children of the camps–a routine in the midst of the chaos of displacement.
They have gone unrecognized and largely forgotten; so, today, we remember them.
My friend Yae Wada (who is one year younger than my mother would have been) once told me that she was starting to hear a lot of stories come out of the camps, but they were mostly stories told by the younger Nisei, who are still around to talk about it–in other words, people who were toddlers or small children in camp. As young children at the time, the younger Nisei didn’t necessarily have an awareness of the context, or carry any of the responsibilities of the older Nisei and particularly, the Issei. When asked what camp was like, many replied that it “wasn’t so bad.”
At first, Yae had mixed feelings. She was glad people were asking questions and survivors were speaking out; but at the same time, she was worried that the picture of the camps that emerged would be far rosier than the one she remembered.
But then, she said, “if the kids thought camp wasn’t so bad, maybe we did a good job.”
Many of the photographs of classes, classrooms, and preschoolers are from the collection of Eleanor Gerard Sekerak, a beloved Topaz High School teacher. Courtesy of the Topaz Museum. Artwork is reproduced from scrapbooks given to Tomiko Takahashi Sasaki by one of her preschool teachers, Alice Okita Abe. Takahashi and Sasaki family photos are courtesy of the Sasaki family.
About the contributor: Ruth Sasaki was born and raised in San Francisco after the War. The Takahashis, her mother’s family, 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 2018, R. A. Sasaki. All rights reserved.