“…standing amid the barrack foundation fragments, I was stunned by a sense of recognition. In the distance rose the outline of a mountain that was present throughout my childhood.”
Over three decades ago, I made my first pilgrimage to Topaz—the site of the internment camp in Utah where my grandparents and their families lived during WWII. There was little evidence of what the War Relocation Authority built there forty-plus years before, but standing amid the barrack foundation fragments, I was stunned by a sense of recognition. In the distance rose the outline of a mountain that was present throughout my childhood.
In my grandparents’ bedroom in their home in California hung a landscape painting. An expanse of desert led up to a number of identical, rectangular buildings, and behind them was the focus of the work: a mountain looming over the relatively tiny structures. In keeping with reticent Nikkei (people of Japanese heritage) tradition, words about the painting, as well as the majority of the WWII experience, were left unspoken.
My grandfather, Saburo Tamura, was a chrysanthemum grower in Redwood City before the War. After establishing the nursery, he returned to Japan to marry my grandmother, Isoye Ichihara, and they then crossed the Pacific together to begin their shared life on the San Francisco Peninsula.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, the FBI arrested my grandfather at home. My mother, who was fourteen, vividly remembers seeing an agent opening their freezer, pulling out an ice cube tray, and submerging it in water—presumably to search for incriminating evidence. She also recalls that another agent seemed troubled by the sight of a young mother and her three daughters witnessing their father being handcuffed and led away.
For months, my grandmother was not informed why or where my grandfather was taken, but she eventually learned that he had been sent to Fort Lincoln near Bismarck, North Dakota. My grandparents corresponded prior to the evacuation and continued to do so until the family was reunited in Topaz. My aunt still has these letters, which reflect the influence of my grandfather’s efforts to learn his second language. After immigrating, he exchanged janitorial services for English studies with an instructor at Stanford University. I imagine that his written formality (the thank-you letters I received from him always began with, “Dear Miss Meri Mitsuyoshi”) was a legacy of these lessons.
At Topaz, my grandfather participated in Chiura Obata’s art classes. It was while studying with Professor Obata that he painted the scene that later hung in a bedroom of his family’s post-war home.
In 1945, my grandparents returned to California. My grandfather found work as a caretaker on a San Francisco family’s country estate in Woodside. The Tamuras lived on the grounds except for my mother, who worked as a domestic in the owner’s primary home in San Francisco while attending secretarial school. After graduating, my mother began working at the VA in Menlo Park. Her salary helped make it possible for my grandparents to build their home and reestablish the flower nursery in East Palo Alto.
My grandfather died in 1998. A year later, my grandmother, who passed away in 2000, moved with my aunt and uncle to Palo Alto. The painting now hangs in a central gathering area of my aunt’s house. What was once hidden is now in open view.
About the contributor: Meri Mitsuyoshi’s father and mother were relocated to Tanforan and Topaz from the farming and chrysanthemum-growing communities in Irvington and Redwood City, CA. Meri graduated from UC Berkeley, where she earned a degree in Electrical Engineering. While working in Silicon Valley, she drummed with San Jose Taiko, and has recently embarked on a second career as a psychotherapist. Meri lives in San Jose with her husband, Mark Gonnerman, and their cats, Tabi and Sujata.
Copyright 2019, Meri Mitsuyoshi. All rights reserved.