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First Impressions of Minidoka - Robert Mizukami

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Robert Mizukami, originally from Fife, Washington, was sent to the Minidoka concentration camp, Idaho, during World War II. Soon after arriving in camp, he went out with a group on temporary agricultural leave to help local Idaho farmers harvest potatoes and sugar beets. In this clip, he talks about his early impressions of camp.

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What we leaned about our camp is that it opend Augast 10 and it closed October 28 1945. And people hadto sleep in a one bedroom apartment and they all had to make their own stuff and they had to eat nasty food.

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What we leaned about our camp is that it opend Augast 10 and it closed October 28 1945. And people hadto sleep in a one bedroom apartment and they all had to make their own stuff and they had to eat nasty food.

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                 Minidoka relocation Center

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                 Minidoka relocation Center

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https://www.google.com

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Seventy years ago, in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attacks, the US West Coast was cleared of Japanese-Americans. More than 110,000 people were put into internment camps, in what was the largest official forced relocation in US history. For many who lived through it, the story remains a painful one.

Now aged 87, Mary Matsuda Gruenewald cuts an elegant and strong figure. She speaks vividly and with almost photographic detail as she recalls the time she and her family spent in internment camps during World War II.

But it wasn't always so - it was only many years after she left the camp that she felt able to tell the story, even to her own children.

"I was afraid that if I started talking about it, I would cry.

"And I didn't want to cry in front of my children, so I kept it all in."

Mary was 16 years old at the time of the Pearl Harbor attacks, and had been living an idyllic life on Vashon, a small rural island just off the coast of Seattle.

It was a prison... One would be foolish to try to escape
Mary Matsuda Gruenewald, Author, Looking Like the Enemy

Looking Like the Enemy
Her parents ran a strawberry farm, and were regarded as upstanding members of the community - good, hard-working and church-going.

Mary and her brother Yoneichi were born in the US, and considered themselves both American and Japanese. So they were just as shocked as the rest of the nation when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, killing more than 2,400 Americans.

The nation was now at war and, because of their Japanese connections, they overnight came to be seen as the enemy.

"We were not white and so we stood out - there was no way for us to hide."

"The propaganda in the newspapers, on the radio, in the magazines, the caricatures - all this was overwhelming, and it just kept coming and coming," she recalls.

"We knew that something really bad would happen to us - we just weren't sure what it would be."

Leaving home

On 19 February 1942 - just over two months after Pearl Harbor - President Franklin D Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. It allowed the military to designate "exclusion zones" and cleared the way for the removal into internment camps of more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans.

Everybody lost something and many people lost everything
Prof Greg Robinson, Author, A Tragedy of Democracy

Greg Robinson
The government feared Japan's next move might be an attack on the US West Coast, and that the large community of Japanese-Americans living there might act as spies or collaborators.

The public was right behind the measures.

"There was very little dissent at the time," says Prof Greg Robinson, a historian at the University of Quebec at Montreal, and author of A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America, and By Order of the President.

"On the West Coast the political class was for it. In the rest of the country, people really didn't know or care - they just thought if the government was moving people, they knew what they were doing."

In May 1942 that order became a reality for Mary. Her family were given eight days to leave their homes.

"We didn't know how long we would be going for, or where we would be going," remembers Mary.

She packed enough socks and underwear for one week, together with one coat and one pair of shoes.

Each family had a number assigned to them and were given tags to wear.

After arrival in Seattle, Mary and her family were walked past a large crowd of the city's residents.

"A few men swore at us, and shook their fists, and some spat on us.

"But the majority were silent as they watched us walk from the ferry dock to the waiting train."

The windows on the train were obscured and no-one knew where they were headed.

After three days, the train stopped at Pinedale, near Fresno in California, and an Assembly Centre where Mary and her family spent the first two months before being moved to the Lake Tule camp, and then a further two camps over the years.

Find Out More

Listen to the BBC World Service programme Witness on the Japanese-American internment camps

Witness airs each weekday and tells history through the eyes of the people who were there

Download a podcast Browse the Witness archive
Life inside

The accommodation in the internment camps was basic - army barracks divided into a number of compartments.

Mary's family stayed in a bare room approximately 20ft x 24ft (6m x 7m) with one small window and a bare light-bulb. They were each given a woollen blanket and an army cot for a bed.

Like many of those who were interned, her family referred to their accommodation as their "apartment". It was however, she says, a euphemism.

"It was a prison indeed... There was barbed wire along the top [of the fence] and because the solders in the guard towers had machine guns, one would be foolish to try to escape.

"There were these big searchlights that rotated all night long and they would flash through our window."

There were schools in the camps, but - as with the living quarters - the facilities were basic.

Mary recalls how - in the absence of typewriters - typing classes involved tapping their fingers on an imaginary keyboard.

Many of the teachers were from inside the camps, but some came from the outside.

This is a country that was big enough to say, 'We were wrong, we're sorry'
Mary Matsuda Gruenewald

To the young students - confined, rejected and cut off from the wider world - they were a source of both curiosity and of comfort.

"We saw these teachers and we thought, 'Oh my goodness, this is a white person, in here, to teach us, why are they here?

"They were trying to act as a counterbalance to what the rest of the nation was doing, and we truly appreciated it," says Mary.

Freedom

One day they were given a questionnaire to fill in, asking whether they would be willing to serve in the US Army, and if they would pledge allegiance to the US and renounce loyalty to the Emperor of Japan.

Though they did not know it at the time, those who answered yes to both questions - as Mary's family did - would be classified as "loyals" and would be allowed to leave.

The young men, such as Mary's brother, were drafted into the US Army.

"As my brother got on the bus, drove through the gate and left, my mother and I wept, and wondered when it would be our turn to leave."

Her turn came soon afterwards, in August 1944, when she was sent to Chicago as part of the US Cadet Nurse Corps. She relished her new-found freedom and embraced it wholeheartedly.

"It was incredible - the sense that I could walk anywhere I wanted to, and enjoy the flowers, the grass, the trees and hear the birds - it was like being in heaven."

Two older nurses took her under their wing, treated her as an equal.

"I learnt a lot about what it means to feel despised, to be hated, to feel ashamed of who I was [during the internment].

"So to be treated as a responsible, respectful person, I can't tell you the relief and the awe that I felt."

Just over a year later, in September 1945, her parents left the internment camp too.

But, for many, the life they returned to was very different to the one they left behind.

"The best estimate that I have heard is that 75% of people [who] moved, ended up losing their land," says Prof Robinson.

"Everybody lost something and many people lost everything."

For years, many Japanese-Americans stayed silent about what had happened.
Mary Matsuda Gruenewald is author of Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese-American Internment Camps.
"The shame that came from this whole period permeated our people, and nobody talked about it," says Mary.

In the 1980s, the US government issued a report stating that the internment had been "unjust and motivated by racism rather than real military necessity".

President Ronald Reagan took steps to try to redress what had happened, which culminated in 1992 with an apology from President George HW Bush and $20,000 (£12,600) paid out to each surviving member of the camps.

Mary treasures the letter of apology she received from President Bush and only regrets that her parents and her brother died before it came.

"I took that as evidence that - in spite of the things the government did - this is a country that was big enough to say, 'We were wrong, we're sorry.'"

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Pain and redemption of WWII interned Japanese-Americans

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Seventy years ago, in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attacks, the US West Coast was cleared of Japanese-Americans. More than 110,000 people were put into internment camps, in the largest official forced relocation in US history, reports the BBC's Cordelia Hebblethwaite.

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The Minidoka internment camp, also known as the Hunt Camp, sits on a spare, dry expanse of land near Jerome. From October 1942 to August 1945, the U.S. government held more than 13,000 people of Japanese descent there following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The old camp has been the site of annual pilgrimages and a few remnants and relics of the internment era remain on the site, including a couple of barracks, various outbuildings and a mess hall. The Friends of Minidoka and Boise State University worked together recently to reconstruct one of the eight guard towers located around the perimeter of the camp.

Now the group, which works to educate the public about the internment and to restore the Minidoka National Historic Site, is partnering with the National Park Service to bring volunteers together to rebuild one of the camp's 14 baseball fields on Saturday, May 28.

Mia Russell, director of the Friends of Minidoka, said restoration of the field will help visitors connect to the story of the internment as well as to understand the complexities of life and recreation in the camps.

"The restoration of the baseball field isn't just a 'feel good' story, but it gives a picture of how people were able to carry something along," said Russell.

Playing baseball and participating in recreation helped re-create some semblance of a normal life at a time when very little else was normal, said Russell. "It was a double-edged sword . For many children, being in the camp was the first time they had seen their parents have leisure time. It's an interesting complexity of life at camp."

The idea to restore a baseball field at camp came from two older men who had been held at the Hunt Camp as children with their families.

Russell and other organizers are inviting the public to be part of "Field-in-a-Day" at the site on May 28, either as volunteers or donors. In addition to volunteers to help with construction, setup, registration, refreshments, children's activities and more, organizers are seeking donations of materials for the scoreboard, backstop, benches and bleachers; used baseballs, bats, gloves, and other equipment for future community use of the field; and WWII-era baseball equipment for educational use at the site.

If you would like to donate materials, sponsor a field element or sign up as a volunteer on May 28, email Friends of Minidoka at info@minidoka.org or the Minidoka National Historic Site at carol_ash@nps.gov. Donors can also send checks to Friends of Minidoka, PO Box 1085, Twin Falls ID, 83303 or give online at minidoka.org.

Donations will also be used to support both the Field-In-A-Day event and the dedication of the field on June 26. Any money leftover from the project will help maintain the field. The field will be open for use to visitors, school groups and special events.

'The Neighborhood Game' returns to Boise on May 14

The Boise Commons, a local nonprofit focused on civic engagement, hosts the event from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 14, in neighborhoods across the city. The Neighborhood Game involves teams of residents fanning out through their neighborhoods, attempting to complete as many game activities as they can during the three-hour time limit. Each activity involves learning about the neighborhood and interacting with neighbors. Possible activities: learning some history from a local person, making a chalk drawing, finding the names of four cats or dogs, and much more. Winning players will receive prizes donated by locally owned businesses.

The best news: the game is for all ages and participation is free. Get details on how to participate on the Boise Commons Facebook page.

Learn more about The Boise Commons online at boisecommons.org.

Cycle for Independence

The Treasure Valley Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of Idaho hosts this 17th annual fundraiser family ride. Proceeds from the event, which features numerous routes to choose from, takes place May 21 beginning at Riverglen Junior High School in Boise. Proceeds will help support the summer BELL (Braille enrichment learning and literacy) Program, State Convention and transportation for members in need, and the organization's scholarship fund.

For registration information and more, visit the Cycle for Independence Facebook page or contact event coordinator Earl Hoover at 208-965-0511 or email hoovere74@gmail.com.

Zions Bank invites public to nominate homes for makeovers

Zions Bank is inviting the public to nominate up to 25 of the homes its employees will spruce up with a fresh coat of exterior paint during the annual Paint-a-Thon service project in June.

Paint-a-Thon benefits low-income elderly, disabled and veteran residents in Idaho and Utah. Typically, homes are referred to Zions Bank by city and state housing agencies, aging services, community organizations and local churches. This year, Zions Bank is inviting the public to nominate qualified homeowners.

Get all the details online at zionsbankblog.com.

To qualify for consideration, homeowners must meet federal Department of Housing and Urban Development income guidelines. The average age of last year's home owner was 75, with an average monthly income of $1,409. Home nominations are due by May 20. In addition to painting, Zions employees will provide yard cleanup, pruning, mowing, planting and minor repairs as needed by homeowners. The cost for all paint and supplies is contributed by Zions Bank.

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Minidoka project will rebuild internment camp baseball field

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The Minidoka internment camp, also known as the Hunt Camp, sits on a spare, dry expanse of land near Jerome. From October 1942 to August 1945, the U.S. government held more than 13,000 people of Japanese descent there following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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Minidoka 2 was about how japanes were at minidoka and how they had to eat nasty sausage . Some people talked own what they did in minidoka like make their own chairs and tables .

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Minidoka 2 was about how japanes were at minidoka and how they had to eat nasty sausage . Some people talked own what they did in minidoka like make their own chairs and tables .

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112 in 2016 https://www.google.com/

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August 10 1942
CLOSED October 28 1945 https://www.google.com