President Gerald R. Ford, on the bicentennial of the United States’ founding, terminated Executive Order 9066 originally signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942 establishing ten “relocation centers” for Nikkei living in America, calling upon the American people to promise “we have learned from the tragedy of that long-ago experience forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American, and resolve that this kind of action shall never again be repeated.” About half a century later, I visited what remained of one, the Minidoka Relocation Center, in Jerome, Idaho.
Of the 640 buildings originally constructed on the 33,000-acre tract of land, two are approximately “as they were”, a dining hall and a barrack from Block 22 (of 44 numbered), the latter of which was a military-designed-and-constructed tarpaper and wood shelter with six one-room “apartments” for families of three to eight. At its peak, there were 36 residential blocks, each with a dozen barracks flanking the dining hall and an H-shaped laundry and lavatory with a recreation hall running along one corner of each block, incarcerating 9,397 people, making it the seventh largest city in the state at the time.
Locally known as Hunt Camp, the incarceration center became a self-sufficient community with a post office, internal police force, fire stations, a 196-bed hospital, elementary, junior high, and high schools, library, cinemas, co-operative stores, a fish market, barber and beauty shops, watch repair and mechanic shops, churches, sports teams, girl scouts, beauty pageants, art exhibitions, musical performances, a newspaper of record, burials for the dead. Yoshi Uchiyama Tani said, “I remember the record symphony concerts, community singing, church services, card games with friends, candle making during Christmas time.”
On being at the camp, Sylvia Kobayashi said, “I can’t forget the feeling of total rejection, the feeling of not belonging, the feeling of complete emptiness.”
Incarcerees saw desert grass – artemisia tridentata and hamatis filum – stretch desolation to sawtooth mountains, crests of some unfathomable wave in our world’s history.
Along the southern boundary of the camp incarcerees saw the Main North Side Canal, the nearest waterway for people who had lived their lives to that point close to the Pacific Ocean.
It is said a phrase common around the camp was “shikata ga nai”, it cannot be helped. Reflecting upon this canal, the incarcerees redirected its water to a swimming hole, an oasis of resilience locked in land never known. The day I visited both canal and swimming hole were empty, returning to their parched entropic basin. Shikata ga nai.
Hundreds of acres of local farmland were cultivated by the inhabitants of the center. From the available records, in 1943, Minidoka produced 979,770 pounds of potatoes, 101,814 pounds of cabbage, 79,325 pounds of carrots. Tons of vegetables were stored in a cellar to preserve them from the clime’s temperature fluctuations. Shikata ga nai. And yet.
The Order said, “by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby […] prescribe military areas […] from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion” since “the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage”. Shikata ga nai. And yet when asked, “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?” and “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization?” 97% of Minidoka incarcerees answered “yes, yes”, the highest among the camps. That we are told, Those who answered “no” were deemed “disloyal” and sent to Tule Lake Segregation Center in California, it cannot be helped. We have record of 715 prisoners from Minidoka serving in the U.S. Army. Two, Peter Fujiwara and Eugene Hayashi, join 71 other incarcerated men from around the country in the distinction of dying in combat while they served.
A solar powered “MEMORIES OF MINIDOKA” audio recording of Gene Akutsu’s arrival in the Idaho camp keeps quiet after I push its button to summon the tale. Shikata ga nai. Lawrence Matsuda said, “Dad never talked about it, none of it. I never heard him say the word “Minidoka.”” The story told now as then in silence.
In an all-too-familiar theme in all-too-American acts of national preservation, one of the baseball fields incarcerees played on remains. Keeping on that theme, the guard tower at the camp’s entrance is a reconstruction made by Boise State University students about a decade ago. The recreation of history.
Forty weekdays after U.S. General Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s formal surrender, the prison camp closed. Nono Mitsuoka said, “Now that we were free to go as our spirit willed, we found that once again we had to face the breakup of a community which had become sort of home.” Walking atop the foundation of a building lost to time, I came across a rusted radiator shot through multiple times with multiple calibers, close range and distant, the impressions left like craters on some alien world.
Along the eastern boundary of the National Historic Site there is a road with a wooden utility pole marking out Eden. To its west, Minidoka.
No flags flew when I was there.
