Ida Nakauchi was born in 1918 in rural King County, the daughter of Japanese immigrant tenant farmers living a hard-scrabble life farming vegetables. When Ida, one of eight siblings, finished high school in Kent, she found a job working for Jim Ellis's parents in their South Seattle home. In this excerpt from his memoirs, famed civic activist Jim Ellis (1921-2019) writes about Ida's life and her imprisonment during World War II at the Tule Lake Internment Camp in Northern California.
Vegetable Farmers
Ida Nakauchi was born January 9, 1918, in a rural area of King County called Cherry Valley, near Kent. Her father, Kazuma Nakauchi, and mother, Miyoju Yoneno, were born and raised in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. Kazuma, born in 1881, was the first to arrive in the United States in 1904 and came to Seattle in 1905. Miyoju, born in 1889, arrived in Seattle in 1913. Their marriage had been arranged by their parents and was recognized in 1912 in a Buddhist ceremony in Japan. An American marriage certificate for Miyoju and Kazuma was issued by King County in Seattle on February 17, 1913. The newly married couple settled on a vegetable farm in the White River Valley, where Kazuma was a tenant farmer. All eight children were born in King County. Ida gave the following description of growing up on the family farm:
"I was the third child of eight. My sisters, Mary and Mable, were born before me. My brothers Jim and Chuck, and my sisters, Helen, Mae, and Ruby were born later. We worked hard farming the land and selling the vegetables we grew. During corn season, Mom would boil up a batch of corn after dinner and we would sit around the dining table and eat ears of corn. In those days, we didn’t have yellow margarine, so we had to color the plain cube of what was supposed to be margarine with a little packet of coloring.
"I remember we had no heater for the house except a pot-belly stove. In the winter months, it was cold and there was always a question of who would have to get up to start the stove. All of us kids would sit around the stove to get our feet warm.
"My family had a big international truck which my brother Jim loved to drive. It was a truck that you had to crank by hand to start. The muffler made so much noise that we could hear him coming down the road at least two miles away from our home, but with the houses so far apart, our neighbors did not complain. My sisters and I used to ride in the back of the truck sitting on corn crates.
"I went to O’Brien School located in a part of what is now considered Kent ... Looking back, it reminds me very much of Little House on the Prairie, with the bell being rung for the start of school. There were swings and teeter-totters. We played hopscotch with small pieces of wood. My sisters and I stayed after school for one hour each day for Japanese lessons. Then, we had to walk home for an hour. By the time we got home, it was well past dinner. I went to O’Brien from the first through the eighth grade. After that, I went to Kent Junior High and then on to Kent Senior High where I graduated in 1936.
During the time Ida lived on the farm, her mother enrolled the younger girls in the Episcopal Church in Kent. They were picked up every Sunday at the farm by a church member who would take the girls to church and return them after the service. Ida’s parents were unable to attend church on most Sundays because the workload on the farm didn’t allow time away. Each of the girls was expected to help with farm chores. When Ida graduated from high school, she began looking for a job in Seattle and went to work for my mother at a modest salary with room and board in the big house on 50th Avenue South. Ida worked continuously for our family until Pearl Harbor, and by that time had become a part of the family.
Pearl Harbor: A Shocking Surprise
On December 7, 1941, without warning, the Empire of Japan launched a sea and air attack on the U.S. Naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack killed 2,388 Americans and wounded 1,178 more. Thirty-one ships were sunk or damaged; 323 U.S. aircraft were destroyed or damaged.
The shock of the attack was as much a surprise to Japanese Americans as it was to other Americans. Public fury against Japan was ignited across the nation and there was near-hysterical fear along parts of the Pacific Coast. With lightning speed, the Japanese armed forces followed up Pearl Harbor by attacking and conquering a wide swath of the South Pacific and Southeast Asia. This included the American Philippines, the Netherlands East Indies, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Straits Settlement, and Burma. Most Americans were shocked to learn how quickly this Japanese conquest occurred. American, Philippine, Dutch, and English forces were quickly overwhelmed and surrendered. Two new British Navy battleships were sunk. The Bataan Death March became an example of the cruelty of war. General MacArthur and his family were evacuated by submarine from Corregidor. U.S. troop reinforcements for Bataan and Corregidor were not available. Even with brave resistance, it was only a matter of months before all of the Philippines, including Corregidor, had surrendered. The effect on the American public of these initial sweeping Japanese victories was profound. Fear was high along the West Coast until the Japanese advance was stopped by a major victory at sea in the Battle of Midway in June 1942.
A historic book entitled Paper Trail to Internment by Yoriko Wantanabe Sasaki contains contemporary newspaper stories revealing the perilous position of Japanese Americans on the West Coast during the months after Pearl Harbor. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the forced evacuation from the Pacific Coast of all people of Japanese ancestry even if they had been born in America and were U.S. citizens. The Army was instructed to relocate everyone of Japanese descent away from the West Coast for the duration of the emergency. This was the largest forced relocation of American people since the Indian wars. It was the result of public anger at the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor and widespread fear stemming from continuing Japanese military success in the following months.
I was away in college at the time of Pearl Harbor. Memories of that day are still vivid. After being a committed pacifist for years, I marched that night through downtown New Haven, Connecticut, with several hundred students.
Internment: An American Injustice
A few days after Pearl Harbor, the Ellis family was shocked to learn that the Nakauchi family, including Ida, was likely to be ordered by the U.S. Army to leave their home and any possessions they could not carry and to report to a local military assembly center. My father and I were incensed that an American citizen like Ida Nakauchi, who was born in the United States and had committed no crime, could be locked up for no reason other than having Japanese ancestry. A vast majority of American citizens were descendants of immigrants from other countries, and no similar group of American citizens of German or Italian descent were included in the World War II internment order. We felt the West Coast Japanese American internment was an unwarranted violation of constitutional rights of citizenship. Nevertheless, the action included all people of Japanese ancestry living along the West Coast of the United States. They were taken under armed guard to inland internment camps beginning in the spring of 1942. The fear of an invasion by Japan had largely dissipated by 1943. However, the harm was done. Movement of Japanese Americans on short notice caused huge losses of value in crops, homes, businesses, and property.
Japanese descendants who had shown their loyalty to the United States by signing loyalty pledges constituted an important resource. They were enlisted in the U.S. armed forces and fought valiantly in the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Europe. This group of Japanese American males drafted from the prison camps became the most decorated combat unit of its size in the entire U.S. military for their heroic deeds: seven Presidential Distinguished Unit Citations, a Congressional Medal of Honor, 47 Distinguished Service Crosses, 350 Silver Stars, 810 Bronze Stars, and more than 3,600 Purple Hearts.
Incarceration
When President Roosevelt’s announcement was made, Ida was 24 years old. She left our home in response to the first notice to register and moved back to the family farm in Kent, where she had grown up. The War Relocation Authority (WRA) required her father to gather his family and report to the nearest assembly center established in Puyallup. Beginning on April 28, 1942, the first people of Japanese American ancestry were transported by train from Puyallup to the regional Pinedale Assembly Center near Fresno, California. Ida’s personal impressions from her forced relocation were seldom discussed with us. However, she did share these memories with her family in the following account:
"We left by train on May 2, 1942, from Kent, Washington, to the Pinedale Assembly Camp located near Fresno, California. Upon arrival I could see guard towers posted on all corners of the camp. Guards inspected our belongings, and we were assigned living quarters. There were four sections within each Pinedale barrack. The men of our family had one room and the women another. The barracks were not fully completed when we arrived and my family was directed to a bare unit with no plumbing and a dirt floor. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling and canvas army cots were the only furnishings. Each 'family unit' consisted of two rooms with 7-foot-high walls. Toilets and showers were in separate common areas for men and women and served 200 to 250 people.
"After a few months, we were moved to the Tule Lake Internment Camp in Newell, California, near the Oregon border. Movies and dances were held and there were commissaries to buy personal necessities, along with a hospital inside the camp that was staffed with doctors and nurses. Jobs were available, but no evacuee could be paid more than an army private, which was then $21 per month. I got a job working in the mess hall earning $19 a month. Laundry was done in the laundry area and there were always long lines, so doing laundry for the family often could take several hours. There were people living in Tule Lake that had been born in Japan and wanted to go back to their homeland. In 1944, several thousand detainees (loyal to America) were allowed to go to Chicago, Detroit, and other cities in the East. I made the decision to go to Chicago, where I worked for several different families.
"After being in California for months, my family was relocated to the Heart Mountain Camp located in Park County, in northwest Wyoming. After release from the Heart Mountain Camp, the rest of our family relocated to Sidney, Nebraska, where they lived for three years with my sister Mable and her husband. Eventually, I was able to return to Seattle and go back to work for Mrs. Ellis. I brought my mother, father, younger sisters Ruby and Mae with me, and found a house for the family to live near Boeing Plant #2 in South Seattle. Ruby attended Cleveland High School and eventually graduated from there."
Ida’s sister Ruby remembers that their father, Kazuma, was the leader of the family, and each member looked to him for guidance. When the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor, the Nakauchi family was shocked; they couldn’t believe such a thing could happen. Ruby recalls that when the children asked their father why they were being sent away from their home, his response was, "Shikatai Ga Nai” which in English means "It can’t be helped." Throughout their internment, Ruby remembers her father was loyal to America, patient, optimistic, and always in good humor.
During the early years of World War II, Canada had a similar relocation program in which people of Japanese ancestry who lived along the Canadian Pacific Coast were sent inland to internment camps. It was a time when there was a pervasive fear that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor signaled an intention to attack the Pacific Coast.
Tule Lake
Tule Lake Relocation Center opened on May 27, 1942. On a clear day, 14,000-foot Mount Shasta was clearly visible to the south. Located on a dry lakebed at an elevation of 4,000 feet, the winters were long and cold and the summers dry and hot. The first evacuees came from the Portland and Puyallup assembly centers to help with the initial setup of the camp. As the camp grew, people arrived from Southwestern Oregon, Western Washington, and the Sacramento area of California. Of all the camps, Tule Lake was fraught with the most turbulence and conflict. While the Nakauchi family signed loyalty oaths pledging allegiance to America, there were thousands of internees who refused, demanded to be sent to Japan, and were eventually shipped there. Internees held frequent demonstrations and strikes demanding their rights under the U.S. Constitution.
By the summer of 1943, the Tule Lake center was converted into a maximum-security facility and became the Tule Lake Segregation Center. Martial law was declared, and military police took control of the center from the WRA. Internees who had refused to take a loyalty oath or who had caused disturbances were shipped to Tule Lake from other centers across the Western states and Hawaii. Eventually, Tule Lake became the largest of the War Relocation Authority (WRA) centers and encompassed 7,400 acres. The WRA was created as a civilian agency responsible for assisting internees to become "acclimated to their new way of life." Self-government had been allowed in other centers, however, due to mounting resistance and hostility within the Tule Lake camp, self-government was eliminated there. Additional troops and even tanks were assigned to Tule Lake, and a well-lighted, 6-foot-high, barbed-wire-topped chain link fence and 19 watch towers were installed surrounding the camp.
The buildings at Tule Lake consisted of 66 blocks of barracks. Each block had multi-purpose areas used for offices, stores, canteens, a beauty parlor, a barber shop, and judo halls. Protestant, Buddhist, and Catholic churches held worship services in these buildings. There were three fire stations in the camp, an outdoor stage, a funeral parlor, and cemetery. Approximately 3,000 acres were used for a farm operation known as the "colony." Internees produced barley, potatoes, onions, carrots, grains, rutabagas, and other vegetables. Hogs and chickens were raised.
None of the Nakauchi family members participated in protest demonstrations against the internment. They believed that eventually they would be allowed to return to their homes and move forward with their American lives.
In May 1944, the Tule compound was converted into a Prisoner of War camp that housed Italian and German POWs. At its peak, Tule Lake held 18,789 internees within a space designated to hold 15,000. Out of a total of 10 internment camps located across seven states, Tule Lake was the last camp to be closed, on March 20, 1946. Most of the Tuleans elected to remain in the U.S., but nearly 4,500 renounced American loyalty and left on ships for Japan in late 1944 and early 1945. The rest remained in confinement (some until as late as 1947) and were sent to camps in Bismarck, Santa Fe, and Crystal City, Texas.
