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MASKING SAVES LIVES

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Photo Records Japanese American Internment

"There's no use crying about the past," the soft-spoken woman said. "But I hope this never happens again."
Portion below; whole thing here: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/397337_fumi24.html

Known as "Fumi" to friends and relatives, Hayashida was among the 227 men, women and children from Bainbridge Island whom the Army removed that day.

Those island residents were some of the first in the country to be forced into exile.

During World War II, 12,892 state residents of Japanese ancestry were sent to camps. Today, Hayashida is the oldest living Japanese-American from the island who was incarcerated.

The orders to leave the island came about a week before the actual departure. The local sheriff kept telling her husband not to worry because the couple was born in the United States.

As she recalled, the U.S. government explained that the removal was needed to protect her family and other Japanese-Americans during the war.

The family abandoned more than 80 acres of land they used to grow strawberries, as well as their trucks, car, tractor and dog.

Before they left, they handed their radio and camera to authorities.

While the family could have moved to Moses Lake or Yakima to avoid detention, her husband thought their son and daughter were too young to make that trek.

"He said, 'Just follow what the government wants you to do and you won't be sorry.' We trusted them," she recalled.

"We didn't know where we were going, how we were going."

To save space in her suitcase for cloth diapers and baby clothing, she wore as much clothing as she could.

The family was escorted in an Army Jeep to the ferry dock, where soldiers with rifles and bayonets stood guard.

After they arrived at the Seattle waterfront, they and other Japanese-American families boarded aging railroad passenger cars for the overnight trip to California.

While government officials ordered them to keep the shades down during the ride, they occasionally peeked outside.

On April Fools' Day, they arrived at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, their camp for about two years. In August, she gave birth to her son, Leonard.

It was not until a distant relative called sometime later from Washington, D.C., that she realized the photograph of her existed.

Ong said she first heard about the image in the 1950s or 1960s.

Decades later, when the photograph was exhibited at the Smithsonian, Hayashida casually told strangers who were looking at it that she was the mother.

"I was surprised," she said. "They all came and apologized. You don't realize how many kind people there are in the world."

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