nosei network

February 19, 2003

Memo:IF YOU'RE INTERESTED
To learn more about the Tulelake camp preservation effort, go to www.gaylonn.com/tulelake.

FORMER INTERNEE SAVING HIS PAST
BID TO SAVE CAMPS IS LINKED TO DAY OF REMEMBRANCE

CECILIA KANG, Mercury News

As Jimi Yamaichi kicked up the dust along the barbed-wire fence, the long-buried memories of his years at the Tulelake internment camp rose in a flood of emotion.

It had taken more than four decades for the San Jose native to muster the courage to revisit the site where his family was imprisoned during World War II.But the 400-mile pilgrimage to the camp in 1991 didn't give him the closure he had sought. Instead, it marked the start of his crusade to preserve the Tulelake camp and to ensure that this painful chapter of Japanese-American history would never be forgotten.

''Everything came back to me, how we had struggled and toiled in the dirt and dust there,'' said Yamaichi, 80. ''I realized then that we have to tell people about what happened to us so that it won't happen again.''

As the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-Americans is commemorated today in the Day of Remembrance, many former internees such as Yamaichi have stressed the importance of preventing a similar fate for Arab Americans and Muslims in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Some see a permanent Tulelake memorial as one answer.

The drive to save Tulelake is part of a growing movement among former internees to preserve the 10 main internment camps, two of them in California. So far, only Manzanar in Southern California and Minidoka camp in Idaho have been designated as preservation sites.

Like many second-generation, or nisei, Japanese-Americans, Yamaichi is now racing to record the stories and and protect the camps. In their 70s and 80s, they are the last of a generation with firsthand accounts of the camps.

But it took many years for the grandfather of four to even talk about the four years he lived at the Heart Mountain, Wyo., and Tulelake internment camps.

After he was released from Tulelake in 1946, Yamaichi, then 24 years old, quickly buried that part of his life, looking for a fresh start with his wife, Eiko. The couple moved to San Jose, where Jimi was raised on his family's Berryessa vegetable farm. They tried to assimilate with their white neighbors, as prejudice against Japanese-Americans lingered well into the 1960s and 1970s. And Jimi spent long hours building his construction company. He retired last year.

Yamaichi never dreamed of going back to Tulelake, the site of so many lost dreams and so much despair. ''It's no different than prison. Who goes back to visit the jail they were in after being released?'' he said. ''There are onlyhard memories there, and you just want to move on.''

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, author of ''Farewell to Manzanar,'' which documents her family's experience in that camp, said many former internees have suppressed their memories. ''It was such a shocking and traumatic experience that it takes many at least 25 to 30 years before they can start to address it again,'' she said.

Gradually, however, Yamaichi's views began to change. His four children and grandchildren were beginning to ask more questions. As he grew older, he reflected more on how the camps had affected his life.

He began to talk to his children and friends about how his father used most of the family's savings to buy winter clothes for his 10 children during the harsh winter at Heart Mountain. He recounted how they chose to move a year later to Tulelake, the largest camp. He spoke about how he was forced to support his family by heading construction and maintenance at the camp for $19 a month.

And he told about his frustration with the uncertainty of his future. Yamaichi should have been dating, going to college or starting his first job. Instead, he felt his life was at a standstill. Yamaichi never went to college.

He decided to make a trip back to Tulelake with Eiko, who was also interned there from 1942 to 1943. Eiko's family left Tulelake before the Yamaichi family arrived. The couple met later through friends.

Despite the many years since their experiences there, the couple were overwhelmed by what they saw.

The concrete jail that Yamaichi helped build was crumbling, and the bars had been stolen from the windows and the doors. But poems and cries for help by prisoners were still scratched on the walls. There were just small stretches remaining of the 32 miles of barbed wire that surrounded the camp.

Residents in Newell, the town nearest to the camp, had built houses, a store and school on former camp property, using the water and sewer system that Yamaichi helped build.

''It was earthshaking to stand on the same ground and see the buildings, many of them that I helped build,'' Yamaichi said. There are only about 25 buildings left of a thousand barracks, kitchens, stores and other buildings that once crowded the land.

In an ironic twist, Yamaichi decided over the next few years to save the place that he had been running from. So in 1996, Yamaichi helped form the Tule Lake Committee to try to gain preservation status for Tulelake through the National Park Service. The committee has eight volunteers leading the effort.

''Tulelake is an American story about how discrimination affected the lives of 120,000 Japanese,'' Yamaichi said. ''We need to preserve the site so that people can see what it looked like and understand what we went through.''

Tulelake was officially a segregation center, designated for the thousands of Japanese-Americans -- many still Japanese citizens -- who didn't answer ''yes'' to questions testing their loyalty to the U.S. government. Of the 18,700 internees at Tulelake, roughly three-fourths had been sent to the camp because they answered ''no'' to the questions.

Yamaichi's father agreed to the loyalty oath, but moved to Tulelake seeking warmer weather for his heart problems.

The effort to preserve Tulelake has gone slowly. Much of the camp land is now privately owned, and residents haven't been receptive to the committee's desire to build a museum and reconstruct some of the old buildings, Yamaichi said.

So far, the committee has gained approval to build a small educational center on a small government-owned piece of the camp.

''We've faced a lot of resistance,'' said Yamaichi. ''But we won't stop working to make sure Tulelake and its stories don't die.''

Illustration:Photos (3), Map
PHOTO: DAI SUGANO -- MERCURY NEWS
Former Tulelake internee Jimi Yamaichi is working to preserve the camp.
PHOTO: DAI SUGANO -- MERCURY NEWS
Jimi Yamaichi of San Jose revisits the Tulelake internment camp in spring 2001. Behind him are stockades that were used to hold internees deemed ''trouble makers.''
PHOTO: DAI SUGANO -- MERCURY NEWS
Yamaichi relates his experiences at Tulelake to a group from City Year San Jose last month at San Jose First United Methodist Church. Today is the Day of Remembrance that commemorates the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-Americans in World War II.