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The sight of a 5-year-old boy sitting on the front steps of a downtown motel innocently waving a miniature American flag would have largely gone unnoticed two days earlier.
But it was Dec. 8, 1941, the day after Japan's bombing of naval ships in Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into World War II. And the boy was Bob H. Suzuki, the son of Japanese immigrants.
"A convertible came by and then came to a screeching halt," Suzuki recalls. "One of the men inside said 'Hey little boy come here.' I sensed danger and ran back inside and
upstairs to my parents. It was symbolic of the intense atmosphere at that time."
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Cal Poly Pomona President Bob Suzuki was 6 when his family was sent to an
internment camp in Idaho.
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Suzuki, 62, president of Cal Poly Pomona, has no doubt his intuition that day kept him out of harm's way.
But any intuition he or his parents had could not keep them from what became the ultimate act of racial prejudice on the home front during World War II - the internment of Japanese Americans.
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Suzuki grew up to become active in the movement that led to internment families getting some financial compensation from the government for being taken to concentration camps during the war.
He said it was a small step in healing old wounds.
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But in Suzuki's mind and in the opinion of other interned Americans, the best thing to come out of the redress movement was getting the message out that the internment happened and that it was a mistake that should never be repeated.
Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Feb. 19, 1942, called for the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast. In a time of world war where the U.S. cause was democracy, the American government took a holiday from its own Constitution. |
There was little or no evidence the concentration camps were needed for any reason. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made it clear in a Feb. 2, 1942, memo: "The necessity for mass evacuation is based primarily upon public and political pressure rather than on factual data. Public hysteria, and in some instances the comments of the press and radio announcers, have resulted in a tremendous amount of pressure being brought to bear on Governor Olson and Earl Warren, Attorney General of the State, and on military authorities."
Suddenly, life as Japanese Americans knew it was irrevocably disrupted in states like California, Oregon and Washington.
Suzuki had turned 6 by the time his family was forced from their home in Vancouver, Wash., to the "assembly center" in the Portland Live Stock Pavilion. Similar assembly centers were operated at such places as the Santa Anita Racetrack and the Pomona fairground.
"I can remember going to school in the bleachers of the rodeo stadium," Suzuki said.
After a few months there, Suzuki's family was sent to the Minidoka Relocation Center near Twin Falls, Idaho. Barracks lined with tar paper - equipped with central bathrooms and dining rooms - where mattresses were made of straw, served as home for three years.
"It was a pretty traumatic change," Suzuki said. "In a lot of cases there was a breakdown of the family."
With the camps providing children the basic necessities - shelter and food - instead of their parents, children became more independent and in turn rebellious. And as a result discipline problems were common.
There also was the tension between two factions in the camp; those who wanted to remain loyal to the United States and those who thought "to hell with the United States."
Suzuki remembers the pressure his parents felt when the local farming community came to the camp recruiting workers to harvest the local sugar beet crop. Some, like Suzuki's father, who lost his job with the railroad when interned, stepped forward. Those in the camp unhappy with that decision retaliated by firing Suzuki's mother from her job in the camp dining hall.
"That was the first time I ever saw her cry," Suzuki said.
The U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled in 1945 that the Japanese internment violated the Constitution. Despite the victory for Japanese Americans, the end of internment led to a tragic final chapter for some families.
"There were some so insecure and fearful about going back out into society that they committed suicide," Suzuki said. "It was too much for them."
Suzuki and his family tried to rebuild their lives in Spokane, Wash., when they were released. There, Suzuki's father became a farmer and Suzuki ventured into his teen-age years not wishing to talk much about
Minidoka.
"It was like being a victim of rape. Your rights have been violated but you felt stigmatized and dirty by the experience," Suzuki said. "Most (Japanese Americans) felt maybe if we had assimilated more (into American culture) this would not have happened."
Although a child at the time, Suzuki retains vivid memories of those days in
Minidoka. But he also became a student of the Japanese internment when in college he realized it was a chapter of American history that seemed destined for obscure footnote status.
Suzuki was a freshman at the UC Berkeley when he had to give a speech about education. He chose education in the Japanese internment camps. It was 1955. Ten years had passed since the end of the internment and the war.
"The further I went on the angrier I got. It turned out to be an angry speech," Suzuki recalled. "When I was done the professor asked if anyone had any questions. There was dead silence."
When the professor asked how many students knew of the internment, only one raised his hand. He was a Japanese American who faced the same experience.
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