Citizen 13660
1946
This book is written by one of the Japanese Americans who was interned and each page has some information and a drawing on it that the author did, making it pretty much physically unique among the books on the subject.
The author begins recounting information about the evacuation process, curfew, etc. He was scheduled to go to the Tanforan Assembly Center which was one of the assembly centers located at horse-racing tracks. He and his brother had all of three whole days to get everything done they needed to do before being shipped off to the center.
He and his brother were assigned to stall 50; an actual horse stall that had hurriedly been whitewashed. For mattresses they had to stuff straw into bags. He describes what life was like at the center, talking about the lack of privacy, the toilets, etc.
The author notes something I saw in another book, that family life was falling apart, for one reason since people no longer ate together, and the parents didn't really have control of their kids any more.
He was then moved to the Topaz internment camp in Utah. He notes that the camp was not actually totally constructed by the time he and others were interned there. He worked on a local newspaper and a literary magazine.
He notes that the food was rationed and meals "consisted of rice, brea, and macaroni, or beans, bread and spaghetti."
When the winter came they were given G.I. clothing - from World War 1. (Making the clothes at least thirty years old) They did get to order some clothes from the Sears catalog, though.
He writes about the loyalty questionnaire and pressure put on people by a pro-Japanese group at the camp. The camp received 230 evacuees from Hawaii (the first reference I've found to a specific number of Hawaiians going to a specific camp.) Then there was the Wakasa case where an internee was shot and killed by the guards.
In the fall of 1943 about 1400 were sent from the Topaz camp to the Tule Detention Center for being "no-no's" and certain others.
In January of 1944 he was released from the camp to live somewhere else on his own.
The drawings are quite interesting, emphasizing very much the daily life of the people in the camp. Again, the book is strengthened by being a personal account of someone who was actually interned. Worth reading.
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