Lilian Bannai Yamamura

LILIAN BANNAI YAMAMURA

Family # 1107

Camp: Manzanar, CA

Address: 5-5-1

Written by a member of the Bannai Family.

I was born on April 5, 1922 in Storrs, UT, the second child of Shino and Sakui (Sam) Bannai. At the time of the mass evacuation of all American Japanese from the West Coast, I was a 19 year old secretary to the principal of Gardena Elementary School.

After joining my family in Manzanar, my work was with the Board of Education. Because many others have described the disillusionment they felt, the humiliation of the crude conditions, I will omit my feelings, which were essentially much like theirs. The greatest grief we felt was for the anxiety of our parents, and the uncertainty of our future as an intact family. My goal was to overcome the situation by trying for the earliest possible release from camp.

I relocated to Chicago, IL as executive secretary to the Dean of the Chicago Theological Seminary. In January 1944, I was able to call my sister Rose, so she could find work to eventually enroll in the University of Minnesota. The following year I brought out my youngest sister, Sharlen, so she could complete her final year of high school.

On my free weekends I was often asked to speak to outlying church groups who were interested in what was happening on the West Coast. As I described the sad situations, I asked the people to try and give the unfortunate victims of wartime hysteria an opportunity to resume their studies and lives in a welcoming community.

My brother Paul, who was training at Camp Shelby, MS, became very concerned for the young Hawaiian boys he met, ready soon to be sent into combat, too far from their island homes for a final visit. He passed out our address to all his new buddies, told them to ring his sister’s doorbell and expect a hearty Japanese dinner. Suddenly we began to get a steady stream of weekend visitors with funny accents. Wherever they wanted to go, we took them – dancing at the Aragon Ballroom, baseball at Wrigley Field, stage shows of one or more of the great bands. Those who survived the Italian campaign came by Chicago to say goodbye. Not one came home intact. We could never forget these brave young men who lived up to their motto of “Go for Broke” and held nothing back in the way they dedicated their lives to the cause of America, even while the constitutional rights of many of their citizens were being misinterpreted.

With the end of the war and the closure of the camps, my final goal was to help my parents get out of the shabby trailer camp where they had been sent. With the return of my brother from the South Pacific, we were able to locate into a normal neighborhood so our younger brother could resume his junior high school education.

Eventually my career as manager of a travel agency saw me visiting many distant places around the world, a great contrast to the two years I was imprisoned behind barbed wire and armed sentry posts, wondering if I would ever see anything but endless miles of desolate desert.

Wind and Dust

This wind and dust I have to bear

How hard it blows I do not care.

But when the wind begins to blow –

My morale is pretty low.

I know that I can see it through

Because others have to bear it too.

So I will bear it with the rest

And hope the outcome is the best.

– George Nishimura, age 16 (Manzanar, 1943)

Read this to learn more about the demographics of each of the ten facilities administered by the War Relocation Authority.

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• Manzanar National Historic Site

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