Phyllis Yeiko Hirata Mizuhara: From a San Bernardino Store to Poston

Manzanar National Historic Site publishes short "ID booklets" on Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. This is Phyllis Yeiko Hirata Mizuhara's first-person account, retold in hubnx's own words.

Family No. 34064 · Poston I, Arizona · Address 4-5-A

The mini-supermarket

Phyllis's father, Kumajiro Hirata, came from Fukuoka, Japan, in 1903 and worked farms up and down California before settling in San Bernardino, then sent word to his home village that he wanted a wife. Same Watanabe sailed over in 1913, and they married in San Francisco after she was released from the Angel Island immigration station. Phyllis had three sisters and a brother.

After briefly running a hotel and a small farm, her parents opened a general store — hot dogs, hamburgers, beer, canned goods, gifts from Japan, fruit, fresh eggs, toothpaste, stationery, even stamps — and sold penny candy to children going to the nearby cinema. It prospered, and the family home was bought in the names of her older sisters, Edith and Helen. Her father was vice-president of the local Japanese Association; the Japanese Christian Church was overseen by a white woman, Pansy Ham.

Phyllis knew where Japanese people could not go in San Bernardino: some restaurants, the public swimming pool, the first-run Fox Theatre down the street. They had the second-class Rialto, which they called the "Rathole" — though Mrs. Ham once took them to the Fox, and they were let in.

"Are there any Japanese in here?"

On December 7, 1941, Phyllis was 11, in sixth grade at Jefferson School, and didn't understand what the radio meant; her parents and her sisters, then in their twenties, were deeply worried. The next morning a new boy, Leroy, jumped up before class and demanded, using a slur, whether there were any Japanese in the room. Her best friend Hazel stood and asked if he wanted to do something about it. The teacher stepped in and explained that Japan's military had bombed Pearl Harbor, and that it must not be confused with people of Japanese ancestry living in America. Phyllis was grateful — and Leroy later became her friend too.

In February 1942 the FBI searched their house and took her father, suspicious of his role in the Japanese Association. He was held at Tujunga Canyon, then at Lordsburg and Santa Fe. Pansy Ham wrote to the government vouching for her old friend's character, and he rejoined the family at Poston in early 1943.

Before leaving, her parents sold the store in a hurry for just $1,000, and sold their car. An honest realtor found by her sister rented out the house; they stored things in the attic, and Mrs. Ham kept more in her bedroom and garage. She and the Quakers gave the family much support, and she drove them to the bus station.

Poston

In May 1942 they were bussed, shades drawn, to the Poston War Relocation Center in the Arizona desert. Carsick all the way, Phyllis was glad to get off — until she saw rows of tar-paper barracks with no trees and nothing green, only sand. Six of them shared one room at the end of a barrack, with six cots and straw mattresses, and she slept badly for many nights. Their block held neighbours from San Bernardino, Colton and Riverside, and she made new friends too, some she still keeps in touch with.

Her father raised chickens and watermelons for the agricultural section; her mother worked in the mess hall; her college-educated sisters taught. Phyllis went through junior high at Poston, enjoyed school — though it felt odd that every boy in her class was Japanese American just as she became boy-crazy — played volleyball and basketball, and went to dances in the recreation hall and later the new auditorium. In the last year they ordered roller skates from the Sears catalogue and skated the new walkways; in the hot summers an irrigation canal was dammed into a swimming hole.

Home

In September 1945, just before she turned 15, Phyllis returned to San Bernardino with her parents and her brother Jack, while Helen and Edith went back to Los Angeles and Masako moved to New York. Unlike many families, they had a house to come back to. As they walked up with their suitcases, children chanted mocking pidgin at them and bowed; two older boys shooed the children away and welcomed the family back, which made her feel much better.

Her father felt defeated without his store. He worked in potato fields and tried but failed to start another business. Camp devastated the family financially, Phyllis says, though they met many people. She holds no bitterness, only the hope it never happens again. Her father, whom she expected to be bitter, told her he was glad the United States had won, because it treated its former enemies so kindly during the occupation. Phyllis helped her parents study for their naturalization tests, and in 1952 they became citizens.

She graduated from San Bernardino High School, went to UC Berkeley, where she met her husband, and has lived in the Bay Area since 1948. For a long time she found it hard to talk about camp with white people, not wanting to make them feel guilty, and would tear up at the subject; it has grown easier. She recently helped a group of formerly incarcerated women make a quilt of their Poston experience, documented in the video Piecing Memories.

Sources

• National Park Service, Manzanar National Historic Site, "Phyllis Yeiko Hirata Mizuhara," an ID booklet. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/phyllis-yeiko-hirata-mizuhara.htm
• More: Manzanar ID booklets.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.