George H. Morishita: Tosh's Mexican Kid Brother at Manzanar

A divided family

• George's father came to the United States in 1906, his fare paid by his wages as a soldier in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05.
• In 1924, racing the deadline of the Japanese exclusion law, he went back for George's mother and two older children. The son was too ill to travel, so both children were left with relatives, to be brought over later. They never were. The brother died at 16 in 1933; the sister at 34 in 1955 — she "just didn't seem to want to live anymore," a relative said.
• George was one of four children born in the United States, and the only one who ever spent time with his older sister in Japan — while stationed in Japan and Korea during the Korean War (1952–1954).
• His mother found Seattle too cold and damp, so they moved to Los Angeles, where she became a barber until 1961 and his father worked in restaurants as a dishwasher and cook.

Growing up

George was born in 1931 and grew up in a neighborhood about 80% Mexican and 20% Russian; nearly all his friends were Mexican American. Leaving the movies on December 7, 1941, he heard men talking about the war — "Japan," "Japanese" — and felt uneasy. Many Americans, he said, saw no difference between Japanese nationals and Americans of Japanese ancestry, a blurring the media and some political leaders made worse.

His family was slow to register for removal, so George kept after his mother. They registered on a Wednesday, scrambled all night, and boarded the train the next morning, reaching Manzanar on April 2, 1942. It was home until August 1945.

Manzanar

• Fitting in: his 16-year-old sister, Tosh, came home furious one day: the older boys weren't enjoying his company, she told him — they found his speech funny. They called him "Tosh's Mexican kid brother."
• Dust storms were frequent at first, until lawns went in between barracks and people watered the ground.
• The apples: his block's apple trees never ripened because of the school nearby. Once he and two friends found a tree loaded with red apples in another block. Two boys watched them pick — until a man charged out swinging a broom, stopping only when the last apple hit the ground. Later they laughed about it.
• Adventures no short visitor could have: swimming in creeks, hiking to the foot of the Sierra, climbing the Alabama Hills — and running all the way down after spotting a sign warning of fines and jail for trespassing.

Leaving

When the war ended, George talked his father into taking him along to look for housing in Los Angeles, to be one of the first to leave and to report back to friends — and not to miss school.

• He stayed two weeks in West Los Angeles with the family of one of his mother's camp barbering customers, then about five months in Long Beach with his oldest sister's family.
• On his first day of school a bus driver said he did not stop where they needed; an elderly passenger told them to get on anyway and he would show them the stop. Boys yelled "Jap" at them on the street.
• In a tiny candy store he saw leftover ration coupons on a shelf — a reminder that he had been denied the chance to take part in the war effort.

Starting over

His father was 63 when the war ended, too old to find work easily. His parents borrowed money to buy a 20-room hotel on Hewitt Street near Little Tokyo; his mother ran her barber shop in one of its offices. George moved in in February 1946 and spent a year or two of free time painting and repairing the run-down building.

Buying the hotel was the turning point: not rich, but comfortable — a rise in fortunes, he noted, that the whole country shared after the war.

Sources

Based on "George H. Morishita," one of the ID booklets of Manzanar National Historic Site, National Park Service, written by park rangers with the people profiled and their families; the booklet's first-person account is retold here, with short quotations. The booklet closes with "Wind and Dust," a poem written at Manzanar in 1943 by George Nishimura, age 16, which is not reproduced. For more on the ten camps, see the Park Service's "War Relocation Centers." The booklet calls the building both a motel and a hotel.