Joyce Okazaki: A Child at Manzanar, Photographed by Ansel Adams

Family

• Joyce's grandfather came from Odawara, Japan, in 1897, at 17; her grandmother came from the same village in 1906 to marry him. They lived in Pasadena, where Joyce's mother was born.
• Her father was born in Kyoto and came in 1916, at 12, with his parents.
• Both parents were college graduates — her mother in physical education, her father in architecture. But the Depression, and his not being a citizen, left no work as an architect, and both worked in her grandfather's dry goods store.

War

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, the family was celebrating her grandfather's birthday at a Chinese restaurant. The FBI jailed him and later sent him to the prison camp at Missoula, Montana, as an enemy alien.

To keep the family together, her parents chose to go to Manzanar with her grandmother, aunts and uncles.

• They had little time to sell the car. Furniture and appliances went into the basement of her grandfather's store, which the government closed and boarded up.
• Joyce had two favorite dolls, but with one suitcase each there was no room even for one.
• Joyce, her parents and sister left on April 2, 1942, by train and then Army transport, arriving in the dark. Relatives had arrived the day before.

Camp

At first eight people shared one room — Joyce's family of four with her grandmother, two aunts and an uncle — until more barracks were built.

• School: she had been in second grade at Maryknoll and asked to go into third. After testing she did fourth grade in summer school and went on to fifth — a blur. Adjusting later to sixth grade in Chicago was hard; she did not do well again until eighth grade.
• Ansel Adams photographed her, alone and with her family, for his book Born Free and Equal. The photos have since appeared in many museum and gallery shows.
• She played cards, paper dolls, hopscotch and other games with two friends. One she kept up with by letter and e-mail for life; the other she found again at a reunion almost 50 years later.
• She disliked going outside to the latrines and showers, lining up for meals, and the food — canned green beans, spinach, pork and beans, and rubbery squid — and often sat an hour at the table refusing a bite.

The rabbit feast

Meat was scarce, so the block raised rabbits — and they multiplied. For Christmas 1943, the block slaughtered them all for a feast, a big event watched by a crowd; the fur was saved to sell. At dinner Joyce took one bite, could not swallow, and went hungry. She has never eaten rabbit since.

Chicago

Her father got permission to leave in February 1944 and looked for work in New York; the job he found was in Chicago. After a few months he found an apartment in the housing shortage and sent for the family, who left camp in July 1944, visiting his father in Salt Lake City on the way.

They spent a month in an apartment over a bar at Clark and Division, then six years in a condemned tenement, quickly renovated because of the shortage. Joyce went to the local parochial school. She never hid where she came from; classmates had never met Japanese Americans and knew nothing of the camps, but treated her no differently.

Her advice

Be tolerant of all people, and learn about other cultures — knowledge prevents prejudice. Be concerned when anyone's civil rights are taken away, and don't say "It's not my problem": the same solution could be used again. "We all cherish our freedom. We need to protect it zealously."

Sources

Based on "Joyce Okazaki," 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."