No Hot Water at Minidoka: How Incarcerated Women Backed the 1944 Boilermen's Strike

A January 6, 1944 memorandum from an administrator at the Minidoka incarceration site in Idaho, to its "boilermen, janitors, and janitresses" opens with a striking line: "A delegation of women representing families in all the blocks of the camp have come to me making demands that they have hot water immediately."

It shows a part of wartime incarceration that is often overlooked: resistance led by women. Because of racial prejudice, innocent Japanese Americans were presumed disloyal, and women faced pressure not to speak out — yet Japanese American women demanded that administrators fix dehumanizing living conditions.

The memorandum from War Relocation Authority administrators to Minidoka's boilermen and janitorial staff, asking them to submit a resolution "in the name of the women of the camp" to Washington. NPS Collections, Minidoka National Historic Site (MIIN 99, Boilermen Strike Letter); donated by Gene Itogawa for Tom and Suma Matsumoto.

The strike

In late 1943, the War Relocation Authority (WRA), which ran the camps, ordered from its Washington headquarters that Minidoka cut its boilermen and janitorial staff while lengthening their hours. By early January 1944, the 160 incarcerated men and women in those jobs went on strike over the unfair conditions. They shut off hot water across the camp — sparing only the hospital, to protect the most vulnerable.

A camp without hot water

• Minidoka stood in Idaho's high desert. Its barracks were hastily built of green wood that shrank, leaving gaps in uninsulated walls that let in freezing cold and high winds.
• People had been forced from their homes in the West Coast exclusion area, sometimes in days, and most weren't ready for the winter or the crude buildings. One woman later recalled the bitter cold, and icicles on the water tower so huge they were dangerous, when her baby was born one December.
• Six families shared each barrack and twelve barracks made a block, with one mess hall and one bathroom building for more than 300 people; at its peak the camp held almost 10,000. Food poisoning and tuberculosis were common.
• Without hot water, washing diapers and keeping children clean became nearly impossible, raising health risks for everyone.

The women step in

After two days without hot water, seventy-five Issei and Nisei women held a sit-in at the assistant director's office. They insisted that a letter be sent in their name, as "women and mothers," to the WRA director in Washington, demanding that hot water be restored by meeting the strikers' terms. Their argument: many of them had sons, husbands and brothers serving in the armed forces, yet they were enduring hardships that a little effort from officials could fix.

It matters that women, not the strikers or block managers, confronted the administrators. Resistance wasn't always welcomed among incarcerees — many felt intense pressure to prove their loyalty by complying. But at the sit-in, the women deflected blame from the boilermen, and speaking as mothers probably drew others to stand with the strikers. Soon after the letter was sent, negotiations began, and hot water was back within a week.

The women's support is all the more significant given the imbalance of power in confinement: incarcerees lived among armed guards, with limited contact with the outside world, dependent on the authorities for food and necessities, and at risk of punishment. The courage of Minidoka's women to protect their families and community brought some decency to a "home" that was anything but decent.

This article is part of the National Park Service's Home and Homelands exhibition, supported in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation. On terminology, see the NPS guide to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Sources

Based on Nicole Martin, "Memo to the Incarcerated Women of Minidoka," Home and Homelands Exhibition, National Park Service, Minidoka National Historic Site, drawing on the Minidoka Irrigator (January 8 and 15, 1944), Nina Wallace (Densho, 2021), Kay Sakai Nakao's 2006 interview (Densho Digital Archive) and the women's letter of January 6, 1944; a work of the United States government in the public domain; rewritten in hubnx's own words.