Rose Matsui Ochi: From Rohwer to Redress and Manzanar National Historic Site

Manzanar National Historic Site publishes short "ID booklets" on Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Rose Matsui Ochi's was written from her oral history interview; it is retold here in hubnx's own words.

Family No. 12732 · Rohwer, Arkansas · Address 12-9-F

Family

Rose's father, Yoshiaki Matsui, was born in Kumamoto, Japan, in 1900. His father and uncle had been brought to America to work in railway roundhouses after Chinese labourers built the western railways; he followed, but went to college and worked for a Japanese trading company. Her mother, Mutsuko Matsukawa, born in 1908, came as an "arranged bride". Rose was born in East Los Angeles on December 15, 1938.

The evacuation hit her older sister Michiko hardest: a young woman with a nice home, a private school, a piano and lovely clothes, she lost it all. Her brother Yoshikazu, two years older than Rose, never stopped being angry about it, like many who were held. Another brother, Takeshi, was born in camp with an intellectual disability and died in his teens; many women in camp were depressed and tried not to have children there.

Rohwer

Rose remembers little of the train to Rohwer, Arkansas — mainly people crying as they left their lives behind, rumours flying, and, even to a small child, clear fear behind the stoicism. In camp she remembers exploring the swamps and their creatures; for a child it was a good time, thanks to parents who stayed strong and hid their worries.

She doesn't think Arkansas had a history of hostility toward Asians. At Christmas, poor rural townspeople sent gifts "from Santa", and the teachers, nurses and doctors were kind — though determined to make the children American. At home she spoke Japanese and was called Takayo, "child of high ideals". Camp renamed her Rose — she jokes that it could have been Petunia.

After camp

The family's money was gone. Her parents had come on a business visa and, barred by the laws of the time from citizenship, faced deportation, despite having four American-born children; American lawyers fought the case and the orders were overturned. Back in East Los Angeles they crowded in with an uncle and cousins. One man gardened, another washed dishes; her father put on hat, shirt and tie each day to find whatever work he could; her mother kept a victory garden and took in sewing. When her parents could finally naturalise in 1952, they needed citizens to vouch for them — and the neighbours who did so were a Scottish family whose son had come home shell-shocked, so badly that the children walked on the grass past their house to keep their roller skates quiet.

Rose was a tomboy who envied the men's deal — no cooking or cleaning. Her parents told her a girl should become a good wife and mother, but when she brought home grades, trophies and class offices, her father would mutter in Japanese what a waste such gifts were on a girl — which she heard as praise. She talked him into teaching her kendo alongside her brother, and learned less about fighting than about taking a hit and facing her fears. At Lorena Street Elementary, among the first Japanese Americans there, she was called slurs and fought often — which, she says, taught people to leave her alone. Her brother went to college, volunteered for the Army and married a white woman, a match her parents accepted once grandchildren arrived; Rose, after dating all kinds of boys, surprised them by marrying a Japanese American, Tommy Ochi.

Law and public service

She graduated from UCLA in 1959 and taught physical education for seven years, then earned an M.S. in education and chose law school at Loyola to work on education reform. As a poverty-law fellow at the Western Center on Law and Poverty she was co-counsel on the landmark school-funding case Serrano v. Priest. After the trial win in 1974 she joined Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley's staff for 20 years, rising to executive assistant heading the criminal justice office, and served as counsel to the Manzanar Committee, in the redress effort and on the President's Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy.

At the signing of the redress law — which gave each surviving incarcerated person $20,000 — President Reagan read from an article Rose had sent him, about an Army captain presenting a medal to a Japanese American soldier's mother and saying that blood spilled on a beach is all one colour, and then revealed that the captain was Ronald Reagan. She was glad the article may have helped.

Manzanar National Historic Site

When the National Park Service considered making Manzanar a landmark, it approached Mayor Bradley's office, since the city's Department of Water and Power owned the land. Rose worked for the law creating Manzanar National Historic Site, winning support in Inyo County, the City of Los Angeles and Congress, and after the land transfer chaired the advisory commission helping the Park Service preserve the site and tell its stories. In 1994 she was appointed to the White House Office of Drug Control Policy, and later became, she says, the first Asian American woman at the Assistant Attorney General level, under Janet Reno — positions from which she could work with the Interior Department and Congress.

At one public hearing, an elderly World War II veteran in his American Legion cap and medals said he had come to oppose the site but could not, because he had not known until then that those held were Americans — people came to learn how many Japanese Americans fought in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Hostility, she says, can melt away in the face of the truth.

Rose has spent more than 30 years creating and preserving Manzanar. She wants the story told: that in crises the Constitution's protections are often ignored, that protecting the vulnerable is every American's duty, and that Manzanar and redress show a country willing to acknowledge past injustice — so that the past need not be prologue.

Sources

• National Park Service, Manzanar National Historic Site, "Rose Matsui Ochi," an ID booklet written from her oral history. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/rose-matsui-ochi.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.