Saburo Sasaki: From Venice, California, to Manzanar — and Back as a Guide

Family

• Saburo's father came to Hawaii as a laborer at 17 in 1896 and moved to the mainland in 1904. He went back to Japan to marry and returned in 1923.
• The family lived in Venice, California, working as farm hands for a friend. Saburo's two older brothers were born in 1924 and 1926, and Saburo in 1934.
• His father became a tenant farmer, since the law barred him from owning land.

After Pearl Harbor

Everything changed after December 7, 1941. Saburo could not attend school, and his parents, as the government directed, got rid of anything considered illegal — photographs, letters and firearms.

• Christmas 1941 was the worst holiday of his life: the family was afraid even to go out for a tree or gifts.
• New Year's 1942, usually a big celebration with traditional food, wine and friends, was somber and bare.
• A good neighbor, a retired Los Angeles police detective, offered to store their belongings, since they could take only what they could carry.

Manzanar

On April 28, 1942, military police escorted them onto Los Angeles city buses bound for Manzanar.

• They shared a 20-by-20-foot room with another family until more rooms were ready.
• The tar-papered barracks were bare, with knotholes in the floor that fell out and let in snakes and other creatures.
• Winters were bitter: in storms, people strung clotheslines to guide themselves to the latrines and mess halls. In summer dust storms they used the same lines.
• The retired detective shipped their stored belongings to the camp and visited to make sure they had arrived — the only outside visitor the family ever had.

Cleveland

On October 15, 1945, they took a bus to Los Angeles's Union Terminal and a Southern Pacific train for Cleveland by way of Chicago. Saburo and his father stood the whole way to Chicago, where his older brother met them.

Cleveland was good to him. With a counselor's help he graduated from high school and from a cooperative engineering school. He met his wife there, and his best man was a friend from his first days in elementary school after Manzanar.

Telling the story

• He volunteered with the local Japanese American Citizens League chapter to tell the story of Manzanar, to help prevent such treatment from ever happening again.
• He and his wife, Ann, volunteered at Manzanar National Historic Site for several weeks each year, leading school programs and talking with visitors.
• In 2007 he took part in an electronic field trip, MANZANAR: Desert Diamonds Behind Barbed Wire, sharing his childhood memories with students.

Sources

Based on "Saburo Sasaki," 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."