Sue Kunitomi Embrey: Manzanar Should Stand as a Symbol

Family number 2614

Sue Kunitomi Embrey's mother had lived in the United States since before World War I, but the law barred Asian immigrants from citizenship. A widow who wanted to support herself while raising her children, she had owned her own store for just a year when the family was ordered out — it must have broken her heart to give it up.

When Little Tokyo was ordered evacuated, the head of each household registered and received a family number. Theirs went to Sue's oldest brother: her mother was 2614A, and the eight children followed as B, C, D and on down. Her oldest brother, married with a six-week-old son, had a family number of his own.

The trip

On Saturday, May 9, they were told to be at Los Angeles's old Union Station at 8:00 in the morning with their luggage. The trains had been brought out of storage and still had gas lights. The ride to Lone Pine took all day, and Greyhound buses carried them on to Manzanar. It was dark when they arrived; they could see nothing.

The wind

The next morning — a Sunday, she thought Mother's Day — they went to collect their luggage in the center firebreak, and the wind began to blow.

• They could not see; dust got in their eyes and grit in their teeth.
• It was nearly impossible to find a bag; with nothing but barracks to stop it, things flew everywhere, and one barrack roof blew off.
• People lost their way in the dust. Everything stopped.

Daily life

• Meals were often "slop suey" — mixed cooked vegetables — eaten with Army folding utensils that came apart and spilled food, or with a spoonful of Jell-O dropped on hot rice.
• Every night after supper, Sue and her best friend Cherry walked the camp perimeter — the only way to talk without someone listening.
• At night the searchlights in the guard towers followed anyone who left their apartment.

What she remembered most

Her most lasting memory was how people pulled together to make things better for everyone, even with many of their leaders arrested. The camp was bare when they arrived — bulldozed for barracks, with nothing growing. Gradually people ordered fish and built fish ponds, relying heavily on the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs.

Her view

She was, above all, disillusioned that her own country would do this to a group of people "just because we looked like the enemy." Restrictions on minorities were common in the '40s and before. America, she said, must see itself as a diverse nation in which everyone brings strength.

"Manzanar should stand as a symbol of something that happened in America; had happened before and could happen again."

It takes people aware of the past to keep it from being repeated. But she also saw strength in the government's apology — its admission that it was a mistake, that Japanese Americans were loyal citizens and law-abiding parents. Liberty is precious, she said; everyone must stay vigilant and work to strengthen it.

Context, not from the booklet: Sue Kunitomi Embrey went on to help lead the Manzanar Committee, which organized pilgrimages to the site and campaigned for its preservation as a national historic site.

Sources

Based on "Sue Kunitomi Embrey," 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 note on her later work for Manzanar is added for context and is not in the booklet.