Eiichi “H.E.” Kamiya: A Six-Year-Old at Santa Anita, Jerome and Rohwer

Manzanar National Historic Site publishes short "ID booklets" on Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. This is Eiichi "H.E." Kamiya's first-person account, retold in hubnx's own words.

Family No. 11-017 · Rohwer, Arkansas · Address 38-11-A

Long Beach

Eiichi's father was born in Hawaii, went to Japan at five when his own father died, and came back at 19; his mother was born in California, went to Japan for schooling at five and returned at 15. His father was principal of a Japanese language school in Long Beach. Eiichi was born in 1936 and had two sisters.

After Pearl Harbor his parents feared for the family, and soon the FBI searched the house and jailed his father for several weeks. In March 1942 they had a few weeks' notice; since they could take only what they could carry, most belongings went into storage — and many valuables were missing after the war. Their suitcases held baby clothes, bottles and diapers for his six-month-old sister.

Santa Anita

On April 5, the family was sent to the Santa Anita racetrack assembly centre in Arcadia; the next day was Eiichi's sixth birthday. His sisters, in hospital with pneumonia, joined them a few days later. They lived in horse stalls on straw mattresses for three months while the permanent camps were finished.

Arkansas

A train took them to Jerome, Arkansas, and three months later to Rohwer, where about 9,000 people lived in a square mile of hot, rainy country full of bugs and snakes, the family in one room of a barrack. School taught the usual lessons — he remembers playing an Indian chief in a Thanksgiving programme — and he made new friends. With no toy store, the children made their own from scraps and imagination, played soldiers and cowboys, and hunted with slingshots. Once guards stopped patrolling the fence, they crawled under the wire to fish in the bayou.

After

A week before the war ended they returned to Los Angeles. His father worked in a coat factory and rented a house in East Los Angeles; his mother kept house for others and took in ironing. His parents spoke of the camps without sadness or bitterness and pushed their children to excel as students and citizens. His father studied at night and built a successful business that put all three through college. His sisters became teachers; Eiichi earned bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering at UCLA and worked in aerospace until he retired. He and his wife have two children, both college graduates and married.

Sources

• National Park Service, Manzanar National Historic Site, "Eiichi “H.E.” Kamiya," an ID booklet. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/eiichi-h-e-kamiya.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.