Lillian Matsumoto and Manzanar's Children's Village

Written by Lillian Matsumoto with a friend's help.

Before the war

• Born Lillian Iida in Salt Lake City on February 4, 1913, the oldest of five children of Shiro and Isa (Tomita) Iida. The family moved to Berkeley in 1929, where her father worked for the Nichi Bei Times.
• She earned a graduate certificate in social welfare at the University of California.
• In 1935 she became assistant superintendent of the Shonien ("Children's Garden"), a Los Angeles home for Japanese American children founded in 1914 by Rokuichi Joy Kusumoto.
• When the FBI took Kusumoto, a Japanese citizen, on the day of Pearl Harbor, Lillian became superintendent. With the future uncertain, she married Harry Matsumoto, a young Nisei board member, on February 15, 1942.

Moving the orphans

The Army found Japanese American children in the Shonien, the Maryknoll home and the Salvation Army home in San Francisco, and a few in other orphanages and foster homes. The government first planned to leave the orphanages in place — but Lillian and Harry could not see how to justify staying in the military zone when everyone else was removed. They asked that the children go with the community, and the Army let them choose the camp.

• They chose Manzanar because it was still in California, for legal and financial reasons, and picked a site beside the new hospital, by an apple orchard — part of the camp but a little apart.
• They brought the children's small chairs and tables, the piano, cribs (they heard only cots were issued) and a mountain of diapers for any need. "We just didn't know what was in our future."
• On June 23, 1942, they left with 62 children, aged 1½ to 17. Young Quakers from the American Friends Service Committee brought food and played with the children while the staff packed.
• Two buses and a van went with armed soldiers, bayonets fixed, who stood guard at the door at every stop. On the way, a four-year-old girl stood up and sang "God Bless America," not knowing all the words. Lillian saw tears running down the young soldier's cheek.

The Children's Village

Manzanar was the only camp with a children's home. In all, 105 children — from three months to 17 years old, all American-born — came under its care. Any parentless child in the West Coast exclusion zone with even a trace of Japanese ancestry was included; three siblings came from Alaska, their Japanese father detained by the FBI and their Alaska Native mother hospitalized with tuberculosis.

• Three buildings, each 25 by 135 feet, better built than the barracks — wood-sided, with tight floors against dust and drafts, and three coal stoves each.
• • No. 1: dining hall and kitchen, and a social hall for nursery school, activities and the piano; a professional cook saved sugar for holiday treats.
  • No. 2: the nursery and the girls' dormitory.
  • No. 3: the boys' dormitory and a laundry room.
• Lillian, Harry and four adults lived with the children; the staff totaled nine.
• In the second spring, camp gardeners volunteered to plant a lawn and went further, building a rustic fence of tree trunks and a gazebo — a cool, park-like spot unique in the camp. Director Ralph Merritt loved to show it off.
• The children went to camp schools, played on a baseball team in the camp league, attended churches and joined clubs — as normal a life as possible, with the usual parental rules.

Leaving

In July 1944 Lillian and Harry filed to leave camp, asking to take one child they meant to adopt; they stayed until September to train their successor, Eva Robbins. The Children's Village closed in September 1945. The Shonien never reopened; as far as Lillian knew, children were returned to relatives where possible and the rest went to foster homes.

In May 1992 the "children" held a 50th anniversary reunion — for many, the first chance to talk about those years with others who had been there. Lillian was struck by what wonderful adults they had become, and remained sure the home had played a positive role.

Sources

Based on "Lillian I. Matsumoto," one of the ID booklets of Manzanar National Historic Site, National Park Service, written by park rangers with the people profiled and their families, written by Lillian Matsumoto with the help of a friend; 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."