Mas Segimoto: A Terminal Island Boy at Manzanar

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

Family No. 4524 · Manzanar, California · Address 10-5-4

Terminal Island

Mas Segimoto's parents both came from Wakayama Prefecture in Japan: his father, Katsutaro Segimoto, in 1906, and his mother, Kiso Dakeno, in 1920, as a "picture bride" in a marriage arranged by their parents. His father was a commercial fisherman on Terminal Island, crewing boats that netted sardines and mackerel; his mother worked in the canneries processing the catch.

There were four children, three girls and a boy. The eldest sister had finished high school and gone to work in San Pedro. Mas was in sixth grade at Mildred Obarr Walizer Elementary School, where every pupil was of Japanese descent and Japanese was spoken in class and out.

After Pearl Harbor

At 12, Mas did not fully grasp what the attack on Pearl Harbor meant, but the community feared violence. On December 8, as the fishing boats came in, the FBI arrested his father and the other Japanese fishermen. He was allowed to unload the fish, but not to change his clothes, before being taken to the immigration station on Terminal Island. With no fish being caught or canned, Mas's mother lost her job.

The family was allowed to visit his father after he was moved to the Tujunga detention facility, a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp. Guards stood in front of them and they were required to speak English, which none of them knew, so they talked with him in sign language.

The family left Terminal Island, leaving much behind, to live with a cousin of his father in North Hollywood — weeks before the Navy ordered every Japanese family off the island within 48 hours. They owned little of value beyond necessities, so there was not much to sell. For camp they could take only what they could carry; Mas packed clothes and some of his mother's things, and had no treasured possessions to leave. The family's one box camera counted as contraband and was handed to the authorities.

Manzanar

The family, all but his father, went straight to the Manzanar War Relocation Center. His father, then held in North Dakota, was later moved to Fort Missoula, Montana, and finally to the Santa Fe Internment Camp in New Mexico. Mas wrote to him in English; the replies came back with many passages blacked out by censors. It was two years before his father was released and joined them at Manzanar.

Mas's first thought was how desolate the place was, barren and dusty. The close-knit Terminal Island community settled together in Blocks 9 and 10 and parts of two neighbouring blocks. The first job was to set up the room and fill long fabric bags with straw for mattresses. Two families shared the unit, with blankets hung from the ceiling for privacy, until the other family moved once more barracks were built. Some time later linoleum was laid over the floor cracks to keep out the dust during storms.

Most people in camp were Nisei, U.S.-born children of Japanese immigrants, and most spoke English — so speaking English at school felt strange to Mas after an all-Japanese grammar school. He began seventh grade at Manzanar, in classrooms that took up one unit of a barrack each and were built just like the living quarters.

Sports, judo and fishing

His happiest times were playing baseball and basketball. A sports-minded man in the block built a horizontal bar, rings and parallel bars for the boys. Mas had wanted judo lessons before the war but his family could not afford them, so when the camp's judo hall was finished he joined at once and reached green belt.

He was one of the "naughty boys" who often sneaked out to fish. Once, early in the morning, he and two older friends from Terminal Island slipped out and hiked well up toward Mount Williamson, ate lunch and fished a creek (he caught nothing). Security loosened over time, and it became easy to slip past the empty guard towers; at the creeks he tied a line to a straight branch and started fishing.

New Jersey and after

In September 1945, at 16, Mas left camp for Seabrook Farms in New Jersey, where an older sister and her friend had gone in 1944 after graduating from Manzanar High, followed by his mother and another sister. The housing reminded him of Manzanar — long, narrow barracks of four or five apartments — but each unit had small rooms with its own kitchen and bathroom, so there was far more privacy.

He went to high school in nearby Bridgeton, alongside students who had come to Seabrook from other camps, and graduated in 1948 with 43 other Japanese Americans; at their 50-year reunion in 1998, all of them were still alive.

Camp, he says, changed his outlook and goals very little. School in New Jersey, and the fierce competition among Nisei students for good grades, showed him that higher education was the way out of his parents' generation's blue-collar work. A high school chemistry teacher inspired him to choose chemical engineering.

His father settled in Long Beach, went back to fishing and earned enough to put Mas through college. After graduating, Mas volunteered for two years of military service, then spent 38 years working with reinforced plastics in the aerospace and defence industries.

When he and his wife go fishing in the Eastern Sierra, they turn in at Manzanar, and he tells her this is where he used to live. He feels no bitterness about the place — only good memories. His advice to students: know yourself, earn a living doing something you enjoy, prepare during high school, and go on to higher education in your chosen field.

Sources

• National Park Service, Manzanar National Historic Site, "Mas Segimoto," an ID booklet. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/mas-segimoto.htm
• More: the ten War Relocation Authority centers; Manzanar ID booklets.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.