America’s wartime failure

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, December 27th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: living history.

Eighty years ago this month the United States Congress declared war on Japan after the surprise Pearl Harbor attack. Three months later, the federal government created the War Relocation Authority. That agency forced more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans on the West Coast to leave their homes, farms, and businesses.

REICHARD: WORLD senior correspondent Katie Gaultney now with the story of a resilient woman who spent her adolescent years in a US internment camp during World War II.

AUDIO: [SINGING “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” AND APPLAUSE]

KATIE GAULTNEY, REPORTER: Sadako Okada turned 90 this year. She lives in a senior community in Menifee, California, an hour outside of Palm Springs. She’s a social butterfly; about a third of her church came out to celebrate her birthday. A real-life pageant queen in the 1950s, Okada is still striking, with bright white hair and a contagious smile. And she has strong opinions about sports. She loves to watch football and picks her favorite teams based on their quarterbacks. And despite living most of her life near Los Angeles…

OKADA: It's funny. I never rooted for any LA team. Be it basketball, football. I just never did.

She likes to root for the underdog. And maybe that’s because she knows what it’s like to struggle. Okada was 10 years old when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

ROOSEVELT: The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions...

That’s President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his address declaring war on Japan. The bombing of Pearl Harbor flared existing attitudes toward Asians in America. Citing caution and security, government officials overstepped. Two and a half months after the attack, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, allowing the U.S. Army and War Relocation Authority to set up 10 permanent camps to house over 100,000 people of Japanese descent.

Okada, her parents, and her seven siblings had lived on a farm on the border of California and Mexico.

OKADA: So we had tomatoes, lettuce and, you know, just stuff like that.

And suddenly, the government forced her family to leave the farm. She recalled a crowded bus ride, then a train ride, that carried all 10 Kawanamis—Okada’s maiden name—to Poston Camp 1, in Arizona. It was confusing for her and her younger siblings.

OKADA: Being that young, we didn't know why we were going, we didn't understand why, why do we have to leave our farm and go to the desert?

Native-born American citizens made up two-thirds of those interned at the camps. The rest were their Japan-born parents and grandparents. Okada and her siblings were American-born. So while the government forbade them from living on the West Coast for security concerns, they could move farther inland after a brief stay at the camp.

The government released a film in 1944 in an attempt to justify the wartime decision.

FILM: Their evacuation does not imply individual disloyalty, but was ordered to reduce a military hazard at a time when danger of invasion was great.

Her brothers got jobs and moved out of the camp. Her older sister had been a student at UC Berkeley, and once she was allowed to leave the camp, she transferred to the University of Utah. But Okada’s parents were born in Japan. There was no “get out of camp free” card for them. So the rest of the family remained.

Okada remembers rows and rows of tarpaper barracks. Each house was made to hold four families, one family per room. But since the Kawanamis were a family of 10, the authorities gave them two rooms.

OKADA: It was just built with wood. On the outside was tarpaper. We had to cover it because the wood wasn't snug, so the wind would come in.

Her parents did what they could, cleaning it and constructing temporary walls within the rooms for privacy. Okada says they didn’t speak English—so looking back, it must have been extra unsettling for them.

But the kids made the best of things. Okada went to school and remembers that her teachers—who were not Japanese—were “very nice.” She said camp personnel hosted a weekly outdoor movie night. And with the other children in camps, Okada just got to be a kid.

OKADA: We played all kinds of hopscotch and we played the little marbles. We played cards, lots of cards, and we used to play basketball. We loved that.

She doesn’t remember much about leaving the camp, but she knows she was 14 years old. Her family never went back to the farm. After they left Poston, her family stayed in a hostel and at the home of friends in the LA area. They eventually settled there permanently and became gardeners.

In 1990, the U.S. government began sending letters of apology to surviving internees, along with individual redress payments. Reagan announced those plans in 1988.

REAGAN: No payment can make up for those lost years. So, what is most important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor. For here we admit a wrong…

Okada recalled those reparations.

OKADA: The government gave them $20,000 to compensate for our loss, which really didn't cover half of what we left behind, you know, what can you do? You can't say, “I want more,” or, “This isn't fair.”

That “roll with the punches” attitude characterizes Okada. She married a Japanese-American dentist in 1957. Her mother-in-law modeled strong Christian faith and helped Okada remember that life is too short to hold grudges. That attitude served her well in the post-war era, as anti-Asian sentiment persisted for decades. She recalled trying to buy a house in a middle class part of Covina, California, in the 1960s.

OKADA: I would see “for sale” signs, and the real estate agent would say, “Well, I can't show you that,” meaning they would not sell to Asians.

But, just as when she played hopscotch on the dusty Arizona ground at the internment camp, Okada made the best of it. She did buy a house in that neighborhood; a difficult resident decided to sell her house to the Okadas to spite her neighbors. But Okada won them over with her hospitality and bubbliness.

OKADA: And, you know, it turned out, it was the nicest neighborhood. I couldn't have asked for a nicer neighborhood.

Today she has 12 grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and two more on the way. She likes to take her grandkids to Dairy Queen when she visits them. Okada’s husband of over 60 years died in January. She went from living with 10 people in two rooms in 1941, to living by herself in a big house 70 years later. But with her can-do attitude, Okada continues to adjust.

OKADA: When you're used to living with somebody for 63 years and suddenly being alone is kinda lonesome, but I'll get used to. There's always that little bit of lonesomeness. So I guess I'll just have to live with it.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Katie Gaultney.

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