Japanese American San Bruno internment camp: 80 years later

“All of a sudden, all our telephone poles had these posters saying ‘people of Japanese ancestry you’re going to be removed,’” recalled Ben Takeshita of the days after the order was signed. Takeshita was 11 years old when his family was ordered out of their San Mateo home into a camp — a hastily converted horse race track in San Bruno.

Nearly 8,000 families living in the Bay Area were sent to the site, the present-day location of the Shops at Tanforan, where families were forced to live in horse stalls or hastily constructed roofless barracks, without running water or basic privacy. Dozens of similarly repurposed facilities in other parts of the state, as well as Washington and Oregon, hosted similar conditions.

“The federal government was saying these so-called camps were for our protection,” Takeshita said. “But we found out very quickly that protection meant that the barbed wire around our camp was facing inward … guard towers had military police with rifles and machine guns facing inwards.”

Takeshita and his family, like the majority of those held at Tanforan, were transferred to a long-term camp in Topaz, Utah, in September of 1942, where they were held for the duration of the war in the harsh, dusty desert. Topaz was one of 10 long-term detention centers Japanese Americans were held in Utah, Montana, New Mexico and North Dakota.

In the weeks leading up to their internment, families were forced to make hasty arrangements to sell or secure their belongings, not knowing when — or if — they would return. Federal laws at the time barred Japanese people from becoming naturalized citizens, which also prevented property ownership. Takeshita’s parents for this reason rented their home, which they were able to quickly sell to a family member who was born in the United States.

Takeshita recalls his father, who owned a landscaping business, locking away his tools in a shed behind the house and leaving his work truck on the street. Families were permitted only to take what they could carry.

“My mother made sure we put on all the clothing we could wear,” Takeshita said. A few marbles stuffed into his pocket were the only toys he could bring. After the war, Takeshita said his father was able to restart his landscaping business — after replacing tools that had been stolen from the shed.

But for other families, more than just tools were taken.

Naomi Patridge was 3 years old when her family was ordered into internment, first Tanforan and later Topaz. Patridge’s father, prior to the war, owned a large ranch on the Pescadero coast.

As with many land owners, upon returning, he discovered his property had been foreclosed on and confiscated by the Bank Of America.

“They went back to nothing,” Patridge, the former mayor of Half Moon Bay, said. “My mom and dad had to start all over … financially it was really difficult.”

Patridge said her father became a sharecropper and was unable to obtain land again in his lifetime. Her family was among few families originally from the Bay Area who returned to the coast amid racism in the years following the war. She recalls her father struggled to find repair shops to service his farm equipment. Many families initially opted to relocate to the East Coast.

Patridge said her parents never discussed the hardships they faced in internment or after, something that was common among Japanese Americans.

“I didn’t know a lot about it until I was older and learned what happened,” she said. “As far as the hardships a lot of people suffered, we, as little ones, didn’t have that … most of the suffering was done by people that were older.”

Karyl Matsumoto, who was 3 months old when sent to a camp in Manzanar, California, recalls a similar experience. Her mother, she said, did not speak about the subject until late in her life, after convincing from her daughter.

“It took a lot for the Japanese people to talk about it, they felt ashamed and they were embarrassed ... it was a shame they carried,” Matsumoto said. Matsumoto, the former mayor of South San Francisco, was brought to the camps as an orphan, later adopted by her parents who ran an orphanage inside the Manzanar camp.

She said her father, who had been an accountant and was a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, struggled to get work. “All he could get was selling pots and pans and vacuum cleaners to the Japanese … he was very embarrassed.”

Loyalty

For Takeshita, the stigma he felt after the war spurred him to join the military, where he went on to serve in the Korean War.

He was eager to prove his loyalty to the United States in large part because of the bravery of his older brother during internment — bravery that flagged his family as “disloyal,” according to the FBI.

In 1943, detainees were made to answer a questionnaire, later referred to a loyalty test. Detainees were asked whether they would volunteer for active duty combat, and another whether they had forsworn their loyalty to the Japanese emperor.

“My older brother, he knew about the U.S. Constitution, and how illegal this executive order was, so he was trying to convince people to answer these two questions in the negative as a form of protest,” Takeshita said, who explained many detainees were born in the United States and “had no idea who the emperor was to begin with.”

“If you answered this question yes you were saying that at one time you had sworn allegiance,” he said, adding that many parents similarly could not honestly answer that they would agree to serve in active combat.

Takeshita said all members of his family older than 17 answered the questions in the negative, and as a result were sent to a special “segregation center” near Lake Tule in Northern California. His brother was questioned about his activism, even placed before a firing squad while blindfolded as an intimidation technique.

Two years after Takeshita and his family were brought to the Lake Tule camp, World War II ended and, in September 1945, he and his family were allowed to return to San Mateo.

Diligence today

Today, Takeshita, Patridge and Matsumoto share common sentiments, emphasizing the need for diligence in preventing similar events from occurring again.

Patridge said when people ask her if she thinks it could happen again, she says yes.

“I don’t know if people would be incarcerated, put into camps like we were, but I think the prejudice can be widespread, and it can multiply and it can get really bad,” she said.

“People haven’t learned,” warned Matsumoto. “It doesn’t matter the color of your skin, the shape of your eye, or the texture of your hair.”

Takeshita said since retiring, he’s focused his energy on educating people about the importance of protecting civil rights, including those defined in the Constitution.

“This kind of thing did happen to us,” he said. “[We need to] make sure that people interpret the Constitution correctly, and make sure the people we vote for interpret the Constitution correctly so this kind of thing won’t happen again.”

corey@smdailyjournal.com

(650) 344-5200, ext. 105