Bunro Sakaino Concentration Camp Diary

May 3 (Sunday)

It was my second turn to work at the mess hall. I went there while I was suffering from a stomach ache, and it was relatively easy as a lot of people work there, and the mess hall is not quite large. People in the kitchen were working hard though.

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Mr. Yakuji Otomo (52) from Nagasaki prefecture, who was considered as an earlier successful person in Panama, passed away at the military hospital at 9 last night. I heard he initially was temporarily exempt from being sent to the U.S. mainland due to the diagnosis of terminal tongue cancer, but for some reason, he was brought up to this camp. It was reported that he was married to a black woman with child/children. He is the first victim, and I don’t know what to say and cannot help feeling sorry for him that he passed in his loneliness in a foreign land tens of thousands miles away from home, forcibly removed from his wife and child/children.

The following is as reported this evening. Upon daily meetings with the administration, it will soon be allowed to subscribe to newspapers women would like to read. Approximately 70 washing pans and boards will be provided, and it was predicted that we will be moved to barracks within the next two months. Visit by the Consul General of Spain has been confirmed, and a meeting with Japanese representatives should take place. As for moving into barracks, it was not mentioned if a part of the buildings under ongoing vigorous construction in the fort will be assigned to us or it means we are to be sent to another location. Either way, this is good news we recently have received. We were also informed that the opening of a kiosk and establishing the autonomous system was announced. This good news seemed to suddenly energize each tent, and people were talking in them even after the light out time.

We found out that Mrs. Miyake, who was detained in the INS facility in Seattle, has been incarcerated in the women’s camp in Texas with other ladies.

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The wife of a Japanese teacher from Salt Lake Mr. Uchida, who is interned in this camp, is in the same place. According to a letter from her to her husband, she is staging in a bungalow, working as an educator with Mrs. Uchida (teacher at a Japanese school) at a facility like a kindergarten for children of people from Panama and working as a piano instructor as well. She said they are being treated well by the authorities, and the ladies are satisfied with it.