Bunro Sakaino Concentration Camp Diary

Transcript

February 10 (Wednesday)

I ate lamb for dinner, and it has been a while since I had some last time. Lamb is supposed to be suitable even for people with some health issues. It is one of my favorites and most welcome ingredients for me while avoiding consuming animal products. Southern wind was constantly blowing today, and our beds and shelves are collecting a lot of dust.

Some families from Oregon are hesitating to reunite with their husbands in the newly constructed internees family center. What is more troubling is that quite a few families send a letter to refuse reunification.

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The reasons are they are afraid that their children will be treated as internees and also that their U.S. citizenship might be stripped away. There is numerous rumors going around in the centers (relocation) [1] about it, and at the same time, they seem to view leaving their current situation as a hardship as young men and women there are having a fun time with dance parties and theater performances. This is definitely the parents’ fault. Of course they have been engaged in the children’s education to raise them as decent U.S. citizens. They deserve my sympathy now that their efforts to educate the nisei generation are all based on illusion and they are going through a dilemma facing the current situation. However, what the U.S government did to Japanese citizens is extreme, and both parents and children cannot afford to be hesitant. It is not even worth discussing about those who loathe the situation where their father is in and refuse to be reunited with him. If they face the reality and recognize what is taking place, they should not have any hesitation to make decisions for the children’s future. Children who refuse to be one, mothers who refuse to be one and wives who do not want to be one. This attitude is not a result of this current war, but stems from our past. This war simply happened to reveal the true feelings of mothers and their children toward the fathers. There is no room for sympathy for that.

The Tsuboi news broadcasted in the evening that news on the radio reported that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan stated all Japanese citizens residing in the U.S. should return to the homeland. It is based on what Mr. Shonan Kimura heard on the radio this afternoon.

[1] These are the words used by the author

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This news must be an enormous shock to the folks in our sixth unit. Those who do not wish to return home are working hard to deny such unfavorable reports. They seemed surprised for a bit and stayed unusually quiet about this topic. Is it an interesting phenomenon.