‘Who will hear me?’

More than 70 years after leaving a Japanese internment camp, a Sonoma woman is moved to share her tragic story of hysteria, prejudice, and politics. By Loretta Carpio Carr.

Standing on the high desert of Tule Lake

Only the wind blows

The plaintive sounds of yesteryears

Once my father’s shakuhachi

Sang songs of longing

To be on the other side of the barbed wire fence

Now the memories of the survivors remain as they talk story

While there is time

Soon even that will be gone

Only the wind song will remain to tell the story

The author of this poem, Tule Windsong, Sonoma resident Tomiko Yabumoto, was born in 1941, just before the start of World War II, and spent her early childhood years in the Japanese internment camp at Tule Lake. She and her family were United States citizens living on their farm in Lincoln, California, in Placer County, when they were removed from their home and incarcerated at the Tule Lake Concentration Camp in Modoc County.

Given the current ICE raids, family separations, and shocking internment of Mexican and Central American children in this country, I contacted my friend Tomiko to learn about her family’s experience. Although her recollections come from a child’s perspective, the impressions have remained with her throughout her life. She provided the following cautionary tale.

Along with her grandparents, parents, and three uncles, one of whom was serving in the United States Army at the time, Tomiko was relocated in 1942 to Tule Lake, one of ten camps built to confine 120,000 Japanese Americans. Her uncle in the military was reclassified as 4-F, “not acceptable for service in the armed forces,” strictly because he was of Japanese descent. Her mother and father had been married only one year when they were forced to leave their home. Two of her younger siblings were born in the camp.

According to a book of recollections of Tule Lake survivors, Kinenhi, Reflections on Tule Lake, racially biased newspaper and film depictions of Japanese incited suspicion and fear, and the U.S. War Department imprisoned Japanese Americans as potential enemies. Photos of Tomiko’s family appear in this book.

Even though there were no incidences of spying or sabotage among the internees, all adults had to answer a loyalty questionnaire. Tomiko described this as a trick to justify imprisonment and divide the community. This caused confusion and resentment among those held, including the men in Tomiko’s family. They asked, “Why should I fight for this country when my parents are locked up?”  Those who protested their unjust incarceration by answering no or refusing to answer questions 27 and 28 were named the “No-No Boys.” They would not serve in the U.S. military and would not swear allegiance to the United States.

Internees were also pressured to renounce their religion and language as evidence of assimilation. For their resistance, 18,000 of the internees were locked up in a separate, harsher camp, Tule Lake Segregation Center, as punishment for being “disloyal.” The Segregation Center was run like a prison with towers, guards with machine guns, and tanks. 

Despite the oppressive conditions, Tomiko related that the Japanese at Tule Lake were very resourceful. They organized their own schools, temples, and art and music classes. Her father worked in the mess hall, so her family had access to left over food even if it wasn’t the type of food they were used to. Many internees planted crops on the rich Tule Lake soil to supplement the rations. She recalled some teenagers crawling under the barbed wire fence at night when the tower spotlight was turned away to gather scrap lumber or driftwood to augment their sparse accommodations.

Among her fondest memories was walking with her grandmother to the bathhouse in the afternoon when it wasn’t so crowded. Lack of privacy was part of the daily living conditions.

Tule Lake was the last camp to close in 1946 by which time over 300 internees including children had died. Tomiko’s family took the train to Sacramento and returned to their ranch, which luckily had not been taken away by the government. The orchards had died from lack of water and care, so her family had to replant and start over.

Tomiko indicated that the people in Lincoln were good to the Yabumoto family upon their return. She explained, “ Farmers help each other,” but when she started school, her mother knew that her daughter might be harassed. Her mother instructed her, “Tell them, ‘I’m not a Jap. I’m Japanese American.’” Her mother had enrolled her in school using her middle name Jean saying it was easier to pronounce, but it may have been an attempt to assimilate. Tomiko resumed using her first name when she became a college student.

She described herself as a pretty serious little kid and felt that children had picked up the fear and trauma of the incarceration. There was not a lot of laughter and joy, but she emphasized, “I feel so grateful to my family for protecting us.”

As an adult, Tomiko went on to serve in the Peace Corp in India, study calligraphy in Japan, and eventually teach English as a Second Language to immigrants in Sonoma. I asked her if her experience at Tule Lake had influenced her choice of career. She answered, “I always fought for the underdog.”

Upon ending our conversation, I thanked her for sharing information that could have been difficult for her to reveal. She stated, “I have to speak up now. For generations, we never spoke up.” There was shame and embarrassment attached to that experience. Looking back, she believes that the Japanese American resisters acted more in accordance with the civil rights guaranteed to all American citizens by the Constitution than the government itself.

It took until the 1980’s for the American government to admit that hysteria, prejudice, and politics had resulted in the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans. Tomiko has twice visited Tule Lake, now a California State Historic Landmark, during the annual pilgrimage of survivors.

She continued, “It took me 72 years to tell my story. When I was at Tule Lake as an infant, I couldn’t speak up. Even now, I wonder who will hear me.” Relating to the current conflicts within this country,  “I believe that resistance is OK. If the law is being broken by the government, that should be corrected.”

Her final message was communicated by a gift of her artwork and calligraphy depicting Mount Shasta dominating a turbulent sky with the Japanese characters for perseverance, patience, and freedom. “A lot of people are feeling hopeless now, so the hopeful image of Mount Shasta is larger and stronger than the clouds of chaos.”