There were over 150 Japanese families living in Loomis; it was a large community for such a small town. In the schools, too, there were a lot of Japanese kids. I started school in 1928; we were living in the country, so I rode the bus the school provided. I spoke only Japanese then; what little English I knew I picked up during the few miserable months I spent in kindergarten.

Reading was daunting. Father helped me every night through the first two readers, laboriously sounding out the words in a heavy accent. With the third reader he threw up...

Rarely does a day go by when my thoughts don’t turn to my parents, Fukumatsu and Kofusa, an unlikely couple who first met at Angel Island—she a seventeen-year-old picture bride, he a man of the world, age thirty-one. Both were attractive people, and I often wonder if that was the reason for their tempestuous life together. No, I don’t think it was vanity; it was more their character. They were fairly similar—strong-willed and unbending. When he tried to dominate her, there was tension because she would not relent, always standing her ground, asserting her place. They fought a...

This journey to early Sacramento Nihonmachi begins at the Southern Pacific station on I Street, a short distance from the boardinghouse where we stayed on occasion during the time we lived in Loomis. Actually, I don’t remember ever going inside the station. It was rather forbidding, enclosed within an iron fence and gate. But I was always conscious of the trains coming and going, day and night, whenever we were at the boardinghouse, Nankai-ya.

A haven for folks from Wakayama Prefecture in Japan, Nankai-ya was run by a family from Wakayama who were related to my father. We were always...

The last time I met my friend Jack in Loomis, he reminded me of a bit of history we share. “We go back a long way, don’t we? We used to go to Japanese school together,” he said, and I was reminded of the carpool our families used to have when we were kids. Every Saturday morning his father, with Jack and his brother in tow, would stop for me on the way to Nihongo Gakko in Penryn. This was convenient, but it meant I had to be up and ready and not pretend to be sick. My father would...

The first bento I can remember is the one I used to take to kindergarten. My parents knew how I hated going to kindergarten, so they bribed me with a special “obento.” There was a meat sandwich, usually ham; some kind of fruit; and a piece of cake or candy. The only thing is, I didn’t get to eat much of it. Other kids got to it first; they were like animals. We were all Nisei; the only non-Nisei was the teacher. Everyone spoke English except me. So kindergarten was no picnic for me.

This reminds me of the bento...

When I was almost eight we moved to town—my parents had taken over the fish market/grocery store. One good thing about the move was that I didn’t have to ride the bus to school and risk missing it going home, as I had once and the school principal had to drive me home. My parents didn’t know what to make of that, but that’s another story. This one is about walking to school, which took only ten minutes even with my tiny strides. I could also go home for lunch. So there was no more lunch pail to carry...

From time to time, I find myself thinking about Dominguez Mendoza, wondering if he is still alive. I owe him a treat, a milkshake. It sounds silly, but it happened when I was fourteen.

At first, I couldn’t tell Dominguez or anybody else from the twenty or more Filipino men out at the ranch. They all seemed alike to me—the same dark faces, the bandana neckerchiefs, the light, quick feet, and the Tagalog speech. Maybe we Japanese all seemed alike to them. I don’t know.

Anyway, I kept away from them as much as I could, even though we...

“I will go and return . . . itte kaerimasu,” the little boy said, repeating the Japanese expression he had learned a few days before. Even now, I can’t forget how he seemed to know that the expression is followed by some movement away, for after each time he said it he would wheel his tricycle around and drive off—to school, to work, to town, or wherever else his imagination might take him. Soon he will be saying it every morning as he goes off to school, and it will become a part of his growing up. But, like...

It was after dinner. A few men had filed out of the kitchen door, wiping the sweat off their hot faces with a red or blue bandana. Some had finished supper and were sitting in the shade on a stray cot or empty lug boxes.

“It sure is hot,” one man said.

“Eating in that hot room is like working in the field,” another man said.

“It’s the August heat, same every year,” a solemn-faced man said.

After a loud and long conversation with the female cook, the last man stumbled out of the kitchen. He was a small man....

That night, my brother sat at the table listening to the radio the boss had given us for Christmas. Since we were on the West Coast, he had already listened to programs on the year’s major news events and heard the crowds in New York and Chicago welcome in the New Year. Now the radio was tuned to a program coming directly from a party in some fancy hotel in San Francisco. I don’t think he liked this for he kept switching stations; but everywhere people were doing the same thing—drinking, dancing, making a lot of noise—and it...

It’s an ordinary felt hat, brown, and not stiff like cardboard that would crack with age. Though inexpensive, the felt must have been of good quality. There was enough suppleness that I could reshape it into porkpie hat, as I did when I decided to start wearing it. I thought the high crown wasn’t right for a young man, a college student, which I was at the time. So I decided to reshape it to suit myself.

Papa had bought the hat at the J.C. Penney store in Roseville, where we bought all our clothing when I was growing up....

I mentioned before that camp was exciting, at least at first. I was nineteen years old and eager for new adventures. There were all these new people of different and interesting backgrounds to meet. Strangely, camp gave me a chance to pursue what interested me the most: writing and acting, performing in front of people. I had taken a drama course at Dorsey High School during my year in Los Angeles and had acted in plays at the Japanese-language school. But nothing like the Little Theater at Tule Lake.

It was late summer 1942; we had only been in camp...

I renounced my American citizenship at Tule Lake, and I feel that was the dumbest thing I ever did in my life. It was a terrible mistake for which I have paid dearly.

I had opposed the registration in protest against the many injustices I had suffered—not just the incarceration but all the racist abuses I had taken as a child and as a young man, all the times I had been called a “Jap.”

For my action, or inaction, I was later segregated from the rest of the camp population. Me, a kid from Loomis, segregated in a...

Swimming was our principal form of recreation in the summer. As kids, we could not go swimming unless the temperature hit 90 degrees or above—so we put the thermometer out in the sun, sometimes shaking it impatiently, and barely waited until it reached 90. Then we rushed off with our swimming trunks to our favorite swimming hole in the American River, about four miles away. How exciting it was, going to the river, standing in the back of the pickup truck. I learned to swim the summer I was eleven and in the process nearly drowned.

After three Sundays...

Tuberculosis was the bane of our family. I believe the disease was ever-present in our household. My youngest sister succumbed to tuberculosis meningitis at age three-and-a-half, when I was a freshman at Placer Union High School. My other sister was diagnosed with TB after she came out of camp, but she was able to overcome it even after several relapses. She was fortunate that new medicines were available after World War II.

In the fall of 1939 my parents sent me to Los Angeles, where I worked as a houseboy and attended Dorsey High School, graduating in June 1940. I...

While I was in college in Los Angeles after the war, I never thought to plan ahead for a summer job while school was still in session. Does this mean I was so immersed in my studies that I could not look ahead to summer, when classes were over? I doubt that that was the case, but, whatever the reason, only after final exams were completed would I head to the employment office. By then, all the desirable jobs were gone. Only jobs no one wanted were left—unpleasant, low-paying jobs or those that were in some remote area, far...

I happened to meet Hiro Okubo one day at the Main Library in Los Angeles, where I was working as a page in the literature department. This was during my college days. We had been classmates in the advanced Japanese class at the Tule Lake camp. That was enough to start a conversation. We discovered that we shared an interest in theater. Hiro was taking an acting class in the evenings at Los Angeles City College (LACC), where I was also enrolled (though I was a day student in the English department). After our first meeting, we met often. In...

Librarianship was not my first choice as a career, but in the 1960s there was a shortage of librarians and the field was opening up to males and minorities, so I took what was available. I had worked for five years as translator/interpreter, editor, and English-language secretary for the Buddhist headquarters. Though satisfying, the job did not pay enough to support a family that included a wife and three young boys, so I was looking for other job opportunities. I thought of teaching high school English, but that opportunity was closed to minorities. I took the Federal Civil Service exams,...

I developed a love for fish of all kinds growing up in a fish market. I still remember watching my father, an ex-fisherman, cutting the fish deftly with his large, sword-like knives. Over the years, I have eaten so many of them, big and small, that I have a good knowledge of fish, especially their anatomy.

Tuna and sea bass are usually served raw as sashimi, but with the introduction of sushi to American cuisine, they are better known as essential ingredients for nigirizushi. However, my mother, who often had access to fresh-caught tuna, used to make nigirizushi long before...

I often wonder were it not for young people’s interest in Japanese American history, I would have thought about camp, much less spoken publicly and openly about my personal experiences during World War II. When I was first asked to speak about my camp experience, my thought was to decline; but the students’ genuine, enthusiastic interest changed my mind. I felt obliged to share my experience with them, even though I knew I would have to reveal the fact that I was a No-No Boy, something I had always kept to myself. But I felt flattered that they were asking,...

At this point in my life, the question of being Nisei (Japanese Americans born of immigrant parents, or second generation) is probably better put in the past tense. I feel I’m a survivor, albeit a battle-scarred one. I’m reasonably happy and proud of what I am. I’m comfortable bearing the history of my parents and the sensitivity of my Japanese ancestors. It took a while to appreciate this aspect of myself, but now I feel it in my bones.

I also carry the history of my life in America, a history fraught with so many ups and downs that for...

No matter how long I have been away from Loomis, I still scan the obituary section of the Nichi Bei. As the firstborn in the family and the only one living reasonably close to our hometown, I am responsible for attending the funerals of my father’s former friends and acquaintances. Even though most of them are gone, it’s a habit I still have.

It is customary to bring koden, or an offering of money, to the family of the deceased. Originally, this was incense money, but today it helps defray the high cost of the funeral. It is a kind...

I was born at 9:40 p.m. on November 8, 1922, in Sacramento, California. My parents were Fukumatsu, age thirty-four, and Kofusa, age twenty. Their permanent residence was given as Nankai-ya, a boarding-house at 219 I Street in Sacramento, run by a family from Wakayama Prefecture, where Wakayama folks often stayed.

Though we were aware that the birth certificate was an important document, it was treated as just another item to be kept in the family trunk. But after December 7, 1941—when our lives changed drastically, when we became objects of suspicion if not hate, and when our movements were...

How did I come to write this poem, so many years after my childhood? I know my father had a store—a fish market/grocery store—in a rickety old building, probably the oldest house at the far-eastern end of town. It was known as the Jap store or the Jap Fish Market. The building was once a saloon, a gambling house, even a bawdy house. It was fronted by a wide porch with many columns where horses used to be hitched.

To the side of the store was a billboard with advertisements, most often for cigarettes—Camels, Chesterfields, Lucky Strikes...

The war was finally over for Mr. Porter when he hired Ryujin and his family to work on his pear orchard. Actually, the war had been over for almost a year, but Mr. Porter couldn’t forget that his nephew had been killed in the Philippines and had stubbornly refused to have anything to do with “Japs.”

He couldn’t understand the farmers who were hiring them or even leasing their farms to them, now that more and more of them were being released from the camps where they had been detained during the war. He couldn’t understand how the farmers could...