Heidi Kathleen Kim has crafted an elegant book from diary entries, letters, and artwork left to us by George and Tamae Hoshida. These precious sources, supplemented with documents and enriched by memoirs left by other Japanese American camp survivors, are direct voices from the WWII years when the Hoshida family was unceremoniously torn from its quietly improving circumstances on the Big Island of Hawai’i in the Territory of Hawai’i. George was an immigrant from Japan, arriving at age four, in 1912. His early years were spent working on sugar plantations and a cattle ranch, but this period served primarily as...

“Please daddy when the war is over do not forget to come for I am waiting [for] you every day,” six-year-old June Hoshida wrote to her father George, held at Kilauea Military Camp on the island of Hawai’i. He was on his way to being interned on the mainland during World War II, one man in the mass federal incarceration of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans.

The incarceration was one of the major domestic events of World War II, an egregious violation of civil rights enabled by a wartime climate of fear and a hostility toward or, at best, a lack...

It was the summer of the year 1912. The sky was blue and the sea calm as theSiberia Maruplowed southeast toward its destination. The ship had left the port of Kobe five days earlier with many immigrant laborers, together with some women and children, bound for the sugarcane fields of Hawaii.

In the third class hold of the ship was Eno with two children—both of them boys—one around 11 or 12 and the younger one about four. The strain of the trip in the stuffy hold could be seen on both the mother and the younger...

Piihonua [on the slope of Mauna Loa] had three or four camps which were originally built and owned by the Wainaku Sugar Plantation to which these two districts were affiliated. However, they were later sold to individual cane planters or leased to them so that people now living in these camps were mainly independent cane planters although, like our father, some were not fortunate enough to be able to buy their own and hired out as laborers to the cane planters. All of these people had come with the single purpose of making a small fortune and returning to their...

Three more years passed and the family moved to another house to the north side of the village by the edge of a cane field. This third family home was built high on stilts and even adults could walk under it and mother could hang the laundered clothes. There were two rooms and a kitchen here, with a large water tank behind the house which supplied enough water even for bathing.

About this time Father finally was able to purchase about five acres of virgin forest land. A footpath through the cane fields led to this land at the edge...

When Yoshio’s family moved into their second home, Yoshio started to acquire some friends among the boys near his age. As they grew up together, they sought adventures Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn style. Silent movies were coming out about that time and cowboy and Indian pictures were their favorites. They made pistols out of wood and road [sic] horses of sticks. They galloped around over the lava rocks, hiding among the bushes and attacking each other with loud “Bang! Bang.” They had great fun. Japanese Samurai movies were also shown at the large frame building owned by Mr. Yamanouchi,...

Yoshio had been reading about many great men in the past who had attained success in spite of all their adversities. Abraham Lincoln hardly had any schooling, but he had set his mind and heart to educating himself. One quotation which struck Yoshio’s heart deeply was: “I will study hard now so that when opportunity comes knocking, I will be ready!” Yoshio decided that even though he may not attain even a fraction of what Abe Lincoln did, he should be able to grasp better opportunities if he could prepare himself for them. Yoshio’s enthusiasm for self-improvement continued throughout his...

An orchestra was organized by Mr. Susami Yamasjita, a regular member of the county band. Yoshio had picked up violin playing to amuse himself while in his teens. He decided to join the orchestra. The orchestra consisted of about thirty members, and they practiced twice a week. When they became good enough to carry their parts, they gave performances at the church and eventually at other churches around the island. The ultimate glory came when they were invited to an interisland convention of the united Young Buddhist Associations (YBAs) of all main islands at Kauai in 1931.

However, when the...

Yoshio dated Tamae a few times and took her to shows, but always together with her niece Toshiko. Then, a couple of months later when Yoshio dropped in, her mother said that she had been hospitalized. It seemed that her pleurisy had become active again. Yoshio visited her whenever he had some time between his sales calls and brought her some magazines to read and other things to cheer her up. They had opportunities for more intimate talks, and Yoshio learned much about the turbulent life she had led from her early age.

Tamae’s parents came to the islands a...

There is a quote in Japanese which says, “Tsuki ni murakumo, Hanani kaze,” which translated means, “There’s black clouds for the moon and stormy wind to the cherry blossoms.” This indicates the cruel reality of life.

It was late afternoon on May 1, 1934, exactly three months after Taeko was born. Tamae was sitting by Yoshio’s side in the front seat of their Model T Ford with Taeko on her lap as they drove down Kilauea Avenue to their new home. As they neared the lane leading into their driveway, Yoshio made a left turn signal and proceeded to make...

The second baby arrived when Taeko was two and a half years old, on June 23, 1936. This one was an easy birth and she was born only about two hours after Tamae started her labor pains. Although it meant additional expense and care, Yoshio was happy that they were blessed with another girl. This perhaps would take Tamae’s mind off Taeko’s condition, and she might not worry about her too much. They named their second daughter June Mitsuko.

A few years passed and, after Taeko’s operation, things in general began to brighten. Sales became easier for Yoshio also. Then...

On December 7th, 1941, while representatives from Japan were meeting with those of the U.S. at Washington DC, Japan launched a fierce surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and air bases in Oahu. Taken by surprise, the raid took a tremendous toll.

Yoshio had gone early to the temple that day for Sunday School, and it was around 10 o’clock that he learned of the attack. Many ministers and laymen were having a meeting at one of the school rooms when the office girl came to notify Mr. Nagao, his neighbor who was also there, of a phone call from his...

Days went by and, as time passed, his anxiety toward being arrested lessened somewhat, for if he was on the FBI list, he would have been taken during the early part of the disastrous event. Then on February 6th, what Yoshio feared happened!

He had gone out in the morning to report on the office and then made a round of calls on his prospects, without any success, as expected. He returned home for lunch and decided to stay at home and do some chores around the house. The wire screen of his front door was torn, and he had...

The day for his hearing finally came, and Yoshio was taken down to the federal building in town with three other men.¹ The guards took them up to the third floor to a room at the northwest corner of the building. They instructed them not to talk and warned them to keep away from the windows.

Yoshio had heard that sometimes word leaked out somehow about the time the detainees were taken down for [their] hearing, and family members waited for them at the side entrance through which they were taken into the building. Seats were provided for them, but...

Yoshio had kept a diary while in the internment camps. It starts on August 15, 1942. Reading through it now, I find that it was quite well written, and in fact, being in the middle of these tragic times, his feelings have been expressed most realistically. So I have decided to copy it as written except in some passages where it will be necessary to add some important details missed in his diary.

GYH 9–11–73

At Lordsburg Internment Camp

Compound 2, Company 5, Barrack 4

August 19, 1942

By Yoshio Hoshida

I was transferred from Hilo to Honolulu...

Hope you’ve received my letters of [SEVERAL LINES CENSORED]. Everything is new and well arranged here. Only its very hot and dusty with temperature over [CENSORED] during the day time and we spend the day in indoors and cold showers. After all there’s no place like Hawaii. I’ve sweat all the fat out of myself and have lost weight and feel very fine. Hope I can remain that way instead of going back to that [CENSORED] lb. baby elephant.

How’s June and Sandra and the baby? Believe the baby must be full of pep and kicking. Hope everyone is all...

So this is 1943! We’ve been hoping that we could be celebrating New Year back at our homes but this large scale war is not so simple as that. It has revealed itself as an honest-to-goodness huge World War. But hope it will be settled during this year.

We stayed up until after 12 o’clock last night and greeted the New Year in our barrack with a can each of crab, salmon, pineapple, some yokan and shoyu sauce.¹ Hata contributed the cans of crab and salmon, Mr. Y. Mizutari the can of pineapple, and I donated the yokan which Mr....

Life for Tamae also settled into routine, with Yoshio’s brother Takeo and his mother helping out with the work around the house. As she gained weight steadily from the life growing within her, it became increasingly difficult for her to attend to the many chores of a household with two little children. But she was relieved of most of the work with Takeo attending to all the outside errands while mother-in-law handled the inside chores. Her mother came over often to help out looking after the children. Yoshio’s mother even started a vegetable garden behind the house and soon harvested...

Received your letter and the nice gift which you had sent for us. We are very happy to have such pretty wooden slippers. We are making very good use now because this place is very rainy and muddy. Its very hard to walk with shoes so with the wooden slippers it is very easy to walk. Most every family received the wooden slippers from their husbands. June was very glad when she got the slippers. She told me to thank you.

June is going to school from Monday Feb. 1, she couldn’t go for about two weeks because she was...

The days following their arrival here were filled with unfamiliar tasks to make this miserable place livable. As people slowly settled down to routine, Tamae found many helpers because of the fact that her husband was not there to do as other families with men. The Odachis were especially helpful in taking care of the baby and Sandra, who tended to hang on to her mother’s skirts and whimper and fuss whenever things did not agree with her. In fact, since Carole was the youngest baby in the block and so adorable, many women without little children came around to...

This is Santa Fe Detention Station, as it is called, but actually an internment camp, or more properly, a concentration camp. I am in Barrack 58 together with 61 other internees. On Monday morning June 14, 350 of us marched out of Lordsburg Camp at early dawn. It was 6 o’clock, and at 7:45, we boarded the special train to Santa Fe.

When the train pulled out, we had a last look at the camp in the distance, so lonely and forlorn when viewed from this distance. It stood in the middle of the desert surrounded by mountain ranges on...

Then in November Yoshio wrote that there seemed to be hope of parole to the relocation center in the near future. In fact, many of the Alaskan and mainland internees were being released to their families in the centers. He mentioned in a later letter that there was a list of parolees in which a couple of Hawaiian internees were included together with a group of Alaskan people, and Yoshio was one of them. It seemed that their dream was finally becoming real.

December came, and the long wait was finally rewarded with a telegram from Yoshio. It said “PAROLED...

Readjustment to the new life in the relocation center was exciting and enjoyable. The two older children came to him as though he had never been separated from them, and to feel the warmth and the joy of holding his youngest daughter, Carole, was a new sensation which was the revival of the joy and wonder he felt when Tamae presented him with their firstborn, Taeko. Friends and acquaintances, as well as other fellow inmates here, came to visit and welcome him to this new life. As Yoshio became familiar with the work which had to be done in the...

The camp took a large area, but the desert land stretched endlessly in all directions, and space was no problem. Their Block 61 faced a large open space in front with a stretch of rocky hills at the back. The adjoining blocks spread to both sides, then spread downward as they reached other high grounds which limited their advancing further. Thus their block had plenty of breathing spaces—unlike the crowded Jerome Camp.

Life in this camp was quite relaxed and enjoyable when compared to the tense years in the internment and early relocation centers. The personnel managing the camp...

They woke up when the bus stopped, and the driver announced that they had reached their destination. It was Santa Ana, near the coast of southern California. They were to be here for about three weeks, waiting for a ship which would take them across the sea to their home in Hawaii. But it was the most pleasant time of all the four years of their confined and turbulent life during this war. Since they were free now of any guards to restrict their movement, they planned trips to nearby Santa Ana town, fishing trips to the coast town of...