Homer Yasui

HOMER YASUI
Family # 16261
Camp: Tule Lake, CA
Address: 74-11-C

My father Masuo Yasui came to the United States in 1903 at 16. Six years later, my mother Shiduyo Miyake arrived in the US at age 26. My mother wasn’t a “picture bride” in the usual sense, because my parents knew each other while growing up in the small village of Nanukaichi, in Japan. Nevertheless, in accordance with Japanese custom, theirs was an “arranged” marriage.

My father owned several farms and orchards in the Hood River Valley, OR, but almost never worked them himself. He was also a co-owner, with my uncle, of a Japanese general store that sold selected Japanese foods and gifts, curios, and some American goods.

My younger sister and I were the only two of the seven Yasui children at home in Hood River, OR, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. That was a huge shock to all of us.

This was a very bewildering time, because my father had been arrested by the FBI and was being held as a “suspected dangerous enemy alien.” All Nikkei (people of Japanese ancestry) were required to turn in so-called “contraband,” as listed by the Justice Department. All German and Italian aliens, as well as all persons of Japanese ancestry living within the Western Defense Command, were forced to obey a restrictive curfew law.

My older brother Minoru got himself arrested March 28, 1942 on the streets of Portland in order to challenge the curfew order issued by General John L. DeWitt in March 1942. The case went to the Supreme Court in June 1943. The justices upheld the curfew order under the doctrine of military necessity and Min spent nine months in jail.

Minoru did not contest any of the evacuation orders. He challenged only the curfew order. Eventually all Nikkei were sent to American prison camps under Executive Order 9066 signed by President Roosevelt.

All but one of my father’s farms was sold during the war. The remaining one is still owned and operated by my two nephews. Our home at the time of evacuation was eventually sold during the war.

We stored all personal possessions we could not take to camp in the basement of my father’s store. Nothing was stolen, vandalized, or torched; and a great deal of our store possessions, which were still in good shape, were donated to the Oregon Historical Society in 1991.

The train ride to our “assembly center” at Pinedale, CA, was exciting for me, a 17-year-old boy, as I suspect it was for many other young people. Of course, I was stupid and naïve. Our civil liberties and rights were being systematically trashed, but I didn’t really think about it – not then.

We eventually left Pinedale and arrived at the Tule Lake War Relocation Authority Center. My mother, younger sister, and I lived in a barracks, and were issued “family numbers” and “individual numbers.” As at Pinedale, I worked as an orderly at the camp hospital.

One day, a young white man who had been terribly burned was carried into our hospital. That afternoon, as directed by the doctor’s orders, I painted his charred body with gentian violet, a medicine used to treat burns. As I did so, he told his anxiously waiting folks that he didn’t want to be in “a damn Jap hospital.” This man died. I never knew his name, but I remember his dying words. I don’t know why he said them.

From Tule Lake, I went directly to Denver University, on September 16, 1942. The National Japanese American Student Relocation Council helped with my application and the paperwork required to obtain clearances from the authorities. The committee didn’t provide any financial support for me, but I’ve always believed that in some cases, it did give scholarships or financial aid to needy Nisei college students.

I don’t know whether my experiences as a medical orderly in the camp hospitals influenced my decision to become a medical doctor. It probably did, because I become a general surgeon and practiced for 29 years before I retired in 1987.

Because of the bad things that happened to me as a Nikkei before, during, and for too many years after World War II, I no longer accept the words of our leaders at face value. The American people were led down the primrose path of misinformation and lies about the Nikkei by some of our greatest wartime leaders. It must not happen again to anybody in our great land.

Americans ought to have the absolute right to ask questions of anybody, our president and his principal assistants included, at any time, for any reason, because all of us are mortals.

Wind and Dust
This wind and dust I have to bear
How hard it blows I do not care.
But when the wind begins to blow –
­My morale is pretty low.
I know that I can see it through
Because others have to bear it too.
So I will bear it with the rest
And hope the outcome is the best.
– George Nishimura, age 16 (Manzanar, 1943)

Read this to learn more about the demographics of each of the ten facilities administered by the War Relocation Authority.

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