Ralph Lazo

RALPH LAZO
Family # 21019
Camp: Manzanar, CA
Address: 19-9-5

Written using Ralph Lazo’s interviews and speeches.

“The first Lazos landed here in 1519 with Cortes. I’m the adventurous type. It runs in the family.” Born in a Black hospital in Los Angeles, Ralph re­ceived his early schooling on an Indian Reservation in Arizona when his father was with the Santa Fe Railroad. His mother, who was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, died when he was five and his father, who was a house painter and muralist, was often gone leaving Ralph and his older sister on their own. “I was a scrawny kid who took corrective PE.” He delivered Liberty Magazine, swept floors at school, and collected bottles for deposit money. “I was a real hustler.”

Ralph was helping a neighbor during the evacuation sale when a buyer remarked to him “I sure jewed that Jap!” Ralph was stunned. He had grown up in a multi-ethnic neighborhood and had often shared meals in the homes of Japanese American friends.

“It was immoral. It was wrong and I couldn’t accept it. These people hadn’t done anything that I hadn’t done, except to go to Japanese language school. They were Americans, just like I am.” At school one day, before their departure, a Japanese American friend said to him, “Ralph, what are you going to do without us? Why don’t you come along?” He told his father he had decided to go to camp with his Japanese American friends, but he made it sound a little vague and his father thought it was a weekend camp. Later he learned where his son had gone.

“My Dad was a very wise man. He knew I was safe and with friends. You couldn’t ask for more protection – barbed wire, searchlights. He probably was very happy I was there – I let him know that I was going to school, being well fed.”

Ralph was 16. “I went down to the old Santa Fe Sta­tion and signed on” to go to camp. He didn’t have to lie about being of Japanese ancestry because “they didn’t ask. Being brown has its advantages.”

Most of Ralph’s friends went to Heart Mountain but he made new friends at Manzanar. “I was very happy being with people I admired and respected. At first a lot of people thought I was Eurasian. They eventually found out but they accepted me.”

Initially he lived in a block with the older bachelors. “I spoke no Japanese, they spoke no English. They were my Issei (first generation) parents. They took care of me.” Later he moved in with a friend whose mother wanted to take care of him. “Ralph Merritt, the camp director, said it was all right with him if I wanted to stay. There were 10,000 of us in one square mile. One was no more or less –”

Ralph had a camp job delivering mail for $12 a month. Later he made $16 a month as a recreation director. He was class president and full of fun.

“One Christmas he announced, ‘We are going Christ­mas caroling.’ He gathered us all into the laundry room and tuned us up. There we were in the rain. But everybody just laughed, nobody ever had so much fun in their lives.”—Rosie M. Kakuuchi

"Most of the Japanese Americans never participated in extracurricular activities at school. He got people motivated for activities.”—Bruce T. Kaji

Ralph played football and helped organize Friday night dances. He only left camp twice. One time he represented Manzanar at a YMCA conference in Colorado. The second time was when he was drafted into the army in August 1944.

Ralph was sent to the South Pacific in the army and was awarded a Bronze star for heroism in combat.

Ralph graduated from college and received a Master’s degree. He was one of the first people to donate $1,000 to the fund for the preparation of a class lawsuit against the United States Government for redress for those who were interned in the war re­location camps. He was called A Jap, just like his Jap friends” because of his actions. He remarked, “I knew right from wrong. I’m one-eighth Irish. Sometimes it shows.”

Ralph became a counselor at Los Angeles Valley College. He died in 1992.

At a memorial service for Ralph, one of his friends from camp days, William Hohri, said of him: “When 140 million Americans turned their backs on us and excluded us into remote, desolate prison camps, the separation was absolute—almost. Ralph Lazo’s presence among us said, ‘No, not everyone.’ As a nation, as Japanese Ameri­cans, and as his classmates, we need to remember Ralph for his gift of courage and hu­man kindness and embrace him in our hearts with love and grati­tude.”

In 2004, a movie called “Stand Up For Justice” was made to tell the story of Ralph’s courageous decision to join his friends at Manzanar.

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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