Sho Maruyama

SHO MARUYAMA
Family # 2859
Camp: Manzanar, CA
Address: 16-4-1

My father came to the US in 1898 and worked many jobs, including house boy, when he first arrived. His family operated a futon store in Ueda, Japan and he and his older brother had no opportunity in the store because of many older brothers. So they migrated to US. My father worked in railroad gangs, operated several types of stores, farmed, and searched, found, and processed indigo in Mexico. My mother migrated from the same city in 1923 as a picture bride.

I was very frightened on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day, when I heard the broadcast of war. I ran into the house and stayed; too scared to go out.

I remember the horrid, frightening, dark, foreboding night we arrived in Manzanar after a long bus ride. The night was pitch black, without streetlights, house lights, shopping center lights. No stars flickered above. The cold wind blew the sand all around. I peeked out the bus window. The people appeared to be demons. They wore goggles, peacoats (navy coats), plaid coats, heavy boots, gloves, wool caps, etc., not the t-shirts of carefree, civilized Southern California I just left. They told us to walk in the dead, dark, pitch black night; I stumbled in the unaccus­tomed sand a couple hundred feet to pick up straw mattresses. The FBI picked up my father soon after Pearl Harbor and jailed him elsewhere, so my older 17 year old brother had to take responsibility.

They placed my family, mother and two teenage boys, in a 20 by 20 foot room, with another family of five, a mother and her four teenage daughters. WOW!

I graduated high school in Manzanar in spring ’44. Most of the boys hung out without much parental su­pervision, because the WRA gave us clothes, a cot, blankets, and fed us three meals a day. We were vora­cious teenage eaters, so we went to several mess halls during lunch and dinner. I had a hard time socializing because in Santa Monica, I had only Caucasian friends. In camp I had to learn a differ­ent culture, the Nisei culture. Santa Monica had few Niseis and they were not close; like me, they had many Caucasian friends. On the other hand San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Hawaii had many Niseis and gangs. At a class picnic I batted left-handed and accidentally hit a home run. A gang member decided my smart impertinent behavior had shown them up and he needed to teach me a lesson. At the after school dance the next day, he and his bodyguard invited me outside and proceeded to beat the hell out of me. Days later they came over to my block, caught me in the bathroom, and proceeded to beat me some more.

After graduating, I volunteered for the army be­cause they offered a year of college before active duty. Because of the discrimination I experienced during the war, after my discharge from the army, I chose a liberal arts college, Antioch College, which had no sororities, fraternities, or intercollegiate athlet­ics. I graduated, and discovered and pursued a new and liberal helping profession, city planning. I then moved on to the Poverty Program, and then to the Model Cities Program. I chose to live in an inner-city neighborhood in Philadelphia, Powelton Village, which had liberals and Quakers. I engaged in many liberal causes, including integrating the neighborhood, forcing a reluctant school board to build an elementary school in my neighborhood so our children could attend an integrated school, promoting a neighborhood organization to coun­teract the all-white property owners’ association. With pride I can state that 40 years later, this inner-city neighborhood, two miles from city hall, is still integrated, Blacks and whites, poor and middle class, college students and professors, families and singles, tenants and owners, young and old.

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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