Tetsuo Kunitomi

TETSUO KUNITOMI
Family # 2614
Camp: Manzanar, CA
Address: 20-3-1

Written by Sue Kuni­tomi Embrey, Tet’s sister.

Some Lines for a Younger Brother.

Tetsuo Kunitomi was born on April 17, 1930 in Los Angeles, California. He was the young­est of eight children, born to immigrant parents from Japan. “Tets,” as he was called, went to Amelia Street School, which was predominantly made up of students of Japanese ancestry.

Tets was eight years old when his father was killed in an automobile accident.

He was 12 when the family and the entire Little Tokyo population were moved to Manzanar. He went to school in Manzanar and in the beginning there were no desks or chairs and he felt it was useless to study history when they were behind barbed wire.

He was confined there for three years with his sis­ter and mother, as the rest of the fam­ily “relocated” to Chicago, until they could return to Cali­fornia.

Tets had dreamed of joining the service while interned at Manzanar and he loved military life.

Returning to Los Angeles in September of 1945, Tets attended Belmont High School. When he was 18 in 1948, he volunteered for the US Army. When his two year term was over, he enlisted for a three year term. He had been in the South and then transferred to San Jose. Soon after his transfer to the West Coast, Tets was assigned to go overseas. While he was stationed in Tokyo, Japan, the Korean War broke out. Tets worried about having to go as a replacement for the soldiers coming back from the Korean front because others who had come back had such nightmares.

While on a weekend pass, Tets collapsed on the street in Yokohama and died in an army hospital. He was 22 when he died in 1952. He did not get to move on with a quality of life that others who were released were able to have.

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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