I’ve heard about plans to commemorate June 2, 1942, the day 86 Lewis and Pacific county residents of Japanese ancestry left the Chehalis depot for an internment camp.
A “Let’s Go Home …” Japanese Neighbors Remembrance Day, marking that historic date with a plaque at the former train depot, now the Lewis County Historical Museum, is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 3.
The event is designed to remember friends and neighbors of Japanese heritage — two-thirds of them U.S. citizens entitled to due process under the law — who were incarcerated by a government that feared sabotage and espionage.
The goal was never to vilify those who understandably reacted in fear to Japan’s attack on America. Or to diminish the sacrifices of our servicemen who fought on battlefields in Europe and the Pacific.
Through the grace of God, and the obedience of Lee Grimes, we have the fabulous Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis to honor those who served this nation in uniform. Vic Kucera, author of “Onalaska,” and Lewis County Commissioner Edna Fund thought it only fitting to remember those who spent three years behind barbed wire within sight of armed guard towers whose only “crime” was to have a Japanese face. I agree.
Seventy-five years ago these families packed everything into two suitcases or boxes and stood on that platform, obeying the government’s executive order. The Satos and Ohis of Adna. The Nakamuras of Chehalis. The Morimotos of Centralia. The Furuyas of Vader. And the Akyama, Endow, Fujioki, Horiuchi, Kadmiya, Morisaw, Kyonos, Nakaya, Ninomiya, Nishida, Shigeno, Taki and Terashita residents of Onalaska. Plus eight families from Pacific County. The plaque lists the names of these 86 who spent three years in federal custody. Many of their husbands, fathers and sons fought valiantly for the country incarcerating them.
Years ago I read a vivid account of the Bataan Death March in which the author who witnessed atrocities said he had forgiven the Japanese guards. Amazed, I questioned my Christianity and ability to forgive. The Bible tells us to forgive not seven times, but seven times 70; in other words, over and over. But could I have forgiven those who perpetrated such torture on others?
The Japanese government issued a formal apology to American POWs in 2009, although some probably considered it too little too late.
So did Rotarian Tohru Shimizu, who visited the Veterans Memorial Museum in 2000 to see a rifle donated in his name. When I interviewed Grimes for “The Miracle Museum,” he shared how he invited Rotary presidents and World War II veterans to meet with Shimizu.
Cy Simmons, a museum board member who had served aboard the USS Oklahoma when it was bombed at Pearl Harbor and 237 men died, questioned why he would ever want to meet with the man.
Vern Jacobson, a Winlock man who had served at Pearl Harbor on the USS California and later recovered bodies from the hold of the USS West Virginia, had married a Japanese woman, Emiko, during the occupation of Japan.
When Shimizu arrived at the museum, Grimes saw Simmons and Jacobson at the door. When he introduced the two as Pearl Harbor survivors, Shimizu immediately bowed at the waist and said, “Soooo sorry.”
When Shimizu continued to bow, Grimes recalled, “Vern said, ‘Sir, there’s no need for that. The war is over.’”
Shimizu didn’t drop those bombs at Pearl Harbor. Neither did the Japanese Americans living in our communities.
We need to remember this civil rights violation in our nation’s history, one I pray will never be repeated. If we’re attacked by fanatic Muslim jihadists, I hope we don’t incarcerate Muslim Americans without due process. If any U.S. city ever enacted Sharia law, I pray we’d never stand by and let gays and lesbians be locked away.
As Spanish philosopher, essayist and novelist George Santayana wrote in “The Life of Reason,” published in 1905, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
