They stood on the platform outside the brick train depot in Chehalis, two suitcases beside each person, filled with their life’s prized possessions, waiting for a train that would take them … somewhere.
Eighty-six men, women and children of Japanese ancestry from Lewis and Pacific counties — 64 percent of them U.S. citizens — reported to the depot under government orders. None knew that they’d spend three years behind barbed wire in the nation they called home.
But that’s what happened June 2, 1942, nearly six months after Japan bombed U.S. battleships at Pearl Harbor, killing more than 2,400 people, including 1,177 sailors on the USS Arizona.
On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the internment of everyone on the West Coast with Japanese ancestry.
In early June, the 86 residents gathered at the Chehalis depot — 51 from Lewis County and 35 from Pacific — boarded the first train bound for the Tule Lake internment camp in California.
A “Let’s Go Home …” Japanese Neighbors Remembrance Day marking this historic and tragic event will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, June 3, at the Lewis County Historical Museum, located in the former train depot.
“We can’t change the worst civil rights violation in the nation’s history,” said historian and author Vic Kucera, who noted that continually renewing awareness of the misery visited upon nearly 120,000 people (at least half of whom were U.S. citizens) might prevent future injustices.
“We respect those who waited for a train at the Chehalis depot, having no idea what would become of the rest of their lives,” he said.
Kucera recently released the second edition of his book, “Onalaska: From Kansas to Washington … via Wisconsin, Arkansas, Minnesota, and Texas — 1886-1942,” which chronicles the three-year imprisonment of Onalaska’s families of Japanese descent. The new edition is available for sale at the museum and Book ’n’ Brush in Chehalis.
The free event will feature unveiling of a plaque commemorating the sacrifice of those incarcerated, reading: “A tribute to our Japanese ancestry neighbors who on June 2, 1942, left from this train depot for the U.S. Army War Relocation Authority Camp at Tule Lake, California.
Time has revealed the injustice of your experience, which we regret. We admire your loyalty, patriotism, and dedication to this nation. Never again.”
A committee headed by Jodi Baker, of Chehalis, is organizing the event, along with Kucera, museum board members Ted Livermore (interim director), Peter Lahmann and Doug Peterson as well as Lewis County Commissioner Edna Fund and yours truly.
Please mark your calendars and join us to honor our neighbors and recognize their sacrifices during World War II.
Busted
After writing about a trip along the Oregon Trail west from Minnesota last month, I received an email from Bill Bryant, a Mossyrock High School graduate and father of the 2016 gubernatorial hopeful of the same name, who had read the column.
“Most people have no idea how important South Pass was to getting people to the Pacific Coast,” he wrote. “We would probably be a part of Canada today if it hadn’t been there.”
He’s right, and I’m busted. With our very patient 15-year-old reading books in the back seat while Mom and Dad explored the historic trail, we agreed to take a faster route from Casper, Wyoming, south to Rawlins on Interstate 80, on to Fort Bridger and into Utah.
By doing so, we circumvented historic South Pass, the Oregon Trail’s halfway point that marked the end of the long climb to the Continental Divide.
Crossing the pass meant pioneers had arrived in Oregon country. Many then traveled southwest to Fort Bridger.
Sometimes life requires compromises, and this was one of them. I’ll cross South Pass on the next trip.
Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
