The Eyes of Children
By Jordan Ikeda
Rafu Staff Writer
Monday, Dec. 31, 2007

Former internee Jim Yoshioka recounts memories of being born into internment.

Courtesy of Jim Yoshioka
8-month-old Jim Yoshioka with his mother Haruye at Rohwer Camp in 1942.

The holidays offer us a brief break from the everyday hustle and grind of our lives and allow us moments of re­flection, usually with family and friends. No matter the dis­tances between or the differences in personality, fami­lies and friend­ships find ways of inspiring. Re­gardless of one’s beliefs, the Christ­mas message is one of hope and forgiveness.

Jim Yoshioka, 65, is a San Fer­nando Valley resident and faithful church-goer. Like many other Japanese Americans, Yoshioka’s story has been greatly influenced by the harsh realities of the internment. But his life wasn’t changed by camp in the familiar sense. Instead, his story began there.

On May 23, 1942, Yoshioka took his first breath in a U.S. army ambulance en route to the Sacramento General Hospi­tal from the Stockton Assembly Center in central California where his family had been placed after being removed from their home in the Bay Area.

His mother, Mae Haruye, had been a picture bride, born in Smithville, Utah, but raised in Hiroshima, Japan. His fa­ther, Yoshio, also a Kibei, returned to the United States for fear of being drafted by the Japanese army.

His mother had traveled back to American via an ocean liner to meet his father in San Francisco. Her ship was the last one to arrive in San Francisco before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Yoshioka’s birth and early childhood were indelibly affected by World War II. There were six others born after him the day of internment, but he was the only boy.

His family was relocated to Rohwer, Ark. a few days after his birth. While being forced to give up his freedom as a rightful U.S. citizen before ever tasting it, being the firstborn came with certain perks.

“The camp chefs would give me a lot of special treats because of my firstborn status,” Yoshioka remembers. “Cookies, cakes, pies, those sorts of things.”

But being born in camp also brought with it a rush to maturity. His parents were moved to Tule Lake, Calif. after spending a year at Rohwer because of a misunderstanding over his father’s ability or lack thereof working as a translator.

“When I got to Tule Lake,” Yoshioka, a former aerospace engineer said, “was very keen about the surroundings and noticed barb wire fences, could notice barracks, see the numbers on them, see guards in the guard towers. I remember lunchtime and dinnertime, when the bell would ring, the two shifts.”

He also recalls one night going out by himself, barely old enough to walk, yet old enough to remember how to get back home. That night he came upon one of the guard towers.

“I looked up,” he said with his gentle and calming voice, “And the soldier up there looked down over the railing, and with his helmet on and the light shining down, thought saw a monster.”

He remembers running home ter­rified and unsure. He remembers his mother’s embrace and her reassuring words that there wasn’t a monster, only a man, a guard.

“From a kid’s standpoint,” Yoshioka, who now works as an occupational ther­apist said, “It’s all innocence. I thought that the relocation camp was an island out in outer space. And the guards were there to protect everyone from space martians that were coming to attack. That’s why thought the guards were looking out, but in reality, they were looking in.”

When he finally got out of camp in 1945, his family moved to Delano, Calif. There, Yoshioka was confronted by a world that was too full of color, too vast after having known only Japanese faces and the confines of fences.

“I couldn’t understand the differences,” he said. “Didn’t understand what was going on.”

He didn’t understand prejudice. Didn’t comprehend the meaning when one of his first grade classmates called him a “Jap.” Was shocked to see kids that were different from him. He remembers being told about white people, thinking they would be as white as sheets, and then discovering that they were in fact not.

But there was no discrimination through his eyes. His best friend was black. They traded comic books and invited each other to their birthday parties.

If anything, his experience in camp taught him how to look at character, how to get to know other people.

“Camp,” he said, “I think what it does, makes you more sensitive to other people. Take for example this situation with Iraq where families can easily be discriminated against, because of their culture and skin color. It’s important to learn and not make the same mistakes.”

Yoshioka became a Christian in August of 1964. According to him, every member of his family has become Christians over the years as well.

In 1987, Yoshioka took his first trip to Japan with his mother. He visited the place where his parents had been raised. The country that because of his shared heritage, had forced him into camp.

They visited the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Museum. Accompanying them was his uncle Don Furutono. His mother’s youngest brother, Furutono was drafted into the Japanese marines at the age of eight as a squad leader and given the task of protecting Hiroshima Bay.

During his tour of duty, Furutono survived a U.S. Navy Hellcat strafing that killed 90 of his peers, all young boys, all drafted soldiers. He later helped cremate the bodies of the Hiroshima A-bomb victims. He hadn’t even gone through puberty.

Yoshioka recalls a story that his uncle told him while standing at ground zero. A story of a youth turned soldier, so hungry, so desperate, that he abandoned his post in search of food. That young soldier came upon a widow’s house and begged and pleaded that she give him something to eat. His uncle told him how that same youth enjoyed the best meal of his whole life. And how that young boy, grew up into a man, and returned to that same house every year to show his gratitude.

Both Yoshioka and his uncle survived. Both moved on. They were two men affected by the same war as children, coming from opposite ends of the globe to meet at the exact point where the war ended.

Their eyes saw a great many tragedies. One the horrors of war. The other the consequences of it.

“I feel like God brought me and my family through the whole ordeal,” Yoshioka said. “And a large part of that was the forgiveness part.”