Verdugo Views: Glendale resident recalls the hardship of Japanese internment camps
Nami Ota-Donals was a student at John Adams Junior High when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States was suddenly at war.
The Ota family had been invited to a wedding that Sunday night, Dec. 7, 1941. They joined hundreds of other guests in Japantown in Los Angeles. Her father, Henry Ota, had been asked to serve as a host.
Born on Okinawa, he came here when he was about 19 years old, Ota-Donals wrote in a profile of her life which she recently emailed to me.
“My father vowed that he would not get married until he was 40,” she wrote. He planned to work hard, establish his own business and own a home first.
“He followed it to the letter,” she added.
Her mother, Miyo Takeguchi, born in Japan, was living in Los Angeles when they met. They married in the Japanese Union Christian Church. Their children, Peter and Nami, were born in Los Angeles.
“My mother was a beautiful lady, a good wife, a good hostess and a good cook,” the Glendale resident wrote.
Now that we’ve met the family, let’s go back to that Sunday night wedding. “We were interrupted by the FBI. They arrested some of the dads without explanation. Days later, we learned they were in the county jail,” Ota-Donals wrote.
Her mother became very ill with tuberculosis and asthma and was sent to a sanitarium in La Crescenta.
Mike Lawler, former president of the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley, emailed me some background on this: In 1942, the government set up 10 relocation camps in the west. Some 120,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese descent were crowded into them.
“In conditions like that, disease was bound to spread, so the government requisitioned Hillcrest Sanitarium to treat tuberculosis patients. It was privately operated, but administered by the county, and the patients were guarded by armed county [sheriff’s deputies],” Lawler added.
One bright spot at the sanitarium was Herbert Nicholson, a Quaker missionary who had served in Japan.
Nicholson offered spiritual succor and ferried belongings and people between concentration camps, detention centers and medical facilities, according to the website encyclopedia.densho.org.
Ota-Donals was grateful to Nicholson and his wife, Madeline, for their help. “They visited frequently and helped so many Japanese Americans in many ways. They were a blessing to the community,” she wrote.
In the midst of all this, the two Ota children were notified to “pack what we could carry — we had to leave all our other belongings behind,” she wrote, adding, “We were carted off to Santa Anita Assembly Center, stayed there for a few months and then were sent to Amache relocation camp in Colorado.”
Eventually their father joined them.
“My brother was drafted into the Army to serve our country,” Ota-Donals wrote.
“We were notified that my mother was getting weaker. My father and I had an emergency pass to visit her, escorted by the FBI,” she wrote. Her brother tried to get leave through the Red Cross, but arrived at the sanitarium too late.
“He had to escort her body to our camp, where we had her funeral, then back to Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles, where her body was laid to rest,” she wrote.
Ota-Donals was only 16 years old at the time. “I still miss her dearly.”
To the Readers:
Vintage Glendale, a Facebook group, recently featured a photo of Brand Boulevard elaborately decorated for the holidays, eliciting nostalgic comments and also a memory of the Glendale News-Press printing a question (and the answer) in its Thanksgiving Day edition.
When the stores on Brand reopened after the holiday, participating shoppers picked up a tag at a store counter and hung it on their clothing, hoping that a “Mystery Shopper” would come by. Prizes were offered to the lucky person who answered the question correctly.
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KATHERINE YAMADA can be reached at katherineyamada@gmail.com or by mail at Verdugo Views, c/o News-Press, 202 W. First St., Second Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Please include your name, address and phone number.
