Survivors of Internment Honor 11 for Whom War Was Forever

The survivors of Tulelake War Relocation Center traveled 10 hours by bus, and almost half a century back in history, to honor 11 of the dead they left behind.

“It’s a little bit of kinship,” said 76-year-old Henry Taketa. “We wanted to make sure 11 forgotten people laid to rest in a common grave were properly taken care of.”

Taketa, a retired attorney, was one of 38 people who rode a chartered bus 387 miles from Sacramento to attend the unveiling Sunday of a bronze plaque at the Linkville Cemetery here.

Inscribed on the plaque are the names of a man and 10 babies. All died of natural causes at the Tulelake War Relocation Center, 50 miles southeast of here, during World War II.

Taketa also was interned there, as were most of the Japanese-Americans who made the bus trip on Saturday.

“About 350 died in the camp, which held 16,000 people at its peak,” he recalled. “They died of the usual ailments. All were reburied after the war by their families in their hometowns--except for these 11 later reinterred here in Klamath Falls.”

The 11 were left behind in a common grave marked: “In Memory of Deceased 1942-45 Tulelake.”

With the ceremony, they are finally identified on the plaque that marks the burial plot:

Mitsuzo Asao, the one adult, twins Hirao and Kazuo Nishizaki, Matsubara Baby, Yamamoto Baby, Yamamuro Baby, Okada Baby, Seki Baby, Loni Miyoko Toriumi, Tetsuo Kiyono and George Uyeda.

“Their final resting place was not one of choice, but largely attributable to the tragic uprooting and confinement of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II,” Taketa said at the graveside ceremony. “With each instance, caring mother and father grieved in sorrow and must have despaired in deciding to leave the remains of their loved ones here.

“For reasons untold or unknown,” he continued, “these 11 were left behind by their families, who did not come back to claim their remains. By being good Samaritans, what we are doing gives us peace of mind.”

Tom Fujimoto, 63, who also made the trip from Sacramento, said he wanted “to give 11 abandoned people recognition.”

“They existed on this Earth and died in a bleak, remote camp where thousands of Americans were forcibly detained because they were of Japanese descent,” he said.

Nearly all of those who rode the bus are in their 60s, 70s and 80s now. Decades earlier, they were taken from their homes with a few of their possessions to be held behind barbed wire fences at Tulelake, in the northeast corner of California, under Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“Of course it was unjust and caused great hardship and humiliation,” said Fujimoto, 63, assistant executive officer for the California Water Commission. “Just imagine if all Americans of German and Italian descent at that time had been evacuated from their homes and placed in camps guarded by soldiers.”

Fujimoto and Ellen Kubo, 70, a banker from outside Sacramento, co-chaired the effort to place a plaque on the grave.

During the bus trip, Fujimoto recalled that in the weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, “we were given a couple of days to get rid of all of our possessions except what each person could carry in one suitcase. Those of us living in the Sacramento area were put on trains. We had no idea where we were going. . . . At the camp, each family was housed in 15-by-20-foot rooms in 350 small barracks.”

Tulelake was one of 10 war relocation camps in seven states: California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and Arkansas. There were also three detention centers. Tulelake was operated from early 1942 until March, 1946, and was the last of the war relocation centers to close.

Two years ago, Mark Miyoshi, 39, of Mt. Shasta, who makes Japanese taiko drums, wrote about the anonymous grave to the Japanese-American Citizens League in Sacramento. His letter was turned over to Henry Taketa, who was interned at Tulelake as a young lawyer.

Taketa was able to get $2,000 from the league for the Tulelake-Linkville Cemetery project, and he appointed a committee. Linkville Cemetery officials searched their records and came up with the identities of the remains, although they had only last names for six of the infants.

The graveside service Sunday, attended by 80 people in all, was opened and closed with taiko drum rolls played by Mark Miyoshi and Michio Teshima. There were flowers, a presentation of colors and a traditional Japanese display of 1,000 silver-colored paper cranes--representing peace, love and understanding.

Tom Fujimoto and Henry Taketa paid tribute to the dead and sermons were delivered by the Rev. George Uyemura, a Methodist minister, and Charles Hasegawa, a Buddhist minister.

Brother, Sister Return

Among those who rode the bus from Sacramento were Violet de Cristoforo, 72, of Salinas, and her brother, Tokio Yamane, 67, who flew from his home in Hiroshima, Japan, to make the trip. For Yamane, as for most of the others, it was his first time back at Tulelake.

But their story was quite different from those of their traveling companions on the bus. De Cristoforo and her brother were American citizens born in Hawaii and educated in Fresno. Her husband at that time was a Japanese citizen who wrote for a Japanese newspaper, taught Japanese language and cultural classes and operated a Japanese-language bookstore.

At the camp, De Cristoforo, her husband and brother were considered pro-Japanese. Yamane spent 10 months in the stockade at Tulelake because of his involvement in a disturbance between camp guards and internees, although he insisted he had tried to act as a peacemaker.

After the war, all three were deported to Japan. Yamane and De Cristoforo renounced their American citizenship and became Japanese citizens.

Returned to Japan

“I had three small children, one born at Tulelake,” De Cristoforo said. “Once we settled in Japan, my husband left me for another woman. I stayed in Japan 10 years, remarrying an American soldier, Wilfred de Cristoforo, during the Korean War.”

Returning to America as a “war bride” with her new husband and three children from her former marriage, De Cristoforo later regained her American citizenship.

Her husband and daughter made the bus trip from Sacramento with her.

Yamane, now successful as a managing director of a large Hiroshima health food firm, said that when his sister told him about the visit to Tulelake, he immediately purchased an airplane ticket “to come here to get a look at the camp which turned my life around in a way I never expected.”

En route to Klamath Falls the bus stopped at Tulelake, where the former internees viewed the large monument that marks the site of the camp. A number of camp barracks left over from the war have been converted into apartments. A few buildings of the old camp stand in ruins.

The group also visited the Tulelake Community Fair, where the Modoc County Historical Society has an exhibit of memorabilia, photographs and maps of the relocation center.

The former internees stood teary-eyed outside a wire fence that surrounds part of the old camp. Some picked up tiny seashells from the ground. “We collected these shells when we were in camp and made necklaces out of them,” recalled Jean Kaneko, 60, of Sacramento.

Her husband, Sam, 66, said: “This is the last place I ever wanted to see again, but my wife insisted we come. Now that I’m here, I’m glad we did.”

Daughter of Internees

Lynne Kataoka, 32, who is deaf and works for the State Department of Education, said she made the trip because her parents were in Tulelake. “This is my heritage,” she said.

Tim Yoshimiya, 69, whose tapes of Japanese music were played during the long bus trip, had bittersweet memories. “My family had a farm in Davis. We left all our farm equipment, our household goods, our crops in a neighbor’s care. When we returned home he didn’t know us. I am bitter about that.

“We made the best of the situation here. My father and I worked on the 1,000-acre farm at the camp that provided vegetables, hogs and chickens for the people living here. We met a lot of wonderful people whom we never would have met had we not been here. I have always wanted to come back. . . .”

Kiyoko Miura, 72, said she and her husband were State of California employees when war broke out. “Everybody of Japanese ancestry was fired by the state. We were shipped up here. Two of my children were born in the camp. I thought I’d better see the place I lived in for 3 1/2 years before I die. I came for that reason, and to honor the 11 left behind in the common grave.”