A Nostalgic and Bitter Remembrance of War : Japanese-Americans: Painful and pleasant memories mingle at reunion of internees at relocation camp in Arkansas.

Surrounded by photographs depicting life in a World War II relocation camp in Arkansas, Richard (Choo-choo) Tsujimoto and Marshall Sumida, both former internees, came face to face for the first time in 45 years.

But instead of talking about how hard camp life was, they only talked about the happy memories they shared together during the war years.

“You tend to block out the bitter memories,” Tsujimoto, 65, said while a slide show chronicled the internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants. “I mostly recall the good times that I had. I came here to see old friends for the last time before I pass on.”

Tsujimoto and Sumida, 69, were two of more than 1,200 Japanese-Americans who converged on the Stouffer Concourse Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport this weekend for the first reunion of internees from the Rohwer relocation camp.

The event is believed to be the largest of its type ever held.

Guests came from as far away as Chicago and Japan to see old friends, many for the first time since the camp disbanded in 1945. They played in a golf tournament Friday and jitterbugged to big band music until late that night. On Saturday, they viewed a photo and slide exhibit and attended a banquet honoring 41 of the surviving first-generation Japanese interned at Rohwer.

Some who passed through the exhibit were quiet and thoughtful, searching a large map of Rohwer to find buildings in which they lived. Others pointed out faces in the photos, joking about how much more hair they used to have, or fending off jokes about how they had aged.

Nick Katsuki, 67, chairman of the Rohwer First Reunion Committee, said he expected fewer than 400 people to attend. When a reunion ad appeared in a local paper and hundreds of ticket orders were placed, it became obvious he had underestimated the response. Katsuki canceled the facilities he had booked and found a banquet room that would hold more than a thousand people. The 1,200 seats sold quickly and Katsuki had to start turning people away. Many said they would come anyway, banquet or no banquet.

About 10,000 Japanese from California were interned from 1942-45 at Rohwer relocation camp, in southeast Arkansas, one of 10 camps nationwide. When the war was nearing its end, Jerome, a neighboring camp, closed and its residents were sent to Rohwer.

About half of the internees at Rohwer came from Stockton and Lodi and the other half came from Los Angeles County. The majority of camp prisoners were high-school aged, said Brian Niiya, a staff member of the Japanese American National Museum.

Harry Honda, who has covered scores of veterans’ and internees’ reunions as senior editor of Pacific Citizen, a national publication on Asian issues, said the Los Angeles reunion is the largest reunion ever.

The event was filled with nostalgia, poignant moments and some bitter memories.

During Friday night’s party, a man took Katsuki’s hand, looked into his eyes and asked, “Nick? Nick?”

After a pause, Katsuki recognized his former soccer teammate. “Oh, Bangle Boy! How ‘ya doing?”

The incident was repeated a hundred times throughout the ballroom.

“It’s been 45 years,” said Alice Kajiwa, 62, “but when you start talking to people, you feel like you’re 17 again. When you first see them, they look old, but after you start talking to them, you can see the same young face again.”

Hiro Ige clutched a list of about 60 names of people he wanted to see. He said the names were of neighbors, schoolmates and sports teammates. Half of the list had been checked off.

Kajiwa and Ige said they still feel bitter about the internment.

Ige remembered stuffing burlap sacks with straw to make beds at a temporary interment camp at the Santa Anita race track before being relocated to Rohwer.

“My mother was so disappointed that we had to live in a horse stable,” he said.

Kajiwa said the government apology offered in 1988 was not a voluntary gesture, but was a political response to efforts by Japanese-American politicians.

“They don’t really mean it,” she said. “They’d like to do it again if they could.”

Others seemed more willing to put the bad memories behind them. “What’s done is done,” said Susie Oshita. “There’s no turning back. I’m just happy to see everybody again. This may be my last trip.”

Camp reunions started becoming commonplace about 10 years ago, as the redress movement, an effort to get Congress to compensate internees, gained momentum, said Niiya.

Charles Wong, a visiting scholar at UCLA who is conducting a study of Rohwer internees, noted that terms like “concentration camps” and “prisoners” are much more frequently used now instead of “relocation camps” and “residents,” demonstrating a growing acceptance of the reality of the internment.

Kango Kunitsugu, who put the exhibit together, said he wanted the reunion to be more than just a fun event.

“In a way, the reunion is like getting everything out of your system. You never talked about the internment. This reunion is a way of letting off steam and releasing yourself of the experiences and hang-ups from the evacuation.”

Sumida’s brother, Tetsu, said: “As we grew older, we started to understand the enormity of what happened. Back then, we were just doing our duty by complying. The interesting thing is, our children have been really raising hell with us.”

“Yeah,” said Tsujimoto. “They’d say, ‘Why did you go?’ ”

Proceeds from the event will go toward restoring two stone monuments in a cemetery at Rohwer. One monument is dedicated to men from Rohwer camp killed while serving in the U.S. Army. The other was for people who died in the camp.