LITTLE TOKYO : Exhibit Spotlights Terminal Island

Forced to evacuate his childhood home near San Pedro Bay during World War II, Kenji Yamamotopacked the only valuable possessions he had--his clothing, shoes and a portable radio.

“I had a .22-gauge rifle and took it to the Japanese community hall,” where it was confiscated by American soldiers, Yamamoto said. “They said they would give it back, but I never saw that (again.)”

Yamamoto, 76, now lives in Boyle Heights. He was among the last to see Terminal Island as a thriving, 3,000-member Japanese community of fishermen, fish-cannery workers and grocers.

Amid rumors that the village on Fish Harbor was a spy colony, American soldiers evicted at gunpoint all people of Japanese descent on Feb. 25, 1942.

In 48 hours, the community was destroyed. Terminal Island was later turned into a military base, and Japanese-owned stores, fishing boats and other property were razed or taken over by outsiders or industrial companies.

Though the island now stands as a slab of landfill in Los Angeles Harbor, Little Tokyo’s Japanese American National Museum for the first time is revisiting the lost community through an exhibit of historic photographs and artifacts.

“An Island in Time: The Terminal Island Story” opened Saturday and will run through Nov. 13.

The close-knit group of Terminal Islanders, who still hold annual reunions around Los Angeles County, formed a campaign committee earlier this year and raised more than $200,000 for the exhibit--twice its $100,000 target, Yamamoto said.

Most of the money has gone to pay for labor and equipment costs for the exhibit, which features 70 historic photographs and 40 artifacts, including a scaled-down model of a Japanese fishing boat, a handmade box containing fishing hooks and bait, newspapers of that period and report cards. Most of the items were loaned by former Terminal Islanders, said Chris Komai, a museum spokesman.

Money left over will help establish a permanent Terminal Island collection and possibly allow for a traveling show, Komai said.

“This is the first (exhibit) inside the museum to be financed by a private group,” he said. “We’re interested in having them tell their own story.”

The Terminal Islanders hope mementos from the past will raise public awareness of their former community and their plight.

“A lot of people, even the people from Japan, don’t know about Terminal Island,” said Yamamoto, whose family moved there from Long Beach when he was a year old. He evacuated at age 25, a single man working for his brother-in-law’s grocery store.

It’s also important for younger Japanese Americans to understand what their first-generation relatives--the Issei--had to endure during World War II, he said.

The exhibit could encourage them “to carry on and appreciate what the previous generation did for them,” Yamamoto said.

“At that time, we couldn’t live anywhere we want,” he said. “There was a lot of prejudice and a lot of the whites didn’t want to associate with the Oriental and minority.”

Though as a child he was sheltered from much of the racial tension of the Great Depression and World War II, Yamamoto did recall one run-in with a white fisherman.

In response to the Japanese attack on Manchuria, the man threatened the 15-year-old boy: “All you Japs are going to be kicked out of this island,” he said.

“In a way, we didn’t pay him no mind,” Yamamoto said. “We couldn’t do anything about it.”

Indeed, the forced evacuation of the fishing community was also stirred by racial fear, he said. But in Yamamoto’s view, it also netted some positive results.

While at the Manzanar internment camp in the Owens Valley, the retired grocery store worker married another Terminal Islander, Hideko, whose grandmother was the first to open a market in the Japanese community.

“It was a good thing that we got evacuated from the island, to go into other societies and make new friends,” Yamamoto said.