Students Learn About Life in Internment Camps

To this day, when Phil Shigekuni passes by a garage sale he is overcome by a sense of sadness.

Innocent as they may seem, such sales trigger memories for Shigekuni of a period in his childhood when his parents and many of their friends held lawn sales at which they sold nearly everything they owned because they were about to be shipped off to internment camps.

The memory was just one of dozens that Shigekuni and Mas Okui, both San Fernando Valley residents, shared with students this week in Woodland Hills during a Pierce College sociology course.

The two men were among the 120,000 West Coast residents of Japanese descent, two-thirds of them American citizens, who were rounded up during World War II and sent to 10 internment camps in the western United States.

Shigekuni, who presented a slide show featuring images of the internment, recalled being hauled off to a camp in Colorado, where he and his family lived amid the constant presence of armed guards.

Okui, who was sent to the Manzanar internment camp in the California desert, told of the crowded conditions of the barracks and surviving on a diet consisting mainly of cabbage and potatoes.

“We were prisoners placed in these camps because the government of the United States thought we looked like the enemy,” Okui said.

Sociology instructor Larry Horn said he invited Shigekuni and Okui to speak to his class because he wanted his students to learn from those who suffered after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

“I think it gives students a historical basis that makes history come alive rather than just reading it in a textbook,” Horn said.

For at least some of the students, the presentation turned out to be their first glimpse into one of the most infamous episodes of this country’s history.

“I didn’t know anything about what happened to them until today, so this is great to know because it helps me understand my country better,” said Manuel Holguin, a 22-year-old sophomore.

“Today’s presentation touched me,” added Zuri Terry, also 22 and a sophomore.

“I hope it doesn’t repeat itself.”