A Treasure Lost in the Internment Camps

I read “The Lost Years” (Feb. 16) with interest because I was one of the 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent interned during World War II. I was 11 years old in 1942. We thought we were Americans. This was the only country we knew. The long-ago memory has remained largely hidden for all these years since I was anxious to erase any differentness from myself and blend into the mainstream.

I went to college, married and raised three Eurasian sons who now really look like mainstream America. How much this country has changed for the better. Yet we need to remind ourselves that under a thin veneer of equality, the ugly infection of racism remains always ready to reemerge for all people of color.

My nisei mother, now 94, for some years had her citizenship stripped from her for marrying my father, an issei. She has spent a lifetime trying to enjoy the blessings of liberty for herself and her family. If things had been different, she might have pursued a writing career, but in spite of all the difficulties, she is grateful for stability now and successful kids and grandkids.

One of her poems was written to memorialize the death of my younger brother in the camp. She is a poet, but unpublished, and would be thrilled to have her poem in The Times.

MARGARET COOPER

Santa Maria

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Margaret Cooper’s younger brother, Kenny Nakamura--a Boy Scout and junior Ping-Pong champ--died of spinal meningitis in 1943 at the Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming. The camp was located on land formerly home to the Shoshone people. Supervised groups such as the Scouts were allowed to roam in the surrounding countryside, and the occasional discovery of an arrowhead or other small relic fired the imaginations of all, especially 11-year-old boys.

“Kenny”

My little son Kenny left me a year ago today

To find the Happy Hunting Ground far away.

I called and called, frightened,

But he never glanced backwards.

His resolute stride told me I called him in vain,

And then I remembered.

He was going exploring!

He had asked for permission time and again.

Each time there was something

That kept him from going--

Either ticks or rattlesnakes or scorpions and such

“When all the danger is over

You may go,” I had promised.

Evidently his grapevine had kept him in touch.

He’s exploring the caves

Of the Indians and pirates

(How the pirates had got there, I never will know).

But a little boy’s instinct

Is as true as the arrow.

I gave my promise, so I had to let him go.

Thus our little son Kenny left us a year ago today.

To play in the Happy Hunting Ground far away.

Nellie Nakamura

9/18/44