Readers Remember

In 1940, I lived in Antwerp, Belgium, with my parents after the German army had occupied Belgium. All Jewish residents of the city were ordered to have the Star of David sewn on their clothes. One Sunday afternoon, while I was walking with my parents, two German soldiers stopped a well-dressed Jewish woman who was wearing a fox fur that partially covered her star. They jerked the fur from her shoulders while yelling at her.

A group of people who witnessed this moved silently to surround the soldiers and glared at them. They felt the anger of the crowd and quickly walked away. In tears, the woman smiled at us and left.

BOB SCHRY

From the Internet

It was Oct. 22, 1942, “closing day” at Santa Anita, and all of the families scheduled to be sent to the Jerome, Ark., internment camp boarded trains. With them were my husband, my son (age 2), and my daughter (age 1).

I and 12 other pregnant ladies were left behind.

One by one we labored with the births of our babies at Los Angeles County General Hospital, each one wondering what life would be like for us and for our new babies once we were taken from the relative comfort of this hospital.

We had lived in horse stalls for a couple of months. Would camp be as bad as that? Six months before, I had consulted my doctor about my pregnancy. He counseled me to abort the pregnancy because of the unknown. Would there even be medical care?

After three weeks, all 13 babies were born. We prepared to leave by train for Jerome and other internment camps. Upon our departure from the hospital, I was handed my new third-generation Japanese American baby’s birth certificate.

It read, “Race: Mongolian.”

F. YOSHIMOTO

Monterey Park