The two-foot piece of rusting barbed wire sticking out of the
sagebrush sand might have come from any part of the American West.
But a shiver shot through me as my fingers pressed hard into its
sharp burrs.
The two-foot piece of rusting barbed wire sticking out of the sagebrush sand might have come from any part of the American West. But a shiver shot through me as my fingers pressed hard into its sharp burrs.
No rancher ever used it to fence cattle. Instead, with no real respect for constitutional rights, the United States government had once utilized it to imprison American citizens.
I found the barbed wire on Independence Day weekend on a “pilgrimage” to the site of the Tule Lake Relocation Camp. From various West Coast cities, coach buses carried about 320 pilgrims to a desolate California valley a few miles south of the Oregon border.
I made the journey because I wanted to see where, during World War II, my father taught music to imprisoned Japanese-American children.
In 1942, Raymond Cheek was a 29-year-old bachelor recently graduated with a masters degree in music from Northwestern University. The War Relocation Authority hired him to teach band and choir at Tule Lake’s schools. For almost three years, he made his home in a tar-paper barrack apartment in the camp.
My throat knotted up as I felt the emotions retracing my father’s footsteps in a walking tour. We were being led by San Jose resident Jimi Yamaichi who was interned here when he was 19.
Yamaichi pointed out the location of the school where my father had taught. The only evidence now: a row of cement pilings stuck in sandy soil.
During the pilgrimage to Tule Lake, several of my father’s former students introduced themselves to me. The government forced 13-year-old Ray Murakami to leave his hometown of Gilroy and go to Tule Lake with his family. He remembers my dad teaching him the clarinet.
After the camp years, Murakami became a dentist. He move to Washington, D.C., where he worked for many years fixing the teeth of celebrities and politicians. Recently he and his wife Mary worked hard with the National Park Service to build the Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II.
Sumie Akizuki, another Tule Lake student, described how my dad was her “favorite teacher.” Being a baton twirler in the high school band helped ease the stress of confinement during her camp years. She laughingly told a story about how dad asked her to take care of his pet terrapin turtle “Albert” when he went away on a trip. (I felt a bit embarrassed admitting Albert’s empty shell currently propped up my DVD collection.)
In my mind’s eye, I tried to imagine what the camp community had looked like back in the early 1940s when my dad lived here. The flat desert scrubland dissolved away as row upon row of tar-paper barracks rose from the ground. I imagined my father showing high schoolers how to march in formation during band practice. I pictured their feet stirring up the dust, and I caught a glimpse of Raymond showing a pretty teenage girl named Sumie how to hold her baton.
As the vision faded, I found myself in the 21st century again, with other pilgrims strolling through sagebrush. The world of drab barracks and armed guards in watch towers morphed into a world of cell phones and passenger jets flying overhead.
As I hiked down a red pumice stone road with the other pilgrims, Jimi Yamaichi pointed out Tule Lake’s perimeter. About 7,000 acres were fenced with barbed wire for the camp internees’ “protection.”
With a peak of 18,789 prisoners, Tule Lake’s population was about the same size as my hometown of Hollister when I was growing up.
Several former internees asked Yamaichi to point out where on the now-desolate plain their barracks had stood.
Somehow, connecting back to the sites of their camp homes was a cathartic experience for them. I wondered what it must have been like for them as young children to step out of their barrack homes, and look up at the stars at night and feel the pain of unjustified imprisonment.
George Takei, who came to the camp as a 6-year-old, remembered how his family’s barrack apartment looked out on Abalone Mountain to the camp’s east. As a child, he had befriended a stray dog he named “Blackie” who gave him great joy. Takei described the heart-wrenching anguish of having to leave his beloved pet the day his imprisonment ended.
Takei grew up to roam among the stars on the Starship Enterprise, playing “Mr. Sulu” on the TV series “Star Trek.”
Yamaichi’s tour ended and our group started ambling back to the tour buses. To the west, I gazed at an immense hill called Castle Rock looming on the other side of the Southern Pacific railroad tracks.
During the camp years, my father occasionally led students on weekend hikes to the top of the jutting landmark. I imagined how excited the camp’s children must have felt in the freedom and adventure of the fieldtrip. What thoughts filled their minds viewing the camp from that high point, I wondered.
Did my dad’s students understand why they had been imprisoned without any judicial trial or due process?
Did President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who signed Executive Order 9066 imprisoning Japanese-Americans, really think the children and babies of Tule Lake were a threat to democracy?
Why were American citizens put in 10 concentration camps throughout the West simply because they shared the same ancestry as Pearl Harbor’s attackers?
I noticed more barbed wire in the sagebrush. A spike of anger hit my gut as I considered how prejudice, greed, paranoia and stupid complacency caused our country to disregard the rights and values ensured by the Constitution. Tule Lake was a slap in the face to our Founding Fathers.
Justice is an inalienable right. When we start denying – for whatever reason – due process and civil rights to one group of American citizens, we imperil all American citizens.
Truly, I hope you will consider this the next time you see a piece of rusting barbed wire.
Martin Cheek is the author of ‘The Silicon Valley Handbook.’
