During World War Two, hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans were held in internment camps, in order to prevent them from spying for the Japanese. Four of these camps were in New Mexico and the New Mexico Japanese American Citizen League is studying the effects of the camps. As part of the effort, a panel discussion on Japanese Internment during World War Two was held at NMSU.
At 9 years old, Sam Mihari left California with his family and brought to an Internment Camp at Heart Mountain in Wyoming, he remembers the journey well.
“I remember the trains,” Mihari said. “I remember going through certain parts of Wyoming that people told you what you were looking at until we got to our destination. It was a very difficult trip. But we all somehow endured, and it was not easy there was no question about it.”
Carrying one bag apiece, his family of four was moved into a barrack that measured 20x20 with cots to sleep on, and communal bathrooms and dining areas. Mihari says his parents and other first- generation Japanese Americans believed and told their children the government was doing what was best for them.
“They were taught in Japan that no matter what decision the government makes,” Mihari said. “Don’t complain. The government makes good decisions, and the people should not object if they made a bad decision. Bad news, because that’s not what we were taught as second generation that when are civil rights are taken away, we have the right to complain.”
Mihari says his parents tried to keep a sense of normalcy, and put a strong emphasis on education- something Mihari said the camp provided meeting the education standards of Wyoming.
“With the professional teachers that were brought in,” Mihari said. “That helped a lot, and I remember going to the schools in other barracks. They had to make school rooms out of other barracks, so that was ok, we were able to survive the schools and the most important is the seniors in high school got their degrees, and went on to college, and that was the objective of the whole program.”
The camps in New Mexico were different, they were high-security camps run by the department of Justice. Victor Yamada, a board member of the New Mexico Japanese American Citizens League, says the camps were all male, and mostly older individuals who didn’t receive proper due process.
“They represented community leaders,” Yamada said. “Anywhere from ministers, school teachers, prominent business people, and so forth. And one of the things I would touch on is they were on lists of so-called high-security risk, but that wasn’t necessarily tested by any kind of government process. They were put on a list and that list was used to pick up the individuals.”
Yamada is part of a project called Confinement in the Land of Enchantment, funded by a grant from the National Park Service that is studying the camps in New Mexico.
“It’s got three tasks,” Yamada said. “We’re installing historic markers, at the camps, at the sites, we’re preparing an outreach publication that will document the experience, and then third, we’re putting together a website that will allow people to link in to our resource materials.”
Because many in the New Mexico camps were older, Yamada says they don’t have many first-hand accounts of the conditions, they are collecting things like letters and a diary left by Sam Mihari’s father-in-law, that included stories from different men held at the camp at Lordsburg.
Mihari went on to become a rocket science, and worked for the government at White Sands Missile Range. He says he is often asked why he isn’t angrier.
“Somebody asked, Why aren’t you more bitter,” Mihari said. “And I told him, well if you’ve ever had a problem in your life and you’ve been bitter, what good is it to be bitter, why should you bear a grudge for your entire life? When there are more important things to do in life. And so I relatively quickly got over the bitterness and got onto something which I really enjoy, which is teaching, mainly teaching young people about their rights, and that’s far more satisfying than being bitter.”
Mihari helped to set up a museum at the camp he was held in Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and says educating people on what happened to the Japanese American Citizens during WWII will help ensure it doesn’t happen again.
