Japanese Intern Camps
Japanese Intern Camps
Barabara ni naru
Civilian Exclusion Order No. 79
Effective Friday 22 May 1942
On this fateful day the evacuation of 100,000(+) Japanese immigrants and Japanese American citizens during World War II were forced into incarceration (internment compounds). These compounds were placed inland throughout the Western
United States. The Japanese peoples of the greater Seattle and Puget Sound
areas were forced to leave their homes, schools, temples (and churches), and
shut down family businesses in Seattle’s Nihonmachi (Japantown)
community area.
In the basement of the “Panama Hotel”, at the corner of sixth and main street,
a time capsule of eight days of diaspora that scattered Japanese American
Heritage exsists. Because the Federal government acting upon President Roosevelt’s signed Executive Order 9066, employed agencies including the FBI and the Army, giving those Japanese peoples only eight days to settle their personal affairs while processing
them for wholesale evacuation from Seattle’s Nihonmachi community, and
forcing their culture into internal exile.
The internees were allowed to take only what they could carry with them.
All other items were to be discarded or left behind, such as the many
personal items placed into suitcases and trunks found in the basement
of the “Panama Hotel. In that darkened basement room, an accidental time capsule, can be seen worn suitcases and trunks adorned with travel tags from Tokyo or Kobe, along with stacks of other household belongings left behind 57 years ago when the American government incarcerated its own Seattle citizens and shipped them via truck, bus, and train to internment compounds like Idaho’s Minidoka and yet closer to Seattle was the Puyallup Assembly Center.
More than, 7,000 Japanese spent the spring and summer of in the Puyallup Assembly
Center, an internment camp, located on the Washington State fair grounds.
They were greeted by barded wire and armed guards and placed into bad housing.
The whole fair grounds area was to house 7,000 (+) . Living in every space around the race track and under the grandstands. Japanese men were immediately employed
to build and set up further livingquarters, mess halls, and administrative buildings.
The living quarters were comprised of barracks that were 15 by forty feet buildings and each divided into 6 rooms, each room was 20 square feet. Each room would house a Japanese family. Euphemistically called “apartments” the furnishing consisted of army cots, family personal items and suitcases, one window and one light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
The apartment walls gave no privacy for they did not reach the ceiling. So the noise level all the time, talking, crying babies and snoring were some of the things that were
often heard. There was no running water. Toilets and showers were a walk away as were the mess halls and laundry rooms. Privacy was lacking in the toiletries and shower
facilities. Group showers were a normal routine until the inmates built on further
walls for themselves.
The camp (resettlement center) was actually a penitentiary, with armed guards in towers with Tommy guns and fifteen foot barbed wire fences surrounding the camp
The Japanese were confined to there quarters from nine’oclock and lights go out at ten. No one was allowed to take the two block walk to the latrines after nine what so ever.
Petty regulations ruled every day life; twice a day role calls, curfews, lights out, set meal times. Other regulations denied basic rights such as the right to assemble organizations, religious freedom, speech (Japanese material was confiscated) and privacy (police
could enter your room at any time). All radios and lights should be turned off no later that 10:30 PM. Lights should remain off through out the night until the
morning. Exceptions were made for the ill, pregnant women or other necessary cases.