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By Mei T. Nakano
December 16, 2011

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Note: In the following, I use the word “we” liberally to refer to the Nisei of 1941, the first generation of Americans (of which I am a part) born to the Issei or immigrant Japanese. I do so for convenience at the risk of generalizing our experiences and outlook. But I believe that is fair since the majority of us were born between the years 1920-1940, our ages densely clustered around 17 and 18 years in 1941. The majority of us lived in modified ghettos in cities on the West Coast because of socio-politico discriminatory practices. All of this leads me to the assumption that, with notable exceptions, we were bound to share similar experiences and cultural proclivities.

I was 17 years old — six months shy of graduating from Manual Arts High in Los Angeles — when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.  Spectacularly ignorant, I had no clue where Pearl Harbor was, much less that it was in Hawaii, that far-off paradise which my friends and I laughingly fantasized as our honeymoon destination. Never could I have predicted that I would spend my honeymoon in a concentration camp in the bleak Colorado desert instead.

We Nisei traveled in a very small orbit of social and recreational activities — mainly ballroom dancing and baseball and basketball leagues — leaving unspoken the glaring fact that we had, over the years, structured our social lives thus because we were not welcome in the larger society.

Many of us prepared for our future workplace in positions where our race would not be a question. For example, most of us knew that with the certain exceptions like housemaids or nurses, we would not likely find a job in which we would be readily visible to the public — on display as it were. Racism had yet no name, no identity in 1941.

So, we struggled mightily to be like them, to lose our identities as Japanese, so to blend more smoothly into their world. To our friends and siblings, we spoke English exclusively, and Japanese only to our parents and other Issei. Like many other girls, I tried hard to imitate the look of a typical American girl, clad in Sloppy Joe sweaters, short skirts and saddle shoes while smearing red, red lipstick across my lips. I wished all the while that my legs were longer, my hair not so black, my nose taller. And you can bet that I learned to do a hot jitterbug.   

But we could never be American enough. That became strikingly clear when Japan launched its ill-conceived attack on Pearl Harbor. We Nisei, who lived along the West Coast, along with our “alien enemy” parents — government authorities couldn’t tell us apart, they said — were summarily ordered into concentration camps, our citizen’s rights blatantly ignored. And conditioned as were to accept that fact, and powerless, with no strong voice raised anywhere to object to this colossal breach of our constitutional rights, we buttoned our lips and marched lockstep into the enclosures, first to the Santa Anita Racetrack then to the desert plain in southeastern Colorado. 

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