The Voices of the Past are Written
on the Walls
During WWII, PFC Peter Ota befriended Okinawan orphans being held at Fort McDowell as POWs. He hopes their stories and those of other POWs don't fade away.
On an island in the San Francisco Bay, 20-year-old Private First Class Peter Ota met a group of boys in 1945 he would never forget. World War II was winding down and Ota was stationed at a prisoner of war processing center that held hardened soldiers captured in the Pacific.
One day, a ship came in filled with bo heitai or boy soldiers from Okinawa. Wide-eyed and devastated from the destruction of their homeland, the boys wandered into the camp like innocent byproducts of war.
They were teenagers conscripted into the Japanese army to pack ammunition for the soldiers.
"We were shocked. They were kids," said Ota, now 82 and living in Tustin, Calif. "They looked like kids who were lost."
The years have worn away most of Ota's distinct memories of the boy soldiers. He can't recall many features. He can't even remember their names, but anything that connects children with devastation tends to stick to your guts.
"What we went through with those kids ... it was the most meaningful part of my service."
An Island POW Center
Angel Island may be best known historically as the site of the immigration station where approximately 175,000 Asian immigrants were processed on their way to the U.S. But during WWII, Angel Island was Fort McDowell, a U.S. Army compound. The immigration station's barracks and the hospital were rehabilitated to house German, Italian and Japanese POWs before they were sent to inland camps or deported.
"Fort McDowell was often a POW's last glimpse of America," said Casey Lee, an interpreter with the Angel Island State Park.
That view was obscured by a barbwire topped fence built around the barracks for more security.
During wartime, Fort McDowell was also an embarkation site for soldiers leaving and coming home from the Pacific Campaign and a station for replacement troops, said Lee.
For Ota, Fort McDowell was home from August 1945 until he was discharged in April 1946.
"I remember the isolation," he said.
But the journey to Fort McDowell was filled with hardship. Ota's father, Kamato, ran a produce market in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo before the war. The family was eventually taken to Amache - without Ota's mother, who died in a sanitarium from tuberculosis during relocation.
After camp, Ota was drafted into the Army out of Chicago, Illinois and went to Fort Knox for basic training. He was transferred many times before arriving at Fort McDowell as a POW interpreter attached to the Transportation Corp.
In 1945, Ota and some Nisei interpreters escorted a group of Japanese POWs to Yokohama where they saw a city in ruins. When the Okinawan boy soldiers later arrived at Fort McDowell, Ota knew they had nothing to go back to.
Boy Soldiers
"We got pretty close to the boys. They helped around the compound doing office work," he said. "We'd ask them, 'aren't you homesick?' And they would respond: 'No. We don't have any family to go back to.'
They were lonely and Ota and the other U.S. soldiers took the time to get to know them and listen to their harrowing war stories.
"Mentally, they were strung out," said Ota. "They were kids. They had stories to tell and we listened. It was somewhat of a comfort to them."
They lost their families and Okinawa was bombed beyond recognition. The island had a large civilian population and the battle killed hundreds of thousands of natives.
The Okinawan orphans spent most of their time in the barracks, but they were given some time every day to come outside and breathe in some fresh air.
"They were treated well," said Ota. "There were other POWs who were belligerent because they didn't believe that Japan had lost the war ... but these were kids."
The boys lived at Fort McDowell for only a few months, until they were ordered deported.
"We were shocked when we found out they had to go home," said Ota, who added that some of the best memories he had were getting to know them.
He remembers they were marched to a boat bound for Japan.
"Some of them came running back crying. They didn't want to go. They were forcibly taken on the boat," he said. "What could you do? It was sad. You can't do anything about it."
"I think about them often. You wonder what might have happened to them."
The Writing on the Walls
Fort McDowell was like a transit camp, but POWs spent enough time there to write on the barrack walls.
POW inscriptions have been found as early as 1943, said Dr. Charles Egan, an associate professor of foreign languages and literatures at San Francisco State University.
Unlike the Chinese immigrants who famously carved poetry and messages into the wall, the POW inscriptions were made in pen or pencil on top of the paint. The building has been painted over at least seven times while in its existence making it more difficult to chart history.
Unlike the Chinese writings, the POWs did not write poetry. They seemed to be leaving records for other members of their groups.
"It was bare bones. Places, names and dates," said Egan.
One of the more interesting inscriptions reads: "Dangerous person coming from Saipan. Osuka?? Beware!!"
Then later, the name "Osuka" was deliberately scratched out with the tip of a sharp object.
"It seems like Osuka came and didn't appreciate his name being there," said Egan, who is working on a book about the new collections of material on the walls including the POW writings.
It's a lot of miscellaneous stuff on the wall, he added, but it's important to study.
A restored Angel Island immigration center is set to reopen in Fall 2008, and park officials are trying to balance POW stories with the immigration stories, but the POW story maybe endangered of becoming a footnote in history.
"There were two uses of the site, but the primary history is the immigration experience," said Lee.
"When you walk into the building, you can't see [the writing] very well. You have to walk right up to the walls. I think that it's inevitable where people ask, 'what's the big deal?'" said Egan. "I see it as a time capsule. This isn't someone's interpretation of history - it's raw data.
"It's that voices of the past talking to us. Where else is there a site like this? People's thoughts are locked into place."
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