Daughter Hopes to Fulfill Mother’s Last Wish with ‘Gila River and Mama: The Ruth Mix Story’
Ruth Mix was a 15-year-old girl volunteering as a nurse’s aide at Gila River during WWII. Together with her mother, she helped JA internees by smuggling goods into the camp. A new documentary hopes to tell their story.
When Claire Mix was 12, her mother told her they were going to meet actor George Takei. An avid “Star Trek” fan, Claire put on her best Trekkie T-shirt, and along with her best friends, anxiously waited to meet her favorite actor.
She thought it odd that the room was full of Japanese people but reasoned they must be all avid “Star Trek” fans. But as Takei began to speak, she quickly learned they were not there to hear about a popular sci-fi show.
It was 1973 and Takei was speaking about his World War II internment experience. Part way through his speech he noted that many Caucasians did not come to the aid of the Japanese American community. It was then that Claire’s mother Ruth raised her hand.
“She stood up and she explained what she did, and the babies she tried to save,” said Claire, 47, as the memory of her mom’s words brought a flow of tears. “She and her mother risked their lives to help the Japanese Americans.”
Although that day was difficult to understand for a 12-year-old girl, over the years Claire has been able to piece together Ruth and her grandmother Frida’s time at the Gila River Internment Camp in Arizona during WWII.
Frida had been a schoolteacher at the camp, teaching both the first and fourth grades. Her daughter Ruth, only 15 at the time, was a volunteer nurse’s aid. Claire would soon learn that her mother and grandmother risked their own lives to smuggle in goods for the JAs, including food, medical supplies, shoes and also contraband items like camera film.
Although Ruth was reluctant to dredge up many of the horrors she witnessed during her time at the camp — including the birth of stillborn babies and a suicide — in the last few years of her life she decided her story needed to be told.
“She was only 15 years old, helping deliver babies, watching people die,” said Claire. “She wanted people to know the Japanese Americans were not pampered in these camps. It was a prison camp and because of that people died.”
Sadly, Ruth passed away from breast cancer in the fall of 2007 but her daughter Claire is determined that her story is told. She is now working on a documentary called “Gila River and Mama: the Ruth Mix Story” which she hopes to complete by September 2009.
A Mother’s Wish
Claire, a music teacher, dabbed the tears from her eyes as she spoke with the Pacific Citizen. She had just completed an emotionally draining viewing of the tapes of interviews she has of her mother.
Although she has four hours of interviews with Ruth, only about 37 minutes are useable. Recalling her days at Gila River was difficult and Ruth sheds many tears, making some of her comments inaudible. There are also some stories she did not want Claire to include in the documentary.
“Mom was very scared to talk about it,” said Claire noting that she vetoed many portions of the interviews. In the end, she made the cuts and her mother gave her approval. “I had to honor my mother’s wishes.”
What emerges from the tapes are the memories of a 15-year-old girl witnessing one of the most horrific moments in U.S. history. Yet, even at a young age she realizes right from wrong, and does her best to help the JA internees.
Frida was a suffragette and she wanted her daughter Ruth to see Gila River for herself. She lied about her daughter’s age, telling authorities she was the required age of 18. At 5-foot-8, Ruth had no problem convincing the authorities.
My grandmother “brought mother so she would be witness to these horrific acts, so in the future she would not let it happen again,” said Claire.
Ruth was soon assigned to the maternity ward of the camp hospital. As a nurse’s aid — the only white person among JAs — she helped with the delivery of the camp babies. She witnessed the birth of many stillborns and often the babies did not survive more than a week.
Seeing for the first time the “blue foot” of a stillborn baby made Ruth determined to help all of the JAs living at Gila River.
“She didn’t know how to process what was happening, but it was the catalyst that made her want to save every Japanese person there,” said Claire. “Gila River was very personal to her. She was going to save everyone.”
Humanitarians and Contraband Goods
Shortly after arriving at Gila River, Ruth convinced her mother and some of the other Caucasian staff members to try to help the internees. They would often head to town to smuggle back goods for the JAs — things like soap, sanitary products and fabric. They would even bring back contraband items like camera film, helping make Gila River one of the most photographed internment camps to this day.
It was an act of kindness that could have landed Ruth and her cohorts in jail.
“A few times they were almost caught. They were told that if they were caught they would be tried for war crimes and treason,” said Claire.
Richard Strickland, 65, was born on March 31, 1943, to parents who lived and worked at the Gila River Camp — his mother Eva was a schoolteacher and his father Roe was the principal. Eva and Frida were best friends and they naturally worked together to help the JAs.
Although in later years Eva would often tell her son stories about the camp, including bringing in goods for the JAs, Richard recalls that much of it was done in the open.
“I really don’t think they had to sneak the stuff in. She never really talked about it in terms of being a big secret,” said Richard from his home in El Centro, Calif. “Japanese Americans there really had nothing. The impression I got was that the people who ran the camp there realized it was a bad deal for everyone.”
Although restrictions were increasingly lifted for the internees at Gila River in later years, Eva did convey to her son was that what the U.S. government had done was wrong.
“My mother was very passionate about it, it was just an atrocity,” said Richard, who plans to be interviewed for Claire’s documentary. “It was something I was very aware of growing up, the horrible way the United States treated its Japanese American citizens.”
Finding Gila River Internees
One of the first former internees to contact Claire was Hy Shishino, 84, chair of the Gila River Reunion Committee. He had been sent a copy of some of Ruth’s interviews and was touched by the mother and daughter’s actions in WWII.
“The people that stood up for us, I will always have a soft spot for them,” said Hy, 84, a member of the SELANOCO JACL chapter.
Soon Hy got in touch with Claire and convinced her to apply for a CCLPEF (California Civil Liberties Public Education Fund) grant to help fund her documentary. She recently learned that she had been awarded a $20,000 grant.
Now the Gila River Reunion Committee is working to raise an additional $60,000 to help Claire complete “Gila River and Mama.”
“I thought hey, we’ve got to do something,” said Hy. “Ninety percent of this country still doesn’t know we were interned. We have to give real credit to the people who stood up for us.
“If we don’t tell our stories now, these stories are going to die with us.”
Claire is also hoping to find former Gila River internees who may have known her mother and grandmother. So far she has found a few internees and is now working to convince them to be part of the documentary.
Mas Inoshita, 89, a former Gila River internee who often goes around speaking about the WWII internment in the Arizona area, recently learned about Claire’s new film. He hopes the documentary will help educate people.
“It’s a very personal story,” he said.
Fulfilling a Promise
Although Claire is struggling with her own health ailments — she suffers from a form of Parkinson’s disease — she is determined to tell her mother’s story.
She plans to interview members of her family, create reenactments, and score the music for the film herself. She also plans to reunite with George Takei at the upcoming “Whose America? Who’s American?” conference in Denver. She wants him to be a part of the film.
Although Claire misses her mother and the daily editing of tapes brings a constant stream of tears, she knows these stories need to be told.
One segment she plans to include is her mother’s story about an Issei woman named Miyoko. The two had developed a close bond while Miyoko was suffering from a high fever and staying at the camp hospital.
Sadly, after four weeks Miyoko passed away and for a long time afterwards Ruth did her best to find the woman’s three children so she could tell them how much their mother loved them. She snuck into the barracks one night in a desperate search but was discovered by a soldier and dragged away.
“Mom felt guilty that she never found the three children to tell them their mother loved them,” said Claire. Even into her 70s, Ruth would often cry about it.
Claire hopes her documentary will eventually make it to broadcast television and into California schools. Perhaps then Ruth will finally be able to pass on her message to Miyoko’s children.
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