Instead of just reading “Farewell to Manzanar,” Huntington Middle School students learned about the internment camp for American citizens of Japanese heritage that was located in Inyo County, California from two men who actually experienced it.
Harry Nakada and Bo Sakaguchi spoke to seventh grade students on Friday, Jan. 8 about how their families were forced to move from their homes to Manzanar during World War II.
“For the seventh grade curriculum prior to the winter break, we had been discussing Japan,” history teacher Hannah Fong said. “Patrick and I thought it would be a logical step to incorporate California American history into Japanese history by doing this unit on Manzanar.”
The students are reading “Farewell to Manzanar” with supplements such as the “Day of Infamy” Speech, Loyalty Questionnaire and United States Army Gen. John DeWitt’s testimony on the internment of Japanese-Americans.
“We are bringing it to life with these two remaining survivors,” Fong said. “In the past, we’ve also gone to the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo.”
“What better way to connect it to the modern times than have people come who can give their accounts of what really happened?” history teacher Patrick Stopford said. “The students can really see these important events beyond the textbook.”
Fong said she was fortunate last year to be on the same bus as parent Hal Suetsugu during the field trip to the Japanese American National Museum.
“I found out his connection to Mr. Nakada and Mr. Sakaguchi,” she said.
Suetsugu, whose son Taylor is an eighth-grader at Huntington Middle School, has known both Nakada and Sakaguchi since he was a child from the San Fernando Valley Japanese American Community Center in Pacoima.
“When this opportunity came, I suggested that maybe we could reach out to the remaining survivors to talk about their experiences at Manzanar,” he said.
Nakada was 16 when his family was forced to relocate from West Los Angeles to Manzanar in April 1942.
“My parents were Kuizo and Kamako Nakada,” he said. “They were both from Okinawa.”
Nakada’s parents both moved to the United States during their childhood.
The family was given three weeks to gather their belongings and move to Manzanar.
“When I entered the camp, I looked at the people there and their faces were all covered with dust,” Nakada said. “They had a wind storm.”
He said the designated barracks had mattresses filled with hay on cots.
Nakada reminisced about when his old classmates traveled all the way to Manzanar to bring him books to finish the school term.
When World War II ended in 1945, Nakada and his family moved back to West Los Angeles.
“My dad owned property so we were able to have a place to live after the war because housing was very hard to find,” Nakada said, adding that his home turned into a hotel because his mother invited in many people who couldn’t find a place to stay.
Sakaguchi was 17 when his family was told to move to Manzanar from North Hollywood, also in April 1942.
“We were told we could take one suitcase,” he said. “My suitcase was filled with candy and gum. No clothes, just candy and gum. I had a terrible sweet tooth.”
Sakaguchi said Japanese Americans lost their rights as United States citizens when they were sent to Manzanar to live behind a barbed wire fence and be guarded by U.S. Army sentries.
He said, “Once Gen. DeWitt said, ‘Once a Jap, always a Jap,’ we had no chance.”
Sakaguchi graduated Manzanar High School in 1943. The school’s classrooms were makeshift bungalows that were constructed by the residents.
Sakaguchi’s family moved back to the San Fernando Valley after the war ended in 1945.
Nakada said both Sakaguchi and himself are involved with the Manzanar reunions every year.
Sakaguchi advised the kids not to judge an entire race or religion of people by the actions of just a few.
“This type of history can’t repeat itself because it was such an injustice back then,” Suetsugu said.“It was just the war hysteria and people were in a panic.”
Suetsugu told of how his father was 17 when World War II began and his family had to leave their Long Beach home and move further inland to Salt Lake City.
“There’s a little known policy of Executive Order 9066 that said that any Americans of Japanese descent had to relocate 100 miles away from the coast,” Suetsugu said. “That’s from California all the way to Washington. If you had a place within that parameter, you could go there.”
He said most of the Japanese immigrants that came over from Japan didn’t have another place to go 100 miles inland. Suetsugu said his father still faced a lot of discrimination at that time.
The seventh grade presented Nakada, Sakaguchi and Suetsugu with bamboo plants after the presentations.
