Internee reunion
interest high
A conference will look at Japanese-American
experiences at camps located in Arkansas
LITTLE ROCK >> A September reunion of Japanese Americans forcibly relocated to Arkansas internment camps at the onset of World War II is expected to draw at least 900 people, including Hawaii's senior senator.
Interest has surprised even reunion organizers who have spent nearly two years preparing for the four-day Japanese-American Life Interrupted National Conference.
It is the first time in the six decades since the war that a major Arkansas event has paid tribute to the history of the two southeastern Arkansas camps.
Among those tentatively scheduled to attend the conference are former president Bill Clinton, U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), "Star Trek" actor George Takei and U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.
Camp survivors, family members and historians from 36 states and Japan have registered to attend the conference Sept. 23-26, said Johanna Miller-Lewis, chairwoman of the history department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Also planning to travel to Arkansas for the event is Sam Ozaki of Chicago, a World War II veteran who joined the Army while his family was living behind a barbed-wire fence at the Jerome camp. Ozaki's wife, his brother and sister and their spouses also plan to attend the conference.
Ozaki, who fought in Europe with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up almost entirely of Japanese Americans, said he sent letters home from the war to his family living in the camp. The families of two of his fellow soldiers who were killed in action received notification of their deaths while living in the camp.
"When I think about the irony of sending letters from Europe to the internment camp, it's difficult," he said. "It took a good many years for me to try and reconcile that past."
More than 120,000 Japanese Americans were sent from the West Coast and Hawaii to 10 internment camps at the beginning of the war. Eight camps were in the West; the Arkansas sites were the only ones in the South. Between 1942 and 1945, the two southeast Arkansas camps at Jerome and Rohwer held 16,000 detainees.
Ozaki, who after the war had a career as a teacher and principal, said the events of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks brought back memories of the internment camps.
"When they said the men were from the Middle East, the first thing that came to my mind was, 'Here we go again,'" he said.
"Of course, it did not happen to the extent that they rounded up all people of Middle Eastern descent and put them in camps, but you have people who are in Guantanamo Bay without legal representation or contact with their families."
The university joined with the Los Angeles-based Japanese-American National Museum to put together the conference, related exhibits and a documentary film. The effort was funded by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.
Miller said interest has been so great that organizers added additional bus trips from Little Rock to the camps at Jerome and Rohwer near McGehee. Visits to the camps had been planned for the final day of the conference, but organizers arranged for an earlier trip to accommodate the interest.
While efforts to preserve the history of the Western internment camps began decades ago, the Arkansas camps went largely unrecognized. Former McGehee Mayor Rosalie Santine Gould preserved a collection of artwork done by children in the Jerome and Rohwer camps given to her by a former camp art teacher.
Gould also worked to salvage the history of the camps, but for many years was rebuffed in her efforts by local World War II veterans who had bitter memories of the war in the Pacific.
Gould said she was gratified that the state was finally paying attention to long-forgotten history.
"I'm so happy Arkansas has realized that it has this treasure of history. I'm happy people in the town have realized that there is a great deal to try and understand about what happened here 62 years ago," she said.
