Lau Ozawa Koji
After a three-and-a-half hour drive, we arrived at the Tulea County Fairgrounds on a cloudless afternoon on Thursday, June 23rd. I traveled from San Francisco to find out more about the memorial built inside the fairgrounds to commemorate its use as a temporary internment facility for Japanese Americans during World War II. bottom.
It was about 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the sun and a small crowd had gathered inside the fairgrounds office. Her CEO of Tulare Fair, Dena Rizzardo, addressed former detainees, descendants, local residents and students to support the creation of the memorial and celebrate the need to preserve important history. expressed. After this meeting, the group walked to the front door to see where the proposed monument would be and discuss its possibilities.
In the months since Executive Order 9066 was signed, a no-go zone was created along the West Coast of the United States and 15 temporary detention camps euphemistically known as “assembly centers” were established in Arizona, California, Oregon, and Washington. was built in In California, most of these camps were hastily converted into fairgrounds and racetracks. As a result, existing buildings such as the stables were converted into apartments, complemented by additional barracks that were soon constructed.
Most of the inmates sent to these camps were forced to stay for several months while 10 larger camps were being built.
The amusement park we visited, which served both Tulare and Kings counties in 1942, was used as one such temporary camp. Located in the town of Tulare about 45 miles south of Fresno and 70 miles north of Bakersfield along present-day Highway 99, the camp is located on Marysville, Sacramento, Tanforan, Salinas, Stockton, Turlock, Merced, Fresno and Pine. Dale, Pomona, Santa Anita.
Tulea, the fourth largest temporary internment camp in California, had a maximum capacity of 4,978, but a total of 5,061 Japanese Americans were interned during its operation from April to September 1942. Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Ventura County, Torrance LA, Gardena, Los Angeles, Pasadena. county. The majority of these detainees were later interned at the Gila River Internment Camp in southern Arizona.
My own family was sent to Tulea, including my grandparents and aunt who lived in Pasadena before the war. When I talked about it with one of her aunts recently, she recalled that the food at Tulare was awful and she was served oatmeal with bugs in it.
My grandmother, Shigeko Elizabeth Ozawa, sketched scenes from the camp, many of which were published in 1995 in Egami Hatsuha. Except for aerial photographs, there are few photographs of Turare’s activities as a camp. from a considerable distance. As such, these sketches are widely circulated as part of the few representations of camp operations. As she walked through the fairgrounds in June of this year, she tried to imagine this version of the world through her grandmother’s eyes.
As of today, Tulea is the only internment camp in California that does not have a memorial or plaque indicating its use as a wartime holding facility. It was this lack of commemoration that Tulare’s mission spurred his Mendoza, Michael Paul, a teacher at Oak High School. Mendoza said he was teaching a cultural history class in 2016. The students in his class were so moved to learn that there was a camp in their town and advocated for the construction of a memorial. These initial plans stalled, but laid the groundwork for a growing movement.
Mendoza’s cultural history class was held again last year, and students enthusiastically discussed plans to build a monument. In March 2022, students met with her CEO of the Tulare County Fair, Rizzardo, to get her full support for the plan to install a memorial at the fairgrounds. In April, it was unanimously approved by the Tulare Fair Board.
Evening of the 23rdrd, I participated in a panel discussion with four Japanese Americans hosted by the Tulea Historical Museum. More than 100 people packed into the museum’s Heritage Art Gallery Hall, providing extra seating, but many of the attendees remained on their feet.
Four other panelists were former detainees: Nancy Hanada Bellin (held in Tulea and Poston), Alice Nanamura (held in Fresno and Jerome), George Novoli (held in Fresno and Jerome) and Madeline. – Tom (captive in Tanforan and Topaz). I participated as a descendant of the Tule and Gila River internees and as a researcher of Japanese American archeology and history.
After a short presentation by the students, the two-hour event centered around a question-and-answer session with the panel. Panelists recalled their time in the camps, the prejudices they faced before and after the war, and the legacy of imprisonment. Although the hardships of the camp were discussed, many of the panelists remained optimistic about the future, expressing their delight in seeing such an open and curious crowd and their personal connection with Japanese American history. Expressed admiration for the students who moved the project forward without ties. imprisonment.
At the end of the event, many of the audience and panelists remained in the museum chatting and discussing the evening’s events. But there are also Japanese Americans from as far away as Fresno and Los Angeles.
The memorial project is still in the early stages of design and planning. The class is currently in discussion with local artist and sculptor Sam Peña. Sam Peña’s work includes Washington, DC’s Extra Mile — Point of Light Volunteer Pathway. Chavez, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King Jr.
An early design concept consisted of a small plaza placed next to the main entrance of the Fairgrounds featuring sculptures or reliefs of Japanese Americans, surrounded by a designed landscape of ornamental rocks and trees, and an imprisonment. However, Mendoza stresses that these plans are still in their early stages and is eagerly seeking feedback from community members.
Placing a memorial at Tulare Fairgrounds has been long overdue. During my travels in the Central Valley, some of the people I spoke to had little or no knowledge of the incarceration of Japanese Americans or the structures of displacement and confinement that remained near them. The invisibility of such moments in history hidden from view silences our country’s past failures while celebrating only its victories.
At a time when schools across the country are avoiding teaching about the marginalization and exclusion of people of color and anti-Asian violence is on the rise, students at Mendoza and Mission Oak High Schools call attention to the incarceration of Japanese Americans. We are doing activities to Even more impressive and needed. Perhaps by doing so, they can not only spread the knowledge of this history, but also move people toward empathy and understanding that exclusion and confinement will never be the answer to global geopolitics.
If you would like to learn more about this project, please contact Mendoza: michaelpaul.mendoza@tulare.k12.ca.us You can also follow the project on social media @CulturalHistoryProject.
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Koji Lau-Ozawa holds a Ph.D. He studies the archeology and history of the Japanese diaspora at Stanford University. More recently, he has focused on the Gila concentration camp. Please send any questions or comments to khozawa2@stanford.edu.
