February 19 is the annual Day of Remembrance of the authorization of Executive Order 9066 in 1942, which mandated the forced removal and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Each person was assigned an identification number and provided a tag, which followed them through detention centers to confinement centers across the country. Allowed one piece of luggage per person, the loss of home, property, personal mementos and essential civil liberties was a profound moment in American history.
The majority were American citizens. Most, like Charles Furuta, had been in America for four decades. He had returned once to Japan in 1912 to meet and marry his wife, Yukiko. They had returned to build their life in Wintersburg Village, raising their children and supporting the community with volunteer work at the Wintersburg Mission and Japanese Association. They had contributed to the rebuilding of the Huntington Beach pier after it was destroyed by a storm in 1912. They had watched the flight of aviator Koha Takeishi from Dominguez field in Los Angeles to a farm pasture in Wintersburg in 1913.
The Furuta farm had become a lush garden, with goldfish ponds and flowers. The Wintersburg Mission had expanded, with a new Church building in 1934 during the Great Depression. The congregation of the Mission had grown, with many coming to attend services and activities from around Orange County. The Wintersburg Mission supported four Language Schools by 1942, in Garden Grove, Talbert (Fountain Valley), Costa Mesa and Laguna Beach.
By February 19, 1942, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, it had become clear that life would change. Families sold farm equipment for pennies on the dollar. Neighbors were asked to watch over the rare Japanese-owned properties, like the Furuta and Masuda farms in Orange County. The Furuta and Akiyama families packed their personal belongings and stored them with Henry Akiyama's employees at the Pacific Gold Fish Farm in Westminster.
And, then they waited. In Orange County, Japanese Americans were asked to voluntarily present themselves at various departure points on specific dates to meet the buses that would take them to confinement.
In Huntington Beach, the ladies from the Baptist church brought coffee and donuts, trying to offer some comfort at the Pacific Electric Railway station near the pier, one of the departure points. Friends made lunch for the Furuta family at their house and then accompanied them to the Language School in Garden Grove where they met their bus to the Colorado River Relocation Center (Poston), Arizona. Charles Furuta had already been taken by the FBI, first to the Huntington Beach jail, then to the Tuna Canyon Detention Station, and then to Lordsburg, New Mexico.
By May 1942, Orange County's Japanese American population was gone. The trip from Huntington Beach to Arizona would have been a full day of travel, arriving to an unfinished confinement camp, unfurnished barracks, in the bleak desert for an unknown amount of time.
In Poston, it was over 100-degrees. The wind was blowing sand across the freshly graded desert and into the barracks, which had been quickly constructed with green lumber. There was no insulation and daylight streamed through the black, tar paper walls. The first thing to do upon arrival: fill an empty mattress with straw and carry it back to the assigned barrack, a place to lay down. Exhausted. Uncertain of the future. And, putting on a positive face for the children.
FEBRUARY 20, 2016: Historic Wintersburg will join sister organizations, survivors of confinement, descendants of those confined in World War II, for the Day of Remembrance at the Japanese American National Museum. More information at http://www.janm.org/events/collab/
All rights reserved. No part of the Historic Wintersburg blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.
