Sutra and Bible: Faith and Japanese American World War II Incarceration

ABOVE: The bible of Charles Mitsuji Furuta with his handwritten notes on the date and time he arrived at different prison camps. This notation marks his arrival at the military prison camp in Lordsburg, New Mexico, in September 1942. He was arrested after President Franklin Roosevelt authorized Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, and had been a legal resident of the United States for over four decades. Lordsburg was run like a Prisoner of War camp with communal barracks, a bugle call at 6 a.m. and lights out at 10 p.m. (Photo, M. Urashima, 2018, Courtesy of the Furuta family) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   The bible of Charles Mitsuji Furuta, Furuta Gold Fish Farm at Historic Wintersburg, is included in an upcoming exhibit, Sutra and Bible: Faith and the Japanese American World War II Incarceration, at the Japanese American National Museum. He was the first Issei baptized as Christian in Orange County and was an elder in the Wintersburg Japanese Mission. At the time of his arrest by the FBI, he had been a legal resident of the United States for over four decades.

   Charles Mitsuji Furuta held the bible with him after his arrest in February 1942, when he was taken to the Huntington Beach jail, then to Tuna Canyon Detention Station in Los Angeles County, then to military prison camps in Santa Fe and then Lordsburg, New Mexico, and, finally, to Poston, the Colorado River Relocation Center in Arizona, where he was reunited with his wife, Yukiko, and their family. He kept a small photograph of Yukiko inside the bible.

RIGHT: A notation in Charles Mitsuji Furuta's bible marking the time of his arrival at the military prison camp in Santa Fe, New Mexico in May 1942. He was imprisoned there roughly four months before being moved to the military prison camp in Lordsburg, New Mexico. He highlighted a passage in the bible. (Photo, Courtesy of the Furuta family) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

    Charles Mitsuji Furuta arrived at the prison camp at Lordsburg, New Mexico, less than two months after the "Lordsburg killings." Two California men in their late 50s, Toshiro Kobata and Hirota Isomura, were shot at close range by Private First Class Clarence Burleson during a two-mile trek through the Chihuahuan Desert. The men had been involved in a camp protest regarding forced labor conditions, illegal under the Geneva Convention as the prisoners were classified as "enemy alien."

   The incident prompted Spain, the intervening power under the Geneva Convention, to issue a memorandum from the Spanish Embassy to the U.S. Department of State. "...Shiro Kobata and Hirota Insomura, who were invalids aged nearly sixty years (60), former suffering from tuberculosis and latter from spinal disease caused by injury sustained while at work in fishing boat, were unable to walk any further, and had to follow party in automobile escorted by soldiers. Party felt uneasy about these two persons, as they failed to join them at Lordsburg Camp. Moreover reports of gun heard in direction of station gave them evil forebodings...It was announced by camp office next morning two invalids had been shot at dawn 27th on charge of attempt to escape. It is inconceivable that aged invalids hardly able to walk should while under military escort have attempted to escape."

   The Spanish Embassy noted the Lordsburg killings and other troubling incidents in an official communication to the State Department in March 13, 1944. "...a Captain fired revolver to urge internees to hasten their work, at another time an internee requesting a sentry to fetch golf ball which had fallen out of fence was fired at from watchtower, and on third occasion internee was fired at while within twenty feet of fence. During 1942 some 20 American convict soldiers were interned at Lordsburg Camp. Japanese internees requested Commandant to remove these convicts to another place, but request was not complied with. On Thanksgiving Day one of convicts, under influence of liquor, intruded into Japanese internees quarters used abusive language, sat astride Doctor Uyehara, and wounded him in back with a knife."

   It was a frightening time during which all civil liberties were lost and the threat of violence was real. Charles Mitsuji Furuta held onto his faith, and the tiny bible with the photograph of Yukiko tucked inside. The upcoming exhibit shares other items of faith held onto by those enduring WWII incarceration.

LEFT: The Furuta family finally was reunited at Poston, the Colorado River Relocation Center near Parker, Arizona. Charles Mitsuji Furuta (front row, far right) had been separated from his family for over a year. The Furutas were able to return home to Wintersburg Village in 1945. (Photo, Courtesy of the Furuta family) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles will host an online preview at 10 a.m., Saturday, February 26, with a "virtual preview of many never-before-seen artifacts that tell the stories of how Japanese Americans drew on their faith to survive forced removal and incarceration at a time when their race and religion were seen as threats to national security."

   "Sutra and Bible brings the stories of those faced with sudden, heartbreaking exile to light through an array of astonishing artifacts: from the prayer books and religious scrolls they carried with them into camp, to the altars, prayer beads, embroidered senninbari prayer belts, and memorials they handcrafted through the bleakest times, to keep their spirits alive."

REGISTER for the free online preview at Sutra and Bible: Faith and the Japanese American World War II Incarceration.

© 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.  

Day of Remembrance: February 19, 2016, the 74th Anniversary of Executive Order 9066

LIFE BEFORE 1942: A collage of moments in Wintersburg Village and Huntington Beach, (top left) the Furuta family outside their bungalow on Wintersburg Road, circa 1926; (top right) Raymond Furuta breaking track records at Huntington Beach High School, 1932; (center left) Yukiko Yajima Furuta in her new home in Wintersburg Village, 1913; (center right) Yukiko Yajima Furuta and Masuko Yajima Akiyama, sisters, at the Cole Ranch in Wintersburg Village, circa 1914; (bottom left) at the beach, circa 1930s; (right) in a new-fangled automobile outside the Wintersburg Mission, circa 1913-1915. (Photographs courtesy of the Furuta family). © All rights reserved.

    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.

 Left: At the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, California, luggage representing the one bag per person allowed into confinement. (Photo, M. Urashima, 2015) © All rights reserved.

   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.

Our American Family: The Furutas of Historic Wintersburg on PBS nationwide in May 2015

ABOVE: Yukiko Yajima Furuta, circa 1913, at the Cole Ranch in Wintersburg Village within a year after her arrival in America and 13 years after Charles Furuta's his arrival.  The Cole Ranch---where Charles Mitsuji Furuta found work---was located where Huntington Beach's Ocean View High School is today at Warner Avenue and Gothard Street.  At the time this photograph was taken, California had passed the Alien Land Law which would have prohibited them from owning their farm purchased five years earlier.  The Furutas had yet to face the local impact of World War I, the Spanish Flu, the earthquake of 1933, and the forced evacuation from their land in 1942. (Photograph courtesy of the Furuta family) © All rights reserved.

      "I think nothing would please him more than to know that his family would be a family chosen to be featured in Our American Family."

          ~ Norm Furuta, Our American Family: The Furutas, speaking of his grandfather, Charles Mitsuji Furuta, Japanese pioneer who worked to gain his American citizenship for more than half a century.

   In May 2015, the story of Historic Wintersburg's Furuta family--relayed in the book, Historic Wintersburg in Huntington Beach--will be seen in homes across the country on public television.  

   A two-year effort with research and assistance from Historic Wintersburg, Our American Family: The Furutas will share the first-person history of Japanese pioneers who helped settle Orange County, California.  Nationally, May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

LEFT: The camera belonging to Charles Furuta, with which he photographed many of the images used in the book, Historic Wintersburg in Huntington Beach, and in the PBS program, Our American Family: The Furutas.  The camera, purchased circa 1912, survived the family's forced evacuation and confinement during World War II. (Photograph, M. Urashima, October 2013)
© All rights reserved.

Our American Family: The Furutas begins with an introduction to the family with a voice-over by Etsuko Furuta, a Nisei.  Etsuko--one of the daughters of Charles and Yukiko--was born on the Furuta farm in Wintersburg Village and attended Huntington Beach High School.  Etsuko has been interviewed for Historic Wintersburg and the Our American Family producers flew to San Jose to interview her for the PBS program.

   As the audio quality of Yukiko Furuta's 1982 oral history was poor for television purposes, Yukiko's words are given voice by award-winning actress Takayo Tsubouchi Fischer (The Pursuit of Happyness, Moneyball, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Memoirs of a Geisha).  

RIGHT: Actress Takayo Fischer graciously and without hesitation donated her time and talent to Our American Family: The Furutas, providing the narration from excerpts of Yukiko Furuta's 1982 oral history.  Special thanks to Academy-Award® winning actor Chris Tashima, who arranged for the introduction for Historic Wintersburg with Takayo Fischer. (Photograph courtesy of IMDb.com)

    Also interviewed for the program are Martha Furuta, the wife of Charles and Yukiko's son, Raymond, and their three sons, Ken, Dave and Norman, as well as Charles and Yukiko's great grandson, Michael Furuta.  The program's producers deliberately allow the history to be told solely by Furuta family members, with no other narration.  The result is the history of an American family, in their own words and from their personal perspective.

   With hours of footage filmed at the Historic Wintersburg property and on one-on-one oral history interviews, the editing process to condense the story into a 30-minute program was not an easy task.  

LEFT: The annual Manzanar Pilgrimage at Manzanar National Historic Site, nine miles north of Lone Pine, California, off Highway 395.  Manzanar was the first of the confinement camps.  Etsuko Furuta's fiance, Dan Fukushima--a Fullerton College alumni--was taken to Manzanar.  He later was permitted to join Etsuko in Arizona and they were married inside Poston by Reverend Sohei Kowta from the Wintersburg Mission.  The majority of the congregation of the Wintersburg Mission was confined at Poston, others at Gila River, Arizona. (Photograph, M. Urashima, April 25, 2015) © All rights reserved.

   Research relating to the forced evacuation and confinement of Japanese Americans during World War II--part of the Furuta family story--connects the history with places of American confinement at the Colorado River Relocation Center at Poston, Arizona, the Tuna Canyon Detention Station in Los Angeles (Tajunga), the military detention station for those classified as enemy aliens at Lordsburg, New Mexico, and Manzanar.  

   The effort to accurately re-tell that chapter of American history is difficult due to its monumental importance.  The Furuta family's account is uplifting and will leave viewers wanting to know more.

RIGHT:  Toshiko and Raymond Furuta, with their cousin, Sumi Akiyama (far right) on the Cole Ranch in Wintersburg Village.  Sumi Akiyama was the daughter of Yukiko Furuta's sister, Masuko, and Henry Kiyomi Akiyama.  Both the Furutas and Akiyamas were goldfish farmers, the first pond on the Furuta farm at Historic Wintersburg.  Sumi Akiyama married Judge John Aiso, who became the highest ranking Japanese American in the U.S. military and head instructor for the Military Intelligence Service language school during World War II.  A street in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, California. is named after Judge John Aiso. (Photograph courtesy of the Furuta family) © All rights reserved.

LEFT:  Alaska public television, KUAC, begins airing Our American Family: The Furutas on May 3.

As of May 6, 2015, the majority of the country's PBS stations are airing Our American Family: The Furutas.  The COMPLETE LISTING OF STATIONS--which will be updated weekly as more stations list programs--is at http://www.ouramericanfamilytv.com/air-dates/  To view the PREVIEW of Our American Family: The Furutas, go to http://www.ouramericanfamilytv.com/

Highlighted in green are the states whose PBS stations are currently showing listings for Our American Family: The Furutas starting at the end of April through the first week of May 2015.  Southern California's KOCE will be airing the program on May 3 and 4.  More stations and air dates will be listed each week.  Check for your local public television station, date and time of airing at http://www.ouramericanfamilytv.com/air-dates/

© 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