A Panorama View of the Minidoka
War Relocation Authority Center
(Eden, Idaho, 1942)
BY Francis Stewart
The National Archives

In the French film by Philippe Claudel, Il y a longtemps que je t’aime (I’ve Loved You So Long), he explores the theme of imprisonment and how prisoners physically begin to look like their prisons. I wondered if Minidoka internees took on the features of the desert, barracks, guard towers, and fences that physically and psychologically corralled them. Ironically when the soldiers removed sections of barbed wire to make clotheslines, no one crossed the void. There was no reason to escape. The desert was a fence and their skin color was their uniform.

My father carried his bitterness back home to Seattle. We lived at 921 Lane Street and shared the house with my maternal grandparents, the Yamadas, and a tenant in the basement. When I was about five, people used to say I looked just like my father. They called me “Little Kiyoshi.” At first, I took it as an honor. Once, some adults at the grocery store said that my brother looked like my father. I thought, “Didn’t they know I am ‘Little Kiyoshi,’ not him?” I moved in front of my father so that they could see that they had made a mistake. But they ignored me and continued to pay attention to my brother.

At Lane Street my brother and I slept in what was the dining area, and my parents shared the bedroom. Two other Japanese families lived nearby, and the Italian landlord had chickens in a fenced area next door. Our two-story rental house was an imitation brick in a semi-industrial area near a sheet-metal factory, a tire warehouse, and other businesses.

We lived near Gatzert Elementary School. Once at recess, I looked down the hill and saw a white ambulance parked at our house. I thought my grandfather Yamada must be ill. After the bell, I returned to Miss Collin’s second grade class where she sent me to the principal’s office. I was surprised to find my older brother, Alan, waiting to escort me home.