Newly Arrived Evacuees from the Assembly
Center at Puyallup, Washington
(Eden, Idaho, 1942)
BY Francis Stewart
The National Archives

Looking back I think that the realities and the residual stresses of Minidoka, having children, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima exacerbated my parents’ illnesses. Times were hard for many Japanese after the War, and I learned to bend and adjust.

The Japanese-American internment camps also affected my friends’ lives negatively. In high school, my best friend, Richard, had a mother who became depressed. I told him about how we had saved my mother’s life by institutionalizing her. His family decided not to do this to her even though she had difficulty with reality, and her mental health grew worse. She changed churches, converted to Lutheranism, and finally took her own life with an overdose of pills. My other friend, Randy, came home after school and found his accountant father hung in the garage wearing a suit and tie.

Looking back I think that the realities and the residual stresses of Minidoka, having children, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima exacerbated my parents’ illnesses. Times were hard for many Japanese after the War, and I learned to bend and adjust.

Suicides were common among Japanese then. My mother would say that someone died the other day and that it was a suicide. That was all the explanation necessary. There was no need to ask, “Was he or she depressed?” “Why did they do it?” As a result of the numerous suicides and my parents’ health problems, I became more self-sufficient and resourceful. I grew up not depending on adults and not trusting the government. Years later, my wife would revise a famous quote for me, “No man is an island, except for you.”

In 2006, I returned to Minidoka as part of an annual pilgrimage, hoping to make peace with the injustice of the place. I wanted Minidoka to be ugly and cruel so I could say it was a horrible place. Only the broken concrete foundations, deteriorating root cellar, a stone chimney and Japanese rock garden were echoes of the past. There were no ghosts or spirits walking the land even though thousands had suffered, and some had died there. Except for a small bronze plaque, no sign of evil remained. Instead it was beautiful, lush and green. Nature has healed the land. But healing for me is not leaving psychological crutches in a heap on that land, and walking away cured. It is simply moving ahead, knowing that pieces and parts will always be left behind unresolved.

A quotation from Isaiah 2:4-5 brought me some comfort on this path: “They beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” As I gazed at the baby picture of me in the desert, I realized instead of swords and spears that…