Important concerns are covered in the story about the Japanese American Museum of Oregon’s Taken from Their Families exhibit as the new administration starts wholesale deportations.By excluding the experiences of Japanese and Japanese American inmates at the Portland Assembly Center, I fear that the story sanitizes history (New Japanese American Museum of Oregon show emphasizes lesser-known story of Angel Island, Jan. 24).
The Oregon Historical Society claims that by May 1942, the livestock stalls at the Livestock Exposition had been transformed into roughly ten-by-fifteen-foot quarters, one for each family. Everybody had a cot and a mattress made of a bag filled with straw. Wood planks covered the dirt flooring, canvas flaps covered the entryway, and rooms were open at the top. In a dorm, beds were assigned to single guys. There were no privacy dividers between the men’s and women’s separate showers and restrooms. There was a strong smell of cattle dung. According to OHS, military photographers faked images of inmates laughing and smiling.
Tall wire fences and armed guards encircled the camps where they were eventually detained, which were built in isolated, desolate locations far from the West Coast. The wind, cold, and heat of the desert could not be stopped by hastily constructed barracks. Concentration camps were what they were.
In southern Colorado, in Amache, my mother was incarcerated. Once, I questioned her about what kept her family afloat. “Shikata ga nai,” she said, implying that there is nothing that can be done about it or that it cannot be prevented.
I questioned her about the possibility that it will occur again. She responded, “We didn’t think it could happen the first time.”
Noriyuki Duane, Springfield
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