H01U, Daniel Bissonnette ‘00, George Tanaka, Family friend, 1925, United States
George Tanaka, a family friend who is staying at my grandmother’s house in California, agreed to be interviewed by telephone on his experiences in a relocation camp during the Second World War.
George Tanaka, a second-generation Japanese-American, was relocated to a camp in southwest Arizona called Posten in 1943. He had already graduated from high school when he was relocated. He goes on to explain that it was very hot all year round, with temperatures reaching well over 100° Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). Because of this the houses had two roofs to keep them cool, but only to a very limited extent.
When talking about Japan’s advances right before the outbreak of the Pacific War, Mr Tanaka explains that second-generation Japanese-Americans were not old enough to understand world affairs or to have an opinion about Japan’s actions. However, many of the first-generation Japanese-Americans were pro-Japan, and so they saw nothing wrong with Japanese invasions of East Asia. However, he emphasizes that he and his family did not support the Japanese but also did not favor the Americans.
When asked if this neutrality changed after being put into the camp, Mr Tanaka explained how when he was first told that he was going to have to be relocated to a camp in Arizona, he felt that it was very strange, because he did not feel as though he was a “Jap” and thought that he was more American than Japanese. But he said that he soon came to understand that he was still Japanese, and that it could not be helped that the government was relocating him, because he had Japanese ancestry, even though he would “never go and bomb a bridge or try and destroy ammunition to help the Japanese army.”
When asked about his worst experience while living in the camp, Mr Tanaka explained that it was not knowing what was going to happen to him. He explained how the fear of not knowing how long he was going to be there, and where he would go, and what he would do after the war ended and he was freed was very frustrating, as well as frightening. He said that these problems had been challenging enough when he was living outside of the camp, trying to find a profession suited for him, but once he was in the camp, these problems became more serious, as his future became even foggier. He claims this problem arose partially because there were few Japanese-American role models other than the local dentist and doctor.
When asked to talk about the changes in the camp as the war went on, Mr Tanaka explained how having 120,000 people in relocation camps was very expensive to keep going. as well as not being good for morale. Mr Tanaka explained how the American government had success with Japanese-Americans in Hawai’i who had not been relocated and who as a result started going around the various relocation camps to give the men an opportunity to serve in the American Army. Although it meant leaving their parents behind in the relocation camps, many of the young men decided to go serve in the war as Americans—including Mr Tanaka himself. He claims that many of the Japanese-Americans joined the U.S. Army, to show that most Japanese-Americans were loyal to America, and to prove that they should not have been put into relocation camps.
Mr Tanaka also shared what he considered a good experience in the camp. One notable experience was working at the hospital. He thinks back on this as being an advantage for him for a number of reasons. One of these was that it was good job experience. He had earlier explained that not knowing what he could do after he was freed from the relocation camp was a frightening thought. Knowing that he had some kind of job experience helped to ease some of the fear. Mr Tanaka also believes that working at the hospital allowed him to meet many people that he would not have met otherwise, including doctors as well as patients.
Another advantage of the relocation camps, according to Mr Tanaka, is that they served as a “large bonding session” where the Japanese community in the United States could strengthen their ties because they were all put in relocation camps. Japanese-Americans thought that they had more in common after the war, and their social bonds began to strengthen, because they had shared similar experiences. They asked about each other’s experiences in different camps and compared them.
The greatest advantage of living in the relocation camp for Mr Tanaka, though, was that he got to play music. In most of the relocation camps, there was an official in charge of education, which included music in Posten. Mr Tanaka learned to play the saxophone which he’d gotten hold of in the camp. He explained that, although they were often given broken instruments that had to be fixed before they could be used, and the music had to be rewritten or bought, music was a way to enjoy the time at the relocation camps.
Asked for his final thoughts, Mr Tanaka explained how he thought that the relocation camps were not entirely bad, and many benefits came out of the camps. He realized that without going to the relocation camp, he would not have gotten a chance to go to the east coast of the United States, where he went to wait to be drafted into the U.S. Army. He also said that, without going to the camp and getting some job experience, he would have ended up working at a fruit stall in Los Angeles, but instead he was able to get jobs he enjoyed doing, such as working in a publishing company and in the auto parts industry.
When I mentioned that many documentaries today seem to show the relocation camps as being very negative and that the Japanese-Americans were treated very badly, Mr Tanaka seemed very surprised. He added that he didn’t remember life in the relocation camps as being terrible, but he might only remember a lot of the good aspects of life there because of the magnitude of the event. He said that somehow he has come to remember only the good aspects of camp life involuntarily, and that perhaps others only remember the bad parts, because they’re afraid of telling people of the advantages of camp life, since it was supposed to be such a terrible experience.
These were the final words of the interview with Mr Tanaka about his experiences during the Second World War. My overall impression of Mr Tanaka’s experiences during the war was that in his case, life in the relocation camps was not as bad as it has been made out to be in many documentaries today, but instead it was a valuable experience which he was able to use to his full advantage later in life.