The article on the “Taken from their families” exhibit at the Japanese American Museum of Oregon addresses important issues as the new administration embarks on mass deportations. My concern is that the story sanitizes history by not describing the experience of Japanese and Japanese American prisoners at the Portland Assembly Center, (“New Japanese American Museum of Oregon exhibit highlights lesser-known story of Angel Island,” Jan. 24).
By May 1942, “the animal stalls at the Livestock Exposition had been converted into quarters measuring about ten-by-fifteen feet, one per family,” according to the Oregon Historical Society. “Each person had a cot and a straw-filled bag for a mattress. Rooms were open at the top, doorways were covered by canvas flaps, and the dirt floors were covered with wood planks. Single men were assigned beds in a dormitory. The separate latrines and showers for women and men lacked partitions for privacy. The stench of stock manure was pervasive.” Photographs of prisoners smiling and laughing were staged by military photographers, OHS says.
The camps where they were ultimately imprisoned were constructed in remote, austere areas far from the West Coast and surrounded by tall wire fences and armed guards. Hastily built barracks were incapable of stopping the wind or cold or desert heat. They were concentration camps.
My mother was imprisoned at Amache in southern Colorado. I asked her once what sustained her family. “Shikata ga nai,” she said, which means “it cannot be helped” or “nothing can be done about it.”
I asked her if she thought it could happen again. “We didn’t think it could happen the first time,” she answered.
Duane Noriyuki, Springfield
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