Dr. Roger Ozaki, Testing Center Director – GPC Gwinnett Campus at Gwinnett University Center

Journey to Poston

Komiko spoke very little English and understood even less. As a teenager, she and her husband had come to the United States in 1917 from Japan to seek a better life. Away from scorn and prejudice, because her family in Japan was considered in a lower class. Both she and her husband worked very hard to make a good life in their adopted country; he worked in the fields as a farm hand; and she worked as a domestic in the home of a wealthy businessman in California. They were pleasantly surprised when she found that she was expecting their first child. It was a girl. After having three more children, she stopped working to raise them. They did not have a permanent home because there were laws in California which prevented Asians from owning land or property.

Then, one hot summer day, tragedy struck. The owner of the farm where her husband worked came and told her that her husband was dead. During the day, as he worked in the fields under the hot, broiling sun. There he suffered a massive stroke and died surrounded by vegetables and insects. Widowed and devastated by the loss of her husband, she vowed never to give up because of her young children. She was all alone, with no other family in California.

When she thought that she couldn’t take any more, another catastrophic event occurred which would change her life forever. The United States naval fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked by Japan in December of 1941, and President Franklin Roosevelt declared war on Japan. Instantly, she and her children were classified as enemy aliens even though her children were American born United States citizens. President Roosevelt issued executive order 9066 which granted the War Relocation Authority the power to transport all Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals from their homes and businesses on the West Coast(California) to relocation camps in the desert and other desolate, uninhabited areas of the United States.

Not fully understanding the executive order, Komiko and her children went to the staging area and were put on a train bound for Arizona. Their only possessions were the clothes that they were wearing and what little they could carry. They were frightened, but they had no choice since they were guarded by soldiers. It was a long and tiring train ride to their new home in Poston, Arizona. She did not know about due process and equal protection. Relocated with 10,000 other Japanese Americans to an abandoned military camp, she and her children endured countless days of blinding dust storms in the desert and freezing temperatures at night. Surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers manned by armed sentries, they lived in crude, wooden barracks. There was no privacy since several families lived in the same area separated by sheets.

After three years in Poston, she and her children were released because she found an American sponsor who guaranteed her a job in New Jersey. She could not return to her home in California because there was nothing left; her home and possessions were gone. Returning from New Jersey, she lived for many years after surviving the camp in Poston, Arizona and eventually was able to return to live in California.

She survived long enough to see her grandchildren graduate from college. She was so proud of them. Sadly, though she did not live long enough to know about the Civil Rights Act of 1988 and the official apology from President Ronald Reagon for the internment. But, somehow I think that she knows. In the end she achieved her dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.