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TI: So this brings up an interesting question for me. It's a little bit out of sequence in terms of when you found this out but what did the Indians think of the camps or the people in the camps? And so obviously if something went in there they went after 'em but was there... what did they think of the Japanese?

RO: They were really, really upset that they were putting a prison camp on their reservation. In fact, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs or Office of Indian Affairs commissioner John Collier wrote a letter to the tribal council, it wasn't asking for permission. It was like, "We are going to build these camps on the reservation and if you, basically if you object to this we're going to take the land from you." So the poor tribes at that time it was the Mohaves and Chemehuevis, only two tribes were there at that time. They had no choice. They had to allow the government to build.

TI: Even though by treaty they were a sovereign state and this was their land.

RO: Absolutely, that's right, it was a sovereign nation but they... if the government threatens them and says, "If you don't let us build it here we're going to take the land from you." And it was a huge reservation it had 200,000 acres or something like that, it was big, it is big, it's one of the larger reservations.

TI: So I guess here's the question then, why did the government do that? I mean, wasn't there other land that they could've gone to? Why did they use tribal land?

RO: Good question. Commissioner Collier, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or the OIA it was called, Office of Indian Affairs at that time and I found this out years later in researching it, they had been trying since the 1800s to bring water from the Colorado river to the reservation so that their plan was to corral all of the Native Americans to this reservation 'cause they had water. So the Arizona government wanted all the Indians, wanted to take their land and push them all to the Colorado River Indian reservation. So they had been trying for decades to bring water and I had to laugh when I was reading some of the memos because they would try, they would dig the ditches, try to bring the water, you know, make a canal from the Colorado River to the reservation and it would collapse. Because they didn't have concrete or they didn't know how to use concrete at the time, I don't know what the reason was but every time they would try it, it would fail. So finally, Collier thinking ahead thought, oh, these Japanese Americans need to go somewhere, we need farmers, we need laborers, we need... so he petitioned and asked for a prison camp on the reservation so he could have farmers test the soil, so he could have canals built to bring water onto the reservation. Because at that time in 1942 the Native Americans or the Chemehuevis and Mohaves were way up towards Parker. The rest of the reservation was desolate, it wasn't cultivated, it was just a desert. So Collier wanted, had big plans and finally he saw a way to develop his plans so he petitioned the Congress to ask for the Japanese Americans to be brought onto the reservation.

TI: How interesting. So it was really this one person, this one man's sort of the dream in terms of... but the tribes did not want this?

RO: Oh, of course not, they didn't, because they were afraid they were going to lose the land after the government, once the government intruded onto their reservation, the government could say, "We've used it, it's ours now." So the tribe would not sign but the government overrode anyway and built the camps. But today if you go on the reservation, thanks to the Japanese farmers who tested the soil and bringing water onto the reservation, it's one of the wealthiest reservations.

TI: Because that whole area is now developed.

RO: It's all developed, it's beautiful. There's only ten acres that they've kept undeveloped with the mesquite and all of the native things that the tribes value. That was the one thing that horrified them was that the tractors were coming in and they were just pushing aside all the mesquite, that bush is a value, it's like their heritage. Because in the early days they would use the seeds, I mean, that bush fed them, fed the early tribes. So it was horrifying to the tribe to see the tractors come in and just, I mean, they just tore up all the mesquite and trees and everything. And then they burned them. If you go onto the WRA online you'll see pictures of these big bonfires.

TI: Bonfires, I've seen that.

RO: And that was just, for the tribes it was horrifying.

TI: But then something you said, but if you go today, it's developed and helped by having the Japanese Americans there, so would you say in some ways Collier's dream came true? I mean, this was kind of what he was hoping would happen isn't it?

RO: It is but I hate to give him credit for it. [Laughs]

TI: Okay. [Laughs]

RO: No, but it's true. His dream did come true in that the Japanese farmers tested, developed, they grew things and they realized that it was possible. In addition to that, though, I don't know -- and this is all part of the Poston history that I recovered, I discovered later was that there were POWs who were sent to Poston and they helped the Japanese who would go out to the cotton fields to pick cotton. German POWs, Italian POWs were sent to Poston to help with the cotton crop and to help paint the school. I mean, they did odds and ends jobs there on the reservation.

TI: And where were they housed? Where did they live?

RO: They lived below the Poston camps and there were buildings there and I went too late, they had torn them down, but they lived south of the Poston camps. And they apparently, I discovered his very late in my research, but they were valuable to the tribe in terms of having additional laborers with the cotton fields and the alfalfa and all the other things and they actually painted the school buildings there, the Indian schools, they did quite a bit.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.