JN: Okay, well, thank you all for being here. So, it is Saturday, May 23rd at 9:41 a.m. and I'm Jennifer Noji, and I'm with Akemi Dawn Matsumoto Ehrlich, Tom Kuwata, Madalyne Kuwata Adams, and Pat Dupes-Matsumoto. Thank you for being here. We're at the Jerome Rohwer pilgrimage, and it's a great opportunity to hear all of your stories. So, to begin, could you just share your full name, when and where you were born?

AE: Certainly, and I'll mention that it's 2026, the year. My name is Akemi Dawn Matsumoto Ehrlich, and I was born November 29, 1949, in Fort Ord, California.

TK: My name is Thomas Takeshi Kuwata, I was born July 25, 1941, in Los Angeles, California.

MA: My name is Madeline Hewett Adams, and my birthday is January 5, 1940. Born in Los Angeles.

PD: I'm Pat Dupes-Matsumoto, and I was born June 18, 1945, in Bakersfield, California.

JN: Thank you. And could you tell me about your relationships to each other?

AE: My mother was a sister, my mother was Rinko Ruth Yamada, and was a sister of Tom and Madalyne's mother, so we are cousins, first cousins, and Pat was married to my older brother Clyde Matsumoto, so she's my sister-in-law.

JN: Great. And could you give me an overview of your relationship to the World War II camp experience?

AE: Just briefly, my mother was in Rohwer. At the age of twenty-two, she went into Santa Anita, and then eventually to Rohwer with her mother, who was our grandmother, Tosawa Yamada. And my mother left camp after less than a year. She was allowed to leave, and she went to Minneapolis.

JK: Let's see, our family was in Los Angeles, my sister and I. We were in Santa Anita directly after the war, and from there we were in Rohwer, Arkansas.

MA: Oh, I guess I could repeat the same thing. Yeah, we had... my folks took us to San Anita racetrack, and from there to Rohwer.

PD: And I should also mention that Dawn and my husband's uncle was Roy Matsumoto, who was in Jerome and later in MIS and Merrill's Marauders. And their family, Tsutomu Matsumoto, was also in MIS.

JN: Thank you. So...

TK: One other comment. I would like to say it was Dawn that made us come over here. I truly, truly appreciate both of my cousins being here and allowing us to do this, because if it wasn't for her, we would not be here. I mean, we just totally said no when they, when the word came out, but she insisted. So, thank you to Dawn.

AE: Also, along with my mother and Tom and Madeline's mother, they had another sister who was Peg, and she was married to Harry Ogura, Ryozo Ogura, and they had a daughter, Fumiko Joyce. And the three of them also went to Rohwer. So the whole family, the three sisters with there, two who had children, and then their mother, our grandmother, all went to Rohwer together.

JN: Yeah, thank you for that overview. Well, you know, we really appreciate that you're here. So, thank you, Dawn, for getting everyone to come out, and I wonder, you know, you all have relationships similar, some similar, but some very different relationships to this experience. So, is there anything you would want to share, you know, about the family's experiences, or your personal experiences during the wartime? Any particular stories or memories that really stick out to you?

AE: Well, because I was not in camp, I don't have personal memories, but my mother wrote a series of letters from Santa Anita and from Rohwer to a family business associate and friend, who was Mr. Matsue Koike. And Mr. Koike was a rice merchant, and so he had made many trips back and forth to Japan. His family was in Japan, and he was arrested immediately after Pearl Harbor, and he was sent to Fort Lincoln in North Dakota, Fort Lincoln, I think, Bismarck, North Dakota, and my mother wrote letters to him, very newsy letters. So we have all of those letters, and after reading them, I get a good sense of what her life was like in camp. And she always had very cheerful, upbeat newsy letters, which I'm assuming was in a way to help Mr. Koike keep up his spirits, and maybe a way to avoid censorship, because we know that the letters were all read by censors, every letter has a stamp on it, and she describes social activities. She said that even though she was not in high school anymore, she attended some high school seminars out of interest. She said, "We had nothing else to do," so algebra, biology, piano. She took voice classes, so we got an, I got an idea of how she tried to keep busy. And in Santa Anita, she worked on making camouflage nets, and she describes that they had a workers strike, and she was chosen as one of the representatives, which surprised me, because I always felt she was not very assertive. But she seems to have assumed a leadership role at some points during camp life, and I'm not sure how she really felt, but she describes Santa Anita as "wonderful." And when they get to Rohwer, she said, "Oh, this is a wonderful place," but then she talks about the clouds of dust that follow vehicles, and how many mosquito bites she got. So it's kind of a double-edged sword, I think. But we got a nice, I got a nice idea, I think, of how she kept busy and tried to be upbeat about it. What do you recall from camp?

TK: Since I was born in 1941 I was an infant, so my recollection of camp is just absolutely zero, none. But our last year, we were here last year, and we were in a group discussion, and that was the first time I found out why we ended up in Japan after the war, and that was very, very eye opening for me, and I really appreciate my sister, you know, for giving me that information. Because when I met my future wife, I was talking to the in-laws, and my mother-in-law, I told her, "Oh yeah, we were in Tule Lake." And my mother-in-law immediately says, "You were one of them?" And my immediate reaction was, oh, you know, what in the hell did I say? But you know, after that, I find, you know, I come to realize that, yeah, well, Tule Lake was not a good place to be for a lot of people, but we were there, and, you know, the reasons why we were there was very, very eye-opening and very relieving for me, in that we were not there because our family said no to the questions, and so that was, yeah, a big moment in my life, you know, came last year. And so thanks to my sister.

MA: Well, I don't know much, but camp life... I don't really remember anything about Rohwer, other than the weather. I mean, because we had thunder every evening, and we were so scared, and so our grandmother said, "Go hide under the table and hide your belly button, so that the thunder won't come and get it. And I remember that distinctly, but that's about it. And I thought, you know... but other than that, I remember so little, I don't remember much. And what I've learned from other people's story is really eye-opening. I didn't realize some people have moved from one place to another so many times, and then I had a friend that came with us last year, and she told us how she was, she was the same age as Tom, so she really doesn't know what happened, but then she found out that when Pearl Harbor was bombed, her dad was taken away by FBI, and her mom, who was an immigrant from Japan, just for a short time there, was left with her, the baby who was an infant, and her little older brother, no friends, no relatives. And also my friend is thinking, "Oh my gosh, Mom really had a difficult time," and those little stories really, really touched us. Because our folks never told us what happened, and even having to have to go back to Japan, or even going to Tule Lake, Mom never spoke about the loyalty test or anything, so this is all an eye-opener for us after what, seventy years, eighty years, so we really appreciate it. Thank you.

JN: Could you just quickly share your mother's name and your father's name?

MA: Oh, my dad's name is Kijiro Kuwata, and Mother's is Lillian Kuwata.

PD: And of course this is not my story, my family's experience was very different, but I don't know when I didn't know about the camps. And in fact I knew from a very small child that my grandmother had stored in the attic, in the rafters above their two-car garage, things for a Japanese American family in Bakersfield that she had known through the school. But I, my dad was in CIC, which is Counterintelligence Corps, and almost everyone he worked with in his first assignment in Korea, in Kyoto, was Nisei, and so I grew up with their children, they think. So I'm a trained genealogist, and so I am working with Dawn in telling the family stories, but also explaining and finding some things, and I found an album that her father had kept during the war when he was making visits to the camps, and was able to show to Tom and Madeline yesterday photographs that he had taken of them as small children that they hadn't seen until yesterday.

JN: Do you want to talk about that experience of seeing these photos?

MA: Oh, it was really, really, really nice. I just... those are treasures. I mean, we, you know, because we were.. I was told that they were not to take cameras. So we have a younger brother who was born in Rohwer, and he always used to, as we were growing up, he told all his friends that he was not a native Californian, and he was really proud of the fact, but yeah, and he only has maybe one or two baby pictures. So yeah, you know, when Pat showed us those photographs, I mean, they were... it was a treasure.

JN: How did you feel about seeing those pictures yesterday?

TK: Pictures that...

AE: The pictures that my father took of you in Rohwer.

TK: I really, really appreciate Pat bringing all of those pictures. I mean, I only saw, I only have, or my sister only has just a few pictures from camp. But when Pat showed me all of the pictures with dates and names, I mean, my uncle was so, so precise in documenting all of that. Yes, I really, really appreciate it, you know, and she said she will send me the whole package, which I will treasure forever. Thank you.

AE: And I have to thank from , because she sent me those letters that my mother wrote, and also recently she said, "Oh, I found a few pictures that look like they're from Rohwer, and I think they belong to your mother, because the names of the people are typed on the back. And she, Madalyne, said, "My mother would have written them by hand." So now I have a few photographs from Rohwer that I've never seen, and my mother's not in them, but they show the men making mochizuki.

JN: Wow. Just quickly, could you share your mother and father's full names, too?

AE: Yes, my mother was Rinko Ruth Yamada, and my father was Tsutomu Matsumoto. And my father was drafted into the army before Pearl Harbor, so he was already in the service. My parents were not married at that time, but they had known each other at Los Angeles City College briefly, they were acquaintances. And maybe I'll add this story. That while my father was in the service, he was at Camp Savage at the Military Language School, and Pat thinks, based on his travel record, that he may have been sent to the camps on a recruiting mission. We were not told that. What we were told was he was on a furlough, he had a friend in Rohwer that he came to visit, but while he was in Rohwer, apparently visiting this person that he knew, inside that person's barracks, he saw a photograph of my mom and said, "Oh, I knew her from Los Angeles." So this friend said, "Well, she lives in, whatever, you know, 32 Block 32." So my father went and looked her up, and then my mom found out that he was in Minnesota at Camp Savage. And not too long after that, she got permission and left camp, and she went to Minneapolis, and about a year later they got married.

JN: Oh, that's amazing.

AE: Yeah.

JN: So I wonder, are there other stories like that, that, you know, you learned, and were really moved by? Or, Madalyne, you had mentioned earlier that your parents or your family did not talk about these experiences, and so I'm wondering, how did you learn about these incredible stories?

MA: Coming here, for one thing, to the pilgrimage, is where I found out a lot of the stories. And as far as the family goes, you know, my mom said that those were the best days of her life. She thought camp was the best place; that she didn't have to work, they gave her a place, a roof over her head, a food in front of them, and she had no complaints. And she mentioned something about teaching the hard of hearing people. My mother had a hearing deficit, and as a child, she went to, she called it a "deaf and dumb" school up in Seattle, because that's where she was born. And so those are the only two things of Rohwer that I remember. I remember more of camp at Tule Lake because I went to school there, but yeah, at Rohwer, I don't remember anything.

JN: Was she was she teaching in camp?

MA: I don't know, but I, yeah, I think because that's what she says, there were a couple, couple of hard of hearing kids, and that she helped them. But she's not a certified teacher or anything, but that's the only thing I know, and I don't know what else, I don't know what our dad did or anything.

TK: I recall my dad saying had they not been taken to camp, he thought, you know, some of the Japanese Americans would be dead because there were so much hate in Los Angeles, especially in the West Coast. And so he said, yeah, it was good that we all went to camp. And he also said for the farmers, this was the first time in their lives that they did not have to get up at the crack of dawn, and he thought that was good for the farmers, but you know, it's... thanks.

JN: A really quick follow-up question, could you just share what your family did before the war, what their lives were like before the outbreak of the war?

My mother and her mother had a grocery store in Los Angeles. And I said, "Grandma..." Grandma. Yeah, I said, my mother and her mother, that's okay. [Laughs] So the two of them ran a grocery store.

MA: Okay, this is in California, Los Angeles, and Dawn's mother and our grandmother started a business, and the two women were running it. Our parents, Mom got married, and since our dad was a contract worker up in Guadalupe, he could not live down in Southern California. He had to stay up there under the contract. So mom moved up there, and I don't know how long afterwards, but the two women, our grandmother and my aunt, our aunt, was having difficulty running the business. So our grandmother went up to Mr. Minami, who was the owner of a lettuce ranch in Guadalupe, and asked them, "Please release our dad and have them to come down and help," and that's how we ended up, you know, that's how our folks came back and started joining the business.

JN: Wow.

MA: That's, I guess, shortly after that, the war broke out.

JN: Do you know what happened to their business?

Well, according to our mom, they sold it. Government, it was a liquor store, also liquor grocery. So the government confiscated, they took the license, but they sold the store, and she said that they had a car that they sold for $25 or something, but those are the only things she said.

JN: Thanks. And jumping to after the war, did you end up going back to Los Angeles? You had mentioned going to Japan.

MA: That's a long story, but long story short, in 1945, the war ended. I remember our dad going down to Southern California to look for a place for us to live and to see about a job. And while he was there, our grandmother received a telegram from Japan that our aunt, who was living in Japan, had passed away and left two kids. So our uncle sent the telegram telling our grandmother to please go to Japan and take care of the kids, and so when our dad came back to Tule Lake, he said, well, he couldn't find a place for us to live, and he wasn't going to have a job. Therefore, Baachan's going to go to Japan, knowing that Japan lost the war, he didn't know what kind of condition it would be, and that he was not going to have her to go there by herself. So, if she's going to go, then we're all going to go, and that's how we ended up over in Japan.

JN: And was it just your family?

MA: Just three of us, three kids. My younger brother, our parents, and the grandmother.

JN: Okay.

MA: And also, I want to say, at that time, and I don't know how true this is, because this is only what Mom said to us. But she said in order for them to, in order for the government to send us to Japan at their expense, that they had to sign a document saying they are returning to Japan and never to come back.

JN: Wow.

MA: And that's how we were able to go. So we went on the General Gordon. Yes, and I remember the ship, we were on the bottom with like four bunks or something. I remember that.

JN: Yeah. Do you, were you able to keep your citizenship, your U.S. citizenship?

MA: Yeah, we did. Mom did, too.

JN: That's good, okay.

MA: We all had our, except our dad and the grandmother business.

TK: Yeah, since we were all US citizens, you know, we were okay, except for my grandmother and my father. They had to renounce their... and so in 1950 is when we all came back to the United States, and then it took a while for my father and my grandmother to come back and my mom did a lot of leg work to get them legally back into our home. And while we were in Japan, I do recall that since my father and my mother were fluent in English, they were, they got jobs at Tachikawa Air Force Base, and there they had American meals, and she would bring home white bread and butter. And to this day, to this day, I really, really think about that.

AE: After... my mother told a story that when she was allowed to leave camp, she was given $25 and a train ticket to Minneapolis, and that was it. And she got to the train station in Minneapolis, and she said there was, in those days, a little booth for traveler's aid. So she went there and said, "I need a job and I need a place to live." And the woman in the booth wrote down the address of a rooming house and said, "You can probably get a room here," and the name of a hotel, and said, "Go to this hotel, I think they're hiring." So she went and got a room and went to the hotel, and got a job making salads. And she worked there I don't know how long, but she was trying to explain to us how difficult it was to get back into regular life, because the opportunities were so limited.

JN: Yeah, I mean, in all of these stories, there's so much change, the moving and the whole, you know, changing your life, having to restart your life, that's so difficult. Well, I wonder if there are any other stories that you would want to share from either the camp experiences? You had mentioned Tule Lake, remembering a little bit more from Tule Lake.

MA: What I remember in Tule Lake is Mom going to the outside of camp to buy my shoes, my first patent leather black shoes. I was so happy, and also taking me to Mrs. Hoshiko to get my permanent for the first time, and it was the electric permanent where you have wires hanging on. I remember those days, and because our grandmother was a seamstress, so I remember her opening up a school to teach others that were in camp how to sew. I remember that, and dad learning how to play the biwa, so he did that. And I went to, I remember kindergarten, and then Japanese school in the afternoon. Yeah, and to me, what I remember is cold in Tule Lake, that's it.

JN: Yeah, thank you.

PD: Tom had mentioned that his mother was a citizen, and she was born in the U.S. and was a citizen until she married your father, who was not an American citizen, and she lost her citizenship and had to get it back later when the war changed. So when she came back to the U.S. -- well, actually, before that, as they were planning to go to Japan, she made very certain that all three of you kids were listed as American citizens. It was very important, so that it was known that you could come back.

MA: Wow, that's an eye opener. We never heard that before.

TK: No, we never heard that before, too. And again, again, you know, Pat and Dawn, I really, really thank them for being here this on this pilgrimage.

JN: Well, do you want to share more about how your pilgrimage experience has been? You know, what has it been like coming to this pilgrimage for you personally, and for you as a family?

AE: So I wasn't sure how I was going to react to being at the Rohwer site, and it, because there's very little physical evidence of the camp, and we had very nice weather, I didn't feel like I could really relate to the conditions that they probably put up with most of the time. And so to me it was kind of a non-event. I mean, I was glad I was there, but I didn't feel a huge emotional pull. But for me, right now, the pilgrimage has been wonderful, because I could reconnect with Madeline and Tom. Now I'm in fairly frequent contact with Madeline by email, but we don't get to see each other that often, even though we're in the same state. So, I've really enjoyed having this time with them, and I've met a few people that have interesting connections with my family, both my father's side and my mother's side, so that's been fun.

TK: As for me, I saw on Facebook the pilgrimages from early on, and it never struck me as something that I... but then in 2023 a lightbulb went off in my head and said, "Oh, if I don't get to Little Rock, I will never see Rohwer or Jerome. So in 2025, you know, I asked my wife, she says, "Who the hell wants to go to Little Rock? So my wife was out, and my... I asked my sister, and she said, "Sure, I'll go with you." And so we were here in 2024, we're here in 2025 and we're here this year, and hopefully we'll make it back next year. And it was a very, very good experience for me, you know, and I've learned a few things about our family that, you know, I never knew, including this year with Pat and Dawn being here, you know. And so that's been, it's been good.

MA: I've heard some of my friends talk about going to Manzanar, going to Tute Lake for pilgrimage, but I never even thought of it, but then I became curious about, I wonder what Rohwer is like? And so when Tom said, "You want to go? I said, "Oh yeah." And thinking... nowadays there aren't too many, like Dawn mentioned, images of camps. So, and then, in my ukulele group, there's a couple that took a road trip on their own because he said his wife was born in Jerome. And they came, and so I was mentioning that I was planning to come to the pilgrimage. She says, "Well, you know that Jerome, you'll never find it." They must have had a hard time finding where the campsite was. So I was, then it really got my curiosity. But I'm, I'm really, really grateful finding out all these stories and interesting backgrounds. I really appreciate Pat and Dawn for setting this up, because when I saw that program and they said, "You want to talk?" I said no, and I told Thomas that I'm not gonna be on the video. [Laughs]

PD: I've appreciated this so much. I've learned so much, I've made some wonderful connections, and, and seeing Tom and Madeline again was a gift.

JN: Well, thank you so much for sharing. We do have a little bit of time left. I'm not sure how you're feeling, but, you know, are there other stories, either from the World War II camp experience, or stories from, you know, what you've been learning at these pilgrimages, that you would like to share?

PD: Well, as the group genealogist, I like the fact that there's been such an emphasis on learning the stories, preserving the stories, and sharing the stories. That is so important, and I think in some cases, like Dawn, I think the hook has been set, and we can reel her in, and we've brought her over to the dark side of genealogy, and the dark side of genealogy means in the early morning hours waking up and hitting the keyboard. [Laughs]

AE: I'm gonna let you do that.

PD: Thank you.

AE: You want to say something? I wasn't really aware there was an organized pilgrimage to Rohwer. I hadn't... I'm not on Facebook, I hadn't paid much attention. But a couple of years ago I was in Chicago for a funeral of my one of my cousins, and Ross Harano was at the funeral, and was introduced to me, and he said, "Oh, I just came back from a pilgrimage to Rohwer." And I was intrigued, and then I found out that these two had been already and were going, went a second time, and I thought, okay, well, if I have a chance, I'll go. So you guys inspired me to come.

JN: Well, maybe just one last question. Thinking about sharing this history with others, what... if you did share this with younger generations or children, what aspects of your story, of your history would you want them to know?

Well, I would like for them to know that it's more about our folks, that generation that went through all of this, not so much us. We were just young kids and having a good time, and so it's not so much about us, but more about our parents having to go through all of this. And that I would like, you know, for the younger generation to learn to appreciate and honor that legacy.

MA: Same here. I would like for my children to really realize and not take things for granted.

That our parents, grandmother really really had to work hard, and it's good to hear the stories, but yet I'm sure that it won't be the same, because they were not in it, just like us. We were not really in it. We were kids who had fun, but I think just by hearing the experiences, I hope that they really appreciate what they have now for what they went through. I'm sure every generation has its own stories and difficulties, but it all comes from previous generation.

PD: I think the message I'd like to take to bring forward is this happened. We don't ever want it to happen again.

AE: And of course I agree with all of that. I have met people here in Little Rock who had no idea there were camps in this state. They didn't know that Japanese and Japanese Americans had lost everything and been incarcerated, and so we need to find ways to spread that message more widely, and when I talk to people about my family's history, my family's story, they say, "Oh, that's so interesting," but I always feel like everyone's story that I hear is really interesting. So I hope that more people will realize that and record it somehow. Densho is doing a wonderful job of preserving these stories, but we need to also find other ways. Mr. Imahara collecting the recollections of people, and now he announced yesterday, like stories for a third book. So I'm considering taking the letters that my mother wrote and writing a story for her to send to him, and I don't want to blow my own horn, but in Washington, D.C. there's a National Japanese American Memorial, and I wrote a tanka that's part of that memorial, and I hope that it will be allowed to stay, that whole memorial, because I see things being destroyed and history being erased, and I hope that that will be something that doesn't get erased.

JN: I hope so, too.

TK: But the cynical side of me says it'll all happen again. It will happen again, and hopefully it doesn't, but yes, people change, people forget. No matter what anybody says, anybody does, you know, do there are... so anyway, that's my negative side. Sorry about that.

AE: Realistic.

TK: Yeah, realistic,

PD: And the photos that I talked about earlier that I shared with Tom, and everything, eventually they will make their way, I'm sure, to Densho Archives.

JN: That would be great.

TK: And my thanks to Dawn's father for taking all of the photographs that Pat has now, and that'll be a treasure for me. So thanks to both of my cousins.

AE: And I never saw those pictures before either. So, my brother must have had that album, no, and he hadn't shared them. I have other albums.

MA: But I haven't seen them.

AE: Yeah. So this is helpful to just, you know, open the doors, open the books.

JN: Well, you clearly show that it's a family effort to uncover this history. So, you know, thank you all for sharing your stories with us, and for coming here today. You know, I've certainly learned a lot from all of you. So, is there anything else, any final thoughts, reflections you would like to share?

AE: Well, we'll think of it later and send you an email.

JN: [Laughs] Okay, perfect. Well, thank you. Thank you so much.