TESTIMONY TO THE UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON WARTIME RELOCATION AND INTERNMENT OF CIVILIANS

My name is Samuel T. Shoji. I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington and have lived here most of my life. I am married and we have two sons. My wife's name is Haruko and our sons are Jay Michael, age 17 years and Brian Thomas, age 15 years. I am employed with the United States Veterans Administration as a Social Worker and have 20 years of federal service including 22 months of military service with the United States Army during the Korean Conflict. I have a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington where I graduated from in 1957.

My testimony before this commission, like those who have testified before men and other yet to speak will focus on the experiences of World War II when Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals with permanent residence status in the United States were removed and imprisoned in concentration camps. I was 16 years old then and spent 13 months in the camps in Puyallup, Washington and Minidoka. Idaho. My wife spent 27 months in the same camps. However, before I talk about my own personal experiences and feelings I want to include in my testimony the experiences related to my parents and a younger sister. They cannot testify before this commission because they are deceased. They cannot tell you how they felt about being the victims of this most regretful and tragic event in the history of our United States.

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My father, the late Reverend Gennosuke Shoji, came to the United States in the early 1900's as a youth. By studying under special tutoring he was ordained in 1918 as a priest of the Episcopal Church of the United States and was the only non-white Episcopal priest in the Seattle area until the mid-1930's. He spent his lifetime working to bridge the gap of misunderstanding that often occurred between the inewly immigrated people from Japan and those who resented them because of their race and national origin. His love and devoted patriotism to the United States was never in question and even when the Federal Bureau of Investigation picked up Japanese nationals at the outbreak of World War II he was not detained because of his proven personal records and deeds. His faith in God and trust in the United States which he now considered his home made him a very proud person. But when Executive Order No. 9066 was issued and then followed by the evacuation order which classified all Japanese Americans and Japanese national, regarless of status, as enemy agents or sympathizers, his pride was crushed. This totally unreasonalbe and damaging event cause him to feel the effects of racial prejudice, hatred and bigotry that he had tried so hard to fight for so many many years

My father was in the prime of his career of ministry when World War II was declared and with the internment of many Isseis in to prison camps he had to take on added responsibilities of ministering to families which were now broken apart. His church was made into a storage site for personal properties that could not be taken to the concentration camps because of the limited

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amount of luggage that was allowed to be taken. We were limited

only to what we could carry in our hands. He spent days and nights packing, sorting and marking containers that wer brought to be stored for the duration of the internment. My brother and I assisted him in the storage process. My father also had to take care of our family's personal belongings for his children at home were too young to know how to prepare items for long term storage. He also had to make special arrangements to take care of the needs of my younger sister who was partially paralyzed and was physically and mentally handicapped.

At the Assembly Center in Puyallup, Washington where we were first sent to live for several months and then again at the permanent site of the concentration camp in Minidoka. Idaho, my father helped many families get settled in their bare and crude barrack room, for each family was crowded into a single room. He also helped to organize a new community of displaced people who had been forced to leave their homes and communities and now had to live on a God forsaken desert isolated from "everthing". I hope that the members of the commission have been given detailed descriptions about the miserable shacks that we had to live in and about the immense discomforts that had to be endured. My father's tasks were extremely difficult and stressful for he had to share in the grief and troubles of individuals and families who were unable to cope with such inhumane living conditions.

After toiling under severe stress and pressures for many months my father became ill himself and had to be hospitalized in a crude and inadequately equipped hospital facility. I do not

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rember the details of his illness but but it was evident that his condition was directly related to physical exhustion from all the work that he had to do with little or no help. He recovered in time and spent the remainder of his time ministering to the ill, lonely and spirit-broken people living in the camp. He was later given permission to travel to other concentration camps to carry on with his ministry and encourage them to make a life with what they had. He spent the duration of the war in the camps until they were ordered to be closed.

When the internees were permitted to return to the West Coast my parents returned to Seattle but could not find a place to live. My parents had to settle in a corner portion of his church which was converted into a hostel to house others who had returned but unable to find suitable lodgings. He took on the task of helping the Japanese people resettle and once again began to rebuild his church congregation as the number of returnees and other coming to Seattle increased.

My father's work and activities during the years of World War II focused on helping others. He sacrificed himself and was denied many basic necessities as he labored. He remained faithful and patriotic to the United States during all that time and until his death in 1968 at the age of 89 years. However, his disappointment with the inhumane removal and detention of the Japanese by the United States government was a topic he talked about often during the time he was alive. His will and strength to survive through all the turmoil came

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from his faith in God and this is how he found a way to forgive the government and the individuals who were responsible for the incarceration of the Japanese Americans and the Japanese >nationals.

Because of the low salaries paid in general to clergymen during the 1940's he did not suffer a great monetary loss of wages on account of the incarceration. However, I am sure that his professional services as a priest deserved more than the mere $19.00 per month he and other professionals such as doctors, dentists, attorneys, nurses and others received. It was an insult to them then as it would be now to expected quality service for so low returns. I feel this is a important factor to remeber.

My mother, Kane Shoji, was also caught as an innocent victim of Executive Order No. 9066. She had come to the United States from Japan in 1921 to serve the Japanese in the community as a Christian missionary worker. He and my mother were married in 1922. While growing up in Japan she studied the art of Japanese flower arrangement, a skill and art requiring many years of devotion and dedication. She became very skill in her arranging techniques. Although she had moved to the United States, in 1939 she was called back to Japan to accept the title of Headmaster of the Senke School of Japanese Flower Arrangement whick was one of the established school in Japan. The headmaster of the school at that time died and his family had asked that this title be passed on to my mother because of her personal character and advanced skills in teaching the art of flower arrangement.

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My mother returned to Seattle and with full enthusiasm began to

to expand her teaching and to establish her headquarter in Seattle. It was he dream and hope to bring the beauty and the culture of this highly skillful art to the people of the United States as her expression and contribution of love for the country which was now her home. With the onset of World War II, the internnent and the negative feelings of everything and everyone labeled "Japanese," she had no chance and had to endure this emotional pain during the years that she was in the concentration camp. She persevered in her desires by practising flower arranging by using whatever material she could gather from the barren desert and sagebrush country. This was a very personal experience for her which left her sad and disappointed. She was a victim of circumstances unable to contribute her talents that would have promoted good will, peace and understanding among all people. It was this kind of emotional tragedy of crushing the emotional spirit of individuals like my mother that also need to be remembered as part of the damages that were done as a result of confining innocent people in concentration camps.

My sister Florence was 13 years old when she had to leave Seattle with the rest of the family. She was a handicapped child from early childhood until the day she died at the age of 18 years in the Idaho State Hospital. Florence was an invalid child, paralyzed on her right side from illness, barely able to drag her body as she walked. She was unable to communicate with others and let us know that she wanted "something" by tugging our arms and grunting certain sounds. She was cared for at home by her

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family in a setting where she could feel sare and comfortable. My mother gave her the physical care needed and saw her through many periods of illness. It took years to teach her the simplest acts such as learning to sit up at the age of 5 years and walking as she dragged her paralzyed body by the time she was 8 or 9 years old. She eventually learned how to tell us that she wanted to use the toilet rather than soiling herself.

The internment destroyed almost all of this progress for her for now she had six of us living in a single room of the barrack. There was no individual toilet or bathing facility that she could use. We had to keep a commode in one corner of the room for her use and her baths had to be done only with a wet towel and small pails or pans of water warmed on a coal stove that was used to heat the room when cold. She was unable to eat with the rest of the people in the common dining hall so food had to be brought back to the room where she was fed alone. Her diet had to be changed since no special orders were allowed to meet her dietary needs. Many times she could not eat the food that had been prepared in the dining hall. She eventually regressed and reverted back to having uncontrollable grand mal seizures. She finally had to be admitted to the Idaho State Hospital for the mentally retarded where she stayed only a short while before she died.

I was told on numerous occassions by my parents that the separation was very traumatic for Florence. They visited her on rare occassions for she knew. them on sight inspite of her mental handicap. My mother bore the grief of her loss for many years.

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My sister could not adjust or cope with the upheaval and confusion that was imposed on her. It was too much for her to understand. Some may say that Florence would have died at an early age even though she was never moved from her home in Seattle because of her physical and mental conditions. However, we have always felt that her death came prematurely as a direct result of her separation from the few things she could adjust to and even more so because of the separation from her parents, especially from her mother who had cared for her in a way only a mother can take care of a special child. -No, my sister did not have any monetary loss during her lifetime for she was totally dependent on others and would have been until her dying day. However, I feel that the mental suffering and anguish forced on her in her limited ability to understand caused damages that cannot be adequately compensated by sums of money or words of apology. She would have never been able to express her thoughts if she were alive today, but she underwent a life's experience just like the rest of us which was unjustified and inexcuseable.

As stated at the begining of my testlmoney I was a 16 year old youth when the evacuation orders were issued, and along with other Japanese American and Japanese nationals were forced to leave Seattle. This occurred during a period of my adolescent life when peer group association and identification was a very important element in my psychological make-up. I was a member of our high school band and began participating in one of the school's activities committee. Very few Asian students became involved

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in activities predominately composed of Caucassian students. I had hopes set on finishing high school with my classmates, many of whom I started with in grade school. I was getting to feel that there was a decent life for me in the United States and I would be treated fairly and as an equal despite of what I had heard about racial minorities not being able to succeed in a place where being Caucassian was the primary criteria fof success. Yes, as a 16 year old Japanese American I did have dreams just like any other teenager and they were based on my acceptance of what was taught to me in school about democracy and decency that was paramount in the United States as compared to the other nations of the world. But as a result of being forced out of Seattle and into concentration camps, my views towards the dreams that I had constructed in my imagination began to change. It was not a sudden change but it felt like something in my "spirit" had snapped and I could not easily put my finger on this feeling. To this day I have never recovered the feeling that I had back in those days. You may say that it was lost in the process of growing up or facing reality, but I was denied to make this transition for myself and the crude reality of how disliked people were treated was a lesson I learned without any preparation or warning.

I completed my senior year of high school in Minidoka, Idaho which was a totally different school procedure and not what I had been used to as a student. We lacked text books, reference material, supplies and other essential items needed

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to help students complete high school. Through a special plea to the Seattle School Districk administration, arrangements were made to have my diploma issued to me from Garfield High School where I had attended before being evacuated. However, I had missed more than a year's schooling with my former classmates and in addition was not allowed to return to Seattle to join in the graducation exercises. This left me out of an important event in my life at that time and only added to my feelings of being unwanted in our society. My 12 years of schooling was represented by a paper diploma that was eventually mailed to me.

In June, 1943 I left Minidoka, Idaho and with five other internees moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. We were told that we had been accepted there to attend the University of Cincinnati. I was still 17 years old then and had no personal practical experience for coping with living on my own and being separated by more than 2,000 miles from my parents. What I though was to be a scholarship to a university turned out to be something different. I, along with the others, were hired by the University of Cincinnati as full time kitchen helpers and this entitled us to 6 credit hours of tuition-free classes. I was assisted by a supplemental tuition plan by the Episcopal Church which did allow me to take additional classes but still had to work full time. The initial shock of being placed alone without any preparation was something that I did not anticipate so I had to experience some very uncomfortable situation before I could make a better adjustment to the circumstances I now had to face.

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Among many things we didn't know when we went to Cincinnati was that we were looked upon by our employers as some type of "refugee" being sent to provide labor. I recall my feelings of being treated like a slave, as if my life was in the hands of one person who could return me at any time to the concentration camp if I did not obey orders. The Black employees that I worked with were treated harshly and initially I was treated in the same manner. However, those of us who went to work at the University of Cincinnati from the concentration camp proved that we were able to accept responsibilities and trust and the conditions of our employment improved. None the less I along with other Niseis were subjected to feelings of worthlessness and humiliation because we were there as dislocated people and treated so differently.

The lack of work experience, education and training left me alone to work for a living and to exist on my own. School became a secondary necessity. Wages were very poor and under these conditions I felt that I had no opportunity to explore other avenues of work that would improve my condition. Other events happened that added to my discouragement. When I was 18 years old I had a sudden attack of acute appendicitis. I had to lay on a cot in the receiving room of the Cincinnati General Hospital because my parents could not be contacted and after waiting for more than 8 hours signed my own permission for surgery because my condition worsened. Fortunately I was operated on before my appendics ruptured and following the hospitalization I was cared for by friends who gave me food and shelter without cost. There were numerous times during the 4 years I lived in Cincinnati that I felt very isolated and

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and longed for my family, but I could not return home to a concentration camp and feel that I had come home, nor in the later years return to Seattle which did not welcome us for after the war we were still looked upon as "japs". My life during the years of World War II was a loss of time, humiliation and failures. I did not do well at the University of Cincinnati and dropped out of school. I volunteered for military service but was turned down because of an injury sustained shortly before being examined. By 1947 when I returned to Seattle my parents and other members of our family had also returned except for our younger sister who had died while in Idaho.

In spite of the humiliation, degradation, shame and discrimination that was experienced I had to try and survivie and make the best of what was available at the time. Having "youth on my side", I am sure that this helped me greatly to not act or react violently to all the injustices that were forced upon the Japanese Americans and our Issei parents. But now I am currently at about the same age when my father was in 1942 and was forced to take his family from Seattle to a concentration camp. It was in his prime of life that he was classified and shown that he no longer counted as a part of the United States. If this were to happen to me today I know that my reactions would not be so submissive and I would not comply without waging a personal battle to keep the government from taking my civil liberties away from me that I had tried so hard to obtain. I cannot find a single reason or explanation that make me feel satisfied that the United States Government had a legal right or so much as a "God-Given-Right" to do what it did in 1942 and the testimonies will back up my feelings.

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For all the wrong and for all the inhumane treatment comitted by the government of the United States during the mass evacuation and internment of Japanese Americans and Japanese living in the United States as permanent residents I am thoroughly convinced that every effort must be made at this time to have an admission by the government that an unjust act was committed and the damages were inflicted on innocent people. The damages and harm was not only to those who were forced into the concentration camps but also to individual and families who voluntarily left the West Coast area and settled in other parts of the nation. Not only must the United States Government admit to this error but there must be a guarantee to all that such an act will never be repeated to any people in the United States in the future without the due process of the law and the protection of the Constitution. The conduct of those individuals who were responsible for formulating and executing Executive Order No. 9066 must be disclosed and the facts of the evacuation and internment must the presented as part of the sad history of this nation through the school and education systems.

I have heard but do not accept the idea that all can be forgiven and excused by having the United States Government offer words of apologies and make promises to prevent another internment. The damage has been done and this fact cannot be denied. The Anglo­Saxon system of apologizing is by offering or awarding monetary compensation when damage has been proven. The testimonies and evidence will bring out this very clearly. The penaly that must be paid for this wrong has to be very significant and have a major

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impact on the government of the United States. It must affect anyone or any body, such as the Congress, that may decide to commit a similar act to be fully aware of it consequences. The value and trust placed on apologies and platitudes are so easily forgotten or waived when hysteria and panic overcomes justice and common logic. However, if the results of any action would result in the loss of millions or billions of dollars of the people's money, those making decisions will stop and then be forced to weigh their decisions against the consequences that would have to be faced.

The reason for seeking monetary reparations are based on other reasons. There were many who lost substantial amounts of income from wages, sale of home, furnishings and personal belongings at a great reduction. Many of these victims are too shy or do not communicate in English so they are not able to submit any testimony.

Some are too ashamed or even fearful of what people will think of >them so they too refuse to make any claim or comment. Others have died and their loss will never be recovered. There has been no adequate repayment for property loss regardless of the token payment that was distributed among some claimants several years ago. It did not get to many of those who should have received much more money for their losses. The fact the professional such as doctors, dentists, attorneys, ministers, nurses and others were paid only $19.00 or $21.00 per month is only another sample of how the injustice was carried out while they were incarcerated, and to make up for this the monetary redress is justified. I know of people who stored their belongings at the church and never got them back because they were stolen or damaged, and they were not compensated.

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Paying monetary compensation for damages done is used in the United States. For instance, a person serving in the military service of the United States can claim for monetary compensation if he/she is injured while on active service. A monetary compensation award is made when the claim is adjudicated favorably for the claimant. The success or failure of the individual is not the determining factor of such an award, but based on the degree of the damage that is sustained. This is an over-simplification of a complex process but it does serve to illustrate that the United States govenment is responsible for paying damages who are injured or hurt as a result of being under the command of the government.

It has been pointed out by some that no amount of money would ever adequately compensate for the damages that were caused by the internment of 1942. I feel that this only avoids the fact that giving monetary compensation is something that the government would like to avoid rather than face up to responsibilties. In my opinion I think that asking for and receiving monetary reparatiions for an amount between $25,000 and $50,000 per individual or their heirs is not an excessive amount. The penalty must have an impact and serve as a deterent. It should be made available to eligible person directly from the United States Government without undue hardship or complicated application processes. Individuals must not made to feel ashamed or humiliated to apply for file a claim when it is made final. Funds not claimed can be distributed among communities and groups that would use the funds to make a positive contribution in memory of those who suffered by the Executive Order.

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In summary, the internment of the Japanese Americans and the Japanese national living in the United States having permanent

residence status were forced to live in concentration camp in the United States when Executive Order No. 9066 was issued in World War II. It was an act precipitated by prejudice, hate, ignorance and fear by those who lack any feelings of human considerations. The effect of this event has affected all of us in one way or another and now the United States Government is being asked to recognize this mistake and take corrective measures. Apologies and promises for the future do not suffice as a means of excusing the terrible wrong that was done nor does it guarantee any of ust that it will not happen again. A monetary redress is the most effective deterent that I know of that can be be used to discourage power hungry people from making another mistake. I hope that the members of the United States Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians will consider all of the evidence and testimonies that have and will be presented to you so that your final recommendations to the Congress of the United States will reflect the most sincere and valid findings that can comoue of of the hearings.

Thank you very much for all your considerations.

[Signed]
SAMUEL T. SHOJI
___________________
Seattle, Washington
98144