'Orientals' Shun Island Japanese
By PAUL OHTAKI
Review staff correspondent

CAMP MANZANAR, Calif., Wednesday, April 8--It wasn't sand storms, hot weather, a lack of jobs, living in cramped barracks or mess hall feeding which were causing Bainbridge Island's evacuated Japanese the most difficulty in their first week in this reception center.

It was that Americanized Islanders found themselves in the midst of other Japanese from California, Japanese who seemed to the Islanders to be the most Oriental people outside of Japan. It was hard for the two groups from opposite ends of the Pacific Coast to "get together." The Los Angeles Japanese regarded the Islanders as "stuck up" and the Californians seemed unfriendly to the Islanders.

The Islanders, accustomed to a different environment than the people from the Japanese "colony" of Los Angeles, found themselves in the position of a minority group.

There were physical discomforts, too, as the Islanders settled down on a totally different world, so to speak. Owen Valley, they discovered, is a dusty, sage-brush, flat land rimmed by high mountain peaks from which the snow is fast disappearing under a hot sun. The mornings, though, are cold.

At the present, wind storms about every three days stir up dust so thick it is impossible to see more than fifteen feet at times.

Building still continues under a force hired by California contractors. Several hundred Japanese evacuees sit around idle. There are about 150 barracks. Each barrack has four rooms, each room housing ten persons. There are no schools, churches or other "village" buildings, but the management promises them as well as concrete work and lawn landscaping later to hold down the dust.

The Islanders were out in full force to bid goodbye to the Army detachment which accompanied them on the train from Seattle. It was a sad parting, for the Islanders were grateful for the courteous and friendly treatment given them by the soldiers and the officers.

Only Islander to find immediate employment was Sada Omoto, formerly of Wing Point and a University of Washington freshman. He was employed by the medical department here.

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Because there are no schools at Camp Manzanar, Calif., where evacuated Island Japanese are living, the Bainbridge school system this week took steps to set up correspondence facilities to that 13 graduating Japanese seniors may earn Bainbridge High School diplomas.

Roy G. Dennis, high school principal, carrying out orders of the school board, said the school would contact the seniors and arrange for "lessons-by-mail." What, if any, graduation exercises would be attempted later was not known.

The system, officially, will not attempt to provide correspondence courses for any other of the 84 Japanese children, but several of these students, prior to the evacuation, made informal arrangements with some teachers for correspondence work.