Statement of Emi K. Fujii¹ September 23, 1981

Members of the Commission:

My name is Emi K. Fujii, 7447 N. Aartesian, Chicago, Illinois. I was evacuated from San Jose, California to the Santa Anita Assembly Center May 29, 1942 with my parents and 6 brothers and sisters, ages 4-18. We were transferred to Heart Mt. On Sept. 13, 1942. I left as a students on June 19, 1943.

The Commission is here to determine whether a wrong was committed. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I respectfully submit that it is like showing you a skeleton and asking you if the person is dead.

Most of the testimony has come from evacuees, which has been subjective and often repetitious. So after weeks of testimony, I wonder what I am doing here. If you want the truth, the whole truth, then let it come from the government archives, and from expert witnesses under oath, like the military leaders, the law officers, the social scientists, the camp doctors and social workers, and more panels like the ones we had this afternoon, as well as from the evacuees.

But I am here, and the focus of my testimony is on the crushing impact of the evacuation and incarceration upon my father, Toshio Kimura. He came to this country alone at age 15, in the 1890’s. He attended American schools in San Francisco and worked at various jobs. From 1916 on, he worked as a life insurance agent. Because of the Alien Land Laws, he bought a house in San Jose in the name of an American citizen. Then in 1919, he met and married my mother. They had 7 children.

Culturally, he was both Japanese and American. Denied citizenship, he put his hopes and beliefs in this country by rearing us in American traditions and values, along with Japanese customs. Despite the years of anti-Japanese feeling and legislation, he had an abiding faith in the basic soundness of the United States government and its democratic principles. He gave much more than he ever got. We took all this for granted, not realizing how lucky we were.

The evacuation seriously challenged my father’s faith and his identity as a husband and father. His livelihood was destroyed; his ability to provide for and protect his family was undermined. It was a shock from which he never recovered. With anguish and sorrow, he wrote to Mrs. Nancy Storm, a friend of over 25 years, in a series of letters: "I never dreamed I would see my children behind barbed wire . . .this is a terrible place to raise the children. We are not cattle, but 3 times day, in the morning, noon, and evening you hear the gong, gong, gong, the bell. Then and there you will see men, women, and children come out of stable-like shelters. . . Everytime I see this sight I cannot help my hear aches."

While 5 of the children were still behind barbed wire, his oldest son was overseas with the 442nd Combat Team. Linc’s volunteering was a natural extension of his and my father’s beliefs.

My parents and 3 remaining children stayed at Heart Mt. Til June 1945 when they were finally permitted to return home. A month later, my father was dead at the age of 62, as the result of a stroke. "He moved heaven and earth to get the family back to San Joe," a friend observed. He had been crushed, angered, and betrayed by this country which he believed in but which never believed in him. What haunts me still is I do not know whether he died only broken or whether he had hope.

It has been almost 40 years since Executive Order 9066. We were evacuated and imprisoned without cause, without due process. Our rights as citizens and basic rights of the person, which extended to the Issei, were violated. The one and only thing against us was our race. If the leaders of our country had succumbed only to West Coast pressure groups, that would have been bad enough. They went beyond that. They knowingly violated the laws of the land in the name of military necessity where none existed. They did this in the face of the Munson Report of early November 1941, stating "there is no Japanese problem." They did this, knowing in the first weeks after Pearl Harbor that no sabotage had been committed by a Japanese of Japanese American. The military was even preparing plans for concentration camps in October 1940. The evacuation was nothing short of criminal.

1.  Statement of Emi K. Fujii, September 23, 1981.  Records of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Record Group 220.18.25, United States National Archives and Records Administration.