Toyo Okumura

Nisei

Toyo Okumura was born in Gardena, CA and grew up in the South Bay area of Los Angeles. Growing up, she helped her two Issei parents, Seisuke and Tome, raise her siblings Osamu, Masako and Mie. The family grew produce as tenant truck farmers and operated a local tofu, fish and meat shop.

Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attacks, the F.B.I. arrested Toyo’s father Seisuke, citing his involvement with two judo organizations. His whereabouts were unknown until weeks later when Toyo’s family received a letter from him and learned that he was detained in Santa Fe Internment Camp.

Toyo was 25 years old when President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. With only one-week notice and their “evacuation” date approaching, strangers began to show up at Toyo’s family home asking for appliances and other valuables. Buyers offered little money, and her family had little choice but to give many of their belongings away. Toyo was especially heartbroken when she was forced to leave their two dogs behind. Carrying only what they could carry, Toyo’s family was sent to Santa Anita Assembly Center in April of 1942.

Toyo’s family was amongst the first to arrive at the Santa Anita Assembly Center. They were assigned a horse stable to live in. On the first day, camp administrators told them that the facility did not have enough food to feed the incarcerees and gave them only stale bread and milk. For the rest of the week, Toyo and her family slept on a cement floor using hay filled sacks as makeshift mattresses. Eventually, they were given cots to sleep on. Toyo’s family was detained at Santa Anita Assembly Center for six months before they were transferred to Jerome in September of 1942.

During their five-day train ride to Jerome, U.S. Army guards required all passenger car blinds to remain closed. Incarcerees were only allowed off the train at stops in the middle of the desert to walk and stretch their legs, under the threat of being shot if they tried to escape. 

Upon their arrival, Toyo’s family was greeted by Black sharecroppers from nearby cotton fields who waved and shouted, “Welcome to Arkansas!” But they were soon escorted to a barbed wire-enclosed prison. Unlike Santa Anita, Jerome was afflicted by heavy rains and flooding. Toyo recalls taking a rowboat from her barrack to the mess hall, where she ate her meals and worked shifts preparing baby formula for infants.

Toyo’s family received the loyalty questionnaire while incarcerated at Jerome. To prevent the separation of their family and in protest of this stark violation of their civil rights, Toyo’s family refused to answer the questionnaire. Toyo and her siblings renounced their U.S. citizenship and the family requested re/expatriation to Japan.

Deemed “disloyal” by the camp authorities, Toyo’s family was transferred to Tule Lake in October of 1943. At Tule Lake, Toyo continued working in the mess hall preparing baby formula for mothers in the camp population. Seisuke advocated for incarceree rights as a block co-representative of the Daihyo Sha Kai. In 1944, Seisuke and Toyo’s brother Osamu joined the Hoshi Dan and Hokoku Seinen Dan—two “pro-Japan” organizations founded in Tule Lake—to prepare the family for life in Japan. Toyo joined the Joshi Seinen Dan, a companion organization for young women. Camp authorities labelled these organizations as “troublemakers”, and the F.B.I. began arresting its leaders and members. In January of 1945, Seisuke was arrested and sent away, followed by Osamu a month later.Toyo and her remaining family members in Tule Lake had no idea of their whereabouts until weeks later, when they received a package from Seisuke: a pair of handmade Japanese zori sandals with a carefully concealed note informing them that he was detained in the Santa Fe Internment Camp and Osamu was detained in Fort Lincoln Internment Camp.

In December of 1945—four months after the war ended—camp authorities transferred Toyo, her mother Tome and sister Masako to Portland, OR where they boarded the USS General Gordon for deportation to Japan. Seisuke and Osamu had boarded the same ship days prior, but because women and children stayed in separate quarters from the men, they were not aware of this until three days into the voyage when they were able to unite as a family again.

After sailing for two weeks across the North Pacific, Toyo’s family disembarked at Uraga Port in Kanagawa Prefecture and joined the six million others repatriating or expatriating from across Asia, the Pacific, and Americas to a war-decimated Japan. Immediately after their arrival, Toyo’s family was recruited by the U.S. occupation forces, who were seeking bilingual individuals to staff their offices. Toyo’s family declined and returned to live with relatives in their ancestral hometown in Mie Prefecture, but the U.S. occupation forces continued to solicit them. Eventually, Toyo took a job with the occupation administration’s housing department based in Tokyo. Seisuke became a local elementary and middle school administrator to help with post-war educational reforms. Later, Osamu enlisted in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. Several years later, Toyo and her siblings were able to restore their U.S. citizenship through representation by civil rights attorney Wayne M. Collins and the Tule Lake Defense Committee. Judge Louis E. Goodman’s favorable ruling in the Abo v. Clark case and the subsequent appellate court settlement led the U.S. government to officially recognize Toyo and her siblings once again as birthright citizens.

Toyo continued to live in Tokyo and operated her own jewelry business for 41 years until her parents and older sister passed away. In the mid-1980s, she returned to her birthplace in southern California. Toyo eventually settled near friends and relatives in Denver, CO before she passed away in 2010.

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James Okumura

Nisei/Sansei

James Okumura is the paternal nephew of Toyo Okumura. He was born in Boyle Heights, CA and raised in Pasadena and Altadena, CA.

The first time James met his aunt Toyo was when he visited Japan at nine years old. He continued to visit her during the summer months throughout his late teens and college years. “They were important trips at that juncture, at that point in my life,” he says. “They were very instrumental in forming my identity as a Japanese, as a human, as a person.”

Although James did not receive a formal education in Japanese, the emergence of ethnic studies in college campuses in the early 1970s and public figures like Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Malcolm X inspired James to reconnect with his own heritage. “This is probably going to sound corny, but the television series Roots, which was being televised at the time—that was pretty instrumental in me trying to figure out what my own roots were,” he says. James took Japanese language classes in college and lived in Japan for a year on an exchange program during his junior year.

Since then, James has conducted extensive research on his family history. “Learning about my own family history has made me understand myself better,” he says. “With greater understanding comes increased capacity to forgive. Perhaps understanding my family history has allowed me to forgive myself for my own shortcomings.”