Toshiyuki Seino - Part 2: From the Lower Concentration Camp to the Tule Lake Concentration Camp

Masako Miki

Translated by: Google Translate

Published March 14, 2022 comments

The Seino family of Hawthorne, 1938.

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The Seino family purchased a house in Hawthorne just before the war and ran a fairly large farm. However, in 1941, the Pacific War broke out. The following year, the family received a forced eviction order and had to leave their home and farm behind. After being sent to an assembly center built at Santa Anita Racetrack, Matsukichi and Fumiko, along with Shunichi, Toshiyuki, Tatsuo and their three young sons, were sent to the Lower Internment Camp in Arkansas. There, their daughter Hiroko was born. They were then transferred to the Tule Lake Internment Camp in Northern California in October 1943, and in 1944, their fourth son, Katsuyuki, was born at Tule Lake.

At Tule Lake. Toshiyuki is second from the left in the front row. 1945.

"I think we stayed in Lower for about a year, and then we were moved to Two Riks. I was only four years old so I don't remember it very well, but apparently there were quite a few anti-American people among the Japanese, and they were involved in all sorts of movements. My father was apparently among those people who were working hard and saying that Japan would not lose. After Two Riks, my father was sent to a different place, and only my mother and I lived there, five of us children. I think it must have been difficult for my mother."

In 1943, the War Relocation Administration (WRA), which ran the camp, conducted a "loyalty registration" for all internees over the age of 17. This questionnaire, titled "Request for Release Permission," asked whether they were loyal to the United States or Japan, and those deemed disloyal to the United States were to be transferred to the Tule Lake internment camp, which was an isolated internment camp. Today, the name is often written as Tule Lake in katakana, but the internees were called Tsuri-re-ki in katakana and written as "Tsurure-ki" in kanji.

These "disloyal" people sent from internment camps across the United States were not all fanatical supporters of Japan, nor were they troublemakers disloyal to America, as the WRA deemed them. There were a variety of reasons and circumstances for their being sent, such as some who had become pro-Japanese out of anger and despair at being forcibly interned in their home country or the second home country where they had lived for decades, and others who had simply followed family members who answered "no" to the question about their loyalty to America.

However, in 1944, extremely pro-Japanese groups such as the "Immediate Return Volunteer Group" and the "Houkoku Youth Group" were formed in Tule Lake. Many of the members were Issei and returnees from the United States who wanted to return to Japan. Matsukichi was probably one of them.

The Seino family was reunited with Matsukichi on board the repatriation ship returning to Japan. "My father was somewhat Japanese in his thinking, and it seems he decided to return to Japan because he thought there would be no home in Hawthorne. I don't remember much about that time, and my parents didn't like to talk about it much because they had a hard time."

A family photo taken in December 1945 before boarding the repatriation ship, with the aunts who came to help with the departure.

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Arkansas California concentration camps generations Japanese Americans Kibei Nisei Rohwer concentration camp Toshiyuki Seino Tule Lake concentration camp United States World War II camps

About this series

When we hear the word "immigration," some may imagine someone moving from one country to another. In the immigration history of each country, the stories of people who settled there tend to be recorded, but the stories of people who moved back and forth, or moved between countries and regions, can sometimes be hard to see due to the cultures and languages in between.

Living in both the Japanese and Japanese American communities in Los Angeles, and through my work at the Japanese American National Museum, I have had many opportunities to meet people with rich individual stories that differ from the stereotypical images historically associated with terms such as "Nisei," "Sansei," and "Kibei." In this series, I would like to record the stories of the postwar Japanese immigrants who returned to America and whose first language was mainly Japanese, whom I met in these environments.

About the Author

Masako Miki

Masako Miki is the Japanese Liaison Officer at the Japanese American National Museum, where she is responsible for marketing, PR, fundraising, and improving visitor services for Japanese people and Japanese companies. She is also a freelance editor, writer, and translator. After graduating from Waseda University in 2004, she worked as an editor at Shichosha, a poetry publisher. She moved to the United States in 2009 and served as deputy editor of the Japanese information magazine The Lighthouse in Los Angeles before assuming her current position in February 2018.

(Updated September 2020)