THE
DESERT MAGAZINE
SEPTEMBER,
1942
When
it was announced in February that Japanese evacuees from the Pacific coast
would be relocated on tribal lands of the Colorado River Indians, there were
protests, both from the Indians and from sympathetic white sources. But it was
a war measure, and the objections were overruled. Largest of the Japanese
relocation communities is on the Colorado River Indian Reservation near Parker,
Arizona, where housing for 20,000 evacuees has been erected in the heart of a
desert mesquite forest. And if you want to know how this project is working
out, here are
some of the answers.
Refuge
on the Colorado
By
RANDALL HENDERSON
"I wish you would write an editorial against putting the Japanese on Indian
reservations. That is one of the most unforgivable things we have ever done to the
Indians. They are defenseless, therefore they are saddled with the Japs."
This
paragraph is from a letter written to me by a friend in Washington several
weeks ago.It
raises a question which has been in the minds of many Desert Magazine
readers since it was announced early this year that all Japanese were to be
evacuated from certain coastal areas,and
that many of them were to be relocated on Indian lands.
I
did not write the editorial for the reason that the resettlement of Japanese on
Indian lands for the duration of the war is part of America's all-out effort.
It was not a time to criticize unless there was a constructive end to be
gained.
However,
I decided to find out for myself from first hand sources just how this Japanese
relocation program is working out There is a three-fold interest involved--the
interest of America
at war with Japan, the interest of the Indians whose lands are being occupied,
and the interest of the Japanese themselves.
The
largest of all the Japanese relocation centers is on the desert--deep in the
mesquite jungles of the Colorado River Indian Reservation that lies along the
Colorado River below Parker.
And that is where I went for information.
With
permits from the War Relocation Authority and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, I
visited the Colorado River Relocation Center early in July. There I found
Americans and Japanese working in close cooperation and doing a job that has
many amazing aspects.
Consider
the task of building a city for 20,000 people--the third largest city in
Arizona--with all the problems of housing, water, power, sewerage, policing,
fire control and transportation, within a period of three months. And keep in
mind that the city is located 17 miles from the nearest railroad and more than
300 miles from its wholesale distributing center, in the heat
of a desert wilderness where there were neither roads, power nor communication
lines, nor any organization to provide these essentials. It was truly
a gigantic undertaking.
The
Japanese Center on the Colorado River is named Poston, honoring Charles D.
Poston, first territorial delegate and often called the "Father of
Arizona." The name Poston really covers three
towns. Camp 1 is built to house 10,000 Japanese plus several hundred Anglo-
American officials who are directing the project. Camp 2, three miles farther
down the valley accommodates 5,000 people, and Camp 3, another three miles south
is the same size as Camp 2.
From
Parker I drove over a paved road to Silver City where the Administration and
School Buildings of the Colorado River Indian Reservation are located. Beyond
this point a well-maintained
gravel road extends to the three Poston camps.
Army
engineers laid out the town sites and directed the construction. The building
job was done by the Del E. Webb Construction Company under contract. The Army
Signal Corps strung the communication lines. The Provost Marshal's Office provided
two companies-- less than 500 soldiers--for guard duty. The Indian Service
receives the evacuees and operates the relocation
centers which popularly are referred to as "camps." The erection of
housing and facilities for a community of 20,000 was not a new problem for Army Engineers or for private construction companies. Jobs of no less magnitude were
done both in World War I and again in the present emergency. But they were
built to house soldiers, adults whose loyalty to the American flag was never in
question, and who moved in under long- established rules of order and
discipline. They set up camp under veteran officers trained for such an
emergency.
But
here was a new problem in human relations: Twenty thousand Japanese, ranging in
age from a few days to 80-odd years, the older generation aliens, the younger
people Americans--all of them members of a race whose national leaders had
been guilty of an atrocious act of treachery against their adopted country. In
occupational pursuits they ranged from laborers in the vegetable fields to
highly successful merchants. Some of them could not speak English. Others had
graduated with honors from American colleges. Some of them had sons serving in
the United States Army and Navy. Others formerly had been members of the
Japanese military caste--may still be, for that matter. They all came to
Poston on a common level.
It
was a mass movement that has no parallel in American history, nor any precedent
on which to base a new code of rules.
As
Project Director, to handle this unknown problem, the lndian Service brought in
W. Wade Head, agent for the last six years on the Papago Reservation at Sells,
Arizona. Head is a graduate
of the University of Oklahoma with a fine record both in and previous to his
federal service. He has youth, a cool head, and a fine understanding of human
nature. Every hour of every
day he has important decisions to make--decisions that never before confronted
an Indian Service official.
As
assistants, the Indian Bureau brought specialists from many places--Nell
Findley from Honolulu where she has been doing educational work among the
Japanese for many years,
to direct the Department of Health, Recreation and Education; H. A. Mathieson
to assume the huge task of making the colony self-supporting on the thousands
of acres of rich silt land that surrounds Poston; Russell Fister to organize
and manage the coopera-tively owned and operated Japanese stores and shops to
serve 20,000 people; Dr. Leo Schnurr to establish a
hospital and direct medical work; Ted Haas, attorney, to help the Japanese set
up their own self-government; Norris James, a San Francisco newspaperman to
take over as Press Officer and sponsor the publication of a daily newspaper,
written and edited by the Japanese in the English language.
There
are a score or more of these departmental directors and assistants, each a
specialist in one of the many fields of Community Activity. They are there to
lead and organize the Japanese in a self-contained community in which the
Japanese themselves will supply the manual effort and fill subordinate positions.
They have a versatile army of workers to draw from.
In
the camp are highly skilled Japanese in every trade and business and
profession.
Isamu
Noguchi is a noted Japanese sculptor. He came to Poston from New
York--came voluntarily. He wanted to help America solve this problem. When I
visited his apartment he was
working on an exquisite bust in marble. That is his recreation. His project job
is landscape planning for the new city on the desert. On the walls at the
administration building is a beautifully
designed sketch of the Poston of the future with parks, gardens and
vine-covered cottages--if there is time and the means to carry out the
project. Noguchi drew the plan.
"Tets"
Iwasaki is a graduate of California School of Technology. His
diploma hangs on the wall of his one-room apartment at Poston. He is the city's
new electrician.
Shigeru
Imamura was a trusted employee of the Imperial Irrigation District
in California, largest in the United States. Now he is water- master for the Irrigation Project at Poston.
Mabel
Ota was an Assistant Librarian in Los Angeles. She and a group of
helpers have nearly 4,000 books and hundreds of magazines--all donated--classified according to approved library methods on rough board shelves in the
long barracks room that has been set aside for the purpose. There are 500
library patrons a day.
Marvel
Maeda, a graduate of San Diego State Teachers College, is
secretary to Director Head. She will join the teaching staff when school opens
this falI.
Harvey
Tanaka was a paper salesman in Imperial Valley--and he has been
assigned to the marketing organization in Poston. And so it goes. There are
skilled and willing workers for every job.
There
is a well-equipped hospital at Poston now. But during the first few days,
before all the medical supplies arrived, the hospital cases were handled in
temporary barracks. When the
first appendectomy came in Dr. Schnurr happened to be away on an
important mission. It was an emergency case and the American nurses were in a
quandary. Could they trust the Japanese
surgeons newly attached to the staff with so important a surgical operation--or should they wait for instructions from Dr. Schnurr?
Drs.
Y. Wakatake and Henry Sumida calmly assured the head nurse they
could do the operation. Reluctantly, she gave consent. They did not have much
with which to work. But they did
a job that won the respect of the entire staff, Americans and Japanese alike.
At
the time I visited the settlement there were 9,000 Japanese in Camp 1 and 2,000
in Camp 2. They are still arriving from Assembly Centers all over California--Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Merced, Fresno, Salinas, Imperial Valley,
Five
hundred recruits arrived from San Joaquin Valley one day while I was there.
They came by special train from Parker. They were met with a fleet of trucks
loaned by the CCC. Arriving
at Camp 2 they waited in line for their assignment to quarters. A cot was
issued to each one, and a tick to be filled with straw for a mattress. They
came with only the personal belongings they could carry with them.
Quarters
consist of long barracks buildings, each 20x100 feet, built of wood, sealed
outside with roofing paper and inside with plasterboard. There are three
partitions in each building, making four 20x2 5-foot rooms. From five to nine
persons occupy a room. The normal is six, but where the family is large they
are permitted to remain together. The Japanese form their own housing groups.
It is the policy of the Administration to keep regimentation to a minimum.
Five
hundred soldiers are stationed at Poston but their duties scarcely touch the
lives of the Japanese. They stand guard at the incoming roads to make sure
visitors have proper permits and they patrol certain areas where contractors'
materials are stored.
There
is no guard line around the camps as a whole. It would take an Army division to
do an effective job of picketing any one of the camps. The Japanese understand
they are to remain on
the reservation--but the reservation is nearly 50 miles long and 14 miles
wide. There really is nothing to keep an internee from running away if he wants
to go--that is, nothing except many
miles of hot arid desert extending in all directions beyond the forest of
mesquite, cottonwood and willows which covers the valley.
They
are not treated as prisoners. Nor do they regard themselves as such. So far,
not a single desertion has been recorded. Openly, there is no evidence of
hostility. The great majority of
those in camp discuss their plight in a philosophic tone: "We are here. It
probably is for the best. And so we will accept it as cheerfully as we can.''
Soon
after arrival each Japanese 16 years and older is given an opportunity to enlist
in the War Relocation Work Corps.
After
enlistment they are assigned to work groups and paid a monthly wage of $12 for
unskilled, $16 for skilled workers and $19 for executive and professional
services. The doctors who performed the appendectomy are in the $19 class.
Among the Japanese there is some criticism of the wage differentials. Administration
officials are discussing the feasibility of a flat rate for all.
In
addition to this pay, which covers a 44-hour week, they receive their food,
water, electricity, heat in winter, and it is planned to issue work clothes to
certain types of laborers where wear and tear is severe.
An
opportunity has been given all Japanese to sign up for return to Japan if an alien
transportation can be arranged. So far 120 members of the camp have asked for
repatriation.
The
unit of administration at Poston is the block. In each block there are 14
apartment houses, a dining room, recreation hall, latrine buildings with
showers for men and women, laundry and ironing room. Wide parking area
surrounds each unit of four blocks, designed as a fire break. Each block has
its Japanese Manager who represents it in matters of Community Administration.
Original
Block Managers were appointed by the official staff, but on July 21 the first
election was held in Poston Camp 1 at which Managers were elected by secret
ballot by the Japanese themselves.
The 36 Block Managers now form an Administrative Council with Mayor, Fire
Chief, Police Chief--all the functionaries of a normal American city.
Each
day a long caravan of trucks rolls into camp, bringing the many tons of food
required for so large a population. Most of diet food supplies are bought through
the Army Quarter Master Department in Los Angeles. A cook and helpers are named in
each block. As far as possible the Japanese are given what they want to eat,
within the limitations of a plain substantial menu. An Anglo-American
dietician would be appalled at the amount of starch they consume. Rice of
course is the staple, with tea the most popular drink.
Good
cooks are notoriously temperamental, and the Japanese are no exception. Earl
Best, Chief Steward, is often called upon to referee the disputes that
develop in the mess halls. Sometimes
the argument is between the chef and his dishwashers. At other times it is from
menus that do not suit all the customers. Bring together a group of American
merchants, farmers,
auto-mechanics and day laborers and set them down at a table to eat the same
family style dinner, and you would have the same problems Best has to deal with
in the community mess halls at Poston. The average cost of food for one person
is 37 cents a day. Cooks, waiters and flunkeys are all on the camp payroll at
$12 or $16 a month, according to rated skill.
With
legal guidance from the Indian Service, the Japanese at Poston are setting up
their own self-government. On July 21 the evacuees elected their own Block Leaders
to represent them on an all-Japanese City Council. The Japanese girl,
blindfolded, is drawing names from a bat to determine
the order in which the names of candidates would appear on the official ballot.
In the background, center, is Ted Haas, Indian Service Attorney, who
arranged the election according to traditional American procedure. At his left,
Norris James, Press Representative of the WRA.
At
one corner of the townsite, Frank Kuwahara, head nurseryman, is
pampering 55,000 baby guayule plants shipped from Salinas for test plantings in
Parker Valley. They are now taking root
in hastily built arrowweed ramadas, but as soon as irrigation laterals are
completed, will be planted in various types of soil in experimental fields.
Guayule is a native of the Chihuahua Desert and no one knows yet just how well
it will grow and produce rubber in the bottom lands along the Colorado River.
Army
Engineers found a fine stratum of water at a depth of 118 feet in Parker Valley.
Huge tanks were built and Poston is well supplied with domestic water.
Irrigation
water arrived in a newly constructed canal from Parker Diversion Dam July 4.
Additional canals are being laid out for the reclamation of as much of Parker Valley's
100,000 acres
as time will permit. Time in this case will be determined by the duration of
the war. There is no finer soil than the sandy loam of these Colorado River
bottom lands. It is the same silt that
grows huge crops of cantaloupes, lettuce, alfalfa and flax in Palo Verde and
Yuma Valleys.
The
first 40- acre field had been cleared and leveled for planting July 15. Mammoth
bulldozers were yanking mesquite trees out by the roots and the leveling crew
was following close behind. There is plenty of man-power and skill for a speedy
job of reclaiming this valley, but tractors and tools are limited, and progress
will depend on the availability of farm machinery. The goal is 20,000 acres the
first year.
First
plantings will be vegetables to supply the table needs of the colonists. They
are eager for the day to come when they will be growing their own food. Some of
the Japanese who arrived in camp the latter part of May already have little
patches of radishes growing around their quarters, watered by hand from the
domestic faucet.
Church
services are conducted by Japanese and American missionaries of the Christian,
Catholic and Buddhist denomination. Japanese may worship where and how they
please-- with the exception that Shintoism, the pagan creed of the warrior clan
in Japan, is barred.
Stores
and shops, still limited in stocks and crude in fixtures, are being operated by
Poston Community Enterprises. Russell Fister, Director of these
Commercial Enterprises has two stores and
three Cold Drink huts, Beauty Parlors, Barber Shops, and is organizing Shoe, Radio
and Watch Repair Shops. From the Japanese population he has drawn managers,
clerks, soda jerks and
all the help necessary for operation. These commercial projects are on a
non-profit basis. That is, the profit goes into the Japanese Community Fund
where it is expended for Recreational and
Civic Activities. The first store opened May 11 and did a gross business of
$11.75 that day. Average receipts now exceed $2,000 a day. Since the total
merchandise on the shelves seldom exceeds $5,000 this is a merchant's dream of
fast turn-over.
Dr.
Willard Beatty, Director of Education in the Office
of Indian Affairs at Washington spent July in camp getting facilities organized
to take care of 6,000 school students this fall. Plans include elementary, high
school and college.
The
Indian Department hasn't enough teachers to fill so great a need. Japanese
girls with normal school training are being enlisted to supplement the
Anglo-American instructors. Since
most of the Japanese came from California, the State Board of Education in that
state is lending books for the class rooms.
A
city of 20,000 without a newspaper would be a strange phenomenon in United
States--and Poston has its Press Bulletin. It is just a two-page mimeographed
journal, comes out every day except Monday and has a staff organization which
is a counterpart of a full-fledged daily paper.
Director
of the Journalistic Activities at Poston is Norris James, affable young
man whose title is assistant in charge of Project Reports, but who performs the
usual duties of a Press and Intelligence Officer. He has assembled an enthusiastic
staff of young Japanese reporters and columnists, and is holding in reserve a
crew of linotype operators, printers and pressmen for the
day when Poston Community Enterprises may be able to undertake the printing of
a newspaper.
What
do the Indians of the Colorado River Indian Reservation think about this
invasion of their tribal lands?
They
do not like it!
There
are 900 Indians on the reservation, which extends along the Colorado River from
Monument Peak on the north to old La Paz on the south. Most of it is on the
Arizona side. The reservation,
ceded to the Indians by treaty with United States, includes three tribes. About
60% are Mojaves, 35 % Chemehuevis and 5 % Yumas. Only a
small fraction of their
rich valley has been reclaimed.
In
1910 the federal government allotted 10 acres to each man, woman and child, and
installed a pumping plant to lift water from the Colorado River for irrigation.
This allotment plan would have been fine if no Indian ever died. But after a
few deaths and marriages had taken place the Indian Service officials found
themselves hopelessly involved in trying to divide fractional tracts between
heirs and in-laws. The arithmetic became too complicated even for the white
man. And so Congress amended the plan and gave each family 50 acres.
For
the most part, Colorado River Indians are not energetic farmers, and few of
them ever developed the full area of their allotments. Some of them were
permitted to lease to white tenants,
but the greater part of Parker Valley has remained virgin mesquite land, not
even accessible by road. The Japanese centers are many miles from the nearest
Indian ranchero.
I
do not know what passed between Secretary Ickes, John Collier of
the Indian Bureau, and officials of the War Relocation Authority when
confronted with the problem of putting a Japanese relocation camp on these
reservation lands--but it was a problem that called for a prompt decision. Gen.
John L. DeWitt of the West Coast Military Zone had to have a place for Japanese
evacuees without delay. The
answer was a Memorandum Agreement between the Department of Interior,
representing the Indians, and the WRA, which gave the latter authority to move
in and take possession of
undeveloped portions of Parker Valley. In behalf of the Indians it was
stipulated that the WRA must vacate the land with- in six months after the war
ended--and that all buildings, improvements, canals and appurtenances of the
project should revert to the Indians without cost.
Under
this agreement the Indians appear to have everything to gain and nothing to
lose. You and I would figure it that way. It would have been a gift from heaven
if the early settlers in Palo
Verde or Yuma or Imperial or Salt River Valleys could have moved in on lands
already leveled and under irrigation--without cost to themselves.
But
the Indian mind has a somewhat different slant. There is historical basis for
his feeling that once the white man moves in and takes possession, his holdings
are gone forever.
And
what does he want with all that farmland anyway? He can raise what he needs on
his five- acre patch. He would rather have the mesquite forest--the original Valley
of the Colorado where
his ancestors hunted and fought and lived and were content--in its natural
state.
Right
or wrong, he is against this whole deal. The white man and his Japanese
proteges are cluttering up his reservation with roads and power lines and
telephone poles and buildings. They are chopping down the trees of his
ancestral hunting ground. They are bringing smoke and noise, and for all he
knows eventually there will come a parade of tourists prying into his humble
dwelling and trying to take pictures of everything in sight.
That
is the Indian's side of the story.
It
is a 1942 version of the same conflict that has been going on since the first
white settlers landed on the New England coast.
One
thing can be said in behalf of the white men who came to this part of the New
World. He never at any time enslaved the Indian. And perhaps that is a better
fate than would befall him
if America and its allies were to lose this war.
If
the lands are returned to the Colorado River Indians, in accordance with
Secretary Ickes' agreement, they will have made no greater sacrifice than other
Americans are making in this
emergency.
Generally
speaking, I found a friendly atmosphere prevailing at Poston. Wade Head
and his associates are strongly imbued with the pioneer spirit. They are out on
a new frontier reclaiming
virgin land. It is a task that has always brought out the best in Americans--courage, patience, energy, enthusiasm. They are putting all these things into
their job.
They
are dealing with two very distinct groups of Japanese; The issei, the older
generation of men and women born in Japan who have never acquired American
citizenship. Most of them are past 50. The larger group is the nisei, the
second generation who by reason of their birth in United States are American
citizens. A majority of them are under 35. They seldom speak Japanese
except when talking with their elders. They are the product of American schools
and have adapted themselves to a rather remarkable degree to American ways.
Around
the Headquarters Offices are scores of clattering typewriters, most of them
operated by young Japanese--competent, courteous and friendly. There may be
resentment in the hearts of
some of the elders, but there is little evidence of it among the nisei.
Pioneering
on the desert frontier is never a bed of roses, but the Japanese at Poston are
being treated well--and for the most part they are responding with the
characteristic politeness of the
well-bred Japanese. I can only hope that Americans interned in Japan are faring
as well, and that the atmosphere in the American internment camps in Japan is
as cordial as at Poston.
Source: https://archive.org/stream/Desert-Magazine-1942-09/Desert-Magazine-1942-09_djvu.txt