esther oda

This in-depth interview with Esther (Kambe) Oda is a unique and broad story of a young Nisei woman who found herself all over the country in the years during the war. With her father taken on December 7th immediately after Pearl Harbor, the family found itself scattered across the country, with her father sent to Santa Fe, Lordsburg and Crystal City while Esther was in Minidoka with her mother and brothers. Esther herself was able to leave camp and join her enlisted husband-to-be, Bill Oda, in the various military camps to which he was assigned. The story she shares here is primarily a love story, from her recollections of letter writing between the two young Niseis, to how they found a minister who agreed to marry them on Valentine’s Day to Esther having to jump from a train in order to reunite with Bill who was waiting for her at the station. Esther and Bill’s story is a story of two quintessential Niseis, set against the backdrop of a war against fascism abroad and prejudice at home.

I’m with Esther Oda at her lovely home. Esther, I'm going to be asking you a lot of questions, but I'd like to first establish your name and where you were born and when you were born.

My name is Esther Oda. Full name is Esther Ruth Kambe Oda. I was born on November 20th 1921 in Seattle, Washington.

Right. Seattle, Washington. So what you're saying is that Kambe is your maiden name?

Yes.

And you were the baby of the family?

I was the baby, and I was a girl. And I was spoiled. I didn't know it at the time, but when I look back, I think I was spoiled.

So when America joined WWII, that's 1941. So you are already 20? So had you started attending university?

Yes, I was a junior in college. So I had to leave the university because my father was taken on December 7th as soon as the war was declared. My then-friend, my future husband, came from Portland to visit me and we were out driving around Lake Washington. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, just talking or listening to the radio. And then we heard the radio saying that Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japan, which shocked us both. But neither of us ever thought that was going to affect us because to me, Japan was a country where my parents came from. I had no allegiance or even thought about it, although the newspapers did see that there were a lot of talks going on between Japan and the United States. But, you know, you're young and you're not thinking about world affairs.

When we drove up to my house, the window shades were all drawn, which we never do, and we never locked the door. And my sister in law was in the house at the time, and she said that the FBI were waiting for my father. They said no time for anything, turned him around and took him. So, of course, my mother doesn't know this, and so then my brother then went down to go get my mother and she was in shock. So then it seemed like the phone was ringing all the time. “So-and-so's been picked up by the FBI.” “Is your husband still safe?” This kind of conversation was going on and my brother would take her down to the immigration [office] and they had this big building with lots of windows and they were looking to see if they could see my father.

They never did see him. And the next thing we knew, he was sent to Missoula, Montana, and then from the city of Montana, he went to Lordsburg, New Mexico. From Lordsburg, he went to Santa Fe, and then eventually went to Crystal City, where my mother was able to join him. So that was changing times, definitely. My brother and I quit university. Actually, he had just graduated because he had to go to work to get some income because my father was the only breadwinner.

Where did you move then when you lost the house?

We were moved to camp.

So you didn't lose it before?

No, no. We were in there, but it was – that was a real traumatic time for my mother because we had to get rid of things. We had a big sale at our house for the dining room set. I can remember the chairs went for $0.25 and the buffet went for $2. And so for all of her appliances, they were just for just pennies on the dollar. It was very hard. And then at that time, they had taken–confiscated things from the house. 

You know what they took?

Oh. Cameras. And he had a sword and my mother had this, I don't know what it was called, a small sword was about that big. But she had that in the cupboard and I used to look at it every now and then because it was so beautiful. But anyway, I had a beautiful set of Japanese dolls for the Girls Day festival. And she would have a party for me every Girls Day, invite my friends and also have a set of little tiny dishes, tea cups, and things. But we – she was afraid that these dolls might, she says “mushy,” I guess would get foggy or wouldn't get care for. Somebody might not treat them well. So she carried them downstairs to the basement and she opened up the furnace and we threw them in the furnace one by one. And that was heartbreaking. Very heartbreaking. We both cried and cried because they were gorgeous dolls. So that was a thing. I know.

Some families also brought photographs from Japan and other documents.

Well, that's one of the reasons why my father was taken because after he had been in the produce business for a long time, he was very, very interested in and learning the English language. And he became quite proficient. He would read the papers and listen to the radio, and then he thought he'd write a little column in the Japanese paper to let people know what's going on in the world. Eventually published a little short newspaper. Not a very big one, but a small one. And he wrote the whole thing himself. So I think they saw that. And that's one of the reasons why he was taken, because he was president of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, president of Hiroshima kenjinkai, who was very active in the community.

So you had a nice life. Your parents were stable, they did things together. Your whole family was close and you helped each other.

My father would take us fishing. All sorts of things. 

And then I got a job working in the neighborhood chicken place, cutting up chickens, and then also worked as a school girl.

This is before you went to camp? So a lot of people lost their jobs after Pearl Harbor. But in your case, you were able to – people still employed you and your brothers.

Yes. Well, the wage was very, very low, but it didn't matter. Because they were having a hard time, too. A lot of the laborers would come to Seattle on their way to Alaska to work in the canneries.

These are laborers of all ethnicities or?

Yeah, a lot of Filipinos especially, it seemed to me. And so they would come back with lots of money. So then they wanted to have these nice suits made. Well, my job was to make sleeves. That's all I did, sew sleeves. I wasn't a good enough tailor for anything else. I had regular tailors to do that. So I did work there until evacuation when we left. And I don't remember the dates or anything but Bill went into the service in February, he was drafted in February 1942.

I thought Japanese-Americans weren't allowed to join.

Well, there was a little window where he could go. So he went and he was drafted. February of 1942. And then he was stationed at Fort Lewis, which is not too far from Seattle. So he had a friend come and take me to him so we’d see him.

That was just where he was inducted. And then he was sent to Fort Camp Robinson for Basic Training, Camp Crowder. And then he was sent to Camp Carson in Colorado, the last. We corresponded all the time and he asked me if I would wait for him, marry him. And I was in camp and he said, “If you're in camp, you know you can marry me and then get out of camp, but you had to have clearance from five different organizations, from the clearance from the Army and the Navy and the FBI, and two personal references.”

And two of the professors at my university in Washington that I helped with in the home department wrote me lovely little reference letters. So I was free to leave camp and so decided to get married. And February the 14th, 1943, because what a romantic person I was, I thought he'd never forget that day, Valentine's Day. So I went up to the administration office and asked permission to use one of their recreation halls so I could have this little wedding. Said he was going to come to camp and his parents, who were living in Portland, were also evacuated to the same place as the Seattle people were. So my mother was there, of course, my father was not there, but, uh, I had a friend that could play the piano and was going to sing a song. And I had sent to Fred Frederick and Nelson, which is a very nice department store in Seattle. I wrote to them and they sent me fabric so I could have a dress to wear.

Do you have a photo?

Yes. A snapshot, really. Anyway, he was all set to go and he was going to come and we got married and we’d leave camp as long as my papers were in order and four days before the wedding. I got this telegram saying, “Cancel all plans.” Well, I was devastated. I thought, what happened? And so I ran up to the administration office because we were in these little barracks. We don't have any phones, right?

No, no.

So I asked if I could use this phone, and I had to have a person to person call because I didn't know where he was. I just knew he was at Camp Carson and they found him. He was working as a clerk in one of the offices. And I said, “What happened?” And he said, “Military secret, I can't talk.” What happened was that he and others, I think about three or four others at their camp meeting were sent to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to help with calvary for the Camp Shelby Japanese segregation unit, which we didn't know. Nobody knew about this.

Yes.

And so then I get on this train, go to Shoshone, Idaho, get on the train, and there are no seats because all the trains are filled with soldiers going here and there. So I sat on my suitcase until I got to Denver, Colorado. And then when I see Bill, he asked the chaplain to marry us and he said he would not marry us because we were Japanese. So he said, “You have to go find a justice of the peace.” 

You know, I don't know anything. And Hattiesburg is a little town. I thought I'll go to the Y because I was part of the Y in Seattle. So I went in there and I told the lady that I had to find a justice of peace, and she wanted to know why. She said “No no, come to the Y on Sunday and I'll ask my minister if he’ll come to the Y and marry you.” So I said okay. So I went back to the bus and I said to Bill we are going to the Y on Sunday and be married at the Y. And so, he and two others said that they would go with him, but the first sergeant would only give him a half day off. And it's aggravating because there was no other reason for his being in camp. The recruits hadn't come in or anything. There were just these people getting ready for this new formation of the 442nd. Anyways, we got to the Y. It was full of people because this lady had gotten up in church and said that this young couple didn't know anybody, and the whole church walked from there to the Y just up a couple of blocks. So we had a roomful of people at our wedding. We didn't know anybody. So, you know, that was quite an experience. And so they all wished us well.

That's really moving.

Yeah, really. It was really something that, that they did that.

What church was this? What denomination? 

Methodist church. 

It must have been so progressive if this [other] chaplain –

Refused. I can’t understand why a chaplain would do that. But that was what he was told.  Anyway, he had to go back to camp and then I had to find some place to stay because Camp Shelby, I mean, Hattiesburg is just a small town, but overflowing with soldiers, wives and girlfriends, just no place. And we did find one little room, and this lady had opened up her house and changed her bedrooms. That's a way to make money. So, yeah, so we just had this one little room, had a hot plate and an outhouse and a pump outside. So you can imagine what kind of living that was? So poor. 

So going back a little bit, you described what it was like when Pearl Harbor was bombed. You were on a drive and you heard all this on the radio. You talked about going home and finding out that your father, the FBI, was waiting for your father.

Well, he'd already gone.

So you didn't you didn't even see him?

Because I was driving around. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, they were right there right before noon. Around noon, they picked him up. That was really, really hard. Very, very hard.

And then in February, your husband-to-be, Bill, was drafted. And when did you get a notice about going into an assembly center and what was it like to move there from your comfortable home?

Oh, it was terrible. You go in there and they give you a piece of a big mattress thing and they tell you, go fill it with straw. And that's because that was our bed. And my poor friend had asthma so badly, I don't remember what they did for her. But it was, you know, it was not a good life.

But what are you going to do? You eat in the mess hall and our barracks were just very tar paper things. The roof was slanted so there was an opening from the front to the back, if you got on a tall stool, you could look down through. And the wood was so green that things were shrinking and I know that my mother was disturbed because a little boy next door – the knot holes would fall out right? And she could see these eyes looking through there. So she had to scrounge for some paper to stuff these knot holes.

Did you ever see the soldiers on guard?

No. You were almost used to seeing them, so you don't really see them. They’re just there.

They become part of the landscape.

Although somebody said one of them got so excited, he fell out of the guard tower. That could have just been a rumor too.

Speaking of guard towers, one man I interviewed talked about ghost stories that came up because people were scared of reflections and images from the search light and things like that. Were you scared? Or just mad.

Well, you know, you just, it's not exactly mad. I think you just accept it. So why? Why try to bring something into it that you can't help, you know? And my mother was very philosophical. She just always was a wonder. She was always positive.

Wow. That must have been really helpful.

Oh, she was a wonderful person, really. Whenever I would complain about something happening like going overseas to some unknown place where there's a lot of snakes. She said, “If you look hard enough, you'll find something good,” she said. “But don't look for what's wrong.” Very philosophical.

You know, before we started tape one, you had said that your mother was a really wonderful individual.

Yes. Well, you know, she'd say if you get angry about something, I'll always remember this. She said, “Go in your kitchen and straighten out a drawer or go in the bedroom or straighten out a drawer. You feel so good afterwards that it looks nice and that you can't be angry.” She was very good.

How practical. Do you think that goes along with the Japanese philosophies of shikata ga nai and gaman and things like that?

Oh I’m sure, I'm sure. Yeah. I mean, what's the point of crying over spilled milk? You know, that's what we used to say. So make the most of what you have.

Were there, as far as you know, any Japanese-Americans who weren't able to be positive? I know that I've only met a very few people, maybe just two people, who talked about Japanese Americans becoming depressed in the assembly centers or the camp. Did you know of anybody who became depressed?

No, because I think we're younger. You know, I felt sorry for those who had little tiny babies. And I felt sorry for people who are really older. But at our age, you know, we could cope with most anything. Our big thing was to get the catalog to see what kind of yarn they had for sale, because we all took up knitting, something we had to do. So we look forward to that.

Because your father was in Montana and you wanted to make things for him?

I was making argyle socks for my Bill. And scarves. I would get Army yarn and make scarves and things for him. I wasn't thinking about my father. He was already in Crystal City by that time.

He was transferred quickly.

Well, I don't know how quickly, I forget how many months he was in Montana. And now this group that’s called the Prime Timer, our church, they’d take short trips and one of the trips we took was down towards Santa Fe. So I said, “Santa Fe. My father was there. Do you suppose it's possible for the tour director to drive us there so I can see and have a picture of this place where my father was?” Yes, she said. “I've been doing this tour business here in Santa Fe for 12 years. I've never heard of such a place,” I said, “But there is a place.” So she's on her breaks, she researched it and found sure enough, it was there. She said she learned something. So we drove by there and there was a monument there showing that that's where the men were interned, the people that lived there didn’t know that. 

No, it's not something that locals want to know.

No, they don't publicize things like that.

Well, so back to the assembly center. These outhouses with slots?

I guess it's not like an outhouse that you think of at the farm where you dig a couple of holes in the ground, you know, not that kind, because this is all contained within.

Did you try to get to the permanent flush toilet?

I never saw one. No. And then, you know, just Japanese are basically pretty private people. They didn’t want them to have little partitions, a little piece of board in between each one of these holes. You know, I forget how many holes or maybe eight in a row or something like that. I don't know.

Well, how about your mom? I mean, she was brought up in a fairly privileged household. It must have been really trying for her – not that she complained.

Never. She never complained. She just, like I said, she was so positive.

So you were at the assembly center for two, three, four months maybe?

You know, it's hard to tell. Seems to me that we moved to Idaho somewhere in early fall and then it was strange because all the curtains are drawn. In the train, you couldn't see where you're going. You had no idea where they were taking you. And dusty, dusty old place in middle of nowhere, sagebrush and all of that, you know.

That's so different from Seattle.

Yes. Oh yeah. All the sagebrushes. So just shows you how big the United States is. They can find ten places where people are just, you know, very isolated places.

As positive as you were, it must have been quite trying to be shipped around like cattle. I mean, they didn't tell you much about where you were going?

No, they didn't. You really didn't know. Well, we knew that once we got to Hunt, what they called Minidoka. Called Hunt, Idaho, that's where we were going to be until people left to go school. Left to go to work, you have to be sponsored. And the Quakers were wonderful. You know, they helped a lot.

So how many of you were in an apartment room in Minidoka? 

Just my mother and myself because my brother was married, he and his wife. And my older brother also had his own place, and of course middle brother's [in] medical school.

Where was that?

He went to medical school in Pennsylvania somewhere. I'm not exactly sure where.

So all this time that you were in the camp, he was at Medical Farm and corresponding with you?

Yes. Well, yes, generally with the family.

How difficult was it to send letters back and forth?

Oh, that was no problem.

No problem.

Wrote back and forth to Bill all the time. So I looked forward to the mail. You know, it was kind of a bright spot. Seeing if you get anything.

How about writing to your father in Santa Fe? Was there – 

Well, my mother and father wrote in Japanese. 

From somebody I knew who was writing back and forth between Tule lake and Santa Fe. They said there was censorship. But you didn't have that?

No.  I was one of the ones that were fortunate to be able to go to Crystal City when Bill went overseas from Hattiesburg. But then I wrote a letter to Crystal City saying my husband was in the service and gone overseas and my parents were there. And I wondered, would I get permission to visit them? I guess I was the only one that was able to do that. My brother tried to go later after he knew I was there, and they wouldn’t let him.

And they had it better than we did.

Well, I heard that they were more of a family style [living].

Right. They just said that they had an apartment, a barrack, like everybody else but went from this site all the way through, so you would go in, there's a little tiny place where they had their little cooking stove table chair and a curtain and bedroom. I mean, a bed, and then a little sitting area and then out the door.

So it was bigger.

Oh, yeah. So, and they received chits, my mother would go to the store, buy what she wanted to fix for dinner, of course it was limited. But it was not like going to the mess hall, everybody eating the same thing. And the thing that surprised me was the Peruvians. Poor Peruvians were one part of the camp. And that shocked me, because they would have gatherings and they would yell, “Banzai, Banzai, Banzai!” To me, that was like a war cry. So why are they doing that? But I guess that was their way of celebrating certain things. I was associating banzai with some kind of war cry. But they were in a hard time when they left camp because they couldn't speak English. They couldn't speak with them, and I don't know what they spoke, they speak Spanish? I don't know what they spoke.

So there you are. You saw a lot because not only were you in this one assembly center, in one camp, but you also lived outside, and saw your husband's camp. Military camp. And then you lived outside of the military camp.

You know, Cora, my friend, and I were able to get jobs on the campsite because there was a dry cleaning place right on the edge of where the camp for G Company was. So we were there to bring in the dry cleaning and sort the clothes and so forth. So we were able to see our husbands every day. Which was really nice. And the poor fellows from Hawaii, we really felt for them because they were issued overcoats that were way too big, sleeves way too long. And so we would measure them and have them altered. 

And then they were not used to this cold, you would think of Mississippi being cold, but it's a damp cold and it just kind of penetrates you. So we had one potbelly stove and that one dry cleaner there. And they would huddle around there. Chit chat. I really felt sorry for them and wanted to have them over for dinner. But we didn't have any money ourselves, and our parents, we couldn't ask them for anything, but the Hawaiian people, they got care packages from home and money so that they could go to the PX, cantina, buy things and so on. But I did feel sorry for them. And then they did a lot of fighting which worried me. They would drink beer and then get into big fights with the mainland people because I think they felt like they were being shortchanged. You know, the mainland people got the big jobs.

Oh, is that right?

Oh, yeah. Because they were there first. And so there was a lot of fighting, especially once they had a lot of beer. Then somebody got the bright idea that they should get a bus and take the soldiers over to Arkansas to see the camps there. And I guess when they did that, they realized that these people were volunteering from camp and people are being incarcerated there. So then they got along very well.

Isn't it amazing how, you know, people always bring that up about this, how it was a huge turning point and the soldiers getting along.

Yeah. And, you know, because I was there and I was scared, every time they'd have a fight, I'd be afraid that someone was really gonna get hurt. You know, I just. But anyway, that was a nice turning point.

You know, you saw so much, you were in different parts of the country during the war. So you saw how the Isseis and the Japanese Peruvians were coping. In Crystal City, there were Germans and Italians there too. Did you see them?

I mean, I wasn’t there long enough. I spent all my time with my parents, and then I just left. And then when I left there, I wanted to go visit my friend who was going to school at Berea, Kentucky. Have you ever heard of Berea? It's a college where everybody works. They have these little cottage industries, weaving and cooking and so on, and they work and go to school. It's an unusual school. Anyway, and my friend Margie, who lives in New York now, said, “Why don't you come through here and stay with me?” And when she asked the housemother about my coming because I wanted to stay in a motel they wouldn't let me because they were afraid that there would be discrimination. So she let me stay with my friend in her dorm. Which is nice. And then from there, I went to Cleveland to be with my brother.

Right, and he's the one with the big house. And he put up all these people.

All these people, so generous. Yeah.

And then when the war ended, Bill said, “I'll meet my brother.” By this time, had finished medical school, was practicing in Philadelphia. So Bill came in through New York. He said, “I'll meet you at my brother Chuck's,” in Philadelphia, so I'll meet you at such and such train. I said I was going to take this train from Cleveland and go to Philadelphia and I'll meet you.

So as I approached, I didn't realize Philadelphia has two stations, North Station and then Central Station. Well, I expect to just go into the main station, but North Station is not too far from where my brother is, and I guess he didn't tell me that's where he was going to be. And I'm sitting in this train and it stops at North Station. All of a sudden the conductor says, “There's a man out there, he looks like he's looking for something.” And he knew I was Japanese. He said, “You know him?” And I looked up and I said, “That’s Bill!” So the train is starting to run up, he says, “Jump off!” I jumped off, he threw my suitcase after me. So saved by that. Otherwise I would have been downtown the main station, and we would never have gotten together. But it was just luck that the conductor did that, I’ll never forget he threw that suitcase.

So then we went back to Cleveland and got a car and drove all the way across to Portland to help his father and– 

From Cleveland? You drove all the way to Portland?

Yeah, because we have a house we're going to get to. I saved enough money. We bought a secondhand car, and then we were driving.

You could've taken a train like everybody else?

Well we figured we have to have a car? Anyway, since my brother was so kind to me, I was able to save a little money, so I didn't have a lot, but we didn't have to pay it. I remember. Well, we paid. But to see somebody where I was working, I was working at this little automobile insurance company. They had a friend who had had this car that was in real good shape and was willing to sell it to us. So we knew that we'd be safe. And so we drove that car across.

Well, you finally got your honeymoon. You know what we missed? When did Bill go to Europe? He was part of the 442nd? 

Well, that was in spring of ‘44. They train from March of ‘43, until that spring. I think it's written down someplace.

And he was in G Company. Did he talk about it? What happened in combat?

No. No, he never really talked. He did get a battlefield commission, though.

What does that mean?

They were in such a horrid battle. They lost almost all their officers. It was a very, very bad battle. And he was the first sergeant. So General Mark Clark, ever heard of him? He was a commanding general over there. He was called in one day, he and several others, and were given battlefield commissions right then and there.

I think one of the people I interviewed said, on the first day, four out of nine officers were killed. 

Awful, terrible, terrible battle. 

Well, we're coming towards the end of this tape. There are two questions I wanted to ask. One is a favor at the end, if you had to share a bit of knowledge with some words of wisdom for the younger generation, based on all the things that you've gone through and you've gone through a lot, what could you tell them? What would they be able to use?

Just say have faith and try to be positive, you know? I got that from my mother. You just have to have faith that things are going to work out because, you know, you just have to do what you have to do the best you can. What else can you do? Don't kick yourself afterwards. You know?

The other thing is, in 1988, President Reagan signed a bill that allowed Japanese Americans who lived through this period and who experienced dislocation to receive an apology letter and a monetary, symbolic monetary compensation of $20,000 each. Do you have comments about that? Did you believe that it would happen? Did it mean anything for you to have the check or the letter?

Yes, I was. I just regretted that the people who really suffered, the parents, Isseis were all gone and they didn't get to see this. For those of us that, you know, received it well, my husband and I took our children to Hawaii for reunions with the money [with the 442nd]. So, you know, it did something for us. And just treat the family well. You know, we were able to do that otherwise, we might not have been able to do that.

Some people have had some strong feelings about this that they didn't think it would ever go through. Some people thought when they received a letter from the president, it was just this amazing document. Some people even said they initially refused to register because they were so against that kind of compensation.

There were people that received the money that were not even I mean, they were like, pregnant, you know, they were at camp. So even they got it. Or they were born in the camp you know. But see, but you know the people that you would have loved [to have it] like my parents and the other Isseis. So that's just the way the cookie crumbles I guess.

Did it say anything for you about the fact that we have this beautiful document about our rights and so forth, and sometimes we fail to adhere to it. And hence the camps, and other times we make good from it because one of our rights is our right to petition our grievances. And that's what happened. You know, people said this was not right. 

We have to owe it to these three fellows, too, who refused to go in. There were Korematsu and who was the other one? Somebody else. But anyway, yeah. So there were a lot that stood up and did a lot for us, so. Well, it's interesting times and we've come a long way. We now have a president that no one would think that we would have.

Interview conducted by Grace Megumi Fleming. JAMsj thanks Grace for allowing the museum to archive and share these oral histories