jimi yamaichi

Jimi Yamaichi needs no introduction to the Japanese American Museum of San Jose audience. As a co-founder and fixture at the museum and in Japantown, Jimi held some of the greatest historical and community knowledge amongst the Nisei generation, and a person who had a unique perspective on the monumental logistical task behind what it took to run, build and operate a camp as large as Tule Lake. As one of the project’s lead carpenters, Jimi was responsible for building the camp’s jail and stockade, and despite his job in building, Jimi himself protested the draft. In this interview, Jimi recalls the work he was tasked with in Tule Lake, and how he become involved in the pilgrimages to the site, after being distant from it for many decades. 

Today, you can see Jimi’s beautiful work in the barrack room replica located at the back of JAMsj. He is deeply missed in the community. Jimi passed way at the age of 95 in 2018.

And today is April 20th, 2001. And here we are at the home of Jimi Yamaichi and Mr. Yamaichi is here. Can we start with your full name, please?

My full name is Jimi Yamaichi. Jimi spelt, J. I. M. I. It's the Japanese way of writing it.

And where were you born?

I was born in San Jose. Fifth street.

So, we're painting a picture of how your life was before Pearl Harbor.

Well, life before Pearl Harbor, like today's kids, they have a car of their own while they were in high school. But back then, you only had one family car right? No buses, everybody drove. So if you want to go to school outside of San Jose, you had to drive.

So for the younger grades, there was a school bus, but not for high school?

There were school buses up to eighth grade, all the preschools, eighth grade. Once you get to high school, you have to find your own transportation.

So what happened between June ‘41 and December ‘41? What were you doing?

Well, I graduated school at Cal Poly and then my brother, second brother. And there was the draft at the time, there were three of us and I was over 18. I got behind school because I was over 18. One of them had to go to draft so my second brother said he’ll go so he volunteered for the draft. So we had one man short of the farm work. My father said, “I want you to stay on the farm and maybe the next year- the following year, we’ll have better luck, better luck to go to school the following year.”

You didn't have money to go to school?

We needed the hands. It wasn’t the money so much, it was the hands. Need help on the farm.

So your father wasn't surprised when Pearl Harbor happened?

No. We knew that at the time, the embargo was getting worse and worse and worse, that Japan invaded southeast Asia, too. So what they were going after was the rubber and petroleum rights in South East Asia, that was a big big push to get that because that was the last country. Well meantime we knew this in December, to plant anymore crops was kind of foolish because we didn’t know what our future was. So let's plant crops that take a few, we called 60 day crops. 60-90 day crops. So we put out a lot of leafy stuff, otherwise local people would say “What happened to the Yamaichi’s, there not planting anything for the farm?” So we planted things.

Oh.

So that is sure enough, on February 19th one exec order came through. They say the curfew and all of this and that, you know talking about, so that reaffirmed our belief. So then we said, "Now what should we do?" Should we move, or should we stay? We keep the farm or we sell the farm and move inland.

And our friend that helped us buy the land, he said “ I want you to just keep the land but sell the equipment and I’ll be a custodian.” I won't be apart – just a custodian. Just collect the rent, pay the taxes, and when you get back you still have the place to yourself. It’s all paperwork. So that's why we decided to sell the equipment and keep the farm…But as I said we all knew basically because San Francisco was already moved, most of it.

Were you scared?

Oh yeah we were scared, we didn't know what's going to happen to us really.

What were the rumors?

There were not too much rumors coming back, because we didn’t know where we were going.

Yeah. Do you remember the train trip?

Yeah, it was a rough train trip. I think I took two sets of chains from my house, and I took my basic carpentry tools, the hammer, saw, square, level. I figured, well, at least the basics, we can do anything with that. So plus then I had to carry my sisters, my sister and brother, they were younger, my youngest sister was only 5 years old.

So I had to carry their share.

I'm going to ask you specific questions about camp, but how old were you when you went to the assembly center and then I guess you went to two camps?

Yes. So with the service center, I'd say I was 19 years old when I went to Pomona Assembly Center on Memorial Day of 1942. So we’re the last ones to leave out of San Jose. Most of them went to Santa Anita Assembly Center

But one train went to Pomona. So we, one of the few that went to Pomona from San Jose.

And then what camps did you go to?

Pomona went to Heart Mountain, Wyoming. You know, it's a cold country. It's one of the coldest parts of the United States. The first year we arrived, it was 30 below zero.

Do you know which month you went there?

September.

September. So that's right before your 20th birthday?

That's right. So almost as soon as I got there actually. My background in carpentry, I went to San Jose Technical High School and graduated from carpentry class. So that's all I had, my experience was carpentry, I was going to high school in a trade school. So as soon as I got there, we were one of the last ones there and I looked for a job as hopeless it be, an engineer. So with the construction department or engineering, I asked them if I could be a junior engineer, and such, surveying. And they heard about my background, they said “You've been in construction.” So then I did construction.

Back in the ‘30s when the WPA, labor day, the Depression years, they built the Shoshone Dam and Canal. Just south of Yellowstone Park. Outside of Yellowstone Park, it’s a government area there and this canal was well actually, they had a big tunnel system, route the tunnel all the way through the rocks and then the canal popped out just outside of Cody town. This canal project was started at all hoping that they would be able to farm all this land. They felt it was fertile.

Near Cody?

Near Cody, just outside of Cody, but they finished the canal. They now dug all along the base of Heart Mountain itself and they turned the water on one day, they celebrated the canal was done, and the water that crossed down through the tunnel came across the river, came up to the siphon pipe, and then beyond the siphon pipe was all natural soil to them. It was all concrete lined, because of the riverbed. But now the river is about a hundred feet below. Anyway, they turn the water on and all of a sudden the water disappeared. A great big gopher hole, huge gopher- I’m telling you it was a huge gopher hole, the water just disappeared, leaving lava bed soil, very poor soil to hold the water and it came up about five miles down the river and gushed into the river again. So they had the funds to build up the dam, but they didn’t have funds to repair it. So it sat all these years.. So here we come in ‘42, they thought if we camp there, the canals would be fixed. So we were hired by an outside contractor to go in there.

So your guess is that part of the reason why Heart Mountain, Wyoming camp was located where it was, is to get labor to fix a canal.

That's right.

Are you talking about hundreds of acres?

Oh thousands of acres. Thousands of acres were opened up by fixing this canal. But this canal was important because of the Heart Mountain basin. We went there, it was just pure sagebrush. That's all we see for miles. So anyway, they try the first year they raised different crops and they had lost most of it because the frost came early and because they came from Santa Clara Valley, and the people in Washington, Oregon area, their farmers too but they had longer seasons than Heart Mountain did. So the farmers got their heads together and said, “There must be a way to combat this problem.” So they said the only thing to do is dig down in the soil. About two feet or so. Compost style. Instead of bringing the heat from top down with the green house. they bring the heat from the bottom up...in Heart Mountain they raised most everything that had been raised in California, even the water level increased.

By extending the farming days.

Yeah by using hotbeds preplanning and getting 30-40 days head start before they go out in the field. So now, in the meantime we had to store the vegetables. After they were picked, the creation got all so much because the vision was mostly for high pressure like meat and milk and water, so we had to build what they call, root cellars.

So we were able to go to the mountains national forest to get logs. To this day the root cellar is still there. It is in bad shape, but I was the only one to tell them how we did that. We sent the people up, that we had it figured out, the size of the root cellar, and we pre-cut the logs more or less because they were all done by handsaw. It was all hands, the bucksaw. We cut most of the timbers, then we sized it. What we needed for the roof part, we needed for vertical and so forth, and the trucks were not that big. 

It saved the economy overall.

Yeah, overall. But this is the funny part of the story too, there were more volunteers going up cutting logs because there are two things up there and naturally, freedom. And some of the guys went on afterward, it was on the stream there, and you see all this trout down there swimming around. We said, “How can we catch this trout?” So next trip back up so they would go there, stay overnight, maybe two days. As you know, safety pin shines, right?

So what they did is made a hook and they jiggle the safety pin like a lure, and they were catching trout with that safety pin. Had people, local people start complaining that we're fishing the fish out of the river without a license…They work two or three hours, go down there fishing most of the day.

So you knew about the hotbeds but you weren't involved, and with the root sellers, you were involved in the construction?

Layout and cutting the timbers, the size of timber to be cut and so forth. And pick and choose because the logs had been cut in the mountains. So whatever they cut, tried to cut it pretty close so you didn’t cut it twice.

Right. It's a lot of work.

Fall ‘43 we went to Tule Lake. For whatever reason we all piled up on the train, went to Tule Lake.

Yeah, would you tell me what you did in Tule Lake?

Tule Lake, I was in construction. So I went down to the shops and departments again. And I still wanted to be an engineer. So I went to the engineering office, a guy named Guy Booker, assistant engineer there, and I told him what I did. He says we need guys out in construction. So back out in the field again. So I went out to the construction field.

You ever got to become an engineer?

Never made it. So then they gave me the overall – take care of all the roads. 

Now you’re only like 20? 

21.

21. I mean they were much older people?

Oh yes there are old enough people to be my grandfather and young enough to be my younger brother.

Why do you think they chose you?

I don't know. I don't know whether my background – because not too many people went to trade school at the time in the forties, late thirties, forties, and knew in detail exactly what construction was. Majority of them were farmers. Right? And sure they can cut lumber and nail, but more detailed, they missed that part. So that's just probably the criteria they used to give me the job.

So you were, you had overall responsibility for construction?

Maintenance of the camp or the water facility, the drinking water facilities, the sewage problems, the roads…Would send people to take care of the farm slaughterhouse, chicken coops and granary and all that, whatever maintenance we had to do with the building…Our biggest problem was the camp was being expanded. We were bringing in 3000 more people and naturally, they added several wells. We had five wells to start off and then they dug two more wells to bring the water capacity to a million and a quarter gallons per day of water use…All predicated on about 15,000 people. But then the cap rose to 18,700 population, when all the rest of camp was finished in ‘43 and plus we had 1200 soldiers, 550 personnel. So to conserve water, the people who irrigate have little gardens, to keep the dust down, and import water from the canal…So we did the canal from the main outside canal, along the fence line, by the Army quarters, in front of the administration, and then by the warehouse there. We dug into the camp and then put what they call a sump pump, to raise the water.

It goes up. Yeah.

My job was 5:00 in the morning. The water master from the canal would open the water. Then about 6 o’clock I start to pump, start pumping the water from 6 o’clock in the morning till dark. Every day the water was diverted to different wards.

That's fascinating.

It is fascinating. And then, people who are trying to make the best of life. Like the sewer, mind you, that a sewer was made to only originally support 13,000 people. They were up to 21,000 people, and in an emergency – they put the other sewage plant up. The main sewer plant was just running wild. We just couldn't digest it fast enough. So we just open field for acres and acres and figured a million gallons a day. We'd say 50% of the sewage services is half a million gallons of water running out there everyday, out in the field. It is what they call, a sump system, the heavy settles on the bottom, the liquid more or less clear water and that used to go out to the open field and then evaporate or put on the ground. But that is the raw sewage coming in so fast you have no chance to settle. Right?

How many acres would you say?

Oh, I would say at least 200 acres was out there.

Well we’ll go to the questions and we can go back to this. You left camp 1945 or ‘46?

Oh ‘46 of May. So I left home on Memorial Day and I came back on Memorial Day. And my job was to go and check every barrack, every warehouse, every room, any place with room in case anybody was left behind. So I spent days walking every road, every barrack…Some people kind of packed it up. This depends- some people fold the blankets neatly, stacked it up, some people just got out of bed and that was it. They just left, took the sheets with them, and dirty clothes, dirty laundry. Some, it’s almost like a pigpen. Some people were very meticulously clean, swept the room out, and put everything in place. So it was a kind of a lot of people left a lot of things behind because where are they going? Do they have a home, right? So they just took what was necessary for them. They can't afford to bring all these extra merchandise with them. 

That must have been really emotional for you. I mean, horrible to see.

All this stuff. But a lot of these people did have stuff stored in a warehouse, see, Tule Lake warehouse was full of merchandise that people brought with them, they were stored in the camp.

I’ll talk a little bit about being in construction. I had a house with 250 people working for me or under me or whatever it may be. And the people were old enough to be my grandfather or younger brother. So you have the talk of the frustrations. You know, especially the older folks there who were sharecroppers, day workers. But in camp there's no such thing as a second job, third job. Lucky you even have a job as a carpenter, and they were very grateful that they had a job because Isseis couldn't get a job. Otherwise, they didn’t want to be bothered – dishwashers. 

So this is the frustration, anyway, like one of the men said “My son wants a glove, baseball glove.” And it costs about $15 to buy a baseball glove, a nice one. Now, “Should I spend one month's salary to buy a baseball glove?” Meantime, I have four or five other kids who need their clothing, shoes and dress and so forth. You know, how would you tell your little boy that we don't have enough money?

The youngsters, 15, 16, they understand as well. We don't have the money. We can’t afford it. So you just have to do without. Well, they understand, but you get a little boy that's eight years old. They don't know where money comes from. And that was the hardest. You know, I hear that all the time. And they used to talk amongst themselves, coffee breaks or lunch time. We sit down and this conversation always comes up to tell the little boy that we're poor. That other families are richer than we are. We don't have any money. And naturally the first thing they say is, “Why we don’t have money?” So that was the biggest, I think, heartache for the men.

Breadwinners, yeah.

You see it. See, the child grow up was very, wouldn’t say distorted, confused. Why? Why are we poor? You know, the family did the best they can, right, Father? Do the best they can. And some families are not exposed to kids. All of this, they’d bring the food home into the barracks and eat in the barracks. So they don’t see what other kids are eating for breakfast.

So this happened quite a bit.

Oh yes, quite a bit, like I know several of our families on our block were like that too. She was a single mother raising four kids. She used to bring all the food home and then she has control of what the kids are eating, and have them eat together. But the thing about that is the hardship.

Sally says, “Gee, May bought a new dress there, can I get a new dress?” Are you going to pull the little savings you have, order a little dress for a little girl?

It's a hard decision.

I’m sure the youngsters say, “Mommy, why can’t we eat what they’re eating?” Right? Well how is the mother say, they’re rich. They have a hotel in Seattle that they can afford to live off of the canteen. Always talk about it too, the three girls in the office. One girl looks like she is from Neiman Marcus, a wool skirt, with a cashmere sweater. At the time, wool sweaters, stockings and tennis shoes, so forth. This poor girl here, she was only worker of the family. She had five siblings and she worked. I can still see it in my eyes. Pink, faded dress. Cotton dress and she wore a skirt with a blouse setup, and an ugly sweater, It’s all she had. Girl from Neiman Marcus every day, she wears a skirt, 30 cents at the dry cleaners, a nice piece, pressed nicely.

Did you have a dry cleaner at the camp, or went out?

It was sent out.

My gosh.

So, you know, there you are. How would you tell your son right? I mean, you know, you only have so much, especially, there’s one child supporting seven, seven people, their daily needs, you know. So she had to sacrifice herself too, you know, most of them are old enough to remember.

Were you willing to go back? You felt that you didn't suffer in that way?

Well, the reason why we didn't go back for a long time was because, we just tried to start a family and make things work. So it was kind of for us to get ourselves on our feet again. So it was 1991 when we first went back. You know, it was really traumatic and there's still a lot of buildings left in 1991.

Which part was traumatic for you?

The discussion period. Talking about how it was.

It wasn't healing for you? It just brought up the hurt without – 

Yes, we hurt, and how we suffered, I mean, how different families suffered and probably trying to help each other as much as possible but still hurts because of the basic thing financially, everyone hurt financially because they came with so little money, they live in the camp for three years. They're almost destined to lose everything they had. A lot of them couldn’t find a job. So they went to offer to get $3 something a month or something. You couldn't buy too much for $3, even the can or two bottles was $0.15. But then again still $0.15 here, $0.25 there, $3 are gone right now. 

We sat in one of the intergenerational meetings, and why the family got together in one group. I don't know if the mother, father and daughter were in that group. And I was talking about this situation where little Johnny wants what he wants, and this and that. Just like that, both simultaneously crying. I think they were youngsters at camp then. They said they were five or six years old at camp and I think it came to them why the mother couldn't give them what they wanted.

Oh, they understood all of a sudden.

All of a sudden it dawned on them, the daughter, because she doesn't know the past. Right? And also, when I talked about that, I was surprised that just those two just broke up. But they just- the hurt still the five year old kid still remember the hardship, the hurt, the family. And they asked the mother and father for something impossible.

I know you already touched on this but I have this question: what prompted you to go back to Tule Lake? You said for a long time all your energy went to starting up your family and getting reestablished, and so forth. 

Well we decided, I think, you know, we should go back and see what life was like. We were both at Tule Lake at different times. And they said “I think we should go.”

So you made a joint decision?

The joint decision was that we go together and we went up there. And after I saw what it was, there and the stories and walked in the camp area – we didn’t walk too much, we drove around. It wasn’t extensive, which was like a three day deal, one day up there, one day camp, next day we went to the cemetery, and on the same day came home. But there are more stories to be told. So the next pilgrimage was ‘92, I got involved from ‘92 on.

So what made you go back in 1992? I mean, you said there needs to be stories.

Yeah, well, I want to do more research on it there, how do you say, reacquaint yourself. And then the other thing to, I think it was ‘92 or ‘94 we were standing in the jail there, and a guy comes from behind me and slap me on my back. He said, “Hi Jimi, how are ya?” I looked at him and said “I don’t remember you.” He said, “I helped you build this jail.” He tells everybody, “This is the big boss.” I found out later he worked with my brother at the post office and he's one of the guys that went to Japan, came back, and anyways, he tells everybody that I was the boss and this and that and meantime say well, if he remembers that much far back, maybe I should. Building this jail. Building the so-called stockades. The stockade was never a stockade, I tell you. It was an embarkation point for people in Japan.

Embarking?

Yes, embarkation point. Because as you know, the Peruvians from South America had been shipped to Japan for prisoner exchange. And at the time Mr. Best, his office was here, our office would be here. Mr. Best would be right next door to us. He used to come to us quite a bit and show us the letters that would come, in regards to our welfare, the letter says, we should send all Tule Lake people to Japan and this letter was signed by a person that I knew.

And you happen to know the author of this letter, was he from the San Jose area?

He was in the Washington area. Washington, D.C. area, and his recommendation because we're running out of people from Central America, the Peruvians. So to this day, I’d like to go back to Washington to look for other letters that Mr. Best showed to us, actually. Mr. Best himself, he didn't know about Japanese, he didn’t know Japanese character, the background, and so forth.

So he was with Indian Affairs or Indian people, who’re more laid back, right? And they're not too aggressive. Whereas Japanese were more aggressive. That's the reason why he got scared and thought about the riot. I thought he was a good man. I mean, he called the Army because he was worried for his own welfare, of those things. But anyway, my order was to build a jail and to build the so called embarkation or transfer what it may be, sent people to Japan because we're running out of people from Peru through South America so Tule Lake was the next point, next batch of people. So that’s why it was made.

So the stockade was not just one building, but two barracks and the bathroom?

And bathroom and kitchen. So the first shipment went out in ‘44. This is a discrepancy, what date it was. I think it was ‘44.

First shipment of people. It makes it sound, you know, when you say “a first shipment,” it just makes it sound like you have some merchandise.

That’s what we were, we were merchandise. But the thing is, it was like I said, it was all volunteers. They volunteered to be repatriated, I don’t know the exact wording but anyways, there were 350 some odd people. And like I say, the saddest part of staying in camp was when I saw those people leave for Japan, it goes to the fact that now when any search- a female, that’s for a female, men, that’s for a man. Then by 44, all the search was done by men regardless.

And they would strip search, they strip girls, men, right down to the shorts and panties, that’s it. And naturally, mind you now, yourself somebody wants to molest you,you just kick their butt. Get a girl 14, 15 years old, and the guy goes down groping their pants, the traumatic feeling, meanwhile they have nothing on top. The bras off too right? The 14 year old girl, bras off, pantie out there, somebody broke down there because when I went on the car, this girl was crying hysterically. That’s when I asked the mother what happened. And they were talking about these big guys groping their pants right? I mean something like that, traumatic. I'm pretty sure those girls never let it down, right? But I mean I think to me, that was the most saddest part of the camp life that I went through. So when I met these girls, their family, when I heard that, it was just so disheartening. I can’t do anything about it, I’m just an internee.

When you went back physically to camp after decades of not going, were there things that you touched that brought back the memories of just being there? 

Just being there and walking on the sand there and, you know, the weeds, seeing few other artifacts around. Especially when we walked on the soil. When you really walked the ground itself.

I think, you know, when you go back to the pilgrimage I remember standing on top of the bluff there – as you look across there, and to feel that wind blowing, and to see the barracks there you know this open field now, just visualize the barracks were there and 18,000 people. And so it's a story in itself, you know?

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