Tag Archives: Correspondence

Letter from Ruth Watanabe to Edythe Backus the arrival of a loaned piano and her music program initiatives, June 9, 1942.

When Harris learned that the Santa Anita Center could use an extra piano, she donated hers. The excitement over the piano’s arrival caused a “minor riot.” Even with the extra piano, six teachers and four pianos accommodated over 300 students.

Elizabeth Page Harris Papers (MS 771), Box 79, Folder 1726. MSSA.

Letter from Richard Nishimoto to Elizabeth Page, June 19, 1942

Letter from Richard S. Nishimoto to Elizabeth Page, June 19, 1942

Faced with unsanitary conditions, many internees fell sick upon arrival at camp. To keep cool from desert temperatures, internees often poured water on their barracks every few hours. To pass time, internees visited the free public library a mile away to check out magazines and at night attempted to catch signals from Los Angeles radio stations to listen to music. In this letter from Poston, Nishimoto thanks Page for sending new sets of prescription glasses for the members of his family. Mundane items were often difficult to obtain in camp.

Elizabeth Page Harris Papers (MS 771), Box 79, Folder 1726. MSSA. Photograph of Richard S. Nishimoto, wife Yae, and daughters at Poston (c.1942) courtesy Densho Encyclopedia. encyclopedia.densho.org/sources/en-denshopd-p221-00001-1/

Nishimoto was one of the prolific letter writers from camps.

Postcard from Ruth Watanabe to Elizabeth Page Harris – 30 September 1942

Postcard from Ruth Watanabe to Elizabeth Page, September 30, 1942

Ruth Watanabe and Elizabeth Page bonded over their efforts to provide music programs in the camps, first at Santa Anita Racecourse and later at Granada. In this postcard, Watanabe offers her thanks and notes that she has been granted leave from Granada to attend the University of Rochester. "Radcliffe," the women's college affiliated with Harvard University "was not approved," perhaps because of its proximity to the ocean. Internees were prevented from attending Yale for similar reasons, with military security cited as the rationale.

Elizabeth Page Harris Papers (MS 771), MSSA.

Letter from Keikichi Imamura to Walter Millsap, 11 October 1942

Imamura discusses The Epic of America by James Truslow Adams (from which the term "The American Dream" was coined) before describing his feelings at camp. The contrast is striking: “Ever since I came to the Assembly Center (and also to this relocation center) I had a sort of spell that I cannot get rid of--a sense of depression or feeling of unspeakable heaviness has crept all over me...although I, with all my might, shun any antagonistic, ill feeling toward anything…to live a life free from such. I would not say I live a life of the passive, far from it. I try to conform the conduct of my life according to my philosophy and to make the best under any circumstances, be it harmonious or adverse. And yet there I am. Perhaps is yet much devil in me and I am going to emancipate myself the best I can in some of these days.”

Walter Millsap / Keikichi Akana Imamura Family Papers, Box 1, Folder 4. WA, BRBL.

Discusses reading James Truslow Adams’ The Epic of America, which coined the term “The American Dream.”

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