Autobiography of Mitsuyo Hashimoto Akiba

It is with love and gratitude I acknowledge my husband, Isao J. Akiba, who supported and encouraged me through the process.

I was born in Sanger, California and grew up in the vicinity of Fresno, a place called Parlier. It is a very small town. [The owner of the ranch was a tall German man named Gaw. My father, Takeo Tanaka, was an important worker who would hire people when he needed them. He acted as the boss. I used to help pick the peaches and the grapes which I was paid for.]*

There were four of us in the family: Teruo (George), Kenji, Kikuye (Lillian), and me. [My father’s name was Takeo and my mother’s name was Tomeo]. He came here in his teens and sent for his wife later. We lost our mother when I was 10 years old.

[She worked herself to death. She was always on the go working on the farm. I remember she used to carry grapes in a large box that were too heavy for her to carry. After my mother died my father was concerned about his children and always said that he wanted his children to learn good manners. He sent me to sewing school where I learned from a woman who was born in Japan. She was an old fashioned type who tried to be a mother to me. She taught me to sew as well as good manners. I learned how to walk and sit properly. I sewed clothing for my sister and brothers.]

A few years later, my father took all of us back to his homeland, Japan.

In 1936, we sailed to Yokohama on the ship called Tatsuta Haku. I stayed in Hiroshima four and a half years. [After my grandmother died we moved back to the United States.] We all came back at different times.

My youngest brother, Kenji, was the only one who returned after WWII. He had suffered great hardships and there was little money. No food was to be found. War is sad wherever you are.

In 1941 I came back to the United States. It was before the War. I was 19 years old and resided in Norwalk, California with my father and George. We were very uncomfortable. Much to our surprise, Japan bombed Hawaii. We all waited to see what would happen to us. Soon we know. We were appointed to go to a relocation camp known as Manzanar. Dad was old fashioned and said it was bad for youngsters to be in camp. So, he called his friend, Mr. Oto, and made arrangements to see if we could go to the state of Utah. The Japanese were told to evacuate inland or go to the camp so we headed to Utah to farm.

On March 28, 1942, as a volunteer evacuee, we filed for a change of residence card with the War-Time Civil Control Administration. Later, we discovered this was registered at the Washington, D.C. National Archives and Records Division. Since we were volunteer evacuees, we had to be alert for hostile people and leaving and entering prohibited military zones. This lasted from December 7, 1941 to the end of the war.

Now, ready to load the car and say goodbye to the old house, there was so little we could take in the old Ford. Very little. It was like being blindfolded. The place was all new to us. We had to be out by midnight, which meant leaving when it was dark. My father, Takeo Tanaka, my brother, George, and I began a new life which we were not expecting to do.

To make things harder, my sister Kikuye was pregnant, and traveling in the second vehicle with her husband, Shigeru Kimoto. In the third vehicle, there were three small children and two adults. They were the Motoyama family, my in-laws.

[My husband grew flowers where he sold them to the florists in town. He would cut the flowers in the morning and then take them to the flower market in town where they were sold. We had to give up this business because his place was next to the airport in Los Angeles. So this was wartime and in 1942 the government began to put Japanese Americans in War Location Camps. My family had decided to move to Utah and we decided to follow them in a convoy of cars loaded up with the things we could carry and needed. We left so much behind, I was sad to leave everything we could not take. It was scary time because we didn’t know what was happening. My husband was offered a position as a welder in Chicago but in those days to travel across the country you had to have a permit with gas ration coupons. We decided to stay in Utah until our son was old enough to travel.]

We finally were on the road. Somehow, we got to our destination without realizing when we reached there. It was not fun. We could have killed or put in jail. We did run into “Hill Field”, a restricted area which was a military arsenal. We were extremely frightened. We had a travel permit, allowing us to travel to Hooper, Utah.

When we reached our friends’ place, Mr. and Mrs. Yamashita, they were very kind to us. they took us to an old big empty house with constantly running water outside. Can you imagine going to the “outhouse” in the middle of the night? Well, we had one.

We sharecropped with Mr. Mitchell and his wife who was a school teacher. Our crops were sugar beets, and tomatoes. That’s what we saw the whole season. To tell you of the hard work involved, I thinned beets everyday and lost 17 pounds in two weeks. We watered the field night and day when it was our turn. Harvest time was worse. You have no idea what harvest is like. You cut the end of the beets with a knife with a hook on the end to pick the beets with and cut off the green leaves, and then thrown the best on the truck which is so high with a board so we can put more beets on the truck. This makes it very heavy and hard on your hands and wrists. Each beets must weight anywhere from 5-8 pounds. My poor aching back and arms. My brother and I were very happy. We were young yet. I felt sorry for my father and the rest of the relatives. We picked tomatoes by the boxes for the tomato factories. It was acres and acres of hard work. I vowed I will never farm again.

One day my cousin Miromu Taniwa, came to see us. He was in the Armed Forces, 442nd Infantry. He also went overseas to Europe but not knowing, he brought a camera with him to see us. Japanese people were not supposed to carry cameras. The next day, the FBI showed up at our front door like we were criminals. They went through our whole house. It left Mrs. Motoyama a nervous breakdown. Very sad, we sort of took it as “life must go on.”

One more unhappy incident happened way out in the sticks. Two cars came down our lonely road to our place in the field after sundown. People got out and started throwing stones at our house. No one got hurt, but it sure hurt our egos, since we were American citizens. Mrs. Motoyama was so angry because she knew all her neighbors and grew up in Utah and could not believe that people she knew and grew up with would do something like that.

Since we were young we had some good times. We went walking on salt flats with Yamashita family. We went to a place which had roller coaster and it was a fun place. We all went our own ways during winter. Dad peeled potatoes for Mr. Kawakami at the Western Café. The following helped my brother again on a farm on better terms.

In the spring of 1942, I was 21 and fell in love with Utaka Hashimoto. Utaka was born in Twin Falls, Idaho and had three years of pre-medical school. I married Utaka on September 8, 1943. I was so happy with a new life beginning for me. Soon after we were married, Utaka was inducted into the Army. Our son, Kenneth, K. was born September 13, 1944, while Utaka was in the service. He trained in Mississippi camp Shelby and was in the 442nd Infantry. Since the baby was about to be born, he transferred to Fort Snelling in St. Paul with military intelligence service. Ken and I spent nine months in Minnesota in 14th Street. He graduated and went overseas to Japan seven days after VJ Day. In other words, 7 days after the bomb fell in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One thing I could not understand was why he was trust in the Army when they didn’t trust our Japanese people in the relocation camp.

The Europe and Japan war was over and once again we had peace. Utaka, troubled about going back to school, made his decision to sex chickens. That was the quickest best offer he had had to make money. Jobs were so hard to find for Japanese people.

On May 17, 1950, Kathy was born. She was truly an angel from heaven after all the unhappiness we had endured. Years went by and Utaka lost his health. He was ill for two years. Now, I had to make a tough decision to return to work. The first year after he took ill, I went to work at the Vet College at Cornell University. It was in the Bacteriology Department. I started from working in the washroom to working as a lab technician and then to supervisor of the bacteriology lab.

We had a total of 80 students everyday, 2 separate classes. I retired in 29 years. I also went to school with the Vet students. They were my best friends.

Utaka, Kathy, and Kenny had to do without me sometimes, but they were good sports. Years went by, and Utaka was able to return to work. He was well for many years to come. When Kathy was a junior at Ithaca College and Kenneth was in California Utaka got ill for the last time. He had leukemia. He passed away on September 12, 1969. It was so sad and lonely for me. I was single for 13 years.

In the Spring of 1983, I retired at the age of 62. I was so very, very happy. 29 years is a long time to work in one place. Then, in the year of 1982, I found out that miracles do happen. My childhood friend, who was like a mother to me, called one day. She asked me if I would like to meet a wonderful man, naturally, I said “yes.” This was truly the second best thing I have ever done in my life. So once again, with bells on my feet, I married Isao J. Akiba. He is very good to me. There is no one drop of regrets nor sorry.

Twelve years go by quickly, and finally after 48 years, the Japanese were pardoned from the US Department of Justice. The Civil Rights Division was proposed on August 10, 1988, and Congress apologized on behalf of the nation. The Civil Liberties Act was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. The law provided $20,000 in restitution to individuals of Japanese ancestry whom injustice was done.

Well, this is my story for the next generations to come. I wish you nothing but health, wealth, and prosperity.

I would like to dedicate this autobiography to my children, Kathryn and Kenneth and Anah, and also to Isao’s daughter Margie.

* all [ ] marked passages are contributed by Lillian Kimoto.