Mitzi Asai Loftus was in elementary school when President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order No. 9066 sent people of Japanese descent — many of them U.S. citizens — from their homes to “relocation centers,” resulting in the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Asai Loftus was born in Hood River on a fruit orchard and spent years of her childhood in the government camps. After leaving the camps, her family returned to Hood River. Asai Loftus spent much of her adult life in Eugene and Coos Bay and now lives in Ashland. She joins us with details of her experiences and her book, “From Thorns to Blossoms: A Japanese American Family in War and Peace.”
Mitzi Asai Loftus was born in Hood River and is the author of "From Thorns to Blossoms: A Japanese American Family in War and Peace."
courtesy of David Loftus
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Mitsuko “Mitzi” Asai Loftus was born on a fruit orchard in Hood River in 1932. She was nine years old when President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 sent people of Japanese descent from their homes to so-called relocation centers. 120,000 people, many of them U.S. citizens, were incarcerated during World War II. Mitzi spent most of the war behind barbed wire fences, while two of her older brothers served in the U.S. Army. After leaving the camps, her family returned to Hood River. She spent much of her adult life in Eugene and Coos Bay. She now lives in Ashland. She wrote a memoir, primarily for her family, in 1990. An expanded and revised version was recently published by Oregon State University Press. It’s called “From Thorns to Blossoms: A Japanese American Family in War and Peace.” Mitzi Asai Loftus joins me now. It’s great to have you on the show.
Mitzi Asai Loftus: Thank you.
Miller: I want to start with your childhood in Hood River. You grew up on an orchard that your father created. Can you describe the chores that you were expected to do every day for your family when you were just a third grader?
Asai Loftus: Well, we were expected to work in the orchard, whether it was cutting grass or pulling the spray hose, because we didn’t have the stationary things you could plug in or speed sprayer that would take it down the road. So I remember pulling the hose through the tall grass while my father was using the spray gun on the fruit trees. Those are my earliest, and then we had a huge garden. So there was always work to do, because we raised almost all our fresh vegetables which we ate in stir fry. We had very little meat to eat, except maybe every couple of weeks, three weeks, my dad would go into town and buy one pound of hamburger or one steak, and that would be chopped up to put into our stir fry vegetables.
Miller: And it was up to you, even as a third grader, to cook for the entire large family?
Asai Loftus: Yes, and that was not too typical. I don’t think other Japanese families had kids do that. That was particularly my parents’ style, because at a certain age, we were expected to learn to do these things. My sister was nine years older than I and she had long since done that. My mother worked 12 to 14 hours out in the orchard with my dad, so she tried to pawn off whatever things she did, because her life was really full of activity. So when I was in third or fourth grade, she taught me, or told me, what to do. And I had to cook the evening meal for the family.
Miller: There’s an old joke, people saying, “When I was growing up I had to walk uphill to school, in both directions.” But the way you write, in your early years in Hood River, it almost seems like that – walking five miles to school, five miles back, in driving rain, in snow, in freezing cold weather, day in and day out.
Asai Loftus: Well, I actually didn’t walk that distance. My brothers and sisters had to walk those distances because they lived on another farm, way up in the hills, the first one my father developed. I grew up five miles from town, but my school was like a mile and a quarter. So I walked a mile and a quarter to and from school and on Sundays, a mile and a half to and from the church, where I sat where nobody else would sit with me. But I went because I was so socially isolated, I just needed to be around people.
Miller: What are your memories of December 7, 1941?
Asai Loftus: It was a Sunday, and we were all home, and my father was downtown at the Japanese community hall. They were getting it all cleaned up and gussied up for a talent show they were gonna have, and we heard on the radio of the Pearl Harbor bombing, and my father came home all excited. He didn’t know what was going on, because the sheriff and the police sent them all home. And of course, he didn’t know anything about it. I suppose the police thought they were cleaning up the hall to have a big celebration that night, and how ridiculous. We explained to them they were joining with the LDS church folks to put on a talent show, and they were gonna make money so they could build an indoor toilet. That story wouldn’t go over too convincingly.
Miller: How long was it before your family was forced out of your home?
Asai Loftus: We were sent away on May 13, 1942, almost five months after Pearl Harbor.
Miller: Can you describe the Pinedale Assembly Center?
This was near Fresno, California. That was the first place that you were taken to.
Asai Loftus: Yes, we were in tarpaper barracks, the black tarpaper with laths nailed on them. There were no walls. There were just bare two-by-fours and the roof, you could see right up to the top. There were concrete floors, and it was 10 degrees. It was just … the heat. We were not used to that kind of heat. So we sat, sometimes with a block of ice right on the concrete floor, sitting around fanning ourselves to keep cool. And I got self-contagious impetigo and I was sent to the camp infirmary, where I had to sleep in a long barrack with about 15 people, beds side by side – chicken pox [on] one side and whooping cough on the other. And me with impetigo in the middle.
Miller: You have a dramatic description of lying in bed at night there. And even with your eyes closed, you say that you could see, through your eyelids, the search light that was just roving its brightness through the camp. And that even when you went to the next stop – this is the Tule Lake, which we’ll get to in a second – lying in bed at night, you would still, in a sense, see that searchlight. It was burned into your memory.
Asai Loftus: Yes. When I was in the Fresno Pinedale Assembly Center, I used to count silently – one, two, three, four, five – slowly. And each time that light would hit my face, like number six or seven, that went on. And then in Tule Lake, where we were sent later, there was no search light, but I still had that ingrained into my brain. So I would be counting one, two ... and around six or seven, that light would flash across my face. The light that wasn’t there.
Miller: What are your most indelible memories from Tule Lake? And this is a place that may be more familiar to Oregonians … It’s just south of the Oregon border in Northern California. Maybe the most infamous of the prison camps that Japanese Americans were sent to. What do you remember most from it?
Asai Loftus: Well, it’s the most infamous because it became a segregation center after the so-called loyalty oath questionnaires came out in 1943.
Miller: It’s been a little while since we’ve talked about those two questions. Can you describe what they were for folks who don’t know?
Asai Loftus: Basically, one said, “I pledge that I have no loyalty to the Emperor of Japan and I forswear allegiance,” which in the first place we didn’t have. And the other one was, “I’ll serve in the armed forces at any time I’m called upon to do so.” And that was asked of all men 17 years old and older. And my father was 69 years old. He had to answer those questions, too.
First place, he has to pledge complete allegiance to the country that would not allow him to become a naturalized citizen, and to say, “Sure, I love this country that just locked me up, and I’ll do anything for it.” And the same for serving in the armed forces. Well, my two brothers were already in the U.S. Army before Pearl Harbor, along with several thousand Japanese American boys who are already in. And they drafted people out of the camps, eventually. For a while they stopped, at the time that that questionnaire came out. But my father answered yes to both of them. And if you answered yes, you were considered loyal and you were sent to other camps, other relocation centers.
So we were sent to Heart Mountain, Wyoming. When we lived in Tule Lake, it was a fairly pleasant, warm, good place, especially for a child who was having fun playing with a lot of kids.
Miller: What kind of divisions did those two questions, the answers to them, set up within Japanese American communities, between the so-called, “yes, yes’s,” and the so-called, “no, no’s” – people who answered those questions those ways?
Asai Loftus: That made a huge rift in that second-generation population of the men like my brothers, who were in the army, and the ones who answered “no, no.” The “no, no’s” said, “You guys just don’t have the guts to fight for your Constitutional rights.” And the guys who went in the army may not have enmity, but they’d say, “Well, this is better than sitting in those blankety-blank camps.” So, there you were … and that has taken over 30 or 40 years to bring those two populations together.
Miller: Because, as you noted, your dad answered, “Yes. Yes.” Your family was moved from Tule Lake to Heart Mountain, the so-called relocation center that was in Northwestern Wyoming. Can you describe the train trip that your family took from Tule Lake north and east, to get to Wyoming?
Asai Loftus: Yes. I don’t remember exactly what direction we went, whether we were north and south, or east or whatever. But during that trip, we were on the train across the Columbia River from Hood River, which is my hometown. And we could clearly look across the river and see buildings, familiar buildings. We were explaining to other people on the train who were from other places, “There’s our high school, and our farm is over in that direction, and there’s the hospital.” And they brought out boxes of Hood River apples, for which [they] were famous, to pass out to everybody. And we were crying, looking across the river at our hometown. We couldn’t eat our apples.
Miller: Because it’s fair to say that you had no way of knowing if you’d ever live there again.
Asai Loftus: Exactly. The questions in my parents’ minds were, “Will we ever get to go home? When will we get to go home? What will be the condition of our homes and our orchards or fields?” – In the case of most Californians who are truck gardeners raising vegetables. When we would ask those questions, the government’s answer was always, “for the duration,” whatever that meant.
Miller: You’re here for the duration.
Asai Loftus: Yes.
Miller: You’ve written that you were a happy child at Heart Mountain. That before incarceration, in fourth grade, you lived on a farm. Your closest neighbor was a quarter of a mile away and you were socially isolated. And then in camp, even though there was barbed wire at the outskirts keeping you there, there were kids everywhere, and you were young enough that you could just play and have fun.
I mean, it was very different for your older siblings and very different for the adults. What was life like for your parents or older siblings at that time?
Asai Loftus: My sister was nine years older. She had just graduated from high school when the war started. So for her, the future was bleak. She had no future of getting a job, going to college, any of those things you usually think about when you finished high school. So her life, her view, is entirely different.
I was just happy to have all these kids to play with. And all this time, as I look back, I’m thinking about my parents worrying about, are our sons going to get killed in the war? And they both – the two who went overseas – went to fight in the Pacific Theater, which a lot of people don’t understand when they think about Japanese American soldiers. They always talk about the well-decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team, who made a name for themselves in the European Theater. And so they were thinking and worrying about those things while I was having a great, fun time with my friends. But I had something further to experience I wasn’t expecting.
Miller: Well, let’s turn to that. In December of 1944, President Roosevelt declared that Japanese Americans could begin returning home the following month. You note that a little before that, in January of 1943, a newspaper poll found that 84% of Hood River County residents, who were questioned, said that they did not want people of Japanese descent to return to the valley after the war. You were the first Japanese American student to re-enter an elementary school in Hood River, and the only one throughout your 7th and 8th grade years. What were those years in school like for you?
Asai Loftus: I should say my brother was above me in high school. He was the first and only one to go to high school. And the principal said, “I hope you don’t turn out for athletics.” And my brother said, “Why not?” He said, “Because it might be embarrassing for you.” And he knew very well what he was talking about. He said, “I wouldn’t be embarrassed.” Well, he said, “When visiting teams come, it might be embarrassing for our team, or whatever…” My brother says, “Well, don’t worry, I’ll just do intramurals.” And he was very athletic, so that was sad for him.
For me, I was going back to the elementary school I’d gone to in the first through fourth grades. And when I got home, I found my so-called classmates and friends didn’t talk to me, didn’t play with me at recess, didn’t walk with me on my walk to and from school. And so I was socially isolated for a good two years. I got to the place where I could go as a group someplace, but I had no dates. I couldn’t go to the school dances. So all I did was sell hot dogs at the football games and usher at the various programs.
Miller: It wasn’t just classmates who shunned you. Adults were vicious and cruel. One woman would sic her dog on you as you walked by her house. But you note that you did not tell your parents about experiences like that, or what you were experiencing in school. Why not?
Asai Loftus: I felt that my parents had enough things to worry about.
My parents went to town once or twice. And it was so unpleasant, they never went downtown after that. So my brother was 16 and just got his driver’s license, and I, at 13, did all the family business that had to be done in town.
Miller: How did you navigate that? I mean, that there were plenty of stores that had signs using a racial epithet, that you weren’t allowed there?
Asai Loftus: Fortunately, a soldier was discharged early. And he came home, he was the head of the Safeway stores. At that time, I think Standard Oil owned Safeway. And when he came home, he was shocked at what was happening. He said, “Anybody with the American dollar is welcome here.” So I still have a kind of a personal loyalty to Safeway, although it’s not owned by Standard Oil anymore, because without Safeway, there was not a good place we could buy groceries without worry. And the same is true … the gas companies that would deliver gas to our underground tanks on our farms. The government representatives in Portland had to come to help us to get through all of that and negotiate with businesspeople.
Miller: Were there white allies, neighbors or friends, who stayed with you?
Asai Loftus: There certainly were. And I can tell you their names. I can count them on the fingers of my hands. Hood River is just not that large a place. So most of the people signed the petitions that the American Legion Post put out in the newspaper saying, “We don’t want you coming here, we will make life miserable for you.”
And they were true to their word.
But I can name the Carl Smith’s, the Max Moore’s, the Mr. McIsaac’s – those people who suffered along with us. They were even refused service in businesses where they had “No Jap” trade signs, they couldn’t even buy there.
Miller: It does seem that a number of white people who maybe were friendly to you in private, were not going to at all be public about that, for fear of being tainted, being seen as traitors. So, I’m curious what that taught you at the time, and what lesson has stayed with you, in terms of human nature, or the desire to “go along to get along,” in the face of injustice?
Asai Loftus: I’ve given talks for more than 50 years about this whole thing. When people ask me what advice do you have or what thoughts do you have that you want to leave with us, I always say, “You know, too many people have noodles for backbones. They need to grow some calcium for their backbones.” I know that there were people who wanted to be friendly to us, but they didn’t have the courage to speak up, or to stand up when something happened, or was said that shouldn’t have been. So those folks, some of those people would speak to us in private, but the next day, if you saw them in town, in public, they didn’t know you.
Miller: Where do you think courage comes from?
Asai Loftus: I think it comes from will. A person just has to decide for himself what they’re going to do or not do. Most people don’t say or do things when they know what is right, and just don’t have the courage to stand up for it and be counted.
Miller: As you noted, you’ve been telling your story for more than half a century now. And I don’t know, I’m not sure if you can count the number of times, in schools and libraries and social clubs, civic clubs. Have the responses to your talk changed significantly or in any interesting way over the years?
Asai Loftus: Thanks heavens. Yes. Many, many years, I’ve given the talks, especially to adult audiences. Someone has come up to me and said, “Mitzi, you know those things you just said are lies. They never happened.”
Miller: “You didn’t experience what you just told us you experienced, I know.” People say that to you?
Asai Loftus: Yes, they have said that to me over many years. And nowadays, there’s still … it happens once in a while, but not often, like it used to.
Miller: Do you think that those people know that they’re wrong and it’s too painful for them to admit the truth of this injustice, or do you think that they truly are ignorant of this huge part of American history?
Asai Loftus: That’s a good question. There are Holocaust deniers around us, and those are the same people. I mean, it doesn’t matter how many facts, figures, and documentation you have. And that doesn’t happen with young people. I’ve talked to so many high school students and young people, I don’t get that from anybody. Their minds are still open. And in some cases, they come from very racist families, parents, and then that’s expressed. But as a general population, I love high school students, because they get it.
Miller: Mitzi Asai Loftus, thank you very much and happy almost- 92nd birthday.
Asai Loftus: Thank you.
Miller: Mitzi Asai Loftus is the author of the newly revised, newly released memoir, “From Thorns to Blossoms: A Japanese American Family in War and Peace.”
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