The Rafu Shimpo - L.A. Japanese Daily News

Digging for Closure
By JOYCE TSE
RAFU STAFF WRITER
Saturday, March 3, 2007

At a Guadalupe, Calif. farm, a family searches for belongings buried before internment.

Photos by MARIO REYES/Rafu Shimpo
Volunteers from the Central Coast Treasure Hunters Association use metal detectors at Ferini Ranch in Guadalupe, Calif., on Feb. 24 to search for belongings the Tanaka family may have buried before their internment in 1942.

Wright Tanaka, 80, points to the location of the buried items on an old aerial photograph of the property as Matt LeVault, 47, right, and firefighters look on.

Sadami (Tanaka) Akira

It was a dual-family reunion on a sunny and crisp Guadalupe, Calif., morning. Immediate and extended family members of the Tanaka and Ferini families converged at Ferini Ranch on Saturday, Feb. 24 for a day that would close one chapter of their shared family histories.

Sixty-five years had passed since members of both families—some now deceased—said goodbye to one another as the internment of some 120,000 Japanese Americans began under former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066.

Before leaving their home of four years in 1942, some members of the Tanaka family quickly buried a few things they knew they couldn’t take with them to the Tulare Assembly Center and the Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona: a camera, some inexpensive jewelry and family photos, among them.

And now it was the memory of these things and the off chance of finding them that prompted this reunion, which also drew curiosity, support and participation of some shovel-wielding members of the Guadalupe Fire Department and members of the Central Coast Treasure Hunters Association, who arrived at the Ranch armed with metal detectors.

Where it all began

The Tanaka family’s start as Japanese Americans began in 1905 when 21-year-old Saichi Tanaka moved from Hiroshima, Japan, to the Hilo area of Hawaii in 1905, according to Matt LeVault, 47, son-in-law of Harumi (Tanaka) Sasaki, Saichi’s youngest daughter, who is now 72.

In 1915, Saichi moved to Guadalupe on a dead man’s passport and married a picture bride from Japan five years later. Since his wife-to-be could only come to the United States to meet her husband, the marriage ceremony was carried out overseas, without Saichi present. He met his wife, Kosada Fukushima, only when she arrived in the United States, said LeVault, who pieced together much of the family’s history through stories from Saichi and Kosada’s surviving children and records he found in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

The first of seven children was born in 1921. The family lived near Oso Flaco Lake, approximately eight miles north of Guadalupe, before moving across the street from the Ferinis. In 1938, Saichi, Kosada and their children, Shizuto, Hideto (Nelson), Saburo, Sadami, Wright, Tom and Harumi, moved next door to the Ferini family, beginning their relationship as neighbors.

“The Ferini family lived here forever before we arrived,” said Sadami (Tanaka) Akira, 81, while walking the grounds of Ferini Ranch. “The grandma taught me how to can fruits and make jam, and I still do it that way to this day.”

While waiting for the digging to begin, Sadami, Harumi and Wright, 80, the Tanaka siblings who were able to attend the dig, reminisced about their childhood on the farm as their own children and grandchildren milled about, some wearing shirts with the slogan Tanaka no takara (Tanaka’s treasure) embroidered on them. Their brother Saburo, who now lives in a nursing home in Laguna Beach, was unable to attend.

“Remember how in our bathroom we had to build a fire to heat that water in our bathtub?” said Sadami to Wright. “That was our job.”

When the water would get too hot, someone would have to put out the fire for whoever was bathing. But if the water started to grow cold, someone would then have to rebuild it, Sadami recalled.

“Sometimes, we’d put potatoes and carrots into the flames while waiting for the bath to heat up,” she said. “Then we’d take them out, brush off the charcoal and eat them.”

Growing up, the Tanaka children attended classes at a schoolhouse in Guadalupe that no longer exists. Each morning Sadami and Harumi would walk together to school since they lived too close to take the bus. Still, they were far enough away that the walk was long, said Harumi.

“My second brother, Hideto, was a favorite of one of the teachers, and I looked forward to being in that class someday so I could be a favorite too,” she said, adding, “Unfortunately, we went to camp before that.”

Internment years

With World War II came difficulties for JAs. At some point, according to National Archive records, Saichi, who was an officer in the Hiroshima Kenjinkai, was detained by the FBI.

“The FBI wanted to make sure Saichi wasn’t part of an organized effort against the war, so they picked him up and questioned him—but I’m not sure how long they held him,” said LeVault, who added that the investigator’s report on Saichi began with, “This old man is blind, and he’s no threat to the U.S.”

Prior to their arrival at the Gila River internment camp, the Tanaka children and Saichi were sent to the Tulare Assembly Center in the San Joaquin Valley in February 1942, where they stayed until late April 1942. Meanwhile, Kosada had fallen ill with tuberculosis and was being treated at a tuberculosis hospital in Santa Barbara.

The family visited Kosada once before their departure, avoiding telling her that they would be leaving since they didn’t want to concern her. Sadami and Harumi returned once more after that, although this was the last they saw of their mother.

Kosada died of her illness in January 1945, just before the family was released from camp. Her body was sent to New Mexico for cremation before being returned to family in Long Beach, according to LeVault. She was in her late 40s or early- to mid-50s. Her ashes have since been buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Even without their mother in camp with them, the Tanaka children remained close and still managed to have fun.

“It was OK for us kids compared to maybe some of the adults who lost everything,” said Sadami. “We had food there that we never had before. We were poor. But mostly, we ate things like veggies and meat.”

Harumi, who was 7 years old when her family was first interned, said internment wasn’t so bad because she felt privileged to have her five brothers there with her.

“They took me out with them and their friends accepted me. And even when I didn’t go out, I felt I was always with them,” she said.

“It’s because of family that we survived the way we did. As a JA family, we didn’t say ‘I love you’ or hug, but I knew I was loved, even if we didn’t say or do those things. I used to feel sorry for everyone else because they didn’t live in my family. I felt I had the best family in the world,” Harumi said.

Having already lost Kosada and just beginning their lives outside of internment, the Tanaka family suffered further loss two years after their release from Gila River. Tom, the second youngest of the children, died of tuberculosis in January 1947. He was 18.

It was memories like these that the siblings shared throughout the morning as six firefighters and their fire chief dug in areas where volunteers from the Central Coast Treasure Hunters Association heard their metal detectors hum. Using Sadami’s memory and an old aerial photograph of the property supplied by the Ferinis, digging took place in an area behind the Ferini’s home. Years prior, the home the Tanaka’s once lived in was razed while trees that stood near the location of the buried items were uprooted to make space for more farming.

Eventually, a bulldozer was brought in to clear layers of dirt faster, and metal detectors were used to supplement volunteers’ careful sifting of both the mounds of dirt set aside by the bulldozer and the areas being cleared by shovels.

Part two continued on...