Daisuke Kitagawa

When General John L. DeWitt issued the evacuation order for Japanese residents of the West Coast, many Japanese families had just a few weeks to make arrangements for the care or sale of their personal belongings. Since they were only allowed to take what they could carry, numerous Japanese Americans had to sell a lifetime's collection of personal belongings at far below value. In the following essay, Daisuke Kitagawa, a minister at St. Paul's Church in Kent, Washington, describes the many private auctions in which povertystricken Japanese farmers sold their possessions to their creditors and other greedy buyers for practically nothing. After liquidating their possessions, Kitagawa's community boarded a train, under armed guard, for the Pinedale assembly center near Fresno, California.

On Mother's Day weekend (May 10–12), 1942, we who were living in the White River Valley [in Washington] and its surrounding areas found ourselves...