Diary of a Nisei

Diary of a Nisei

Kyoko Yoroshima

January 3. 1943

Snow

I’m still trembling because of fear, terrible fear of everything that happened and things which are still awaiting me. My life fell down into hell, since police stood in front of our house and attempted to put all of us into a big truck- The only sentence I understood was: it’s for you own good. We were put into the truck and someone told me that we were driving to an assembly centre.

The nightmares have begun with these barbed wire fences and armed guard towers with guns facing toward us, and then the gate shut. I really doubt that we’ve done something wrong so that we should be put in such a prison. I always try to look out of the gate, but the military police won’t get out of my line of vision, and their rifles make me so terrified and sick. The freedom, the beautiful life, my school, my friends, everything seems to be so far away. I really feel alone. Okaasan carries my little brother in her arm. I can see tears drying on her face and despair in the dark brown eyes, she doesn’t dare to cry loud, but I do.

How should I describe our situation right now… maybe miserable? Oh well, our hair freezes and our fingers stick to metal door knobs, but we have to live in overcrowded single rooms in a barracks with terribly harsh living conditions: unsanitary and without privacy. I would never have imaged that I would live someday like that. Father can only sleep in a horse stall and he has to work in the camp office for 44 hours a week. I don’t have the heart to look at his tired face which has become so much older in a short time.

Now, I feel nothing but hostility towards all the whites here who deprive us of our basic civil liberties, who force us to stand in line for everything including meals that are definitely nutritionally inadequate, including latrines, supplies… They will laugh at you and think it must be a joke if you ask for help; they make fun of our suffering from this great injustice. It’s a shocking feeling that human beings are behind this fence like animals. How could it be good for us?

Otoosan is coming back from his work; he seems to have finished, well, just like any other day. It’s time to stop writing into my diary and take care of him. Nobody knows how long it will go on, we might be waiting forever.