Moving Day for Mr. Nisei

Pasadena's Rose Bowl looked like a second-hand auto park. In the chill dawn, 140 battered cars and sagging trucks huddled, piled high with furniture, bundles, gardening tools. At 6:30 a.m. they chuffed and spluttered, wheeled into line, and started rolling. Led by a goggled policeman on a motorcycle, a jeep and three command cars full of newsmen, they headed for the dark, towering mountains to the east.

Thus, last week, the first compulsory migration in U.S. history set out for Manzanar, in California's desolate Owens Valley. In the cavalcade were some 300 Japanese aliens and Nisei--U.S. citizens of Japanese blood. They were part of the first mass evacuation from the forbidden strip of West Coast land which Lieut. General John Lesesne DeWitt has made a military zone (TIME, March 16).

At the old Santa Fe station in down town Los Angeles another group of 500 aliens and Nisei (all men, as were the Japs who went by motor) boarded a special 13-car Southern Pacific train for Manzanar. A few impassive-faced Japanese women stood on the platform, handed up pop bottles through the open windows, waved good-by with composure. One was a white girl, clutching the hand of a small, wide-eyed, yellow-skinned boy.

Desert City. At the Army "reception center," nine miles beyond Lone Pine, the Japs piled out. They were greeted by 88 Japanese men and girls who went ahead to put the camp in order. In the unfinished, tar-papered dormitories where they will live until the war ends, they made their beds on mattress ticking filled with straw, dined on rice and meat, prunes and coffee, dished out by Japanese cooks.

At Manzanar, General DeWitt may settle as many as 50,000 of the Coast's 112,353 Jap aliens and Nisei. Another 20,000 will be placed on the Colorado River Indian Reservation at Parker, Ariz.

The first emigrants to Manzanar were Japanese plumbers, carpenters, mechanics who will help build the desert city. Wives and children will follow later. Some projects with which the Army may keep its guests busy: laying broad-gauge track on the railway down the valley; driving a highway across the Sierras (nearest all-weather crossing is 400 miles away); farming. They will earn from $50 to $94 a month, with $15 deducted for living expenses. All they forfeit is their freedom. They cannot leave the camp without permission.

"God Bless America." The Army hoped that most Japs and Nisei would go quietly, of their own accord. Japanese spokesmen said that was wishful thinking: some 90% of the Coast's Japs are destitute, or will be in a few weeks.

Most aliens, far from thinking the Army's haste unseemly, wished last week that General DeWitt would move them faster, before they starve. In San Francisco's Little Tokyo, store fronts were plastered with huge signs, proclaiming: "Evacuation Sale." In one window, under the sign, hung a red-white-&-blue poster: "God Bless America, the Land We Love." Under that, another sign: "Twenty Percent Off."

What kind of people were these Japs and Nisei?

>Seijiro Suchiya, born in Japan, came to Los Angeles 22 years ago with his wife and his infant son to join the fishing fleet at Terminal Island. When FBI men raided the Island two months ago, Seijiro had three grown sons, lived in a clean, comfortable house--from which he could see the U.S. fleet at anchor off San Pedro.

Seijiro's family did not know what had become of Seijiro last week. With eleven other Japanese families, they were packed into the classrooms of a Japanese-language school in Los Angeles. Said Seijiro's oldest son, 23-year-old Takeshi Suchiya, a pre-med at Compton District Junior College when the FBI rounded up his family: "When we stop to think it over, most of us understand the necessity for evacuation. But the immediate reaction is, we have got some rights as Americans. . . . I know my parents are loyal, yet they have been picked up. Anyhow, the whole thing's a mess and we'll just have to take it. . . ."

>Genzo Horino, son of a well-to-do Japanese landowner, set out for the U.S. at 18 with his father's blessing and 5,000 yen, rented ten acres and an old farmhouse near Torrance, Calif., for 27 years grew berries and tomatoes. Genzo retired three years ago, moved into a big, rambling home in Hollywood. There he sat last week, in U.S. clothes but wearing a black skull cap, peacefully smoking a pipe. Two of Genzo's six sons are in the Army. But Son Isamu Horino, 26, is a tough, wiry Nisei boy with a shock of unkempt hair and a stubborn jaw. He never did like the way white citizens treated him. (But he went to school in Japan for a while, did not like the way yellow men treated him either.) Rebel Isamu decided a few years ago to make a lot of money just to prove he was "as damn good as a white."

Said Isamu: "I decided if I was going to be a bastard, I'd be a first-class bastard. . . . I figured I could beat a big bunch of white gardeners out of their business. I did. I acted just like a white man, but I did it better, and my gardens are the best in town." Isamu paid more than $1,000 in income taxes this year; owned four trucks, a half-dozen power-mowers; had three full-time assistants--two Japs and a Mexican; hired white college boys for part-time work. Said Isamu Horino: "Why should we support anything in this country with a whole heart? I don't mean any of us give a damn about Japan. We hope they get licked. But . . . nobody ever let us become a real part of this country. . . . If they want to take away all we've got and dump us out in the desert, we've got no choice. But we don't like it. . . . And we're expected to buy bonds, too. Not me!"

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