Margaret Cooper was eating spaghetti off a paper plate after Sunday School when the church’s organist came out and announced Pearl Harbor had been bombed. Four months later, the 12-year-old Cooper was living behind barbed wire in a Japanese internment camp after the government ordered the evacuation of all Japanese people living along the West Coast during World War II.
“I wasn’t angry,” Cooper said. “I felt betrayed. I thought, ‘How could they? I was born here. I’m a citizen, aren’t I?’ And they said, ‘No, you are the enemy.’ And that hurt.”
Cooper spent a year and a half living between two internment camps. She’ll join another former internee, “Tets” Furukawa, for a panel discussion as part of the presentation “Japanese American Internment: Stories of Strength and Hope.” To introduce the program, Furukawa will narrate a five-minute film shot by a principal in Guadalupe on the day of the evacuation. Author Shig Yabu from Camarillo, also an internee from the same camp as Cooper, will be signing his books, Hello Maggie and Boy of Heart Mountain, with proceeds to benefit the Friends of the Library.
Cooper said she talks about her experience so it doesn’t happen again to other people. But she also talks because people are curious about what daily living was like then. She describes how the rooms they lived in lacked running water or toilets; how they’d have to collect coal in the snow to feed a small oven to keep warm in the winter in Heart Valley, Wyo. She said they were treated humanely, but life was primitive.
“When I talk abut it now, I think my kids and grandkids are incredulous,” Cooper said.
Such details, more than anything, are what people like to hear. Though internees weren’t starved or beaten, they were still survivors in many ways. Some former internees don’t talk about the experience, but the ones who do offer inspiring tales of getting through that life and getting on with a better one.
Grace “Megumi” Fleming brings such tales to life in her presentations, which focus on traditional Japanese folktales and internment. Megumi will join Cooper and Tets to present her take on the events based on her interviews with internees.
“I keep interviewing survivors, and they are amazing—their energy, inspiration, and resourcefulness,” she said. “I feel good after those interviews. They give me a gift on how to deal with extremely difficult situations.”
Megumi tells those tales with an inspirational perspective, as well as a bit of humor.
“I get people to laugh,” she said. “Like they’ll want to know, ‘How did they have sex with no privacy?’ I’ll get them laughing, but also thinking really hard about what I’m saying.”
Megumi said she enjoys telling these stories that introduce people to Japanese culture because it helps to make connections.
“I like being in that shared moment with a whole group of people,” she said. “It’s a heart-to-heart communication.”
Arts Editor Shelly Cone laughs hard and thinks hard. Contact her at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 22-29, 2010.