Writer John McReynolds wasn’t looking to uncover the reason nearly 100 Japanese families in Lompoc never returned to the community after having been sent to internment camps. He wasn’t even aware of the fact that of those interned families, only two returned to Lompoc. He didn’t know that what was once a vibrant Japanese community simply vanished one day, creating financial opportunity for a select few.
He was simply searching for a light-hearted story when he stumbled on a lot more.
In his book, Vanished: Lompoc’s Japanese, McReynolds details his search for answers to the question why only a pair of families returned to Lompoc.
His search took him through 80 interviews, reams of old newspapers, various reports, and War Relocation Authority files to piece together the picture. His book outlines his findings and proposes how a few leaders with alleged potential for financial gain were successful in pushing for the evacuation of Japanese Americans from the Pacific Coast.
“I thought, ‘There’s a story here—something light and easy and quick.’ But it turned out to be none of those things,” McReynolds said of his 16 months of research.
Instead, he found evidence of racial injustice and profiteering by a vocal few and questions about how a community can be swept away—and kept away.
“Basically, you can track the most egregious injustices of all egregious injustices to Santa Barbara County and Lompoc,” McReynolds said.
While McReynolds explores the racial intolerance of the era and the struggles of Japanese Americans to settle into the community, Vanished isn’t all about strife. McReynolds paints a vibrant picture of what Lompoc’s Japanese community was like through stories from former residents, most of whom were children at the time of their internment. Through testimony and pictures, McReynolds offers a timeline of their settlement in the Lompoc Valley, as well as a peek into the lives of these families.
Because many of the people he interviewed were children at the time, their memories were limited to their individual stories—not what was happening overall. Thus, many of them learned more of their own stories during his research process, McReynolds said.
He explained that he wrote the book for no other reason than to follow the thread, and what he found needed to be put out for readers. He said if there’s a purpose for his book, it would be that many of the Japanese Americans who experienced the events described in the pages can discover a little more about their heritage and their Lompoc roots.
The hardest part of the book for McReynolds was learning how bad things can happen when others just stand by or look the other way—even in a town as small as Lompoc at the time.
“I still had a hard time believing Lompoc—the town is so tiny,” he said. “Did we really have this role in it?”
Arts Editor Shelly Cone looks for the big picture. Contact her atscone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 7-14, 2010.