Former UW student recalls hardship of internment camp

Mitsuye "Mitsi" Mihara was a junior at the University of Washington who followed the fortunes of the Huskies, worked part-time jobs and went to church socials. She was 20 years old, her life just unfolding. Then came Dec. 7, 1941.

"I was coming home from working as a housemaid at a doctor's home on Queen Anne Hill. The radio news was blasting that Pearl Harbor was attacked," the 87-year-old recalls. "And all of a sudden there was a big, scared feeling in my heart."

That day was a Sunday. The next morning, she took a bus to the UW.

"All the faces were staring at me, you know, and I felt like creeping into a hole," she said. "Then when I was walking up 'The Ave,' there was a white lady who came toward me and said 'You dirty Jap' and she spat on me."

Mihara was horrified that someone she didn't know would feel such anger toward her.

The next few months were tense. Chinese people started wearing badges — "I am Chinese" — to distinguish themselves from Japanese Americans like Mihara.

In April 1942, Mihara withdrew from the UW. The next month, the military evacuation orders took effect. Each person could take along only what could be carried by hand. A bus with guards on board took Mihara, her parents and two younger sisters to Camp Harmony, at the Puyallup fairgrounds.

Her father, a clerk, and her mother, a part-time Japanese teacher, were leaving their livelihoods behind. The family was put into barracks with other families.

"It was divided by plywood, which did not reach up to the ceiling," Mihara said. "We could hear the people snoring, or the babies crying, or talking at night. And there were knotholes in the plywood, so we could see through."

The families spent their days playing cards and checkers, knitting, listening to the radio.

After four months, the Miharas were moved to the Minidoka internment camp in southern Idaho. There, the winter days were so cold their towels would freeze in the time it took to walk from the shower block to their barracks.

People could apply to leave the camps if they had job offers outside of the West Coast exclusion zone. After five months at Minidoka, Mihara managed to get out when the doctor on Queen Anne helped arrange a housemaid job for her near Chicago. Her parents were released a few months later when they got servant jobs in another town nearby.

Because Japanese Americans were barred from returning to the West Coast, Mihara began applying to colleges in the Midwest. None would take her. Finally she got lucky with Hanover College in Indiana, where the president had once been a missionary in China and was sympathetic to her plight.

After the war, the family moved back to Seattle. Mihara began a 35-year career working for the federal government. Her first job was with the War Relocation Authority, the agency that ran the internment camps. She helped Japanese Americans move out of the camps and begin their lives again.

She said she doesn't feel bitter.

"You know, there's a Japanese saying, 'Shikata ga nai' — it couldn't be helped — or something like that. And knowing our situation, I had to bear with it. With the discipline and rigidity of our society, the Japanese society, we just bore the brunt of it, I guess. But there was a little bit of resentment in all of us for being treated without due process."

Mihara married and had seven children. The older three graduated from the UW. Mihara would get piles of UW mail — alumni magazines, notices of events — addressed to her children, never to her. She felt left out.

Now, she is excited to finally be recognized as a Husky.

"We never expected anything like this," she said. "So I don't think it's ever too late."

Nick Perry: 206-515-5639 or nperry@seattletimes.com