Barracks From Japanese Internment Camp Unlocks Memories

Looking at the World War II internment camp barracks reconstructed in Little Tokyo, Ron Mukai felt a tinge of worry and pride.

He was proud that he was able to help transport to Los Angeles an original barracks from a former camp in Wyoming, where his father’s family was forced by the federal government to live because of concerns that Japanese Americans were a subversive threat.

But the Whittier resident also worries that the barracks, part of an exhibit opening today at the Japanese American National Museum, may be only a small step toward dispelling ignorance and intolerance.

“People are xenophobic and afraid of the unknown. It’s easy to have this fear, this phobia,” said Mukai, 25. “This exhibit can open the doors to education and help people understand the genuine disservice to people who went through this experience.”

That is the goal of the exhibit, “America’s Concentration Camp: Remember the Japanese American Experience.” Its centerpiece is the Heart Mountain, Wyo., barracks, dismantled and trucked to Los Angeles by a group of former inmates determined to inform future generations about what happened.

Bacon Sakatani, 65, who was interned at the camp during the war, first got the idea of displaying the barracks nine years ago after almost a dozen trips to the camp, which is now farmland. Only about two dozen barracks remain of the 450 that once housed 10,000 internees.

When the Japanese American National Museum considered organizing an exhibit two years ago to commemorate the 120,000 Japanese Americans interned from 1942 to 1945, Sakatani jumped at the chance to transport the barracks to Los Angeles and quickly got approval from the museum. In September, Sakatani, along with Mukai, his father, and 40 others from Southern California, revisited the Wyoming camp and loaded flatbed trucks with two 20-by-60-foot barracks.

With saws and hammers, Sakatani and volunteers resurrected a three-unit barracks in Los Angeles over a windy October weekend.

For Sakatani, who was 13 when incarcerated with his family in 1942, the barracks memorialize a painful wartime experience.

“The barracks have taken out much of my anger,” said the retired computer programmer, who lives in West Covina. “I had a lot of anger before. But now I don’t have to speak about it. (Visitors) can just look at the barracks and understand.”

The barracks had no ceilings or insulation, Sakatani recalled. Instead, the drafty wood-frame structures--often with inch-wide openings in the planks--were merely covered with tar paper on the outside.

“Sometimes it would get down to 30 degrees below zero and we had no insulation,” said Sakatani, rubbing his fingers down the peeling black tar paper.

A family of three usually lived in a single unit, half the size of a typical living room and supplied with a single light bulb, steel cots and a coal stove. There was no running water, and bathroom facilities were outdoors and communal.

Along with the barracks, the museum displays more than 700 donated artifacts and photos from families who were interned in the 10 relocation camps .

One photo is of a banner on a house: “Japs Keep Moving, This Is White Man’s Neighborhood.”

“The purpose of this exhibit is to help a community and country remember its history so that it never happens again,” said museum curator Karen Ishizuka. “Throughout this experience, I felt strengthened and enriched.”

Said Mukai, whose father helped assemble the barracks: “My dad talked about his camp experience a lot. I would ask about it so I could tell other people. Now the discussion is open to the public.”