Georgette Yoshikai

Georgette remembers December 8, 1941. “My sisters, brothers, and I were waiting for the school bus like always. The bus approached us and then passed right by without stopping. I started to run after it, but my sister held me back. She said we would walk to school. I could see the laughing faces of the children looking at us through the back window of the bus.” For her family, and more than 120,000 other Japanese-Americans and their immigrant parents, nothing would ever be quite the same.

The months between the start of the war and the evacuation to the internment camps were sad, frightening, and uncomprehending months. Georgette described her loneliness as she was subjected to the taunts and name-calling of her classmates. “I asked myself how people could change overnight from friendly to hateful.” To this day she remembers one friend who didn’t desert her, as well as a history teacher who reminded her classmates that this one small girl didn’t start the war.

Georgette and her family were interned at the Tulelake, California camp where she worked in the Base Hospital. “At the barracks there were canvas cots, knot holes in the walls, no grass, no flowers, no trees, just sand.” Families were assigned to rooms according to the number of members in the family. Constructive activities were organized for the youths to enjoy life, even under these conditions. At a “jam session” Georgette danced with Tom Yoshikai, of Salem [Willamette University Class of 1955], who was at the same detention camp. Tom was moved to Heart Mountain, Wyoming and was soon drafted into the Army.

Georgette began a career and twenty years later she would meet her “jitterbug” friend at a dinner at her boss’ home. A whirlwind courtship, engagement, and marriage followed. For the past forty years, they have made their home in Salem where they raised their daughter, Vickie, also a graduate of Willamette University.

Retired now, both Georgette and Tom are active in the United Methodist Church, both being Lay Members of the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference. She loves gardening, hopes to get back to her painting and tracing her genealogy, and is busy with the welfare of children, shut-ins, and the sick.

Reflecting on her experience during the war, Georgette says, “It would be a shame if we do not teach the students of today about our past history, of what happened. We cheat the leaders of tomorrow if they do not know the dark history of the past. There is always the danger of history repeating itself.”

Written by Virginia Green

Back

Bibliography:

This profile based on interviews with Georgette Yoshikai.

This article originally appeared on the original Salem Online History site and has not been updated since 2006.