A Teacher on Teaching: Year 1943

__________

“I smell the stench of those bodies rotting in the sun. It still comes back to me.”

Leon Cooper

__________

American forces wade ashore at Tarawa.

Having returned from a 31,000 mile trip around the world, Wendell Willkie rushes a book, One World, into print, explaining what the war is really all about.

Willkie’s simple message was that the United States’ view of the rest of the world had for too long been childishly parochial. There are “no distant points in the world any longer,” said Wilkie; “our thinking in the future must be world-wide.” He forecast the postwar drive for freedom in underdeveloped parts of the world: “Men and women all over the world are on the march, physically, intellectually and spiritually. … They are resolved, as we must be, that there is no more place for imperialism. … The big house on the hill surrounded by mud huts has lost its awesome charm.” (1127-154)

What is Fate?

March 13: Disgruntled German officers manage to place a bomb successfully on Hitler’s plane, disguised as a present of two bottles of brandy. Inside, a small bottle of acid was broken by the press of a button. The acid would eat through a wire that held a spring – and the eventual release would trigger the blast.

The plotters waited anxiously for word that Hitler’s plane had been blown out of the sky. Twenty minutes, forty minutes, an hour passed. No word of an explosion came. The bomb had malfunctioned. The plotters managed to retrieve the “present” later and substitute two better bottles of brandy.

On disassembling the device, all was found to have worked, but the striker had not caused the detonator to explode.

Ohio University enrollment drops to 1,306, as 17% of faculty and many male students enlist. Women outnumber men 5-1.

Enrollment in 1940 had been 3,501.

On a beach in Sicily General Patton spies a man gibbering in fear (Atkinson, p. 139; Army at Dawn). In his personal diary, Patton describes what happened next: “I kicked him in the arse with all my might…Some way to boost morale. As a whole the men were poor, the officers worse. It is very sad.”

What is Fate?

Bill Bryson’s English father-in-law grew up poor, in “a decrepit cottage with his poor widowed mother and elder sister at the end of a wooded lane a quarter of a mile or so from the village center.” The place had no electricity or running water, and his father-in-law would walk miles to Staines and back on a Sunday “to get a bag of stale buns for their supper.”

In 1943 a German bomber blew the place to bits, probably dropping its bomb by mistake, or dumping it after a failed raid.

Chance. No one was home at the time. His father-in-law had to live under “changed circumstances” and

met a girl whom he would not otherwise have met, and in the fullness of time they married and produced two children, one of whom grew up and married me. So the direction of my life, not to mention the very existence of my children and grandchildren and whomever else follows, is directly consequent upon a German bomb that fell randomly on Wraysbury on a summer’s evening long ago.

Baseball season: With so many men away at war, major league baseball owners are worried fans will lose interest in the sport. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is created to help fill the void. The league will survive for eleven years, and 600 young women will suit up and play. (The story of the league is told in the 1992 movie, “A League of Their Own.”)

June 14: The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnett (rendered appropriately on Flag Day) upholds the right of children of Jehovah’s Witnesses to be excused from saluting the flag or saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school, on religious grounds.

Justice Robert Jackson, writing for the six-vote majority, explains: “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy. … One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly.”

Children who had refused to participate had been suspended; but members of the Witnesses refuse to swear oaths of allegiance, except to God.

“Lessons from the ku klux klan.”

June 15-June 17: A race riot erupts in Beaumont, Texas. With the U.S. locked in war with Germany and Japan, African Americans were serving in increasing numbers under the flag.

The great African American poet, Langston Hughes, captures the anger of his people during an era when racism still thrived. Hughes noted riots that had occurred that year in places like Detroit and Beaumont.

“Beaumont to Detroit” by Langston Hughes

Looky here, America
What you done done –
Let things drift
Until the riots come

Now your policemen
Let the mobs run free.
I reckon you don’t care
Nothing about me.

You tell me that hitler
Is a mighty bad man.
I guess he took lessons
From the ku klux klan.

You tell me mussolini’s
Got an evil heart.
Well, it mus-a been in Beaumont
That he had his start –

Cause everything that hitler
And mussolini do
Negroes get the same
Treatment from you

You jim crowed me
Before hitler rose to power –
And you’re still jim crowing me
Right now, this very hour.

Yet you say we’re fightin
For democracy.
Then why don’t democracy
Include me?

I ask you this question
Cause I want to know
How long I got to fight
BOTH HITLER – AND JIM CROW.

August 2: The future writer, James Baldwin turns 19, during a riot in Harlem, fueled by anger at how the U.S. military was treating black soldiers. “The treatment accorded the Negro during the Second World War,” Baldwin would later explain, marked a turning point in black attitudes. “To put it briefly, and somewhat too simply, a certain hope died, a certain respect for white Americans faded.” *

What is fate?

In November a young German officer, Axel von dem Bussche, was selected to kill Hitler, by hiding bombs in a new overcoat design the dictator wanted to inspect and wrapping up Hitler in a sudden embrace. The night before, the new coat was destroyed in an Allied air attack and the meeting postponed.

“It still comes back to me.”

November 20 (Battle of Tarawa begins): Leon Cooper died, in 2017, at age 98. Yet he never forgot other young men who had died around him at 17, 18 and 19.

After graduating from the University of Illinois he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. In 1943 he was a landing boat captain and carried Marines into the beach at Betio, part of the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Low tides stranded many of the craft, and survivors remembered 76 hours of hell. The Marines suffered 1,113 killed and 2,290 wounded. “Riddled corpses form a ghastly fringe along the narrow white beaches,” The New York Times wrote that November, “where men of the Second Marine Division died for every foot of sand.”

Cooper took part in six battles, including the invasion of Iwo Jima. Tarawa always stuck in his mind. He had nightmares after the war. In one he was drifting or falling into deep water, and finds a young boy sitting on a sunken Sherman tank. “You never really lose the memory of the sounds, the smells and everything, including the blood running down your nose, so you’re smelling blood instead of breathing.”

“I smell the stench of those bodies rotting in the sun,” he added. “It still comes back to me.”

A visit to the island in 2008, sparked memories, and he began lobbying Congress to clean up the garbage-strewn beach and look for the remains of lost men. In 2015, the remains of 39 Americans were recovered.

In Private Pages, Kate Tomibe (not her real name) tells the story of her family’s time in a “Relocation Center” for Japanese Americans. Editor Penelope Franklin describes some of the conditions.

Housing was in standard army barracks, hastily erected. Each family was given a 20 x 25 foot room with army cots as the only furniture. Bathroom facilities were communal and primitive; meals were served in army-type mess halls.

Tule lake, California, where Kate Tomibe and her family lived, had been built on the sandy bed of a dried-up lake. Summer dust storms were menacing, and winters were extremely cold. Lack of drainage caused seas of mud during wet seasons.

The Tomibe family was from the Seattle, Washington area. Kate was 19; with her were her parents, brother Sam, 16, sister Beth, 14, and brother Ray, seven.

Franklin picks up the diary edit when Kate gets the idea to write in greater detail, after a friend tells her that her entries, to that point, are “too impersonal and not detailed enough.

January 24. Mother made me take my kid sister with me, so I went with her and two other girls in our block [a block of barracks] to the morning service. There was the regular singing of hymns…

It was decided that Sunday breakfasts would be eaten at home in our block. This is a good idea because you don’t have to get up as early and can cook the meal more deliciously, although handicapped by the lack of facilities formerly available back home. Sad case, on New Year’s Day when we had to cook all our meals at home [that is, in their camp home], our soup was cooked in an empty tomato can. However, the breakfast menu isn’t very large so it doesn’t matter.

…

N., a boy from Tacoma, was also [there] looking as suave as ever. It seems so silly now when I think of the crush I had on him long ago. It only lasted several days so it wasn’t too serious. He can go jump in the lake for all I care after the dirty deal he gave C. – going steady with her and monopolizing her time for a week then suddenly walking out on her without any explanation. The only reason I can see for his desertion is that he didn’t want to go to the dance with her every time. Then he goes necking with any girl that is dumb enough to give him the slightest encouragement.

January 25. Getting up in the morning is the worst of my trials and tribulations. Last night it was so hot I couldn’t sleep very well. The stove is about six feet from my bed and when Dad puts too much coal in at night it gets too warm. … I like to lie in bed in the morning and meditate because that is about the only time I have to do that. The mess gong and my parents don’t give me much time to do that though. I would like to hear a bugle blowing reveille instead of a noisy gong. I have a good notion to get a bugle and blow it myself if some Boy Scout doesn’t beat me to it. When I finally dragged myself out of bed, hastily dressed, washed and ran into the mess hall what did we have for breakfast but pancakes! “Sells like pancakes,” sounds like a farce here. I never did like pancakes too well, but I just can’t stand them anymore; they choke and nauseate me. I wish [I] could have a nice fluffy waffle though.

January 26. There have been times when I have yearned for dates with certain people, and there have also been other times when I have had to run around in circles trying to avoid dates with certain other people.

January 27. After I came back to the office [she is working for the Recreation Department in the camp] we went over the budget for 1943. The music department said that it was necessary to get about $200 worth of music books, in addition to various other musical supplies. They got about $160 worth of piano instruction and music textbooks in 1942, and P. thought they were demanding too much. There seemed to be some friction so I kept quiet, but I think that some people really demand too much. They are of the opinion that the government put them in here against their will, so now they’ll try to get as much as they can out of the government. As far as the basic needs, such as food, shelter, clothing, medical care are concerned the people should make certain demands, but they shouldn’t expect too much in the way of luxuries. …

As U. says, if the people have too many things done for them, they’ll lose the power to do it themselves and really become wards of the government as the Indians are.

This morning I suddenly got the idea that I must have my typewriter which I left home along with many other things I should have brought. I told Mother that I was going to write to the man who was taking care of our place and have him send it. She said that if I were going to get my typewriter, she wants her trunk too because it contains many of her precious keepsakes.

January 28. What I need is another love affair. Not any more adolescent infatuations or physical attractions but a beautiful romance which is lasting and based on understanding and companionship. I want somebody to love and understand me, somebody that I can respect and love. Nobody understands me completely, not even my own family.

January 30. The other day I stopped in at the canteen and got some nail polish, shade young red. I have never used such bright nail polish before, but when I’m working outside I have to be a moderate so I might as well use it while I’m here. However, after I got it on it looked a little too flashy, and my parents didn’t like it. I don’t know why I got it, and I hate to think of having to use up the whole bottle. But perhaps there is something to that “red badge of courage.” Some man said that the reason a woman wears lipstick is that when she is down and out, when she has just lost a job, or is disgraced, the flashy lipstick serves as a symbol of courage. If that is true of lipstick, the same should also hold for nail polish.

Yesterday I did my two week’s washing after lunch, and today after lunch I was doing my ironing which had been accumulating for over a month. When I had it about half done N. came, so I went to the Little Theater with her. When and if I ever get married I faithfully promise to devote my time to domestic work, but while I’m single I might as well enjoy my life as much as possible, and there simply isn’t enough time to keep up with the housework.

February 1. V. and G. got word that they had received their leave clearance, and they were thrilled and excited. V. Is going to Columbia University in New York, and G. says he is going to either Michigan or Maine.

My parents still won’t let me go out [of the camp], but I’m not in too much of a hurry. I am very particular and opportunities seem quite scarce.

February 3. I got up before seven this morning, the first time that has occurred in months. Regardless of whether I wanted to or not, I had to because Dad practically yanked me out of bed. Miraculously, we had fried eggs for breakfast. I had almost forgotten what an egg tastes like, and bacon is a thing of the past along with some other commodities.

Kate is reading “Psychology of Women,” a lecture by Freud. “Freud,” she grumbles, “thinks that all women feel inferior to men, but I don’t…”

February 4. This water is really getting me down. In fact I’m developing hypochondria. It’s nothing like the beautiful waters of Lake Washington or Puget Sound where we used to go swimming. I’m getting so homesick for a lovely sunset on the sound; These dirty puddles are nothing but a menace to society.

For many years I have wanted two things, time and money, along with some other things. I still want time, but as long as we have to stay here money hasn’t much value to me. About all you can buy besides the bare necessities or extra clothes and perhaps equipment.

Food in the mess hall has curbed Kate’s interest in food. “Now, when the mess gong rings it’s just a nuisance. It’s just too much of the wrong kind of food, such as two big pancakes in the morning or a big plateful of beans at noon.”

February 5. More people left today four points east. The moment when the leave permit arrives is a happy one, a climax to months of waiting, but the moment of departure must be one of joy, sadness, and anxiety combined, the dawn of a new day. I don’t think I’ll be going out for a long time yet. …

It sounds funny, but until a little over a year ago I didn’t even know how babies were born or what intercourse meant. When I asked mother about these things, she always said, “You’ll find out when you grow older.” I finally had to get it out of my teacher. I had heard about unmarried mothers and wondered what they did to get that way. For some reason or other sex has always been considered taboo…Miss S. and I were talking about it one night, and I naively asked her if a woman would get a baby if she married a man and ate with him and slept with him. She said that they’d have to go through intercourse. She couldn’t very well explain what that meant in ABC language, but I got a general idea of what it meant. When I was 16, I tried to read Havelock Ellis’ Psychology of Sex but couldn’t get ahead nor tails out of it. Recently I have read a textbook on marriage and understand most of the things concerned, although I still don’t understand the principles of birth control or the strong sexual urge.

When I was in high school I was still naive enough to believe that there was no such thing as racial prejudice although I had been hearing about it. … After I graduated I went through eight weeks of summer school to take a post-graduate course in geometry and bookkeeping. Then came time to look for a job. I could have gone to college like everybody else did, but I didn’t want to struggle my way through financially nor ask my parents for a subsidy, so I pounded the pavement day after day. This was the reality from which I had been sheltered all these years. Some bank presidents and executives were frank enough to tell me the truth about racial prejudice. To others who were hesitant I asked bluntly, “Are you racially prejudiced?” They didn’t want to admit it and hemmed and hawed without being able to give a satisfactory explanation. I didn’t want to be a quitter so I continued and finally got an office job in the Seattle public schools. I was only 17 at the time and just out of high school, so it wasn’t too bad as a beginning. About six months later the war had broken out and people were beginning to get hysterical. There were several other Nisei girls working in schools, and some busy body women who said they were PTA members were passing around a petition to have us dismissed because our loyalty was in doubt.

Former classmates of mine, some of whom were on the borderline of graduating, are now working at shipyards and defense plants while here I am stuck in this place. Many brilliant college graduates are also here while their dollar classmates are earning hundreds of dollars outside.

Last year a Mrs. B. wrote an article in the Sacramento Bee complaining that teachers shouldn’t be paid $200 a month to teach evacuees in relocation centers music and other fine arts, so I wrote to the Bee saying that evacuee teachers who have professional standing are only getting $16 a month and that in a community of 15,000 people education and recreation were a necessity; although handicapped by lack of facilities and equipment, we were doing the best we could. Then two anonymous housewives viciously attacked me, telling me to write Hirohito and ask him what kind of treatment the Japanese were giving American prisoners, and stating that with “limited facilities and equipment” the Americans had fought courageously at Corregidor and Bataan. As it happens almost every other day, another woman wrote an article in the Bee protesting the fact that Japanese were permitted to go to colleges while American boys had to join the army.

February 7. The snow was about a foot deep this morning…In my younger days snow would have made me very happy, but now I don’t care for it so much because the after effects of mud and slush are too much.

In spite of the weather there was a surprising number at church. I wonder why some of these people go to church. I don’t think it’s to show off their clothes because that’s silly. They don’t look serious enough to go for the purpose of remission of sins. The purpose of meeting people seems the most logical. Why do I go to church? Of course, mother makes me go, but it’s not just because she says so that I do it. The matter of clothes is out because I certainly don’t dress up to go to church, and if I had to, I wouldn’t want to. I love to dress up in pumps, fur coat, gloves, hat, etc. on the right occasion, but the right occasion never occurs in here.

February 8. I. and some other boys asked me what I thought about cheek-to-cheek dancing. I told him that if necessary, it might be all right with their one and only but promiscuous if made a habit with every girl. They said that with certain girls it was unavoidable.

February 10. After I got home [from work] I was reading the rules for selective service. One part says, “We want to give you the opportunity to serve your country along with other Americans. We are sure you wouldn’t want to be treated differently.” Is this a farce? What irony! Less than a year ago they were saying, “Everyone of Japanese ancestry clear out within a week.”

The next day, when Kate went to the office, she discovered that “some boys were celebrating kigensetsu [Empire Day]. I used to know that this was a Japanese holiday but it’s hard to keep up with those things now.”

Whether they were celebrating in ironic fashion, or whether their treatment in being sent to camps had darkened their feelings for this country, is not clear. We do know from what Kate says, that feelings ran the gamut.

In the evening some of the young men got together and suddenly decided to call a block meeting to discuss the selective service questionnaire. L. was sitting next to me so I asked him what he thought. L. is 23 years old and in Japan 19 years and even attended college there. He said that as an American citizen he would do everything for the United States but expected to be treated like a citizen. He said that it was our duty to fight against all enemies. I asked him if he would join the army and fight against Japan, and he immediately replied “Of course.”

…

G.Y., block manager, and D.G., councilman, thought that there should be no question about answering “yes” to the 28th question which goes something like, “Do you swear allegiance to the United States government and forswear allegiance to the Japanese emperor and any other foreign organization or power?” To the 27th question which asks “Are you willing to do active combat duty and fight at any assigned place?” They thought it could be answered “no” or with a conditional yes. The conditions would be that Nisei soldiers be allowed to enter any restricted area without any red tape; other Nisei would be treated like ordinary American citizens; and our parents be accorded the same privileges as German and Italian aliens. Of course this would not apply to those who are planning to go back to Japan. Such persons should answer no to both questions.

February 16. In the evening there was a block meeting. I went in there late and as Mr. O. was making an announcement I didn’t want to walk across to the other end of the room. M. and N. and some other boys were sitting on the service counter so I sat there with them. Dad made me get off and later told me that it’s alright for boys to sit on the table but girls shouldn’t do it. Gee, I get tired of hearing that boys can do a certain thing but girls can’t.

On February 21, instead of a sermon in church, five speakers discussed the question of loyalty to the U.S. One man, who had come to the U.S. at age four, said if he were a citizen he would be loyal, but would not register for the draft. Mrs. O. urged everyone to register. She suggested that any “zoot-suited, jitterbugging Nisei” who returned to Japan would have trouble adjusting. One high school teacher suggested that each individual follow his “own conscience and not follow the herd like sheep.” A young man said he would answer yes to Question 28, and “gave as his reason…the kindness of American friends and reminiscences of the typical American life he had led.”

There was hot feeling against, as well. Tomibe explains,

Beth came home around five and said there was a big riot in block 42. After a block meeting some of the boys put on anti-registration demonstrations and shouted “tenno heika Panzai” [“Long live the emperor”]. The soldiers had to come and after using teargas had carried off some thirty boys to jail.

February 24. Today was a gloomy and desolate day and so I stayed home in the afternoon and read Freud’s theory on dreams. He thinks that most dreams are wish fulfillment and are of sexual nature. The only dream that I can remember clearly is the one I had about the devil when I was about three years old. When I was small, Mother used to discipline me with the devil will get you if you don’t watch out stuff so I dreamt that we were on a picnic and a red oni [devil] came along and dragged me off to Hades where there were devils of other colors.

…

There was another block meeting. A request was made for a representative to attend the kibei meeting, but nobody wanted to go. We thought that it would be fun to see what it was like so I tagged along with the kibeis.

The place was packed, mostly with kibei. The air was full of smoke and reminded me of a bar room minus the drinks. Everybody was more or less excited, and one man got up and said in a half crying voice, “Some people can’t make future plans because they don’t know which side will win the war but I’m sure that Japan will win.” Somebody else shouted “Japan will never lose!”

February 27. Dad says that his heart is definitely in Japan, and if it came to the point of choosing between Japan and me he would choose Japan. Well, I’m not going to worry about anything like that until I get to it. I might even be willing to go to Japan for awhile and see how it is.

There simply isn’t any privacy here. I was getting undressed to take a shower when Mr. P. knocks on the door and comes in. They finally installed the Japanese bath and our shower room but now that the weather is getting warmer it won’t do much good. Seems so unsanitary for everyone to use the same water. The rules are that the people are supposed to take a shower and clean themselves before going in the bath, and they can’t take their towels or washcloths in there. I didn’t think anything of going in the swimming pool even with Negroes but bath is a different matter.

March 3. The recruiter for the WAAC is here today and tomorrow. If I could meet the minimum requirement I might enlist if it weren’t for my parents. Driving a Jeep over foreign terrain sounds very thrilling.

March 18. In the evening I went to hear misses. F. G.’s Speech on preparation for marriage period she listed 10 points to look for in the prospective partner: closest to ideal, sterling character, confidence, ability to live together, no clashing of tastes, health, skills, worthy to be a parent, brings out the best in yourself, mutual interests. [Later that day, Kate’s mother went to hear the same woman lecture on “Sex and Youth Problems.”]

I listened to “Town Meeting of the Air” as I do every Thursday evening, and the topic of discussion today was on the subjects to be taught in the schools in war time. The question was whether to discontinue liberal arts and replace it with military training. Most of them thought that liberal arts had its place but war came first.

Franklin notes that the War Relocation Agency’s “official policy was to encourage people to leave the camps, and qualified U.S. citizens had been granted leave clearance as early as July 1942.” By the end of 1944, 35,000 people had left the camps. Meanwhile, Tule Lake was turned into a maximum security facility, where so-called “disloyals” from many other camps were kept locked up together.

Nothing further, the editor says, is known about what happened to the diarist after the war ended.