The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange (22 page)

“The morning the repatriates were scheduled to leave, the two Japanese boys returned to the camp to say good-bye to their parents,” said Biddle. “Just at sunrise, as the American flag was being raised, and as the entire population of the camp gathered around the flagpole for a farewell ceremony, the two young Japanese Americans stepped forward, saluted the flag, and sang ‘God Bless America.’ Then they left to join the American Army.”

By the time Biddle made that speech, more than five thousand Japanese Americans had joined the 442nd, and many were fighting side by side with other Americans on the Italian front. “Is anything more needed to entitle the loyal Japanese Americans to recognition?” Biddle asked. As attorney general, Biddle had not supported the mass evacuation of the Japanese from the West Coast, but he had implemented their removal—and the removal of their American-born children—on orders from President Roosevelt. Now Biddle expressed regret. On that day, the conflict over loyalty between sons and fathers, played out in Crystal City, was finally understood at the highest level of government.

All he could see was the narrow path ahead between two rows of American soldiers, who stood six feet apart and carried rifles with fixed bayonets. It was early morning and snowing at the train station in Santa Fe. The icy air straightened the Reverend Yoshiaki Fukuda’s already rigid posture. At forty-six and standing five feet ten inches, Fukuda was the tallest of the twenty-three Japanese enemy aliens gathered at the train station. All were considered treacherous by the American government.

The Japanese men boarded a specially chartered Missouri Pacific train that would take them directly to the small depot
in Crystal City. Gas lamps hung from the old train’s walls, and a coal-burning boiler fueled its motion.

In his seat, Fukuda took a black leather notebook from the pocket of his shirt, and in the dim light of the car he jotted down his thoughts.
“I came to this country through divine will, and therefore I feel I must do my utmost to stay here,” he wrote in bold cursive. His mission in life was to spread the Konko faith, a Shinto sect little known outside of Japan, in America. He was a missionary—not a politician, but a preacher who did not quietly accept the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans. He wrote strongly worded letters to American officials in which he detailed abuse of Japanese
internees and called for an end to the mass internment. His outspokenness had made him dangerously influential.

In the two years since his arrest by the FBI
on December 7, 1941, Fukuda had been imprisoned in two other internment camps. In the first camp, in Missoula, Montana, in the middle of the Northern Rockies, he’d cleaned Army stables and constructed roads and airfields in temperatures as low as fifteen degrees below zero. At the second camp, in Lordsburg, New Mexico, situated on a plain just north of the Mexican border, he did more of the same in temperatures as high as 120 degrees. One day in Lordsburg, Fukuda was building a road during the hottest part of the day. The Japanese crew leader asked the officer in charge if the men could rest. In response, a watchtower guard shouted at the men to keep working and barked, “Japs, we’ll kill you.”

Fukuda had good reason to believe the threat was real. Like Isamu Taniguchi, Fukuda had been in Lordsburg when Kobata and Isomura, two elderly Japanese internees, were shot and killed. Fukuda’s recollection of that day was more detailed than Taniguchi’s. In his memoir,
My Six Years of Internment
, published in 1957, Fukuda described the other guards’ response to the killings: later that day, they praised the shooter of the two issei internees for “avenging the treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor.” Fukuda said that the other internees in Lordsburg were forced to dig the graves of the two dead men. “The grave diggers found that the ground was very hard, and requested a rest period. The guard refused their request and told them, ‘These graves are going to be used to bury Japanese. Keep digging. If you don’t, I’ll make you dig two or three more graves.’ ”

Like many enemy aliens, Fukuda was well read in the Geneva Convention, the agreement signed by many countries, including Japan, that mandated and defined humane treatment of prisoners of war. Fukuda’s copy was dog-eared. After the deaths of the two internees in Lordsburg, Fukuda petitioned the Spanish consul and the US Department of Justice and documented other stories of physical abuse. One such story noted,
“The Issei never
monku-ed
(complained) . . . very few talked
about the abuse they received from the guards. . . . I was kicked, hit, and was sobbing. . . . What did they want? I was just a farmer. What could I have done to be arrested and taken away?”

Fukuda’s petitions for redress piled high in the Spanish consul’s office. To camp authorities, Fukuda was a troublemaker, but to many of the internees, he was a prophet. A strong man, long trained in the art of judo, Fukuda had thick forearms and an ample chest. His black hair was closely cropped, as was his thin mustache. In Lordsburg, the desert sun had aged his face. The rules in the Lordsburg camp were the same as in Missoula: no books in Japanese; all mail censored; no display of emperor-worshipping Shintoism allowed.

In Missoula and Lordsburg, Fukuda, who had a magisterial voice, conducted Konko worship services every morning at 5:30 a.m. and made speeches on Sundays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Life behind barbed wire was a test of his faith. “Even fish will lose their vitality if they are taken from the seas or rivers and placed in a tank or pond,” Fukuda wrote. “Likewise, internees suffer from the bleak life that they live. They become irritable and quarrel over trivial matters. They become sleepless, worrying about the plight of their families.”

In each of the camps he was assigned, Fukuda used his internment to practice long hours of meditation, to improve his skills in judo, kendo, and Japanese calligraphy, and to strengthen his personal will. When internees in Lordsburg argued over who would do demeaning work, Fukuda volunteered to do the most unpleasant tasks. He cleaned communal toilets, disposed of garbage, and worked in the kitchen. More often than not, others followed his example. The black notebook went everywhere with Fukuda. He frequently reminded himself of one of the central Konko teachings: “Misfortune is a blessing in disguise.”

Already, Fukuda had begun to see some of his experiences of internment as a blessing. In camp, he met Japanese leaders—ministers, businessmen, and teachers—from all over the United States and Latin America. He learned how to negotiate with American camp officials.
When the war ended, Fukuda believed these contacts and skills would help him fulfill the central mission of his life: to propagate the Konko faith in America.

Outside the window, the train snaked its way across the great Southwest from Santa Fe, crossing into Texas sometime during the night. Fukuda pulled back the shade and looked into the vast Texas night. Fukuda was genuinely happy for the first time in many months, since the train was bound for the Crystal City Internment Camp. After fourteen months of separation, he would finally be reunited with his wife, Shinko, and their seven children, all born in America.

At 1:30 a.m. on January 27, 1944, the train came to a stop at the small depot in Crystal City, and the soldiers escorted
Fukuda and the others off the train. It hardly felt like winter at all, and above them was the primeval sight of a thousand stars. Fukuda climbed onto the bus with the others, and the bus drove slowly past the town and approached the front of the camp.

Inside the gates, news of the men’s arrival had preceded them. In the cluster of Japanese women who were there to greet them, Fukuda saw Shinko, who had arrived with their children almost twelve hours before on a bus from San Antonio. A Boy Scout band, made up of Japanese boys dressed in crisp uniforms, played. Like other issei, Fukuda guarded his emotions, repressing them to a hairbreadth—even on a day as momentous as this one. Instead of rushing to embrace, as Americans might have, the women lined up at some distance from the men. The long-separated wives and husbands then bowed to each other.

O’Rourke approached Fukuda and extended his hand, an uncharacteristic formality to his casual, cheerful deportment. In his hand O’Rourke held a piece of paper, which he presented to Fukuda. The memorandum from the Department of Justice forbade Fukuda from making any public statements in camp or assuming any leadership role. He was profiled as among the most dangerous of Japanese enemy aliens.

Fukuda did not protest; instead, he nodded and told O’Rourke that he understood. The minister was not surprised; he knew that O’Rourke had read his FBI file and knew every aspect of his history.

Fukuda was born in 1898 in a mountain village in the Nara prefecture of Japan. In 1918, Fukuda was conscripted into the Japanese army and served five months as a second lieutenant. Afterward, he attended an elite junior college; in 1925, he enrolled in the Imperial University of Tokyo, where he studied sociology and law. While at the university, he suffered a relapse of tuberculosis, which he had contracted as a younger man. In desperation, he sought the help of a Konko minister, who prayed with Fukuda. The symptoms went away, and Fukuda converted to the Konko faith, which had broken from many of the teachings of Shinto, the official religion of the Japanese state.

In 1927, after graduation from the Imperial University, Fukuda entered a spartan style of religious training at a Konko seminary in Tokyo. Every morning at three, he awoke and took cold showers for spiritual purification. At 3:45 a.m., he went to the worship hall for silent prayer. A worship service was held at 4:00 a.m., followed by breakfast. At 5:20 a.m., Fukuda and the other religious trainees cleaned wooden floors on their knees. They fasted regularly.

At the end of his rigid training, Fukuda was ordained a minister at the headquarters of the Konko faith in Tokyo in 1928. In an arranged marriage in April of the following year, Fukuda married the daughter of the ruling leader of the Konko faith. The marriage was fortunate in more than bloodline: Shinko, his wife, had trained as a Konko minister, as well. Fukuda pressed his superiors to send them both to America to start Konko churches.

Three years after he began training, Fukuda finally received permission to become an American Konko missionary. On October 17, 1930, Fukuda and his wife boarded the cargo ship
Hawaii Maru
at the port of Yokohama. In photographs taken that day, Shinko wore an American-style dress and hat, not the traditional wear of Japanese women. Fukuda wore a crisp silk suit, not the faded-black
haori
jacket and torn
hakama
pants he typically wore in his day-to-day duties as a minister. “Banzai, Reverend Fukuda!” roared the crowd that had gathered to send them off.

Only five months later, the Fukudas had started a Konko church on Bush Street in the heart of Japantown in San Francisco and had attracted two hundred members. With the onset of the Depression, many Japanese workers in San Francisco worked at menial jobs as gardeners, restaurant workers, and salesclerks at curio shops. Young nisei worked as “schoolboys” or “schoolgirls”—domestic servants—in Caucasian households. “We grew up during the Depression, and it was hard times,” said Nobusuke Fukuda, the second-born son of the Fukudas. “Our church took care of the neighborhood. My mother cooked for everyone and never sent anyone away hungry. My father treated all the church members as though they were family. He found them jobs, loaned them money, married and buried them.”

Fukuda kept the same severe schedule on Bush Street in San Francisco as he had during his religious training in Japan—the cold showers, fasting, and meditation. Before dawn, he silently swept the streets in front of the Konko mission as an act of prayer. After a reporter from the
San Francisco Chronicle
mentioned Fukuda’s predawn sweeping, crowds showed up to watch the ritual, and the Konko minister became mildly famous.

On December 7, 1941, Fukuda, Shinko, and their younger children were in San Jose, where Fukuda led a worship service at a new Konko mission. His three older sons—nine-year-old Michisuke, eight-year-old Nobusuke, and seven-year-old Saburo—were at home on Bush Street in San Francisco.

Two FBI agents knocked at the door on Bush Street. Michisuke, the eldest son, also known as Mitch, answered the door. The men ordered the boy to get his father. “He’s in San Jose,” answered Michisuke. “At church.”

On Monday, December 8, 1941, the
San Francisco Call-Bulletin
put out a “blue streak edition” with the banner headline U.S. DECLARES WAR! A text of Roosevelt’s war message appeared on the front page.
On page two, under the headline “F.B.I. Rounding Up Japanese Aliens in the Bay Area,” was the story of the arrest of Fukuda, who was identified as a “Japanese preacher,” and thirty others who were among the first group to be picked up in the roundup. In addition to a full sweep of Japantown, the story noted, all cars and trucks driven by Japanese on streets or bridges, including the Golden Gate Bridge, were stopped and searched for explosives. Nationwide, the number of Japanese men arrested on December 7 was 736.

In Fukuda’s heavily redacted FBI file, agents described his arrest in San Jose and noted, “The subject is a minister in the Konkokyo Federation of North America, Japanese churches composed of the doctrine of Shintoism, which is a strongly nationalistic doctrine.” He was booked at the Santa Clara County Jail and later transferred with other issei men to a jail at an immigration station in San Francisco.

Fukuda and the others were held in San Francisco for ten days. During that time, the FBI interrogated many members of his church, including his wife. In addition to caring for her six children, Shinko took charge of the vital functions of the Konko mission. She conducted prayer services and comforted the families in the congregation, who wondered when they would be forced to evacuate from their own homes.

Her title at the Konko Church was second head minister, Fukuda being head minister. In the days after his arrest, the streets in front of the church were not swept. Shinko cooked great quantities of rice and spaghetti. Almost twenty people, members of the church whose fathers and husbands had also been arrested, moved in with Shinko and her children. They had no other place to live. Finally, in the midst of raising her children, carrying out her ministerial duties, and sheltering the homeless parishioners, Shinko discovered she was pregnant with her seventh child. Without her husband, she told her friends, “I am just like a monkey who has fallen out of a tree.”