The siblings worked in the flower fields after school and helped transport the cut flowers to market in Los Angeles on Sundays. They were also members of the Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles. What little free time they had was spent being regular American kids. They were involved in school activities and enjoyed spending time at the beach. Kameyo was dismayed to see her children losing their Japanese identity, so she insisted they attend Japanese school on Saturdays. "These schools used textbooks published in Japan to teach the Niseis the Japanese language as well as the history and geography of Japan. They thought it important to continue teaching their ancestral tongue to enable them to talk to their parents, most of whom knew only a smattering of English. They also thought that the Japanese schools could provide moral education." [Chan, Sucheng. Asian Americans: An Interpretive History. Boston: Twayne, 1983. Page 112.]

On each child's birthday, Kameyo would buy a large Baby Ruth candy bar and cut it into nine slices instead of buying a cake. George remembers making toys out of empty thread spools. Even though they had little money, they were happy during those depression years.

On December 7, 1941, the family was working in the flower fields when a carload of friends from the high school drove up to tell them that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. They immediately left their work and went inside to listen to the radio reports. It became apparent that life had changed for the family. George and his friends went to the local drive-in restaurant to pick up hamburgers, and George shone a spotlight on the menu to make it easier to read. Five minutes later, they found themselves surrounded by police cars. An "American" woman had called the police to report that some "Japs" were signaling submarines off the coast of Redondo Beach! Suddenly the community saw them as the enemy. Fortunately, one of the officers recognized George and allowed the boys to return home.

On May 3, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, The Civilian Exclusion Order. Army personnel in jeeps posted flyers by order of the United States that read, "all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien, will be evacuated from the above area by 12 o'clock noon, P.W.T., Saturday, May 9, 1942." All Isseis' bank accounts were frozen, and the family had six days to dispose of their belongings. "Many families stored their belongings in the local Buddhist churches, but, in the end, almost every church was looted during the war." [Kunitsugo, Kango, ed.The First Rowher Reunion. Los Angeles: Privately Published, 1990. Page 7.] They were only allowed to bring bedding, toilet articles, one set of extra clothing, and one plate, cup, knife, fork and spoon per person. Each evacuee had to carry his or her own bundle. Kameyo, like many widows, also carried with her the ashes of her late husband.

Gladys had been sent to Hillcrest Sanitarium in the mountains to recover from tuberculosis, but her husband, Takeo Tom Yoshino, along with their two small daughters, Jane and Patsy, were evacuated with Kameyo's family. So were Alice and her husband, Chukichi Kawaguchi. Mary had a small son by this time. She decided to stay with her mother, but her husband, Michitaka Adachi, was here on a student visa, and he was sent back to Japan. Because they had attended Japanese school and were members of the Buddhist temple, Kameyo's family was labeled "high risk" and they were among the first to be evacuated.

With numbered tags attached to their clothing identifying them as Family #2461, the Yonesawas were sent to the Santa Anita Race Track Assembly Center where they were assigned to one horse stall per family. Because Mary had a son, she was allowed to register as a separate family, and they were assigned two horse stalls for all twelve family members in their group. It was decided to assign one stall to the girls and one to the boys. Kameyo was lucky that her curious sons immediately went to investigate their new surroundings. They scavenged extra straw-filled mattresses and rolls of toilet paper from barracks that were being built further back on the property. The walls had been whitewashed, but the smell of manure overpowered the small, windowless rooms that had housed racehorses just a few weeks earlier. George and Sonny removed several of the boards that separated the two stalls in order to create a doorway. They recycled the boards to build a bed for their youngest brother, James, who was too tall to sleep on the cots provided by the Army. Bathroom facilities were inadequate and no privacy existed for these people, who were very private by nature. Meals, consisting of nothing more than salted fish and rice, were served three times per day in one large dining hall. Rumors circulated hat the army was sending truckloads of fresh vegetables that were being stolen by the soldiers and sold on a black market. Armed guards stood in towers along the barbed-wire fences. Author Helen Zia notes wryly, "The families were told they needed the bard-wire and guard towers for their own protection - but the guns pointed inward." [Zia, Helen. Asian American Dreams. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 2000. Page 42.] Many women sat down and sobbed that first night, but Kameyo did not. She, like thousands of other Japanese-Americans, settled in to see what could possibly happen to them next.

Six months later, the residents of Santa Anita were told they were being moved again. This time, they would be moved inland to permanent camps. They were very afraid, for they had no idea what was meant by "permanent." Alice and her husband, along with Yukiju's family, were ordered to Jerome Relocation Camp. The rest of the Yonesawas were headed to Rowher Relocation Camp. All modern trains were being used for the war effort, so the internees were transported on vintage trains with gaslights and wooden upright benches. The windows had to remain closed to prevent soot from the engines from entering the stifling cars. Shades remained drawn, and the train moved only at night so as not to upset the communities through which they passed. After three days and nights of sitting up on the hard benches, they arrived at Rowher Relocation Center, near McGee, Arkansas, where they were assigned to Block 4, Barracks 6, Units A and B.

Each unit was equipped with a pot-bellied stove, but the government provided no fuel. Coal shipments arrived regularly by train to supply the mess halls and shower boilers only. November in Arkansas is much colder than November in Southern California, and Kameyo's family had never before experienced sleet or ice storms. They froze for several days until a supply train arrived bearing 10,000 heavy woolen mackinaws. Shortly thereafter, a volunteer crew of lumberjacks was allowed outside the fences to cut down trees for heating fuel. Never wasteful, the lumberjacks chose trees based on the quantity of hickory nuts they bore. Initially, no power tools were provided; instead, they used heavy two-man saws.

Having learned from their experiences at Santa Anita, some of the internees met with the camp director and received permission to do their own cooking. This helped fill the empty hours and allowed a more familiar diet. Other internees started schools and medical clinics. The War Relocation Authority created a Community Government, and assigned jobs to the internees. George drove a supply truck fourteen hours per day, six days per week, and was paid $13.50 per month. He still has his first paycheck, which he refused to cash.

While in camp, all internees were asked to sign a loyalty oath, requiring them to forswear their allegiance to the Emperor of Japan and to pledge their allegiance to the United States. The Isseis were afraid they could never return to their homeland after the war if they signed the oath; they would become stateless, as federal law prevented them from obtaining U.S,. Citizenship. The younger internees, or Niseis, were natural-born citizens of the United States. They believed if they signed the oath they would be agreeing they previously had felt some allegiance to Japan, a country they had never even visited. Most signed anyway, wanting the Unites States to understand they were loyal. Those who refused were sent to a deportation camp to be repatriated to Japan. Lucille married Mr. Y. Seki while at Rowher. Mr. Seki had not signed the loyalty oath, and shortly after their marriage they were transferred to Tule Lake Relocation Camp to be repatriated to Japan. Lucille decided not to accompany her new husband to Japan, and she spent the duration of the war at Tule Lake. Yukiju Kawashiri, like Mr. Seki, decided to repatriate, and in 1944 he was transferred to the Tule Lake Camp where, sadly, he passed away while still unjustly incarcerated.

During this same period, young men were being drafted into the Army directly from the camps. Many drank quantities of soy sauce before their physical exams. The saltiness of the soy sauce raised their blood pressure high enough to make them fail the exam. (The army could never figure out why the internees at Rowher had such a high rate of hypertension.) Sonny wanted to serve his country and was sent to Japan as a translator and later as a member of the C.I.C. George desperately wanted to join the army, but he failed the physical because of a congenital heart defect. James was too young to be drafted, but would serve later in the Korean War.

Rowher Relocation Camp closed in July 1945, and most of the family returned to Southern California. Lucille later married a doctor, Richard Hoover, who passed away many years ago. Today, Lucille resides in a California nursing home. Kameyo arranged a marriage between Mary and one of her cousins, Ichiji Jack Kawajiri, in order to provide a father for Mary's son, Tommy. Mary and Jack both passed away in the mid-1980s in Chicago, where Tommy still lives. Gladys was reunited with her husband and children, and they lived in Los Angeles until Gladys's death in 1971. James married Yayeko Akiyama and they also raised a family in Los Angeles where James worked in the wholesale fruit and vegetable markets until he passed away in 1992. Alice's family still lives in Torrance, where her husband, Chukichi, passed away in 1983. Dorothy and her husband, Mac Ishida, continue to live in Redondo Beach. Kameyo lived with Sonny's family in Gardena until she died of cancer in 1965. Sonny went on to spend thirty years as a U.S. Marshall. He and Yoshiko are in a Gardena nursing home. Harry drifted in and out of the family for many years, and passed away in Gardena in 1985.

George and two friends headed east after camp because they heard Japanese could find work in the Chicago area. He ended up working at Maier's Bakery in Evanston, Illinois, where he remained for more than thirty-five years. He married Vivian Doi and they raised two children, Gary and Christine, but later divorced. I met George when I began working at Maier's Bakery in 1972. We were married in 1977 and have two daughters, Lisa and Amy, who live with us in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Shortly after our marriage, George took me to California to visit his family. He wanted to visit a man who had been their neighbor and friend before he war. Although he was quite elderly and in poor health, Mr. Pratt recognized George immediately, and they both hugged each other and cried. His house looked exactly as George had remembered it from before the war; however, there had been one important modification. During the six days of preparing for camp, before the Yonesawas left for Santa Anita, Mr. Pratt and Sonny had built a false wall in one bedroom of the Pratt Home. This wall created a hidden room, approximately ten feet long, but less than one foot deep. In this space, Mr. Pratt hid all of the Yonesawa family photo albums, important papers, and certain prized possessions. These were returned to Kameyo after the war. Because he had not returned to California after the war, George never knew of the room's existence until that day in 1978.

Kameyo and Sutematsu Yonesawa had eleven children and twenty-three grandchildren. Among the five sons born to Kameyo and Sutematsu, five grandsons are known to have survived to adulthood. Interestingly, none of the five grandsons has borne a son, so the Yonesawa name in America will likely end after only three generations.