LOS ANGELES (CN) - Inside her home in Southern California, Mary Izumi sits at her piano flipping through the yellowed pages of her old songbooks. Along with her high school yearbook, they are the last remaining artifacts from her time growing up in a Japanese fishing village that once thrived on an island in the ports of Los Angeles before it was destroyed at the onset of World War II.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan on Dec. 7, 1941, claims of treason and disloyalty were launched against Japanese-Americans living across the country.
Japanese community leaders were rounded up and jailed the same day. Soon after, families were forcibly evicted from their homes and sent to concentration camps.
They couldn’t have known it but the Japanese villagers on Terminal Island - a man-made island nestled on the coast between San Pedro and Long Beach - would be the first community on the West Coast to bare the brunt the country’s racist fear.
Furusato
At dawn, fisherman launched their ships from Terminal Island and flung their nets into a blue surface teeming with sea life. Other men used a more traditional method: thrusting long bamboo poles into the water and flinging large tuna over their heads and onto their ships.
The men unloaded their catches of sardines and tuna into the Van Camp Seafood and American Tuna Company canneries, two companies that together produced most of the country’s supply of canned seafood in the first half of the 20th century.
After dropping their children off at Walizer Elementary School, mothers streamed into the local fish canneries and shipbuilding warehouses for work.
After school, children learned judo and kendo at Fisherman’s Hall. They walked along Main Street, trickling into candy shops and storefronts where vendors sold traditional Japanese goods.
On Tuna Street, fishermen bought supplies, home goods and homemade sake from Hashimoto Hardware. Outside the store, men made mochi rice cakes for New Year’s celebrations.
The boys would go clam hunting with their fathers while the girls would learn Japanese dances and prepare for Emperor's Day celebrations.
On days when fishermen returned home, families would picnic at the beach.
The more than 3,000 first and second-generation Japanese villagers that lived in this community called it the “old village,” or Furusato.
Izumi, 93, was raised in one of the homes that cannery companies rented to their employees.
“It was a cohesive community with no crime. Everyone depended on each other,” Izumi said. “If people had extra food they would share it.”
Everything changed after Japan attacked the U.S naval fleet at Pearl Harbor.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 authorizing law enforcement to round up over 120,000 people of Japanese descent – two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens.
In a wave of fear and anger that swept the nation, Izumi’s father was one of hundreds of Terminal Island men arrested and jailed.
Weeks later, a notice appeared on a telephone pole on Main Street. The notice - dated Feb 25, 1942 and signed by a U.S Navy captain - ordered all Terminal Island residents to leave their homes within 48 hours.
Soldiers patrolled the streets as mothers scrambled to figure out where their families would sleep in the days to come.
