Dana Kato

The Seabrook Experience: Exploitation or Exoneration of the Japanese American Internee? 

Twenty-seven years ago I became part of a new family with its own American experience when I married an East Texas boy, a former Nacogdoches High School band president I met while attending Stephen F. Austin State University. My husband was a true minority in his East Texas community in that his family is Japanese-American. As the years passed and I came to know his family better, some of his family’s stories revealed to me a side of history I had never heard about in my high school history classes. Since my children also share this cultural history, it disturbed me that I knew so little about it. In deciding what to research for this posting, I initially considered examining the effects of the internment camp experience on the psyche of the Japanese-American citizen whose immigrant journey and partial assimilation had been thrown a cruel curve, but during my research I came across information about a place called Seabrook (in New Jersey, not Texas) which instantly rang a bell, because that is where my husband was born and spent his early years. (Up until now, I just thought it was just a town in New Jersey).From this discovery, I framed a research question.  Was the Seabrook experience a positive one for those who chose to go there from the camps, or was it just another example of the dominant culture taking advantage of the disadvantaged immigrant minority?

In many ways the Japanese-American immigrant story diverges from the more traditional immigrant narrative into one more closely aligned with that of the African-American or the Native American, in that their rights as human beings, not to mention American citizens, were removed from them, albeit only for a few years.   In the year following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, “the government began forcing people of Japanese descent from their homes in California, Washington, Oregon and southern Arizona” (Wirtz). Approximately 120,000 Japanese, two-thirds of them American-born, were confined in internment camps in remote parts of the country (Wirtz). My mother-in-law, a California born American citizen, arrived at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Powell, Wyoming as a thirteen-year-old, along with her parents. My father-in-law, also California born, ended up with in Manzanar, located in eastern California in a desert-like area near the Nevada border. In addition to those of Japanese descent in the U.S, some people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent were also deported from Latin American countries and sent to the U.S. to be placed in internment camps. Such was the case of Ginzo Murona, detained and deported from Peru, with no chance to even communicate to his wife and children as to what was happening (Jacobs).  His account reminded me of Equiano’s fearful tale of his journey to America, in that Murona had no idea what was happening to him and was forced to travel for days in an open bed truck with no meals along the way. Mr. Murona ended up in a camp in Crystal City, Texas (Jacobs).

By 1944, even before it became apparent that World War II was about to end, the question of what to do with these internees would become an issue.  Committees were formed in the camps to work with the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to help with the transition. A few internees were released into small Middle America communities where work could be obtained (Wirtz,). But this was only a small percentage. The main problem was that after several years, most of these people simply had nowhere to go back to.  Those who owned property and or owned businesses usually found that it was gone- repossessed or sold with no way to gain recompense for the loss.  Some who did go back to California, especially those coming from towns with very small Japanese populations to begin with, found a hostile environment awaiting them (Wirtz). So when the son of businessman/entrepreneur Charles Seabrook went to talk to the relocation committees about the possibility of internees coming to New Jersey to work for him, with free housing and pay, for many internees, already between a rock and hard place, this seemed an opportunity that they could not turn down (Wirtz). According my mother-in-law Toyoko Kato, “We could not return to California- there were no jobs and it just was not a good place for us. With Seabrook, my mother and father were guaranteed jobs.” Therefore, around 2500 internees eventually left the camps and headed by train to Seabrook Farms, New Jersey. 

Once in Seabrook, the new workers were assigned cement block apartments, courtesy of the U.S. government. The living conditions were not much better than that of the internment camps, but there were several significant differences to Toyoko Kato. “In the internment camp, everyone had to share the restrooms and showers. There were no walls in the barracks they lived in, only partitions made of sheets. At least in Seabrook, we had real walls and an indoor bathroom and our own kitchen. At first the rent was even free, but over the years Mr. Seabrook started to charge rent.”  Once there, her parents went to work in the food processing plant, often working twelve-hour shifts.  Toyoko and other school-age children of the internees were enrolled in the local Bridgeton school districts.  A grammar school near the Seabrook facility educated mostly the children of those working at Seabrook, but high school meant riding a bus into Bridgeton to attend the only high school there. I asked Toyoko about how the town of Bridgeton treated her and her family, and she responded: “Well, at first I did not feel very welcome. I remember going into a donut shop and having to wait for the clerk to help everyone else first- even those who had come in after me.”  Eventually though, she said that she believed that once the townspeople got to know them better, they become much more accepting. Overall, she sees Seabrook in an almost nostalgic perspective, noting that although parents often worked long hours there was a community nursery school and after school programs at Seabrook and a feeling of community. She recalled that many people were able to save enough money to buy cars and that by 1949 a majority of the internees had left Seabrook usually for better jobs. Toyoko’s own mother, Michie Fukui, stayed on with her husband to work for Seabrook until the 1960s when they retired. Toyoko also mentioned that one thing that stands out in her mind when she remembers Seabrook is a ceremony in which 126 mostly elderly people of Japanese-descent (most of own had been previously legally barred from citizenship) were sworn in as American citizens. This was “the largest single group of Issei ever to be naturalized in the United States” (Nakamura).  

While Toyoko Kato and others viewed the Seabrook experience as one which allowed them to reenter American society and eventually have a second chance at obtaining the American dream, not everyone saw the experience as a positive one.  Over 200 South Americans of Japanese descent came to Seabrook after a more horrifying experience than those from the U.S (Jacobs).  Literally kidnapped and deported from the countries they had been living in, most had nowhere to go at the end of the war because their old countries refused to take them back (Jacobs). Many only spoke Spanish and/or Japanese.  Seabrook was for them the only option. On top of that, many of the Latin Americans, according to Toyoko Kato, had been wealthy in their former countries and found the living conditions in Seabrook to be demeaning.  In an interview, Mrs. Murona said that she found the living conditions “deplorable…” especially in comparison “…to the comfortable way of life they enjoyed in Lima” (Jacobs). In addition, many of the younger Japanese-American internees, second-generation Nisei who were much more assimilated into mainstream American culture prior to the war, often resented the lifestyle and the working conditions of Seabrook (Jacobs). Toyoko Kato mentioned that her mother made her work in the fields one summer at about age fifteen and she hated it.           

In researching the subject of Seabrook, I discovered a piece of American history I knew nothing about.  I discovered the story of an American entrepreneur named Charles Seabrook who came up with a “model of mechanized faming” and a concept of freezing and packaging fresh vegetables that is still in practice today (Jacobs).  I learned also that in addition to his engineering and agricultural skills, Seabrook must have been a very persuasive man.  When the labor supply disappeared due to the war, he was able to convince the government to allow internees in large numbers to leave the camps early in order to work for him (Jacobs). But back to my initial question: was this a positive humanitarian venture on the part of Charles Seabrook, or just another case of the greedy dominant culture taking advantage of a  disadvantaged immigrant minority group?  What I think is that I cannot truly understand the perspective of Seabrook and his sons without a lot more research, but the evidence tends to support both capitalist and humanitarian motives.  For the internees, I think that the interviews that I have read and heard tend to support the Seabrook experience as an important and beneficial event in the lives of many internees. On the other hand, like the experience of the Native American and the African-American, Seabrook for the Latin Americans of Japanese descent, such as Mr. Murona, was just a continuation of “the American nightmare.”  

A former internee, Warren Tsuneishi, who left the Heart Mountain internment camp to fight in World War II and who went on to graduate school via the U.S. government, commented:: “The same government that interned our families…. But that’s America. It’s a nation that’s always in the process of trying to live up to its dreams” (Santoro 7). In the end, even if Charles Seabrook’s intentions (with support from the WRA) may not have been totally humanitarian, the Seabrook Farm years appear to have helped many recovering from the trauma of the internment camp experience to find their way back to belief in the American Dream.

Works Cited

Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Gustavus Vassa, or Olaudah Equiano, The African

               (London, 1789).  LITR 4333 American Immigrant Literature: Course Website. UHCL. 21 June 2008.

               http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333/lecture/undergradlecs1/equianoexcerpt.htm

Jacobs, Megan. Audio Rev. of “Seabrook at War: A Radio Documentary.” by Marty Goldensohn and David Steven Cohen.

 WWFM/WWNJ, Trenton and the New Jersey Historical Commission, Department of State, 1995. The Journal for Multimedia History: Volume                2. 1999. (Excerpt from Murona Family interview with the New Jersey Historical Commission). 21 June 2008. http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/vol2no1/seabrook.html

Kato, Toyoko Honda. Personal Interview. 21 June 2008.

Nakamura. Ellen. “Resettlement in Seabrook, New Jersey.” The Japanese American Experience.

               Exhibition in the Museum of the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies. 21 June

               2008. http://www2.hsp.org/exhibits/Balch%20exhibits/japanese/seabrook.html

Santoro, Gene. The Story of Two Japanese Americans Who Fought in World War II.  HistoryNet.Com. 2008. 

               21 June 2008. http://www.historynet.com/the-story-of-two-japanese-americans-who-fought-in-world-war-ii.htm/7

Wirtz, Michael. “Uprooted and Replanted in N.J.” Philadelphia Inquirer. 15 August, 2004. Posted online by

               Daniel Teraguchi.  25 August 2004. 21 June 2008. 

               http://list.aacu.org/pipermail/bildner_nj_cdi/2004-August/000044.html

For further information on Seabrook:

Shortlidge, Jack. “The Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center: Telling the Story of a Japanese American Community in

               Southern New Jersey.” Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore: Volume 31. Spring-Summer 2005.

                21 June 2008.  http://www.nyfolklore.org/pubs/voic31-1-2/seabrook.html

[Original Submission]

The Seabrook Experience: Exploitation or Exoneration of the Japanese American Internee? 

Twenty-seven years ago I became part of a new family with its own American experience when I married an East Texas boy, a former Nacogdoches High School band president whom I met while attending Stephen F. Austin State University. My husband was a true minority in his East Texas community in that his family is Japanese-American. As the years passed and I came to know his family better, some of his family’s stories revealed to me a side of history I had never heard about in my high school history classes. Since my children also share this cultural history, it disturbed me that I knew so little about it. In deciding what to research for this posting, I initially considered examining the effects of the internment camp experience on the psyche of the Japanese-American citizen whose immigrant journey and partial assimilation had been thrown a cruel curve, but during my research I came across information about a place called Seabrook, which instantly rang a bell, because that is where my husband was born and spent his early years. (Up until now, I just thought it was just a town in New Jersey). From this discovery, I framed a research question.  Was the Seabrook experience a positive one for those who chose to go there from the camps, or was it just another example of the dominant culture taking advantage of the disadvantaged immigrant minority?

First, some background information… In the year following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, “the government began forcing people of Japanese descent from their homes in California, Washington, Oregon and southern Arizona” (Wirtz, 2004). Approximately 120,000 Japanese, two-thirds of them American-born, were confined in internment camps in remote parts of the country (Wirtz, 2004). My mother-in-law, born in California, arrived at the Heart Mountain Internment Center in Wyoming as a thirteen-year-old, along with Nisei parents. My father-in-law, also California-born, ended up in Manzanar, located in eastern California in a desert-like area near the Nevada border. There were even people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent deported from Latin American countries and sent to the U.S. to be placed in internment camps in the U.S.  Such was the case of Ginzo Murona, detained and deported from Peru, with no chance to even communicate to his wife and children as to what was happening (Jacobs, 1999).  His account reminded me of Equiano’s fearful tale of his journey to America, in that this man had no idea what was happening to him and was forced to travel for days in an open bed truck with no meals along the way. Mr. Murona ended up in a camp in Crystal City, Texas (Jacobs, 1999). In many ways then, the Japanese-American immigrant story diverges from the more traditional immigrant narrative into one more closely aligned with that of the African-American or the Native American, in that their rights as human beings, not to mention American citizens, were removed from them, albeit only for a few years.  

By 1944, even before it became apparent that World War II was about to end, the question of what to do with these internees would become an issue.  Committees were formed in the camps to work with the WRA to help with the transition. A few internees were released into small middle America communities in which work could be obtained (Wirtz, 2004). But this was only a small percentage. The main problem was that after several years, most of these people simply had nowhere to go back to.  Those who owned property and or owned businesses usually found that it was gone--repossessed or sold with no way to gain recompense for the loss.  Some who did go back to California, especially those coming from towns with very small Japanese populations to begin with, found a hostile environment awaiting them (Wirtz, 2004). So when the son of businessman/entrepreneur Charles Seabrook went to talk to the relocation committees about the possibility of internees coming to New Jersey to work for him, with free housing and pay, for many internees, already between a rock and hard place, this seemed an opportunity that they could not turn down (Wirtz, 2004). According my mother-in-law Toyoko Kato, “We could not return to California- there were no jobs and it just was not a good place for us. With Seabrook, my mother and father were guaranteed jobs.” Therefore, around 2500 internees eventually left the camps and headed by train to Seabrook Farms, New Jersey.  Coming from Heart Mountain and Manzanar would be young Toyoko Honda (Kato), with her mother and step-father, and later, Kenji Kato, a tall quiet young man, along with his large family, to work in the food processing plants. 

Once in Seabrook, the new workers were assigned cement block apartments, courtesy of the U.S. government. The living conditions were not much better than that of the internment camps, but there were several significant differences to Toyoko Kato. “In the internment camp, everyone had to share the restrooms and showers. There were no walls in the barracks they lived in, only partitions made of sheets. At least in Seabrook, we had real walls and an indoor bathroom and our own kitchen. At first the rent was even free, but over the years Mr. Seabrook started to charge rent.”  Once there, her parents went to work in the food processing plant, often working twelve-hour shifts.  Toyoko and other school-age children of the internees were enrolled in the local Bridgeton school districts.  A grammar school near the Seabrook facility educated mostly the children of those working at Seabrook, but high school meant riding a bus into Bridgeton to attend the only high school there. I asked Toyoko about how the town of Bridgeton treated her and her family, and she responded: “Well, at first I did not feel very welcome. I remember going into a donut shop and having to wait for the clerk to help everyone else first--even those who had come in after me.”  Eventually though, she said that she believed that once the townspeople got to know them better, they become much more accepting. Overall, she sees Seabrook in an almost nostalgic perspective, noting that although parents often worked long hours there was a community nursery school and after school programs at Seabrook and a feeling of community. She recalled that many were able to save enough money to buy cars and that by 1949 a majority of the internees had left Seabrook usually for better jobs, Toyoko’s own mother, Michie Fukui, stayed on with her husband to work for Seabrook until the 1960’s when they retired. Toyoko also mentioned that one thing that stands out in her mind when she remembers Seabrook is a ceremony in which 126 mostly elderly people of Japanese descent (most of own had been previously legally barred from citizenship) were sworn in as American citizens. This was “the largest single group of Issei ever to be naturalized in the United States" (Nakamura).

While Toyoko Kato and others viewed the Seabrook experience as one which allowed them to reenter American society and eventually have a second chance at obtaining the American dream, not everyone saw the experience as a positive one.  Over 200 South Americans of Japanese descent came to Seabrook after a more horrifying experience than those from the U.S. (Jacobs, 1999).  Literally kidnapped and deported from the countries they had been living in, most had nowhere to go at the end of the war because their old countries refused to take them back (Jacobs, 1999). Many only spoke Spanish and/or Japanese.  Seabrook was for them the only option. On top of that, many of the Latin Americans, according to Toyoko Kato, had been wealthy in their former countries and found the living conditions in Seabrook to be demeaning.  In an interview, Mrs. Murona said that she found the living conditions “deplorable," especially in comparison “to the comfortable way of life they enjoyed in Lima" (Jacobs, 1999). In addition, many of the younger Japanese-American internees, much more assimilated into mainstream culture, often resented the lifestyle and the working conditions of Seabrook (Jacobs, 1999). Toyoko Kato mentioned that her mother made her work in the fields one summer at about age fifteen and she hated it.                

In researching the subject of Seabrook, I discovered a piece of American history I knew nothing about.  I discovered the story of an American entrepreneur named Charles Seabrook who came up with a “model of mechanized faming” and a concept of freezing and packaging fresh vegetables that is still in practice today (Jacobs, 1999 ).  I learned also that in addition to his engineering and agricultural skills, Seabrook must have been a very persuasive guy.  When the labor supply disappeared due to the war, he was able to convince the government to allow internees in large numbers to leave the camps early in order to work for him (Jacobs, 1999). But back to my initial question: was this a positive humanitarian venture on the part of Charles Seabrook or just another case of the greedy dominant culture taking advantage of a  disadvantaged immigrant minority group?  What I think is that I cannot truly understand the perspective of Seabrook and his sons without a lot more research, but the evidence tends to support both capitalist and humanitarian motives.  For the internees, I think that the interviews that I have read and heard tend to support the Seabrook experience as an important and beneficial event in the lives of many internees. On the other hand, like the experience of the Native American and the African- American, Seabrook for the Latin Americans of Japanese descent, such as Mr. Murona, was just a continuation of the American nightmare.  

A former internee, Warren Tsuneishi, who left the Heart Mountain internment camp to fight in World War II and who went on to graduate school via the U.S. government, commented. “The same government that interned our families. But that’s America. It’s a nation that’s always in the process of trying to live up to its dreams" (Santoro, 2008). In the end, even if Charles Seabrook’s (with support from the WRA) intentions may not have been totally humanitarian, the Seabrook Farm years appear to have helped many recovering from the trauma of the internment camp experience to find their way back to belief in the American dream.

Resources:

Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Gustavus Vassa, or Olaudah Equiano, The African 

               (London, 1789).  LITR 4333 American Immigrant Literature: Course Website. UHCL. Retrieved 21 June 2008.

               http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333/lecture/undergradlecs1/equianoexcerpt.htm

Jacobs, Megan. “Seabrook at War: A Radio Documentary.” (Review) The Journal for Multimedia History: Volume 2, 

               1999. Retrieved 21 June 2008. http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/vol2no1/seabrook.html

Kato, Toyoko Honda. Personal Interview. 21 June 2008.

Nakamura. Ellen. “Resettlement in Seabrook, New Jersey.” The Japanese American Experience. 

               Exhibition in the Museum of the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies. Retrieved 21 June 

               2008. http://www2.hsp.org/exhibits/Balch%20exhibits/japanese/seabrook.html

Santoro, Gene. The Story of Two Japanese Americans Who Fought in World War II.  HistoryNet.Com. 2008.  Retrieved 

               21 June 2008. http://www.historynet.com/the-story-of-two-japanese-americans-who-fought-in-world-war-ii.htm/4

Wirtz, Michael. “Uprooted and Replanted in N.J.” From the Philadelphia Inquirer. 15 August, 2004. Posted online by 

               Daniel Teraguchi.  25 August, 2004. Retrieved 21June 2008.  

               http://list.aacu.org/pipermail/bildner_nj_cdi/2004-August/000044.html

For further information on Seabrook:

Shortlidge, Jack. “The Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center: Telling the Story of a Japanese American Community in 

               Southern New Jersey.” Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore: Volume 31. Spring-Summer 2005.

                Retrieved 21 June 2008.  http://www.nyfolklore.org/pubs/voic31-1-2/seabrook.html