Children's voices in the Archives : El Joaquin Newspaper

Children’s Voices in the Archives is a series of posts brought to you by CHS’s North Baker Research Library.

Reading through the historical newspaper issues of El Joaquin is a strange experience. El Joaquin was a newspaper published in the Stockton Assembly Center during Japanese incarceration. This was considered a ‘temporary detention center’--such centers or concentration camps as called by others were used from late March, 1942 until mid-October, 1942. The El Joaquin newspaper issues in CHS’s collections have a run from May 1942 to the Final Edition, September, 1942. It was published every Wednesday and Saturday by the El Joaquin Press, W.C.C.A. Assembly Center, Stockton, CA. Single copies were delivered to each ‘apartment’ free of charge.

The editors of the newspaper seem to take great pains to tread the line between boosting morale--in the face of a racist policy that used war as an excuse to force Japanese citizens and residents out of their households--and appeasing the people who were incarcerated, perhaps in the attempt to ensure their safety. In the first Volume (issue no. 1) one gets a sense of the appeasing tone the editors use to try to get everyone to cooperate: “However, our personal frustrations must be shelved temporarily for an undertaking which requires each individual to cooperate with his fullest and best effort” (p. 1). This appeal seems at once appeasing yet subversive. Why subversive? Let me explain.

The same Volume 1 (no. 4) introduces us to Pancho, the newspaper mascot. Pancho is a toothy El Joaquin staff character: “Little Pancho represents the spirit of the Center. He is Patient, Active and Neighborly, Courteous, slap-Happy and Orderly” (an acrostic for his name).

Pancho for President, June 10, 1942; El Joaquin, Vol. 1, No. 4; OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society.

On closer study, little Pancho has an interesting backstory the reader may peruse in the El Joaquin Final Edition (page L3). When the newspaper staff discover little Pancho “perched pertly on the Art Editor’s desk” toting a huge sombrero with “patches of hair showing underneath” the staff writes that upon more close observation of this “mysterious object… we noticed that there was a face and even a body beneath the hat. ‘Hey,” we shouted, “What the ____.”

When they ask Pancho what he is doing there, Pancho replies, “Why… you know me. I helped develop the lands around here. I raised beets, celery, grapes, potatoes, and even carrots. I’ve been a doctor, lawyer, farmer, merchant, laborer and a scholar. You’ve seen me around -- everywhere. I came in when the evacuation order was issued, because I had to” (Final Edition, L3). The staff notes how their adopted mascot then leaps gracefully from the table to the right-hand corner of the front page with a cry of “Let it roll.” The story of Pancho within the pages of El Joaquin begins a subtle subversive thread of a character who is resilient and ready to take on the immense burden of captivity with an industrious spirit.

But the subversive hint doesn’t end here. Remember--the El Joaquin newspaper had to, by the nature of the people’s captivity, be tame since the captors and hired staff of administrators and center’s workers could read its contents. In the issues I reviewed, I didn’t find the significance of the name “El Joaquin.” I wondered if there was more to it than being emblematic of San Joaquin County, the center’s county location in Stockton. It turns out there may be more history there. Upon speaking with library staff at the San Joaquin County Historical Society and Museum, the special collections staff thought that at first glance the newspaper was just named after the county. However, when the staff spoke with the Education Director, he mentioned that according to local lore the name has historical significance for one of the following reasons:

The newspaper was named after Joaquin Murrieta, a symbol of resistance.

Cover page, September 28, 1942; El Joaquin Final Edition, 1942; OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society.

Joaquin Murrieta was a “legendary bandit who became a hero of the Mexican-Americans in California” during a time when Yankee miners pressured the legislature in Sacramento in 1850 to pass the Greaser Act and the Foreign Miners Act with the intent to drive out Mexicans (Encyclopædia Britannica). According to lore, Murrieta or several “Murrietas” responded to the oppression by “leading bands of outlaws that raided up and down the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, robbing gold miners and holding up stages” (Encyclopædia Britannica). Murrieta reached a symbolic status as a freedom fighter that has “long resonated and provided a powerful symbol of resistance for Chicano activists” (Encyclopædia Britannica). Could this resonance be the motive for the re-branding of El Joaquin Newspaper by the editors? Remember there is power in naming. Is it a reach to say that the branding of El Joaquin Newspaper by the editors was a subtle act of resistance? A way of reminding us of the historical implications of racist laws meant to favor one group over another and undoing it by capturing the original spirit of a Mexican migrant who wanted to settle with his bride in California?

Researchers must read between the lines and sometimes history is completely hidden from records and/or passed on as oral history. It’s hard to discover the “truth.” Remember the echoing lines, “Why… you know me. I helped develop the lands around here. I raised beets ... even carrots. I’ve been a doctor, lawyer, farmer, merchant, laborer and a scholar. You’ve seen me around -- everywhere. I came in when the evacuation order was issued, because I had to.” If the Japanese community saw themselves as Americans, they saw themselves as the traditional ideal of what Americans aspire to be: a helping hand, a laborer, a farmer, an intellectual. Whatever circumstance they are forced into, that ideal rises to meet the massive ‘challenge’ (an understatement in this context). Words are well but don’t always convey their true meaning. So we keep reading between the lines and between bodies’ gestures and actions.

What terribly complicates this captivity and the extent to which the captive can object, resist, or openly rebel are, of course, the children. Imagine if you were a parent under captivity. Imagine what you would do if you were forced out of your home and told that you and your children had to stay in an assembly center until further notice not knowing what will happen. What would you do?

The people at the Stockton Assembly Center and the newspaper staff got to work immediately-- organizing a nursery school; training Boy Scouts “the value of serving their communities” (A8, Final Issue); informing the “centerites” mothers that infant care would be provided as the dreams of the people were crushed when they were told they were being relocated to another new facility dubbed the “Arkansas project” (Final El Joaquin issue).

Pancho with travel bags, Aug. 8, 1942; El Joaquin, Vol. 2, no. 9. OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society.

From church activities (Buddhist and Christian), to playing chess, performing Nisei symphonies, writing bittersweet poetry and humorous drawings, and setting up school lessons by dedicated volunteers serving as teachers in the center, the people of the Stockton Assembly Center arose to a difficult situation by uniting and organizing to make things work and to protect the children.

Kids playing chess, July 29, 1942; El Joaquin, Vol. 2, No. 6; OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society. 

“Night and a Mood” poem, September 28, 1942; El Joaquin Final Edition, 1942; OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society.

When I say that reading El Joaquin is a strange experience I mean to reflect upon the strength of the human spirit--how we meet captivity by doing what we've always learned to do--laughing at ourselves; caring for the children, and ensuring that their minds and bodies keep active (I'm thinking of the Girls' All-Star Teams noted in the Final Edition); dancing with "shimmering hues of brightly colored kimonos" (Vo. II, No. 2); informing our community of the latest developments through print and word of mouth. This is what a resilient and resisting people do. One may ask the bold question: What else can you do when you hope that the lives of the children will continue and maybe even thrive despite the trauma of captivity.

History repeats itself but it need not. We can learn from our costly mistakes and those of our ancestors. We can grow wiser and be better humans. We can resist. We can protect each other if we unite and raise a cry of protest against injustice.

El Joaquin takes kids to center store, August 5, 1942; El Joaquin, Vol. II, No. 8; OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society.

References

El Joaquin, 1942; OV Vault 289, Stockton Assembly center; California Historical Society.

Joaquin Murrieta. (2019, May 1).  Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved May 29, 2019 from

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joaquin-Murrieta

Nisei. (2017, September 11). Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved May 29, 2019 from

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nisei

Stockton (detention facility). (2015, July 14). Densho Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:31, May 29, 2019 from https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Stockton%20(detention%20facility)/

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Written by Lynda Letona, Assistant Archivist & Reference Librarian at California Historical Society (CHS).

Photos digitized by Marissa Friedman, Imaging Technician and Cataloger at CHS.

Spotlight on Japanese American History

Brocade of Sacramento Valley, 1911; Vault 13061; California Historical Society. Translated Title: Japanese in California: A pictorial history. By Nichei Bei Times, 1911; California Historical Society

This special edition booklet , created in 1911 by the Nichei-Bei Shimbun (Japanese American Times), provides a pictorial history of Japanese American families in rural California. It both documents and celebrates the Japanese community in the Sacramento Valley region and the important contributions they made to California’s agricultural economy early in the early twentieth century.

Watch shop owned by Mr. Aokihaka, Sacramento County, Calif.; Brocade of Sacramento Valley; Vault 13061; California Historical Society

In 1869, when the transcontinental railroad laid its last piece of track, Chinese workers, the labor force behind the building of the railroad, were left to seek employment elsewhere. At the same time, in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, Northern California’s farming and agriculture industry was fast-expanding to meet the needs of a growing State. It was in these areas that many displaced Chinese workers migrated. Despite the clear need for labor in the orchards, fields, and vineyards of these regions anti-Chinese sentiment, formalized in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, was rampant - forcing many to move to urban areas where Chinatowns offered some form of protection against racial violence.

Kaishundo Drug Store, Sacramento, Calif.; Brocade of Sacramento Valley; Vault 13061

As Chinese workers were forced out, labor needs in these agriculture and farming areas started to be filled by newly arrived immigrants from Japan. Post 1900, immigration from Japan to Hawaii and the West Coast of America was fueled by people seeking economic security and many Japanese, particularly those from rural farming and fishing villages, took advantage of Japan’s loosening emigration laws to seek employment overseas. Communities were born all over rural California as people from the same prefecture in Japan often settled near each other, many making the transition over time from agricultural laborers to tenant farmers and even business owners. 

Mikado Fish Market with owner Mr. Fujita, Sacramento, Cal., Brocade of Sacramento Valley; Vault 13061

Valerie Matsumoto in her book, Farming the home place: a Japanese American community in California, 1919-1982, estimates that between 1891 and 1900, 27,440 Japanese came to the West Coast from Hawaii and Japan to work in agriculture, canneries, logging, mining, and other industries, and that within a relatively brief period agriculture became the leading enterprise of the Japanese. In some areas of central California all-Japanese communities developed, including Florin in Sacramento County (known in Japanese as Taishoku) and the Yamato Colony at Livingston in Merced County.

[K. Igarashi & Co. Brocade of Sacramento Valley], Brocade of Sacremento Valley, Nichi Bei Times, 1911. Vault 13061

By 1913, two years after Nichei-Bei Times published this pictorial of the Japanese American community in Sacramento Valley, as many as 6,000 Japanese had become tenant farmers. Despite this clear need for labor, increasing xenophobia paved the way for discriminatory laws targeting Japanese farmers. The Alien Land Law of 1913 prohibited "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning agricultural land or possessing long-term leases over it.” In 1920, California made this law even stricter with amendments that prohibited even short-term leases of lands to non-US citizens. 

These communities, continually under threat, were ultimately decimated in 1942 when Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, forcibly removing all Japanese residents and American citizens of Japanese ancestry and incarcerating them for the duration of WWII.

For many, after 1945, there was no home, no work, and no community to return to.

Nichei-Bei Shimbun [Japanese American news] 

Established in San Francisco in 1899, the Nichibei Shimbun was one of the most prominent ethnic newspapers in the continental United States. Reflective of its founder Kyutaro Abiko's vision, the newspaper called for assimilation and permanent settlement among Issei (“first generation”) as well as biculturalism and American patriotism among Nissei (“second generation”).

Throughout the prewar years, the Nichibei Shimbun remained one of the most important Japanese vernaculars in California, if not in the entire western United States. During the 1920s, its daily circulation peaked at over 25,000, which included the San Francisco and Los Angeles editions.

Sources

Waves of Immigration, by Emily Anderson, Densho Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Immigration/

Terminology, Densho Encyclopedia, https://densho.org/terminology/

National Park Service, A History of Japanese Americans in California: Patterns of Settlement and Occupational Characteristics, National Park Service,
https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/5views/5views4b.htm

The California Alien Land Law and the Fourteenth Amendment, Edwin E. Ferguson, Vol. 35, Issue 1, March 1947, https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=3652&context=californialawreview

Matsumoto, V. J. (1993). Farming the home place: A Japanese American community in California, 1919-1982. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.

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Written by Frances Kaplan, Research Librarian at California Historical Society

The Life of Elaine Black Yoneda, In Her Own Words

The concept for Women’s History Month was born in California, beginning as a local, week-long celebration in Santa Rosa in 1978. The idea quickly spread across the country as other communities adopted their own versions of the celebration, and in 1980 President Jimmy Carter issued a proclamation instituting a nationwide “Women’s History Week.” This eventually evolved to encompass an entire month, observed annually, and designated each year by Presidential proclamation. Every March, we take the opportunity to recognize the achievements, struggles, and experiences of women by telling their stories and exploring individual contributions to history as well as contemporary life.

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Examining the past can allow us to understand and appreciate the people, places, and events that have made up our history, inform our present, and inevitably shape our future. Studying what came before can help route the course for a world that is more inclusive and equitable. It’s common to learn the stories behind well-known names, the key players in text books, interpretations of the past that are well-loved and often repeated. These stories are important, yes, and their reappearance in our lives in no way diminishes their significance, but what about the other, less talked about stories?

Recently I made a trip downstairs to visit CHS’s North Baker Research Library, feeling a bit overwhelmed by my task of identifying a source around which to compose a Women’s History Month blog. There are a lot of women of gumption ingrained into the story of our state…so where to begin? Luckily, my colleague, Lynda Letona, had recently stumbled upon the oral history of Elaine Black Yoneda, a gem in our collection because of the figure behind the name but also unique because the history is oral and publicly available online.

A complete typed transcript of Yoneda’s oral history is stored in our vaults as well, so Lynda hauled the thick volume up for me to peruse. Within a few minutes I was entranced by this woman and elbows deep in her life. Across 7 days and 14 hours in the late 1970’s, at Elaine’s apartment in the Outer Mission District of San Francisco, the interviewer proceeds with a purpose to “obtain Yoneda’s background, schooling, early life, marriages, and involvement in the left wing movement of the thirties. Then to develop her activities and motivations as an official of the International Labor Defense, and as a member of the Communist Party, particularly her thinking and opinions as a woman leader during that period.” 

Transcript of  Elaine Black Yoneda's oral history, 1978

The thing I love about Elaine’s oral history is that it’s told from her first person perspective and speaks to her political activism, but also includes descriptions of her personal life, things she experienced as a woman, daughter, sister, and mother, as well as how those experiences affected and were affected by her public life and work. It is compelling because so much of it is relatable and provides insight into the little things that make up a life, the things that make us human and connect us across time and diversity of experience. Her work was radical for her era, especially as a woman, and echoes battles still being waged across the nation and world today.

Elaine Black Yoneda was born in 1906 in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. Her family moved to California in the 1920's and Elaine’s political awareness emerged after she experienced police brutality at a mass unemployment demonstration in Los Angeles. From there she quickly became a civil rights leader with the International Labor Defense (ILD), an organization for the defense of political and trade union prisoners, including deportees. She earned the nicknames “Red Angel” during the 1934 waterfront strike and General Strike in San Francisco, and “Tiger Girl” in Salinas during an agricultural strike. She was arrested many times, and used the courtroom as a forum to bring to light civil rights violations, including the right of free speech and the right to assemble.

Like many good stories, this one includes love and drama. Yoneda’s oral history outlines both of her marriages, including her second marriage to a Japanese American activist named Karl “Hama” Yoneda, whom she met when she bailed him out of jail as part of her duties working for the ILD. (He changed his name in honor of Karl Marx). They married in Seattle, as anti-miscgenation laws still in place at the time made it illegal for them to marry in California. As Japanese Americans, Karl and their son Tommy were sent to Manzanar Interment Camp following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Elaine insisted on joining them. 

The Yoneda family at Manzanar Internment Camp in 1942, credit: TradingCardsNPS 

Throughout her oral history one can garner a sense of Elaine’s passion for the labor movement, her convictions about civil liberties, tenderness towards her children and family, and snippets of wisdom gleaned from 70 years of life experience. She discusses her childhood as a second generation American with revolutionary parents, her hopes for her daughter, and her participation in the Salinas Lettuce Strike, National Scottsboro Week, and the Spanish Civil War relief. She discusses being the only woman on the steering committee of the 1934 San Francisco Strike, her unsuccessful campaign for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1939, and examples of male chauvinism within the Communist Party in the 1930’s. It’s engaging, informative, inspiring. 

Elaine Black Yoneda with “Free the Scottsboro Boys” Activists, 1934

California Historical Society

Elaine Black Yoneda died on May 29, 1988, one day after attending a longshoreman’s rally in support of Reverend Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. She leaves us with some wisdom to be passed on to future political activists:

“Sometimes some of them have a tendency (perhaps I did at that age) to think that the revolution should have happened yesterday. There may be many tomorrows. You have to work with the people, and you have to discuss their needs, not just your own needs, and see it from a wider perspective than just a narrow path. Things do not happen overnight. It takes a long period of working for an objective and if it’s the right one, eventually you’ll get it.” … “ I think for a while they tended to disregard everything that is so-called history. 'We don’t need history, that’s ancient.' But more and more, are beginning to see the need to at least know that history so that they don’t commit some of the same errors that others committed.”

Listen to the full oral history of Elaine Black Yoneda here or visit our North BakerResearch Library to read a transcript of the interview.

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by Katie Peeler, Marketing Associate at California Historical Society

Day of Infamy, 75 years later

Troops in Vehicles Lining Crissy Field, 1941

Courtesy of National Park Service

Articles

FOCUS: How the attack on Pearl Harbor changed the course of California

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/infographic-737460-focus-california.html

http://files.onset.freedom.com/ocregister/news/2016/focus/FOCUS_Cal_and_Pearl/cal-after-Pearl.gif

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http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/military/honor/

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Ansel-Adams-Japanese-internment-WWII-6206027.php

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Tora-Tora-Tora-over-SF-When-Japanese-10652456.php

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-ol-le-pearl-harbor-75th-anniversary-20161207-story.html

http://www.latimes.com/travel/deals/la-tr-hawaii-pearl-harbor-75th-anniversary-20161123-story.html

http://www.smdailyjournal.com/articles/lnews/2016-12-07/memories-of-pearl-harbor-san-mateo-man-reflects-on-surviving-infamous-attack/1776425172438.html

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2016/12/06/pearl-harbor-survivor-chuck-kohler-makes-up-for-lost-time-spreading-the-word/

http://people.com/human-interest/oldest-surviving-pearl-harbor-vet-to-visit-base-on-75th-anniversary-i-hope-people-never-forget/

http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2016/12/pearl-harbors-role-in-a-historic-supreme-court-decision/

Previous California Historical Society pieces related to Pearl Harbor and its aftermath

http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/02/day-of-remembrance.html

http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2015/12/this-day-in-history-bombing-of-pearl.html

Day of Remembrance

Executive Order 9066 and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II

Civilian exclusion order #5, posted at First and Front streets, directing removal by April 7 of persons of Japanese ancestry, from the first San Francisco section to be affected by evacuation, April 1942.
Library of Congress

 Two notices in San Francisco, posted side by side, reflect the fear of Japanese invasion in the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The California Historical Society joins the nation in observing the annual Day of Remembrance on February 19, when in 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The order paved the way for the removal of people of Japanese descent, citizens and noncitizens alike, from their homes and communities along the West Coast during World War II.

As the Japanese American Citizens League explains, “Every February, the Japanese American community commemorates Executive Order 9066 as a reminder of the impact the incarceration experience has had on our families, our community, and our country.”

We remember this day with an essay by the noted historian Charles Wollenberg on the precedence of discrimination and racism in our state’s history and its legacy today.