March, 1942
It was in February 1942 that FDR signed Executive Order 9066, which turned 125,000 Japanese Americans from citizens to internees with no homes, businesses, or foreseeable futures. In March 1942, the Hisagawa family in Tule Lake was forced into Army trucks at gunpoint and taken to the Tulelake Relocation Center behind barbed wire and guard towers. They had to endure filthy sanitation, deplorable housing, poor medical services, inadequate education for the children, and a lack of respect for them as American citizens.
March, 2042
The media had stories about the new war in Korea, the upcoming Presidential election, and problems on Lunar One, the multinational base on the Moon.
Not much had changed around Tule Lake. Many of the old retail stores downtown had been replaced by feeder distribution centers for internet fulfillment of customer orders. The old Tule Lake High School had been rebuilt after a horrible fire during a 2008 Homecoming dance that took the lives of many. The remnants of the old, embarrassing relocation center had been removed. Townspeople did not want to discuss the shame of their ancestors.
Last month was the 100th anniversary of Executive Order 9066. Nothing had been mentioned on television or on social media. There had been no ceremonies where the camp had existed to mark that dark chapter in American history. Newspapers no longer existed, so the blight was not noted there.
Robert King was a 42-year-old history teacher at Tulelake High School. All his old friends had either moved or passed away. No one in town remembered him as Bobby King or remembered what he had been or done at the age of 16.
The old cemetery in the field was all that remained of the Tulelake Relocation Center. No one came to honor an ancestor who had endured the camp. The town tried to minimize any remaining guilt from the hatred that spread through the citizenry like a growing cancer. All the graves were forgotten and no longer marked.
All except one well-maintained grave.
Read The Two Terrors of Tulelake to find out whose grave that is and why it is still important 100 years later.
The horrors of World War II shocked the world. Americans believed it could never happen here…until it did.
Ichiro Hisakawa and his family were part of the American culture – living the American Dream – until February 19, 1942, when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that branded them “the others”. Taken from their homes and stripped of their lives and citizenship due to their ancestry, they endured deplorable conditions in the “relocation camps”. Typhus ran rampant through the camp, and riots were a daily occurrence. And for the first time, America was scornful. Life was difficult and the Hisakawa family did their best to endure it all.
However, 16-year-old Ichiro wasn’t prepared for the betrayal, murder, and escape that was waiting for him. And how did Bobby King, a sixteen-year-old from 2017, find himself in 1942 and befriend Ichiro?
The horrors of World War II shocked the world.
Americans believed it could never happen here…