Site of Rohwer Internment Camp Gets Grant Money

The KUAR website has announced that Arkansas will receive $400,000 in Federal grant money for its projects devoted to the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

I visited Rohwer in November, 2009 as part of my research for my novel, BROKEN DOLLS. In my blog post, "Rohwer Whispers," I wrote about visiting the site--the impact it had, the secrets it shared.

KUAR's article quoted Dr. Johanna Miller Lewis, Project Director of Life Interrupted: The Rohwer Cemetery Preservation Project:

“We need to learn from our mistakes and I think it is especially important in Arkansas because civil rights is so much an important part of the state’s history and this is just another chapter of civil rights in the state of Arkansas.”

To learn from our mistakes, we must remember our mistakes. It is the reason I wrote BROKEN DOLLS.

Synopsis of Broken Dolls

It hit me on the drive in to work today. What have I done? In the synopsis I originally presented in this blog, I told the ending to the book! My apologies to those of you who already read the original synopsis. Nothing worse than knowing how a story ends!

NOTE: The synopsis I originally posted here was written for agents and editors -- they do want and need to know the ending of the book.

So, now I have amended it, removing the thrill-packed conclusion. Guess you'll just have to stand in line with a throng of fans to find out! :-)


It is 1941, and racial tensions are rising toward Japanese-Americans in the California community where nine-year old SACHIKO KIMURA lives. She is torn between the Japanese culture her mother compels her to learn, and wanting to be “American” like the rest of her friends. When Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, the tensions erupt, and Sachi is even more confused over her identity as a Japanese-American.

One afternoon, two days before Christmas, Sachi is at the park with her papa, MICHIO KIMURA. While playing on the slide, she witnesses three teenage boys taunting and beating her father. She especially remembers the colored boy with hazel eyes, TERRENCE HARRIS. Sachi’s older brother, NOBU KIMURA, comes upon the park scene in time to catch his three friends in the act. They run, and Nobu cries out to them. How could they beat up his father? The Kimura's are informed of Papa's death the day after Christmas.

On the morning of the beating, Terrence’s family had received a telegram that his father was killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor. In a blind fury, he leaves his mourning mother’s side, searching for something to make him forget his pain. He comes across two high school friends who convince him the only thing that will help is to “get a Jap.” When they find the Japanese man in the park, they do not know it is Mr. Kimura, father of their friend, Nobu. The three assailants are arrested later that night.

The attorney assigned to Terrence’s case, EDWARD BLAKE, has sympathy for Terrence’s story, having lost his own father at the hands of the Germans in World War I. Terrence is convicted of manslaughter and spends two years in jail. Blake becomes his mentor and helps to pay his way through college.

In April 1942, the Kimura’s are sent to Santa Anita Assembly Center—a converted horse race track. There, Sachi experiences her mother’s first outward discrimination, when she forbids Sachi to be friends with a boy of lower social class. But Sachi believes that attitude makes her mother as wrong as those who put them in the camp, and disregards her mother’s authority.

Several months later, Sachi and her family are transferred by train to the War Relocation Center in Rohwer, Arkansas, where Sachi develops a friendship with JUBIE LEE FRANKLIN, a local colored girl. But, as Sachi learns acceptance and forgiveness, Nobu and Mama become more embittered by events of racism toward Japanese-Americans.

In March, 1943, Nobu’s resentment over the United States’ treatment of its Japanese-American citizens leads him to become a “No No Boy,” when he answers “no” to the two questions on the loyalty questionnaire given to internees: Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered? And, Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attacks by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or other foreign government, power or organization? He is categorized as “disloyal,” and like thousands of others, is sent away to Tule Lake, a maximum-security camp. Sachi and Mama remain at Rohwer.

Terrence is released from prison in January, 1944, and shortly after, passes his entrance exam into the University of California. With the prompting and encouragement of Mr. Blake, Terrence has become interested in civil rights, and pursues a law degree.

The World War II years, internment and an unexpected event affect Sachi and Nobu differently, and their lives take separate directions when the war ends.

Will Nobu be able to forgive the way Japanese Americans were treated?
Will Sachi's and Nobu's close relationship remain unchanged?
What is the surprise event?

Stay tuned!

Sachi's Letter to Nobu

I've come to understand that my characters are like children. They want my undivided attention, and will only agree to "talk" to me if they get just that -- undivided attention. So, when I finally sit myself down, open my mind and let my fingers fly over the keyboard, they tiptoe in, sit beside me and begin to tell me what's on their minds.

It happened this morning.

In my book, Broken Dolls, Sachi, my eleven-year old Japanese-American girl is still an internee at the Rohwer, Arkansas Internment Camp. Her eighteen-year old brother, Nobu, has been sent to a Justice Department camp in Santa Fe, New Mexico, because he answered "No-No" on Questions 27 & 28 of the loyalty questionnaire given to all Japanese-Americans over the age of eighteen. Sachi misses him terribly, and sits down to write a letter. But rather than tell him about the black hole in her life since he's been gone--that would make him more homesick--she decides to tell him about what she and her friend, Jubie, a local black girl, have been up to.

Here is a segment of that letter:

. . . When we moved one big rock, a couple of weird-looking, lobster-like creatures skittered away. Jubie called them crawdads. She said you could eat them, and that she’d ask her Auntie Bess to cook up a pot. But first, she said we’d have to catch a bunch of them. I don’t know. They look a little creepy. How am I supposed to help catch them if I don’t want to touch them? And eating them? Yuck.


People around here eat some strange foods, Nobu. Of course, Jubie probably thinks what we eat is strange, too.

I told her once that sometimes we eat our rice with seaweed wrapped around it. She crinkled her nose and asked what seaweed was. I had to remind myself that she’s never even seen the ocean, so she’s probably never heard of seaweed. When I explained that it was like thick, long blades of grass that grew in the ocean, she crinkled her nose even more, then stuck out her tongue!

That’s okay, because that’s how I felt about eating crawdads . . .


For me, there's no greater pleasure in writing than when my characters talk to me so openly that my fingers fly on the keyboard just to keep up with their words.

Rohwer Whispers

When I first started writing Broken Dolls, I wasn’t aware there had been two relocation centers in southeast Arkansas. This discovery added new layers to my story which follows the lives of a Japanese-American family from 1941 to 1968.

In November 2009, I decided to visit the site of one of the relocation centers, Rohwer. I began with an interview with the former mayor of McGehee, Arkansas, Rosalie Gould, an authority on the history of the Rohwer and Jerome Relocation Centers. She holds an extensive collection of artifacts from the camps and has maintained relationships with many former internees. She told me fascinating stories that were told to her by internees, and she shared her collection of photographs, artwork and essays. Her interview started my passage into the past and helped me to better understand what it meant to be a Japanese-American in the 1940’s.

But my real empathic journey began the following day, when I drove to the site of Rohwer Relocation Center. When I was a child, I’d visited Tule Lake, a relocation center in California where my mother spent three years of her childhood. As a little girl, I couldn’t grasp the concept of being “relocated.” In fact, I thought it would be an adventure to live in a desert camp. But I saw my mother crying as she recollected her days in camp, and it made me queasy, but I didn’t understand why.

So, on that very warm day in November 2009, I hoped that as an adult, I might feel something deeper and come to a better understanding at the Arkansas site.

I left my hotel, and my gas gauge indicated I had approximately 1/8 tank of gas. I approached a gas station at the crossroad of US-65 and AR-1, where I would turn off the highway to get to Rohwer. I debated whether or not to stop. I pulled in and found the pumps were not auto-pay. Lazy and in a hurry, I didn’t want to take the time to go inside. So, convincing myself the site couldn’t be that far off US-65, I turned onto AR-1 and headed in the direction of Rohwer.

I drove and drove. And drove. Through acres and acres of cotton fields, still dotted with puffs of white. Through marshy patches of tall trees. All the while the gas gauge snuck toward “empty.” Surely I’d pass through a small town that would have a gas station. But what if I didn’t find one before I ran out of gas? There was hardly a house in sight. I really was out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere.

As my heart beat nervously, I wondered when I would finally arrive at Rohwer. And would it be before I ran out of gas? Then, in the middle of my frustration and fear, an epiphany hit me. I realized my anxiety might be similar to what the Japanese-Americans felt as they were being relocated from California to Rohwer, Arkansas.

Such a strange-looking land. So hot and humid. In-the-middle-of-nowhere.

The “low gas” warning light flashed on, feeding my fear of the fast-approaching empty tank. But I immersed myself in that fear and apprehension and imagined being on the train that brought the internees from California almost seventy years before.

When will we be there? What will Rohwer look like? Will there be armed guards and barbed wire, like at the last camp?
In the distance, I saw a couple of buildings, perhaps a town?

Please have a gas station.

My heart pounded.

How much farther to Rohwer? Why aren’t there any mileage markers? What if I’m not going the right direction? Please have a gas station.
There it was. A tiny station in a tiny town. Though it was not an automatic pump, I counted my blessings and proceeded inside to pay. I interrupted the conversation of two young girls behind the counter and an awkward silence followed. One girl glared at me while the other took my credit card, and I felt like a stranger in a strange land. I wondered why. Was it because I wasn’t from “around these parts?” Still engaged in imagining the feelings of an internee, I even wondered if it was because I am half-Japanese, so close to Rohwer. I finally decided it was probably because I’d cut short the gossip of two teenage girls.



Finally, a couple of miles farther down the road, I saw the sign for Rohwer. I turned right onto a gravel road and crossed the railroad tracks on which the internees would have arrived. I got out of the car and stared down the long, lonely track. I turned 360°. A small swamp. Cotton fields. Tall, shrubby trees. Arkansas Highway 1, Rohwer Relocation Center Memorial monuments.

The tarpaper barracks that housed almost 12,000 Japanese-Americans from September 18, 1942 to November 30, 1945 were gone. All that was left was a group of monuments that stood in a grove of trees in the middle of a cotton field, and a tiny cemetery of internees who had died while in camp. I felt lonely and sad, but at the same time grateful, to be the only visitor at the small site.

Swatting mosquitoes away from my face, I closed my eyes, and imagined getting off the train after a four-day ride from California. Being half-Japanese, if I had been alive during that time, I too would have been sent to a relocation center.

The wind whispered in my ear as I walked around the site looking for any memento that might tell me a secret of the camp. A lost trinket. A carving in a tree. A name I might recognize on a headstone.


At last, Sachi, the young girl in my book, whispered a secret to me that changed my story in Broken Dolls. Sachi has become a part of me, and every page I write is a visit with her. One day, when my book is finished, I’ll miss her.

As I prepared to leave Rohwer, I wanted to leave my own monument to the internees. I searched for something special, but the area was barren. Gravel crackled with every step I took in my search. Rocks! That would be my monument. I stacked several and left them as my personal monument to the Japanese-Americans who were taken from their homes in California and brought to Rohwer, Arkansas.

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Then, I drove away with the secrets I’d learned.