Reflections of the Jerome and Rohwer Pilgrimage — Healing the Wounds

Editor’s note: The following article on reflections of the pilgrimage to the Jerome and Rohwer internment sites in September 2025 is from Evelyn Maruko of the Orange County Buddhist Church. It includes excerpts from Maruko’s father, Shuji Maruko, who lived from 1925 to 1998.

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We live in a fast soundbite society — and this is a history that deserves more than 30 seconds.  

My sister and I, my Aunt Keiko, my second cousin, Barbara Lewis, and her two children joined Fresno Betsuin interim Rinban Rev. Kazuaki Nakata’s pilgrimage to honor our Uyemaruko family and to learn about their experiences during World War II. 

My Uyemaruko family, parents Kou and Sanichi, and children Kenji, Sachi, Shuji and Eiji went from a peaceful existence in a primarily Italian community in Fresno to losing everything as a result of the U.S. government’s forced relocation and mass detention of Japanese Americans. My father, Shuji Maruko, once told me that he had never experienced racism before the internment.  

Uncle Eiji started speaking about his internment in his 90s. The bitterness he expressed began to percolate to the surface and became the spark for our family to want to understand what happened to our family.

My father wrote notes about internment camp experiences to help me with a U.S. history project, yet discussions did not take place between us. Perhaps he thought I was too young to hold the pain of such loss. My cousin, Doug Nakashima, vouched for the bitterness that my father expressed after the war that was missing from his notes.   

My father wrote: “The longest, saddest ride of my life was … from our home to the (Fresno) Assembly Center. My brother and I ride on the back of an (Army) truck loaded with our belongings. I take my last long look at our home as the truck pulls away from the curb and wave goodbye to my dog Rascal as he lays on the lawn watching us leave. I fill my eyes with the familiar sights along Ventura Boulevard … and think about the many times we drove this road during happier times to go fishing. I keep thinking, ‘Remember these beautiful sights, it might be the last time you will ever travel down this road.’”  

He never saw his dog again.

In October 1942, the Uyemaruko family and close to 6,500 others, entered the Jerome internment camp in Arkansas.  Executive Order 9066 took everything away. My father eventually graduated from college and became the aerospace engineer that he wanted to be since he was a boy. Yet, what happened didn’t go away. His name was Americanized to Maruko, but the past reveals itself in little bits, small quirks and philosophies about life. 

Sept. 17, 2025

I’m in Little Rock, Arkansas, waiting two hours for my rental car so I can drive to McGehee. I could have complained about the wait, but one time is not much compared to what the internees endured. Waiting was the norm at camp. No wonder my father hated it when people wasted his time, preferring to make other people wait. It was one of his quirks. Thirty years after the war, it was his way of saying that his time had value.  

“It can’t be helped” was something my grandmother used to say. I always felt powerless when it was said as if we are not in charge of our own destiny. I found out that it was a common saying at Jerome. Maybe  surrendering to what is present is part of the power that allows one to endure. 

Sept. 18, 2025

We are in Jerome and the property at the internment camp is vast, lined by trees with a clearing where the train tracks still stand that brought 8,500 Japanese American internees. Acres of dust and steamy heat lay before us, now a soybean farm for alternative fuel. When my father arrived, it must have been more swamp land with bugs.  Snakes are what Uncle Eiji remembers. He was 9. 

The man who owns the land, farmer Kim Ellington, is friendly and respectful of the tragedy, trying to preserve what he can with his own money and allowing visitors to walk the grounds undisturbed.  

There is a monument at the front of the property commemorating the Japanese interned at Jerome. I walked the hot and dusty road from the monument to a dead end to see the smoke stack of the hospital in the distance. After just a half an hour, I’m hot and tired. Fortunately, my fellow travelers offered me a ride back to my car. I don’t know how the internees endured day after day, changing it into a living and able community. It was fun at first, my father said. My grandmother, Kou, an optimist, also described fun times. She didn’t have to cook. 

After a nice lunch break, we visited the Japanese American Internment Museum with wonderful air-conditioning. The paintings and photos of the latrines and the guard towers are just as my father described. There was no privacy, not even to use the toilet. Eventually, partitions were built to make stalls. On a card table toward the back of the museum, I found a notebook called “Final Accountability Roster for Jerome” with my Uyemaruko family listed. It strikes me, this cruelty by the U.S. government really happened. No wonder I had dreams of poverty.  

My father did not go to Rohwer. The family was separated. My grandmother Kou, Auntie Sachi and Uncle Eiji went to Rohwer. My grandfather, Sanichi, was a leader in the community and was separated right away. Letters from camp to camp were saved, some only my aunt can read because they are in Japanese. My father was sent to Bismarck, North Dakota, then the entire family was at Tule Lake. These are the gaps that I don’t understand, but I believe the loyalty questionnaire of 1943 had something to do with it.  

Although Shuji had just turned 17, he was subjected — like other Issei and Nisei men — to answering two questions that decided his future. Shuji answered “no, no” because his father wanted to take his family back to Japan. Japan was a foreign country to him. Sanichi was afraid his son would be killed if he answered “yes, yes.” 

Cousin Barbara told me about the phrase, “No-No Boy.” This was new to me. My father was not defying the government. He was obeying his father.  He described the fear and dread and the deep division those questions created between father and son, and his own soul. I can’t imagine the turmoil he had to carry by himself. 

Sept. 19, 2025

It is the last morning of our trip and we are at the Rohwer cemetery where the air feels thick and heavy. Gravestones honor those who did not survive. Rev. Nakata gives a short service to honor those who passed not knowing there was a brighter future ahead. I give my Aunt Keiko a hug. She points to the names on the graves, the purpose for the service. “Asai Tohachi” died at the camp in 1942, the same year she arrived. Chanting helps calm the sadness.

My father Shuji graduated from Denson High School behind the gates of the Jerome internment camp. Years later, when I was about the age that he was interned, he told me, “I’m going to my high school reunion with my brother,” as he walked out the door with his suitcase. I wasn’t sure where or with which brother. In retrospect, it must have been his older brother Kenji since Eiji was too young. I’m glad my father had friends who understood him in a way that no one else could, the ones who also walked the dusty path from the train to a life behind barbed wire.  

My grandmother and father used to say, “Education cannot be taken away.” Others on the pilgrimage heard the same. The message trickled through my childhood. I felt pressure to choose a profession. I decided to attend dental school, the path that was set since high school even though during college my interest turned to studying the human condition and achieving a doctorate in psychology.  

It took sheer will and determination to graduate dental school.  I wanted to quit but felt that I had invested too much to change course, and my father had wanted it so badly. Now I understand — to rest comfortably, to have family and food, and a roof over one’s head was a luxury and normalcy was tenuous at camp. A doctor or dentist is always needed and means security.  

Sept. 20, 2025

It is my last day in Arkansas. I admit that visiting Little Rock did not sound appealing to me because of the prejudice that my father suffered, but I also experienced racism while growing up in Orange County, California. My Lyft driver is a principal from a small town even smaller than McGehee and he is afraid of an unknown big city, too. After an awkward “hello,” we found out we both work with students and swap stories.  What was scary became fun.

The fear of strangers that led to Executive Order 9066 may never go away, but common ground transcends it. There were people that I encountered on the trip that were not friendly, and many more who were friendly. I know my Lyft driver agreed, the unfamiliar can be intimidating, yet good conversation and lightness are just on the other side of a “hello.”

I am grateful to be with a kind and thoughtful group of travelers and I am grateful for the opportunity to write for my father — to understand his life a little better by going on this pilgrimage. I know that he had the best intentions to protect me from his suffering so I could feel safe because people need to feel safe in order to thrive.  

I also know that my father wanted me to know why he went to Tule Lake, and that it was a difficult decision since he wanted to go to college. He made it to college, achieved his dream job of designing airplanes, raised his family, retired from engineering and went to work with “fun people” at the happiest place on Earth, Disneyland.  

What he didn’t tell me was that he was in the internment camp at the same age that I was working at Disneyland for my first job. I sometimes complained about working at Disneyland and going to summer school. I wish I didn't complain. I’m sure he saw it as a privilege, no matter how hard it was. I’m sure there are many other stories to be told, so other families  and the world can understand the suffering of prejudice and the strength of the human spirit to rise above it.