Stubborn Twig – Excerpt
“My girl made a trip to Japan last summer,” answered Masuo, referring to Michi, “and I wrote to express my appreciation.”
“Have you written to any person in Japan concerning the military condition in the United States?”
“Absolutely not,” answered Masuo.
On the basis of this sworn statement and unsubstantiated “reports” of his allegiance to Japan, Masuo became, in the parlance of the day, a “detainee.” On December 27, 1941, he and a group of fellow detainees being held at the jail were taken under guard to Union Station and put on a train bound for Fort Missoula, Montana, where the Department of Justice was conducting hearings to determine the loyalty of Japanese aliens. It was an eight-hundred-mile overnight trip that began with heartbreaking familiarity as the train snaked its way up the beautiful Columbia River gorge through the town of Hood River and then through mile after mile of the bleak and windblown dry lands of eastern Oregon and Washington.
Fort Missoula was a small, old army post with the standard forty-bed wooden barracks, mess hall, canteen, assembly hall, hospital and laundry. But the compound was customized for its new purpose, encircled by a heavy galvanized iron fence dotted with floodlights and punctuated by tall guard towers, where armed sentries stood watch around the clock.