Sewing Memories

In the San Francisco Bay Area, a group of women have stitched together their memories about a painful chapter in Japanese-American history. They've sewn an elaborate and colorful quilt that they take to classrooms and other venues across Northern California. We brought three of these women together to share their stories in their own words.

Bess Kawachi Chin:
"Mostly it's the women's story. The background is all blocks called 'road to California' and upper left is blue. That's to represent the ocean that the parents had to cross. Then the beige is all during camp life, and then the rosy down at the bottom is what I feel that life is like for us today, except that we still have to worry about our civil rights, everybody's civil rights and so there are those little gray spots in there."

Each block or "square" represents a personal story about what happened to people in the camps.

Bess Kawachi Chin:
"This one is where a woman has her good dishes and someone offers her such a pittance for them that she'd rather break them than sell them."

Phyllis Mizuhara's family lived in San Bernardino in Southern California where her father owned a small grocery store. After her father was detained by the government, Phyllis and the rest of her family were forced out their home and into a camp.

Phyllis Mizuhara:
"So there we were with mom, my three sisters, a brother and myself and I was 11 at the time and they said we had to go. Got to get rid of the store. We sold it lock, stock, and barrel. Everything just went for a thousand dollars. After the war we went back to San Bernardino and my father, of course, was released and so he wanted to start another store. He found a building directly across from where we had our first store. And he just never got it going. He sold hamburgers and hot dogs and chili beans and soda pop and candy, but never any of the other stuff, so it just never took off again. My dad was always kind of sad about it that it never came back to what he had before."

A number of words and dates are stitched along the borders of the quilt.

Hatsue Katsura:
"All these words are very important to the Japanese- American experience.

For example, today is February 19 and I thought you were shooting this because we were commemorating the 61st year of the Day of Remembrance when Executive 9066 was signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt."

Bess Kawachi Chin:
"The adults who have seen it, especially those who experienced World War II where their friends were taken, they would say all of a sudden the Japanese were no longer in school and they wondered what happened to them. Someone said to me they stored a piano for someone. Someone else would say they took care of their dog. Others would also tell me that when they see this quilt, they get chills. That they remember that time and so our hope in making the quilt is that it becomes a way of telling our story and also it was hope this kind of thing doesn't happen to anybody else."

JASEB
Japanese American Services
of the East Bay
2126 Channing Way
Berkeley 94704

(510) 848-3560
e-mail jaseb@igc.org