Charles Kikuchi was born in 1916 in Vallejo, California, but was orphaned aged 8 and sent to live in a multiracial orphanage some 70 miles north of San Francisco. He worked at any number of unskilled jobs, and managed to graduate from San Francisco State College in 1939. That same year he published, anonymously, an autobiographical essay entitled A Young American with a Japanese Face, which later brought him some renown in his own community. He worked for the California State Employment Service, surveying occupations of Japanese immigrants; and he attended the School of Social Welfare, University of California, receiving a certificate in social work in 1942. He was recruited by sociologist Dorothy Swaine Thomas for the Japanese Evacuation and Relocation Study (JERS), as a result of which he began to keep a diary.
For about a year, Kikuchi was interned with his family at Tanforan (San Bruno, California) and Gila River (Rivers, Arizona) concentration camps, as part of the US policy to remove over 100,000 persons of Japanese birth or ancestry from the Pacific Coast. He completed sociological field surveys at both centres, and continued chronicling camp resident settlement after he and his sisters had been allowed to relocate to Chicago in 1943. Just before the bombing of Hiroshima, he was drafted into the army. After the war, in 1946, he married Yuriko Amemiya, a professional dancer, and the following year he received a master’s degree in social work from New York University. For more than two decades, thereafter, he followed a career as a psychiatric social worker in Veterans’ Administration Hospitals where he mostly counselled Africa American veterans of the Vietnam War. He died on 25 September 1988. Further biographical information can be found at the Densho Encyclopedia website.
Kikuchi proved to be a committed and careful diarist, amassing many volumes from early 1942 to mid-1945 - all of which are held by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCAL) - as well as for the rest of his life. Some pages from the war period diaries are, in fact, available to read online in their manuscript form. They are also available in print: in 1973, University of Illinois Press (UIP) published The Kikuchi Diary: Chronicle from an American Concentration Camp as edited by John Modell. The diary chronicles the period before and during the time he and his family were forced to live at Tanforan (converted race track stalls), but not his later experiences at Gila River. Parts of the book can be read online at Googlebooks. UIP quotes a review in History: Review of New Books: ‘For anyone interested in the significance of ethnicity, the role of social marginality, and the insidiousness of racialism in American history, The Kikuchi Diary is indispensable reading.’
In his introduction, Modell says Kikuchi’s diary can profitably be read on at least three levels: ‘as an insider’s record of events in “America’s concentration camps,” as the daybook of a man who was no mere detached observer but for whom the camp experience was a psychic turning point, and as one strangely glowing example of the far wider phenomenon of ethnic ambivalence.’
9 December 1941
‘Berkeley. Holy Christ! San Francisco last night was like nothing I ever saw before and everybody was saying that the Japs are going to get it in the ass. I ran into Jimmy Hong up on Grant Avenue, and he says I’m not allowed to screw Chinese girls anymore. Angelo, too, he says, because he is a Wop. Jimmy was kidding; and he will give me some kind of a badge which says that I am a Chinese as he says some of the Japanese boys from U. C. got beat up. I didn’t hear anything about that. Kenny told me it was true when I got back, and he said that all of the students are going to be restricted to campus. A lot of them want to get the hell out of here and go home, but I don’t know what good that will do. I don’t know what good it will be to stay here.
Kenny has a friend, Shibs, who is full of wild stories. I don’t know where he gets them. He says Bill is spying for the Navy or the FBI. I don’t believe that; but I guess the FBI do have guys on the campus. They have picked up some suspicious Japanese already. I saw Alice and she is worried about Pop, because we live so close to Mare Island and she thinks that Jack should go over and tell the Mayor that Pop was in the U.S. Navy. I think Pop would praise Japan; but he is not going to blow up anything. It may be dangerous for him in the barber shop with all those Mare Island guys coming in. I told Alice to tell Mom to have Pop’s Navy discharge framed and put on the wall next to the barber license and take that Buddha statue the hell out of there. Alice says the Army should put me in charge of patriotism because I am suspicious of my own father. I did not mean it that way; but it is true, I don’t trust the Issei. If just one of them sabotaged something, what hell there would be to pay.
Mrs. Edwards seems very calm about the whole thing, I must say. She told me to study hard and become an officer in the Navy. What a laugh! The Navy would not even let me be a messboy. Jack says it’s going to be bad, and he wants to go East to study medicine; but he can’t walk out on the family like that.’
30 April 1942
‘Berkeley. Today is the day that we are going to get kicked out of Berkeley. It certainly is degrading. I am down here in the control station and I have nothing to do so I am jotting down these notes! The Army Lieutenant over there doesn’t want any of the photographers to take pictures of these miserable people waiting for the Greyhound bus because he thinks that the American public might get a sympathetic attitude towards them.
I’m supposed to see my family at Tanforan as Jack told me to give the same family number. I wonder how it is going to be living with them as I haven’t done this for years and years? I should have gone over to San Francisco and evacuated with them, but I had a last final to take. I understand that we are going to live in the horse stalls. I hope that the Army has the courtesy to remove the manure first.
This morning I went over to the bank to close my account and the bank teller whom I have never seen before solemnly shook my hand and he said, “Goodbye, have a nice time.” I wonder if that isn't the attitude of the American people? They don’t seem to be bitter against us, and I certainly don’t think I am any different from them. That General De Witt certainly gripes my ass because he has been listening to the Associated Farmers too much.
Oh, oh, there goes a “thing” in slacks and she is taking pictures of that old Issei lady with a baby. She says she is the official photographer, but I think she ought to leave these people alone. The Nisei around here don’t seem to be so sad. They look like they are going on a vacation. They are all gathered around the bulletin board to find out the exact date of their departure. “When are you leaving?” they are saying to one another. Some of those old Issei men must have gone on a binge last night because they smell like sake.
Mitch just came over to tell us that I was going on the last bus out of Berkeley with him. Oh, how lucky I am! The Red Cross lady just told me that she would send a truck after my baggage and she wants the phone number. I never had a phone in that dump on Haste Street.
I have a queer sensation and it doesn’t seem real. There are smiling faces all around me and there are long faces and gloomy faces too. All kinds of Japanese and Caucasian faces around this place. Soon they will be neurotic cases. Wang thinks that he has an empty feeling in his stomach and I told him to go get a hamburger upstairs because the Church people are handing out free food. I guess this is a major catastrophe so I guess we deserve some free concessions.
The Church people around here seem so nice and full of consideration saying, “Can we store your things?” “Do you need clothes?” “Sank you,” the Issei smile even now though they are leaving with hearts full of sorrow. But the Nisei around here seem pretty bold and their manners are brazen.
They are demanding service. I guess they are taking advantage of their college educations after all. “The Japs are leaving, hurrah, hurrah!” some little kids are yelling down the street but everybody ignores them. Well, I have to go up to the campus and get the results of my last exam and will barely be able to make it back here in time for the last bus. God, what a prospect to look forward to living among all those Japs!’
23 May 1942
‘Saturday. Last night after I came home I heard a number of gun shots. Alice says (unofficial) that three boys were shot while trying to escape over the fence, one of whom is in the hospital. The administration won’t take any moves to confirm or deny any of the stories so they continue to spread. This seems to be a shortsighted policy. There is no chance for the paper to bring such things out without being censored. They just won’t allow us to take a definite policy on aims, except possibly Americanization. They are so afraid of radicalism. If it is being a radical to push American ideals and war effort among the Japanese without fear of stepping on toes, then we are radicals. The Japanese are really conservative and anything a little different is an indication of radicalism. They will have to get used to changes, because there will be many of them in the next few years. They will never go back to their old pre-war lives. If they cannot adjust themselves to changes, they are in for bitter disillusionment. I have hopes that they will, but the Americanization process will be slow. We can’t expect anything else, I suppose, under the circumstances. Ever since Orientals have been in the U.S. they have had a difficult time. Denied citizenship and economic opportunities, it is not surprising that they have withdrawn and hung onto what they have brought with them. The cultural ties were stronger than the political ones. In a way it is a form of escapism.
Yesterday while we were playing our little card game, the police came in and arrested 88 men for violating the State Gambling law! This puts an end to our games for a while and is an “out” for me. I don’t know where all of those single men get their money; they certainly have enough for those big card and dice games.’
21 June 1942
‘Lots of visitors as usual. Many of them probably came out of curiosity to look at us and the camp. Makes one feel like being either in a zoo or a prison. The person who owns the property across the highway in front of the main gate has opened up a very profitable enterprise. He has a 15 cent parking lot!’
18 August 1942
‘The movies were scheduled for eight o’clock and the place was not supposed to be open until 7:30, but the 1500 people were in line by 6:35. It extended all the way down past the postoffice in three columns. The shows are given every Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday night with 1500 people attending each showing. Only the first 7 or 800 to get in can see the picture very well. This week a lot of blankets were put up against the windows to darken the place and two loudspeakers have been installed on the girders crossing the large room.
The Issei are as bad as the kids when it comes to pushing and crowding in. They just come and plop down on any space that is even left slightly open. And they take their shoes off! Seeing a show is a form of self torture. One sits on the floor and the cushions do not eliminate the hardness of the boards. Soon your back gets tired and the feet cramped. You shuffle around to get an easier position and step on somebody’s hand. The owner of the hand turns around and gives you a dirty look. About half way through the picture, your neck gets awfully stiff from looking up at an angle. With people pressing in on you from both sides, you feel suffocated. And to add further torture the sound is not very clear. But in spite of all this, everyone that can walk to the grandstands comes for the show. This week Abbott and Costello in “Hold That Ghost” was playing. The audience really seemed to enjoy the picture, but I thought it was a bit corny. But why should I be an old wet blanket?
The film scheduled for next week was “Citizen Kane” but Yoshio K. told me that he had to cancel it upon the request of Mr. Thompson of the Rec. Department, who claimed that the picture would be too deep for 80% of the audience and he thought that comedies should be shown.’
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