Sarah Simms got emotional at times discussing the book she and Hayley Johnson wrote at an Authors Club monthly meeting at the Westside Library in Alexandria last Thursday night.
Simms (at left in photo) and Johnson are LSU librarians and their recently released (2023) book is “Beneath Heavy Pines in World War II Louisiana: The Japanese American Internment Experience at Camp Livingston.”
Sixty-six people showed up for their talk, which they said is the largest gathering they’ve attracted at any stop on their book-promotion tour.
At a time when the deportation of illegal immigrants is a hot topic, it’s worthwhile to learn about another time in our American history when “residents” of the United States were declared “enemies.” This happened after the Japanese bombing attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when U.S. authorities began to arrest Japanese residents and place them into enemy alien internment camps run by the Department of Justice or the United States Army.
Simms and Johnson wrote about this, but the book focuses on the mostly untold story of how, from 1942 to ’43, more than 1,000 men of Japanese ancestry were held at Camp Livingston in the pine forests of Central Louisiana, some 12 miles from Alexandria. The two librarians found an even more local connection, telling the story through the experience of two families, the Koharas and at least one of the Miyamototos, the Koharas’ cousins.
When, in response to the Pearl Harbor attack, the U.S. declared war against the Axis nations, Japanese, German and Italian aliens were arrested and investigated. The precedent for this was set with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, when America became involved in naval conflicts with France. It was legal to consider residents from hostile countries as enemies and have them incarcerated.
Another precedent for this was after World War I, when about 2,300 German civilians within the United States were arrested and interned. Between 1941-46, more than 100,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans were interned across the United States.
Simms and Johnson did extensive research for several years into the subject, often being frustrated by the lack of information on it. Yet, what they found seemed to indicate the interned men, while jolted and separated from their families for one year, were not mistreated. There was a photo of men outside a barracks at Camp Livingston, where there was a barbershop and a vegetable garden, for example. Another photo showed the men playing in a baseball game.
Yet, the somber side of the camp comes from a photo of a path flanked by barbed wire fences, and at the end of the path in the distance is a watch tower.
“This generation didn’t usually speak of their experiences,” said Johnson, “and there’s not much documentation.” They did, however, find out some information from things such as rosters, letters, journals, diaries and newspaper clippings.
One wartime story in the Town Talk was about the Koharas being “proud of their American citizenship” and operating a photography studio at Murray Street. One of them was Tommy Kohara, who was a photographer for 25 years at the Town Talk. He was the second-oldest of five children of parents whose came to the United States in the early 20th century and never returned to Japan. He died in 1999 at age 82.
Tommy Kohara and his older brother Jackie took part in WWII. Tommy enlisted in May 1941, six months before Pearl Harbor, and served as a photographer both on the front lines and behind the lines in Germany and France. Jackie enlisted a few years later and was an officer in the reserve/Medical Administrative Corps. After the war, he took over the Kohara family photo business.
“Both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Treasurer department have made thorough investigations of the Kohara family,” the Town Talk story said, “and not one shadow of doubt regarding their patriotism was found.”
Simms and Johnson, inspired by a 2016 story in the Los Angeles Times about survivors of U.S. Japanese internment camps speaking out against the increasing hate Muslim Americans were enduring, sought to find out if there were any internment camps in Louisiana. Their research led to Camp Livingston, best known as a site for the “Louisiana Maneuvers” – the exercises the Army held to prepare for war.
They would find out from a Kohara family survivor in Alexandria, the late Marion Couvilion Kohara, that while the Kohara family was not interned, her cousin, Reverend Buntestu Miyamoto, was interned. He had been in Hawaii, and after being investigated by the FBI, was classified as an “enemy alien” and taken to Camp Livingston.
His family, with virtually no financial support, chose to be interned on the mainland in Crystal City, Texas in hopes of being reunited with him. After the Reverend was released from Camp Livingston in 1943, he was reunited with his family in Crystal City, but they were not allowed to return to Hawaii until the end of the war.
Some Carnegie Whitney Grants enabled the two librarians to travel to different archives across the country to piece together information for their book. They determined from the camp roster that men interned at Camp Livingston were from ages 20 to 80, but most were in their 50s.
Simms and Johnson found some haiku poems from the camp and a poster promoting an art exposition with a quote revealing of the character of those interned at the camp:
“Simplicity is to be valued at the place of exile in the United States.”
