Out of the Shadows

Terry Higa was an 18-year old Japanese American girl imprisoned at Heart Mountain Relocation Camp in Wyoming during World War II. The story I’m sharing was buried for almost 80 years. It’s Terry’s story and my family's shadow story. My interest in writing Terry’s story began three years ago when my 89-year old father died. My mother dealt with her grief, not by talking about my father or their life together, but about her childhood. I’m sharing this story and my archival research because it’s relevant to our times and because it may help people of Japanese ancestry find information about their loved ones imprisoned in Japanese American internment camps during World War II.

My love of research began as a child. I was inquisitive and curious about everything. I asked my parents endless questions about people, history, science, and so on. My mother was an educator and when I would ask a question, I was directed to the Encyclopedia Britannica housed in my father’s home office. This always led to a trip to the public library to check out books on the subject. Learning the basics of research served me well as an undergraduate when I double majored in English and Geography/Environmental Studies because both required extensive research. As a graduate student, I’ve learned to fine tune those research skills and I’ve learned to think outside the box. I’ve done thousands of hours of research and I can tell you for a fact that not all archival material is neatly organized and packed in a pretty box with a bow. Wouldn’t that be nice! I hope I can help you with your research by telling you how the tiniest little nugget of information can lead to a jackpot of archival material.

Reading loads of books, fiction and non-fiction, helped me with my research. Reading books seems to be out of fashion today and honestly, how many of us feel we have time to sit down and read a book. Right? If you decide you’re passionate about finding information about your loved ones, try to take the time to read everything you can get your hands on. I guarantee it will help with your research. In order to accurately write about history and about people’s lives, I find it helpful to listen to the voices of those who lived and experienced historical events. They have so much to teach us.

In April 2016, my father died and my younger sister and I were sure our mother would follow. We concocted a plan to keep the little lady alive. Monday through Thursday my mother stayed with my sister and Friday through Sunday she stayed with me. We kept this up for months until one of my four brothers agreed to move into her home and take care of her. In those few months that my mother stayed with me, she seemed to take comfort in telling stories of her childhood and of her father to whom she was very close. She eventually asked me to take her on a trip to Northern California. She talked endlessly about her trip to the World’s Fair in San Francisco, California in 1940. I haphazardly threw together a travel plan, packed both of us up, and off we went on a 10-day road trip.

The trip turned out to be much more of a challenge than I expected. You see, my mother was losing her eyesight and she did a good job of hiding it from us while my father was alive. That combined with child-like temper tantrums (on her part; not mine), two grieving, heartbroken women began the longest road-trip of their lives. I’ll leave out the first few driving days of the trip because they’re hardly relevant to this story, but I have some advice for those of you travelling with a partially blind, 85-year old woman. Yosemite National Park is beautiful, but probably not the best choice for a site-seeing stop. “No, Mom, those aren’t sheep. They’re rocks.” At least she had a sense of humor about it! Having a glass of wine and a nice lunch at a winery in Napa was more her speed.

Three days after our road trip began, we arrived in San Francisco. My daughter happened to be working in Napa and met us for this glorious road trip of not two, but three generations of heartbroken women. As we drove through the heavy downtown traffic, my mother entertained us with stories of China Town. She would periodically stop talking, look out the window, and say things like, “Why is there a CVS Pharmacy here? That wasn’t there before?” We quickly realized my mother thought San Francisco was going to be the city where time stood still. Not to worry. I’m a really good enabler and I'm pretty good at photoshop. I would help her recreate her memories of the World’s Fair and create a scrapbook that would knock the socks off Martha Stewart.

Our first stop was at a fantastic restaurant in Chinatown called Sam Wo. Sam Wo is the oldest restaurant in San Francisco Chinatown. It was built sometime shortly after the infamous earthquake of 1906. Was it the restaurant she ate at as a little girl? She thought it might be and after much discussion and a drink, we decided it was. I can still see my daughter's eyes rolling into the back of her head. Our next stop was Fisherman’s Wharf. My mother is a history buff and I thought a walk along Pier 45 would pique her interest. My mother is normally very talkative, but as we walked along the pier, she grew quiet. At the end of the pier are two ships that serve as national landmarks. One is A World War II Liberty ship called the SS Jeremiah and the other a submarine called the USS Pampanito. My mother stopped and looked up at the massive steel battle ships. I read the historical markers out loud to her and she began to cry which freaked me out a little. The woman rarely cries. She chalks this up to her mother who didn't tolerate such weakness in her daughter. She didn’t even cry when my dad died. As my daughter says, the 'men in black,' came to pick up Papa. She kissed him, and said, 'See ya later.'" By the way, that’s Irish talk for, "See you on the flip side, my love." My mother began telling us the story of where she was when Pearl Harbor was bombed. She talked about the political rhetoric used by the government to instill fear in the public. “We were told the west coast of the United States would surely be attacked by the Japanese and that Japanese Americans were a threat to the security of the country,” she said. “Ridiculous,” I thought to myself. Then she told me a story that I’d never heard. Months after Pearl Harbor was bombed, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the removal and relocation of any person of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. Over 110,000 Japanese American citizens were eventually relocated to assembly centers and then internment camps in remote areas of the country. One of those camps was Heart Mountain Internment Camp located outside of Cody, Wyoming.

My grandparents, Bob and Lovey Meigh, owned a large ranch outside of Casper, Wyoming. Bob was 25 years older than Lovey and you might assume Lovey outlived him, but life rarely turns out the way we imagine. Lovey was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a few years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. She was 35 years old and her health was rapidly deteriorating. Bob worked the ranch from dawn until dusk and he knew he needed to get someone to care for Lovey, but help was hard to find in Casper. The new Casper Army Air Base was one of four World War II military installations in Wyoming. The population of the base was around 2,250 Army Air Force personnel and 800 civilians. The young local girls of Casper often worked at the base which left little help for the residents of Casper. Bob and Lovey Meigh were unable to find the help they desperately needed, so they turned to a good ‘ol boy network of Wyoming lawyers and politicians for help. A young girl named Terry Higa was released from Heart Mountain internment camp six weeks after she was imprisoned there and went to work and care for my grandmother for 14 months.

My shock at this news quickly grew to horror and I began bombarding my mother with questions. “Was this young woman a prisoner in your home? Did she get paid or did she work for free? Where did she sleep, eat, and bathe? Was she treated kindly?” You see, I didn’t know my grandparents because they both died several years before I was born, but I’d heard stories about my grandmother and how the M.S. caused physical as well as mental health issues. My mother assured me that Terry was treated kindly and so I tried to let the story go. The grief I felt for my father was consuming me and I didn’t have the emotional energy to dig into a story where I possibly find out my grandparents are monsters. One of the great tragedies that can occur when researching one’s own family is that you find out they weren’t very nice people.

The next day I took my mother on an unscheduled trip to the Presidio. Her father was stationed at the Presidio before he was shipped to the Philippines to fight in the Spanish American War at the ripe old age of 13. My mother likes to throw out the old, "You're just like your father," line and she's right. Like my father, I'm a stickler for following the planned travel schedule, but I felt this was really important to my mother. I regret now that I couldn't be emotionally and mentally present for the visit.

My every thought was of my father and how much I missed him. I drove around the Presidio for almost an hour listening to my mother chattering from the back seat telling me where to go like she had been there a million times. I finally settled on a space near the beach and my daughter helped my mother out of the car. I'm pretty sure my daughter knew I was at my wits end and took charge. Who says 20 somethings aren't perceptive! Off she went, arm in arm with her grandmother laughing and chatting like two little girls on their own adventure. I scanned the landscape and thought about how odd it was that the airplane hangars were turned into rock climbing rooms. What happened to preserving history and the memory of the men and women who served this country? I was overcome with anger and sadness. Why didn’t I know about this young woman who worked for my grandparents? Why didn’t I learn about the internment in any of my history classes? Does history keep repeating itself because we keep erasing any evidence of it? I wandered down to the beach and took in the enormous Golden Gate Bridge. I was on top of the bridge the day before, but this was my favorite view. I watched as people travelled over the historic bridge and I watched little sail boats cruise under it. "I don't really like the beach," my mother exclaimed, jarring me out of my quiet moment. "Sure. No problem," I replied. We headed back to San Jose to our Air B&B. My darling daughter helped my mother into our little casita when we arrived. "I didn't get to go to the museum at the Presidio today," my mother pointed out. "Yes, I know Mom, but we did lots of other fun things." "But I didn't get to go to the museum." Again, I replied, "Yes, Mom. I tried, but the museum wasn't open." My daughter whispered, "I got this," and she took my mother to her room and helped her settle in for an afternoon nap.

I went to my room and fell face first onto the bed and started sobbing. At that point I believed nothing I did for my mother would be good enough. Don’t get me wrong, my mother is a really amazing woman, but she was grieving. That night my daughter said, "I think I have to go back to Napa early, Mom. I have classes starting, and I need to prep for my new students." Maybe it was true. Maybe not. I didn't blame her.

For two years I let the story of Terry Higa stay in the shadows. I wanted to learn more, but I was afraid of what I might find. Every time my mother and I were together, the stories of her childhood and her father’s childhood would surface. As a gift to my mother, I decided to write a biography about her father. My grandfather was the child of Irish immigrants and to say he had a challenging childhood is an understatement. He somehow managed to survive and went on to have a fascinating life as a cowboy in Wyoming. My plan was to include the story about Terry in one chapter of the book.

I’m a graduate student at the University of New Mexico and I enrolled in a class that would help me hone my writing skills as a biographer. With the help of my professor, Dr. Michelle Hall Kells, I realized Terry Higa deserved more than a chapter in a book. All I had at this point was my mother’s side of the story which was that of an 11-year old white girl from an affluent family. I needed to get the story of a Japanese American teenage girl whose world was turned upside down overnight with the tragedy of Pearl Harbor.

My mother attempted to find Terry at one time by writing to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center and then to a United States Senator by the name Alan Simpson. The Heart Mountain Relocation Center was only able to tell her that Terry passed away in 1996. I asked my mother why she thought an old, retired Senator would help her find Terry. It turns out his father, Milward Simpson, was the reason Terry was given leave when work release leaves weren’t being authorized. I had to find Terry’s family members. I felt like it was a long-shot, but I had to try.

I knew almost nothing about this part of U.S. history, so over my summer break I read as many books and academic articles as I could find. I read on my lunch hour, breaks, while cooking dinner, hair appointments, etc. You get the idea. I made time to read! I read everything I could get my hands on about Executive Order 9066 and the internment of Japanese Americans. I read about the inhumane conditions under which they were forced to live. I watched documentary after documentary on YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. The more I learned about the camps and the people in them, the more I was haunted by the thought of this teenage girl being imprisoned by her own country for simply being Japanese. My anxiety level was through the roof and I barely slept. I wondered if she was safe in the camp and I wondered if she was safe at the ranch. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling guilty because she had to work for my grandparents, and I didn’t know under what conditions. I had to find her family and find out the truth.

I have a membership with Ancestry.com and I initially used that to find more information about Terry. I found the registers of Japanese American prisoners at Heart Mountain and learned that Terry was interned there with her father and two brothers. Her parents were divorced, and her mother was interned at Manzanar in California. The family was initially sent to the Santa Anita Assembly Center where they spent months before being “relocated,” to Heart Mountain. On the register of internees were family numbers and I remembered reading about the Japanese Americans being forced to wear small, tan paper tags with family numbers on them. Her family was reduced to a number.

I found the dates Terry and her family members were released from Heart Mountain and she was the last to leave. I learned from the books I read that it was typical for men to go on ahead and establish homes before wives and daughters joined them. They were discouraged from going back to the West Coast. There were threats from citizens on the West Coast to hang Japanese American's from trees if they tried to return. The government's propaganda and divisive rhetoric escalated the fear and hatred people had for the Japanese. Terry and her oldest brother settled in Chicago, Illinois and her father and younger brother returned to Los Angeles, California. I knew many of the internees were encouraged to go to Chicago because there were plenty of jobs. The War Relocation Authority set up an office there to help internees find jobs and housing. Then I came across a snippet of information I overlooked in Ancestry. I found documentation of Terry’s marriage one month after leaving Heart Mountain. I researched Terry’s husband’s name in the registers at Heart Mountain and found him. Did they meet there or did they know each other before they were interned? I dug deeper and found Terry’s husband and his mother, brother, and sister were sent to the Pomona Assembly Center before being sent to Heart Mountain. Did they fall in love in camp? The only way I would ever know was to contact someone in Terry’s family.

Ancestry.com is a nice resource for getting started, but it is easy to go down rabbit holes only to find inaccurate or incomplete information. I contacted a few people Ancestry suggested might be relatives and received only one response back from a very nice gentleman in Hawaii saying he didn’t think he was related to her. I was hitting one dead end after another and feeling pretty discouraged. I went back through some of the information I collected on Ancestry and came across a website called Findagrave.com. Terry’s obituary was posted on the site. I didn’t know anything about Findagrave.com, but people manage online memorial sites. Sometimes these are family members and sometimes just volunteers. I contacted the person managing Terry’s site. I explained why I was trying to find family members. I gave him my professional website, LinkedIn page, and Facebook page hoping he might respond. I was not surprised when I didn’t hear from anyone.

In the meantime, my mother gave me an oral account of how Terry came to the ranch. I spent hours listening to stories and writing down facts. I can't lie, I didn’t really believe half of what she told me. The woman is elderly and the stories she was telling seemed far-fetched. My mother told me that Milward Simpson, a prominent Wyoming attorney, arranged for Terry to work at the ranch. She insisted the University of Wyoming had letters between my grandparents and Milward Simpson. She told me Milward Simpson eventually became a senator in Wyoming. Bingo! Senator’s papers are housed in archives.

Navigating the University of Wyoming archives was a bit of a challenge, but I finally found the letters of Milward Simpson. I began with a search at the Rocky Mountain Archives. I honestly don't know how I finally navigated to the right page, but somehow, I got there. I got up early on a Saturday morning and began digging through almost 400 letters and documents. Did I tell you about my obsessive-compulsive disorder? Well, it’s not a clinical diagnosis. I'm just pretty sure it's a thing because everyone needs to have a thing. Halfway through my search, I pulled up a document and my eyes were immediately drawn to the signature at the bottom. It was signed by my grandmother, Lovey Meigh. I literally felt sick to my stomach. The letters to Milward Simpson began with a request from my grandmother for a young woman to live at the ranch and act as a housekeeper and companion. The government referred to these young women as “Domestics.” I read through about 50 letters and telegrams between Lovey and Milward Simpson. I found a contract between Terry and Lovey. Terry was to be paid $30.00 a month and free room and board. "Was that a living wage?" Prisoners working as laborers in the camps were limited to earning $12.00 a month. I pieced together some of my grandmother’s correspondence and she seemed to adore Terry. Milward Simpson supported the internment of Japanese Americans and this made me wonder why he allowed Terry to work and live outside of Heart Mountain. Was it just a favor to an old acquaintance or was it normal for prisoners to work outside the camps?

I went to the National Archives online and found a link to information about the Japanese internment. I was able to access some information about Terry and her family, but it seemed to be the same information I found on Ancestry. Now this is where reading books pays off. One day I was thinking about the things I read about the War Relocation Authority and how they were in charge of the camps. I went back to the National Archives and found the War Relocation Authority kept case files on each individual prisoner.

The National Archives doesn’t make it easy or cheap to get these files. They require you to write a letter to them with either the person’s obituary or social security index before they’ll give you information. You can find a deceased person’s social security index on Ancestry.com. I was able to get the social security indexes for the family and wrote a letter requesting information for each person. A couple of weeks later I received invoices indicating how many documents the archivists found and the charge for those documents. Terry’s father and brothers had 20 to 30 documents in their files, but Terry had 202! I ordered Terry’s case file to the tune of $170.00. I wondered what the family would think about this if I ever got in touch with them. It felt incredibly invasive to look into the case file of someone I wasn't related to or ever knew. I decided that if they did not give me their permission to write about Terry or use the information in her case file, I would honor their wishes. I still had my grandfather's biography to write and my mother's stories about the time she spent with Terry.

A few more weeks passed and finally a lightbulb came on. Think like a millennial! I took to social media and plugged in the names of family members listed in Terry’s obituary. I went to Facebook and found what appeared to be a niece and great-niece. I messaged both of them because the niece hadn’t been on Facebook for about a year and the great-niece was still active. I gave as much information about myself as I could. Three weeks later I received a message from Terry’s great-niece. I was sitting in an early morning meeting at work and I could hardly contain my excitement! Terry’s niece would like to know the names of my grandparents and my mother as well as the name of the ranch and where it was located. A few hours after sending the information I got another message from Terry’s niece, Amy. She told me she would pass the information on to the family and get back to me. It was all very mission impossible - ly. Can you just hear the theme song now?

At 6:00 that evening, my cell phone rang; caller unknown. The location of the call was coming from Anaheim, California. I picked up the phone and a voice said, “Hello, Moya. I’m Amy Higa-Sayama. I’m Terry’s niece.” A three-hour phone call ensued, and Amy told me the family was hesitant to contact me because it might be a phishing scam. At the end of the conversation, Amy asked me to give the family time to process all of this. Amy asked me to post pictures on Facebook of my mother and grandparents around the time Terry was at the ranch. She asked that I post only pictures and no information about why I was posting them out of respect for the privacy of the family. She ended the call by saying, “There’s a picture. Terry’s son Alan found a picture in Terry’s belongings. She’s sitting on a corral fence with another girl.” I was stunned. I called my mother immediately and told her. She couldn’t remember any such picture, but she was thrilled I made contact with someone. “Did she go on to have a happy life,” my mother asked. “It sounds like she did, mom,” I replied.

A week later I got a text from Amy that included a picture. I opened it and there they were. Terry and my mother sitting on the corral fence dressed like cowgirls. They were decked out in cowboy hats, cowboy boots, and my mother was sporting her dress spurs. They were smiling from ear to ear. I have to be honest I was so moved by the picture that I cried. I forwarded the picture to one of my brothers in Colorado Springs. My mother was visiting him, and I wanted her to see it right away. My brother enlarged the photo about a billion times and handed the photo off, but my mother said she had no recollection of when that was taken.

I called Amy that evening to talk about the picture. She said when Alan compared the picture of my mother as a child to the photo he had, he knew immediately that it was my mother with Terry. Amy set up a FaceTime meeting between Alan and his wife Karen and my mother and me. In the meantime, Amy and I Facetimed, talked on the phone, and texted just about every day. I learned so much more about the internment through her. I learned about Japanese culture and she told me the Japanese people have a saying. “What happened, happened.” The people interned rarely spoke about the camps and felt they needed to put it in the past and move on with their lives. There were many who felt ashamed of what happened to them and wanted to forget the past.

It’s funny how the universe seems to open up and information starts flowing when you stop being afraid to know the truth. A few weeks after Amy contacted me, I found an article in the Albuquerque Journal. The Japanese American Citizens League had an exhibit of Japanese internment camps at the Albuquerque Museum. To my surprise, New Mexico had three Japanese Internment Camps. Unfortunately, most of the evidence of internment camps in New Mexico were demolished and it’s as if they never existed. The tiny exhibit reinforced what I’ve felt the whole time I’ve been doing research. This is a dark time in our nation’s history and we’ve done a great job of making it look like it never happened.

The evening finally came when my mother and I had our first video chat with Alan and Karen. My mom really couldn’t see anyone, but she was thrilled to hear their voices. The first thing Alan said when he saw her was, “That’s the little girl in the picture!” My mother told Alan stories about living with Terry and how much she loved her and thought of her as a big sister. My mother tried to give Alan a description of the ranch and where Terry lived, slept, and worked and what her daily routine might have looked like. Alan explained that they knew Terry worked at a ranch, but they thought the ranch was near Cody. They assumed she was bussed there every day for work. They had no idea she was living outside the camp for over a year. We talked about how dangerous it might have been for a young teenage girl to live in an internment camp. I told them I thought she must be very brave to take a chance on working and living with strangers. I hoped Terry’s case file might give some information about her time at the ranch so that I might pass that on to other families for their research.

I sent Alan the letters and telegrams between Milward Simpson and Lovey. In Milward Simpson’s papers there is a telegram directing Bob and Lovey to meet Terry at the train station in Lysite, Wyoming. My mother explained that the train station in Casper would have been closer. She said Lysite was a tiny town. “You could spit from one end to another.” We all agreed Lysite was chosen for that reason. Fewer people would see this young Japanese girl getting off the train. Karen asked if Terry rode the train all by herself or if someone accompanied her. I assured them I would do more digging and find out.

Finally, I told Alan that I ordered his mother’s WRA case file and promised to forward it to him as soon as I received it. He was shocked when I told him how many documents were in her file and laughingly said, “Did they think my mom was a spy?” I honestly wondered if my grandparents were under some sort of surveillance because they arranged for Terry to live at the ranch. I worried that their involvement got Terry into trouble with the War Relocation Authority. Ugh, one more thing to keep me up at night.

I wouldn’t be a good student of rhetoric and writing if I didn’t research legal documents written by the government and more specifically, the War Relocation Authority. I did a google search of the War Relocation Authority and I came across the “War Relocation Authority Handbook.” The handbook explains how and why internees were given permission to live outside the camps. The handbook outlines the process for granting leave. Internees are interviewed by the camp director and if they pass the interview questions, their case is sent to Washington, D.C. for the F.B.I to investigate further. Once the person passes a background check, they are either given short-term leave or indefinite leave. Terry was gone for over a year and I assumed her case file would show that she had indefinite leave. The War Relocation Authority also suggests that employers take pictures of the internee working in the home, recreating outside, and socializing with people in the community. I wondered if Terry’s case file would come back with pictures that Lovey took. As sickening as it is to think of people taking pictures and sending them back to the War Relocation Authority, it might help people recover stories of family members who worked outside the camps.

I received Terry's case file five weeks after ordering it and I quickly realized why there were so many documents. They are government documents and everything is in triplicate. Unless you are able to visit the National Archives in person and do your own research, expect to pay for everything in triplicate! I forwarded the file to Alan and we agreed to give each other a couple of weeks to sort through everything. I went through each document and jotted down notes and questions for myself and for Alan. There was very little information about Terry’s stay at the ranch and no pictures. What I did find in the case file left me wondering if Milward Simpson was authorized to sign the paperwork that allowed Terry to leave Heart Mountain.

Some of Lovey’s correspondence was in the case file. Some of it I already had and some I didn’t. According to the War Relocation Authority documents, Terry’s departure to the ranch was not exactly on the up-and-up. She was never given indefinite leave and someone caught on pretty quickly. Terry was permitted to stay at my grandparent’s ranch from October 1942 to December 1943.

I wondered if this was all we would ever know. I took a few weeks off from my research. It was emotionally draining and I was feeling down. My mother on the other hand, wanted to continue the search for information. I took her out to lunch one afternoon and she told me more stories about her childhood. “You really need to come over to the house and go through my paperwork and letters that I wrote when I was trying to find Terry. I think there might be something in there.” The thought of going through mounds of paperwork was daunting, but I agreed.

My mother is of the letter writing generation and I swear she’s kept every letter she’s ever received from everyone she knows. I packed up boxes of paperwork and took them home. One Sunday afternoon I decided I had to face the mountain of paperwork sitting in a corner of my office. I plopped myself down on the sofa and started sorting through her correspondence with various friends. I found letters my grandfather wrote to my mother about Wyoming, the ranch, and the VA meetings he attended on a regular basis. I found plenty of material for my grandfather’s biography, but there is no mention of Terry. Did I tell you sometimes you’ll find nuggets of information in the oddest places? I came across a photocopy of a recipe card that my mother’s friend Kristi Evenson sent her. Kristi was a baby when Terry lived at the ranch, but her mother Betty Evenson was my grandmother’s best friend. A hand scribbled note at the bottom of the photocopy said, “Look what I found in Mama’s recipe book.” Betty wrote, “My Friend’s Food Favorites: Bob Meigh hates gelatin desserts, weenies, and salads. Lovey doesn’t care for rice. Bobbie Lue doesn’t like weenies. Terry, eggs in any form except hard boiled.” I called my mother and told her what I found. “Hey, you didn’t tell me Terry knew Betty Evenson. My mother sighed a big sigh. “Well, of course she did. My mother and Betty were best friends. They got together once a week at Betty’s convenience store and gas station. "You’ve been to the Bright Spot in Hiland. Back then it was the closest store and filling station to the ranch. Betty was a published writer and she wrote a book about life in Natrona County, Wyoming called, "50 Years at the Bright Spot.'" It occurred to me that if Betty was a writer, she might have written something about Terry. I brought this up to my mother. “She may have, but she never would have published anything that would have gotten my mother or Terry in trouble. We can call Kristi Evenson and ask if she found anything in Betty’s writing.

My mother comes to my house every Saturday night for dinner and the following Saturday we called Kristi and left her a voice mail message. “Well, I guess we’ll see where we go from here,” I told my mother. Later that evening Kristi called me back. “Moya, I’m on vacation at the moment. What years are you looking for?” I explained to Kristi that October of 1943 to December of 1945 would cover the time Terry was at Heart Mountain and Meigh Ranch. I knew from my grandmother’s letters to Milward Simpson that she was still in contact with Terry for at least three months after leaving the ranch. “Mama kept diaries every year. I’ll go through the diaries, but you’ll have to wait a few weeks.” I got off the phone with Kristi and had that butterfly in the stomach moment I get every time I think I’m on to something. It's only been a couple of weeks since Kristi and I talked, so I haven’t heard anything yet. I just imagine her sitting in a room with years of diaries stacked all around her looking for a needle in a haystack.

In the meantime, I contacted Heart Mountain Interpretive Center online to find out if they had information about Terry. I got a polite e-mail back telling me if I ordered her War Relocation Authority case file, I probably had all her files. A few days later, I went to the Japanese American Fall Festival in Albuquerque. I found a booth set up by the Japanese American Citizens League. The president of the board was there so I told her about my research. “The War Relocation Authority files should have photos and correspondence about her time at the ranch. She had to have an ‘alien citizen,’ card in order to leave the camp.” I explained that she didn’t and that I think the whole arrangement was a covert operation. She agreed it was highly unusual. I explained that I contacted the Heart Mountain Relocation Center and didn’t have a lot of luck getting information. She wasn’t surprised. “They get thousands of letters from people and they probably don’t have the manpower to help everyone.” We exchanged e-mail addresses and agreed to carve out some time to discuss my project. Before saying goodbye, she mentioned that there is a man in Albuquerque who was interned at Heart Mountain and she would introduce me to him. The chances of this man having any knowledge of Terry or her family is probably slim because there were over 11,000 Japanese Americans interned at Heart Mountain, but you never know.

This is my archival journey to date. I'll continue to research and post archival information to my website as I receive it. In the next year, I'll be writing Terry's biography and with any luck, I'll fill in some missing gaps about her time at the ranch and where she went after she was released from Heart Mountain. I hope my story helps you with your research. Unfortunately, we're losing the people who can tell us first-hand internment stories and I feel a sense of urgency in researching this time in history. I'm honored and grateful that the Higa-Yamamoto family allowed me to tell Terry's story and I hope I can continue to give back to the Japanese American community. If I can help with your research, I hope you'll let me know.

BEYOND BARBED WIRE

Beyond Barbed Wire