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New book details life at Tule Lake stockade By Lee Juillerat Feb 27, 2022 12:30 AM A A Courtesy photoTatsuo ahd Yuriko Inouye in 1988. When Tatsuo Ryusei Inouye was taken at gunpoint from his barracks at the World War II Tule Lake Segregation Center, he didn’t know why or for how long he’d be held at the camp’s primitive stockade. For the next three months — from Nov. 13, 1943 to Feb. 14, 1944 — Inouye, one of 16,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated at the camp, wrote about his thoughts, fears and observations in a daily journal about life in the stockade. It was a story of three months of misery. It’s taken nearly 78 years, but a book based on his diary, which Inouye was reluctant to share, has made its way into print. “He really didn’t want the book to be published, because there were people who are still alive. He didn’t want to embarrass or shame them,” says Nancy Oda, of “The Tule Lake Stockade Diary,” a book taken from the journal her then 33-year-old father. Inouye he and his family — his wife, Yuriko, and daughters, Sayuri and Masako — had been transferred to Tule Lake from the Poston War Relocation Center in southwestern Arizona after he declined to answer “yes” to two controversial questions on a loyalty form. While at Tule Lake, shortly after martial law was declared, he and eventually more than 200 others were taken into custody and placed in the stockade, a primitive tent barracks, without being charged with any crimes, no hearings and no trials. The stockade, as Oda mentions in the book, was a 250-by-350-foot area enclosed by fences and guard towers. Within the stockade were four barracks, a mess hall, a latrine and Army tents that were used as unheated punishment quarters for some prisoners. The stockade, which was destroyed after the war, at times held more than 200 prisoners. Near the stockade was the six-cell jail designed to imprison up to 24 men, which at times held more 100 men. The prison, which can be visited on ranger-led tours, is one of the few remaining structures from the camp, which is part of the Tule Lake National Monument. During his ordeal, Inouye wrote in his diary about meager meals, refusals from camp authorities to explain why he and others were imprisoned, a lack of proper medical treatment, and threats and forms of intimidation by guards. When stockade prisoners staged a hunger strike to protest their confinement and conditions, Inouye hoped it would draw attention to their mistreatment. But he was disgusted when, after six days, other prisoners ended the strike. At other times in his diary, Inouye lambasted younger Japanese Americans he believed were disrespectful of their elders. He also repeatedly expressed fears that expressions or outbursts of anger by stockade prisoners might give camp authorities justification to intensify the ill treatment of all those held in the camp. Despite her father’s concerns, Oda, who was born May 20, 1845, at Tule Lake shortly before her family was released, decided to self-publish “Stockade Diary.” “It was unfinished business from my point of view,” explained Oda, 76, during a telephone interview from her home in Van Nuys, Calif. “What my father gave me was perseverance, the will to do what you believe in.” Oda, who has long believed her father’s story should be told, said her plans to publish the book began as a term paper for an Asian American class at UCLA in 1972. “My teacher would be happy to know the book is finally published.” Getting the book into print stalled during the years Oda battled ovarian cancer — “I’m not going to be here forever.” It was also delayed because of problems in translating the diary from Meiji-era Japanese to English. Oda said her need to publish her father’s stockade diary intensified several years ago during a Tule Lake Pilgrimage, gatherings normally held bi-annually in Klamath Falls and Tulelake by the dwindling number of people incarcerated at Tule Lake and, more often, their children and grandchildren and interested others. During one of those pilgrimages, Oda visited the Linkville Cemetery in Klamath Falls, where many of those who died at Tule Lake are buried. As she writes in the book’s foreword, “I looked down and noticed that many of the headstones were for babies. That hurt me deeply. Without my father’s protection, I might have been one of them. I realized that I was saved to tell the ‘Tule Lake Stockade Diary’ story.” Referring to her father and others being derogatorily labeled as “No-Nos” because of their refusal to answer “yes” to the two loyalty questions, Oda noted Tuleans have historically faced scorn from other Japanese Americans. “In our community if you say you’re from Tule Lake, you become disloyal. I’ve been subjected to that, too.” In the foreword, Oda insists, “The stigma of being a Tulean must end in our (Japanese American) community. Today, I hear my family whispering in my ear to not fear when I stand up for what I believe in. Now that the ‘Tule Lake Stockade Diary’ is in your hands, there is no telling what lessons can be learned from one man’s diary written in a prison within a prison.” In his daily reflections, Inouyi emerges as a strong-willed, stubborn and sometimes arrogant individual. He expresses obvious feelings of pride for “the great country of Japan” and believes Japan will win the war. Oda, however, said those beliefs and feelings changed after the family was released from Tule Lake. She notes the diary covers only the three months of Inouye’s never-explained time in the stockade. The family returned to Southern California, where he began a gardening service, taught judo, raised his family and learned about conditions in war-time and post-war Japan. While in Tule Lake — and disillusioned by his and his family’s incarceration — he twice applied for “repatriation” to Japan. Inouyi, who was born in 1910 in Laguna Beach, California, never renounced his American citizenship. “Family triumphed over everything,” Oda said, explaining that her mother had no desire to return to Japan. “My father was willing to sway and bend like bamboo.” Oda said her birth name, Kyoko, reflects her father’s spirit, faith and optimism. In her birth document Inouyi wrote, “At this moment, World War (II) does not know it ends (no one knows when the war will end) and no time is more crucial than today for the race (people) and the family to be united in one and cooperate in harmony. Therefore I give (this baby) the name ‘Kyoko.’” “My name means to bring harmony and cooperation,” Oda explained. “He saw and hoped the new world would be different.” Copies of “Tule Lake Stockade Diary,” which includes several photos taken at Tule Lake and others before and after the family’s incarceration, are available through the Japanese American National Museum gift store at www.tulelakestockadediary.com. They will also be available at the Lava Beds National Monument visitor center. Reach freelance writer Lee Juillerat at [email protected] or 541-880-4139.