Homecoming On Bainbridge -- Internment-Camp Correspondent Returns

In Paul Ohtaki's lovingly assembled scrapbook, teeming with newspaper clippings, faded pictures and mementos collected over a long and eventful lifetime, is a gently chiding letter that opens with the salutation "Dear Lazybones."

Ohtaki received the letter, dated April 24, 1942, just weeks after arriving at Manzanar, Calif., where his family, along with other Bainbridge Islanders of Japanese descent were interned at the onset of U.S. entry into World War II.

The letter was from Ohtaki's old boss, Walter Woodward Jr., owner of The Bainbridge Island Review. Woodward and his wife, Millie, were among the few publishers around the country that had spoken out against the internment, an unpopular stance that cost them readers and advertisers. (His fight on behalf of the island's Japanese and Japanese-American residents later inspired a character in David Guterson's best-selling novel "Snow Falling on Cedars.")

Just before the evacuation, Woodward asked Ohtaki, then a senior at Bainbridge Island High School who had been working at the paper's print shop, to be his camp correspondent. Despite the playful tone of his letter's opening, Woodward's intent was serious.

"When this whole mess is all over, you people are going to need to come home," Woodward wrote. "You'll be welcomed with open arms by the vast majority of us. But those who don't or won't understand will not feel that way. They may actually try to stir up trouble.

"But they'll have a hell of a hard time of it if in the meantime, you've been creating the impression every week and every week that the Japanese are just down there for a short while and that - by being in The Review every week - they still consider the island as their home. Any and every scrap of stuff you can gather about how they miss the island is fuel for the fire."

Now 74 and semiretired from his printing business in San Francisco, Ohtaki credits the letter for launching his brief career as a wartime correspondent.

Ohtaki returned to Bainbridge Island with his wife over the weekend for a rare homecoming to visit old friends, and as a special guest at the island's Japanese-American community's annual teriyaki dinner.

He also came to visit his old boss, who is 89 now and in frail health.

"He did so much for me, for us," Ohtaki said Saturday. "I wanted to see him one more time. I think I owed that to him."

Spurred by Woodward's nudging, Ohtaki began reporting about the rhythms of daily camp life, and his articles soon became a regular feature in the island's weekly paper.

Ohtaki quickly caught on. From the May 7, 1942, edition of The Review came reports about youngsters with measles and chicken pox, men registering for the draft, and even a marriage ceremony.

The headline of a May 14 article: "Pneumonia Hits `Grandpa' Kuora." From Aug. 20: "First Island Baby at Manzanar Born."

There also were stories about camp conditions and the adjustments that the displaced Bainbridge Islanders endured.

Copies of The Review also were sent to the camp to keep residents informed about news back home.

"I think people at the camp were glad to see the stories and happy that people back home were interested in what was happening to us," Ohtaki said.

In the fall, Ohtaki joined a crew of young men who were given permission to leave the camp to help harvest sugar beets in Idaho. But the column had, by then, become an established feature and a successor correspondent was quickly found. By the end of the war, four young Bainbridge Islanders had served as reporters.

When the internees were allowed to leave, Ohtaki headed to Chicago to work and study. He was drafted near the end of the war and stationed at Fort Snelling in Minnesota.

At the end of the war, about half of the 271 Bainbridge Islanders returned to the island. Although there was an island group opposed to their return, for the most part the returning residents were welcomed.

Ohtaki credits the Woodwards for fostering that receptive mood.

"On Bainbridge Island there was none of the hostility to the returning Japanese that you saw in other places, and I think that's in large part because of the Woodwards," Ohtaki said.

But the island's Japanese community, which thrived for 50 years before the war, never fully recovered. Today, there are about 150 Japanese Americans on the island, while the island's overall population has swollen from about 7,000 to 19,000 since the end of the war, said Frank Kitamoto, the longtime president of the island's Japanese community organization.

Ohtaki's own family chose not to return. Unlike other islanders, the Ohtakis had no property on the island, and they restarted their lives elsewhere. Since the war, Paul Ohtaki has been back only twice before.

What drew him to the island this time was recent news that his old boss was now in a nursing home on the island.

On Saturday, before going to the Japanese-American community's dinner, Ohtaki visited Woodward. He stayed for a half-hour mostly talking about the past. Woodward still remembered Ohtaki, but his attention occasionally drifted. But when Ohtaki brought out his scrapbook, Woodward came to life.

Before he left, Ohtaki promised to make him a copy of the scrapbook and thanked him for what he did during the war.

At the Japanese community's dinner, it was as though Ohtaki had he never left. Held in the cafeteria of Woodward Middle School, which was named in honor of his former employers, Ohtaki was greeted by a succession of longtime island residents who recognized him.

"Sometimes I've thought of coming back," Ohtaki said. Then, he added, sometimes he wondered what his life would have been like if he had never had to leave.