Sonoma County’s Japanese American Citizens League hosting event to remember World War II deportees

It's well known that after the United States made a sudden entry into World War II following Japan's attack in 1941, more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up and sent to internment camps.

Henry Kaku, a Petaluma resident, is keen to talk about the thousands of those detainees who resisted being locked up and ordered to swear their unconditional loyalty to the U.S., and for that were sent following the war to Japan. Among the deportees were Kaku's parents, both native-born American citizens.

On Saturday in Sebastopol, Kaku will speak at a Day of Remembrance hosted by the Sonoma County chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League.

The event starts at 2 p.m. at the Enmanji Buddhist Temple on Gravenstein Highway South. It will begin with the screening of the one-hour documentary film, “Resistance at Tule Lake.”

Directed by Konrad Aderer, the film tells of the incarcerated Japanese Americans, most of them residents of the West Coast, who defied the injustices inflicted upon them at the Tule Lake Segregation Center. Of the internees, about 5,000 were not allowed to return home after the war but were shipped to Japan.

“They were a minority within a minority,” said Kaku, 70, a substitute teacher, origami master and judo instructor who for years managed the gift shop at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.

For resisting internment, his parents and his two older siblings were stripped of their American citizenship and in March of 1946 were shipped to Japan. Kaku was born there in 1948.

“When I was born I was stateless. I did not have a country,” he said.

Following the screening of the documentary, Sonoma County history author and Press Democrat columnist Gaye LeBaron will moderate a conversation by Kaku and James Okamura.

Both had family members locked away at Tule Lake, where acts of resistance included rioting.

Kaku will speak about the outrage felt and displayed by internees including his father, Keige Kaku, who was born in California and had joined the U.S. Army prior to America's entry into the war. Following the Japanese attack on American forces in and near Oahu, he was discharged from the Army and then sent to a camp.

Shipped following the war to Japan, Keige Kaku filed suit and won a restoration of U.S. citizenship for himself and his family. The Kakus returned to America in 1956, when Henry Kaku was 8.

You can contact Staff Writer Chris Smith at 707 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.