The Block Manager: A True Story of Love in the Midst of Japanese American Internment Camps (book)

Incarceration memoir of a Nisei woman from Stockton, California, who becomes a block manager at the Stockton and Rohwer detention camps and who meets and marries her husband at the latter. The narrative follow the couple to Tule Lake and postwar Japan.

After a brief prologue set in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1986, the story begins in Stockton, where the Hayashi family—middle-aged Issei parents with eight Nisei children—live a poor but happy life. Eldest daughter Janet, born in 1920, graduates at the top of her class from the local high school, Japanese language school , and sewing school and helps her mother with chores and childcare at home while international tensions rise. After her brother's science experiment causes an explosion, the FBI investigates the family and discovers Janet's skill as a translator; she is subsequently called upon to translate as the FBI questions other Issei men in the community. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Janet loses her job at a theater and is shunned by her closest white friend. The family is rounded up and sent to the nearby Stockton Assembly Center, where Janet is promptly appointed to be a block manager . In the course of her duties, she becomes friends with Ray Konishi, a young Kibei bachelor in her block. Having arrived from Japan just prior to the war—and coming from a wealthy family from Hiroshima—he intends to go back to Japan as soon as he can.

The family moves on to the Rohwer, Arkansas, concentration camp where Janet again serves as a block manager. Ray suddenly proposes to Janet, who, on the advice of her parents, turns him down, both because of the status difference between their families and because of fears of how she would fare in Japan as an American. But Ray persists and wins over both Janet and her parents. The couple marries in Rohwer and Janet soon becomes pregnant. Janet finds out that Ray had answered " no-no " on the " loyalty questionnaire " and is to be sent to Tule Lake. Though her parents want her to stay with the family until at least after she has the baby, she decides to go with him. A difficult childbirth leaves both mother and child in critical condition, though both eventually survive and thrive. At Tule Lake, Ray gets involved with organizations of inmates that saw their future in Japan and is among the dissidents who renounces his U.S. citizenship and is sent to the Santa Fe internment camp . As the war ends, and Ray prepares to go to Japan, Janet's family resettles in St. Louis, where they find conditions amenable. They urge her to join them. Though torn, Janet decides to join Ray in Japan.

After a miserable journey during which she is seasick most of the time, Janet and her toddler son Norman are greeted by Ray upon their arrival in Tokyo. Since he works as a translator for the occupation, he is able to arrange for them to stay in a colonel's private apartment, and they enjoy a warm reunion. But when she and Norman journey to Ray's mansion in Hatsukaichi, outside of Hiroshima, she finds herself shunned by Ray's sister and by nearly everyone in the town as an American and nearly starves with food scarce. Upon his return, Ray is shocked by the conditions and is barely able to keep the family fed, even having to trade Janet's wedding ring for milk that turns out to be spoiled. With help from care packages from Janet's brother Will, who is in Tokyo serving with the occupation, and from her family in St. Louis, they are able to scrape by. Though material conditions improve, community sentiment against Janet and Norman largely do not, and they seek to return to the U.S. Though Janet and Norman are able to get passports, Ray is denied. Janet and Norman decide to go ahead and rejoin the rest of the family in St. Louis. Janet lands a job as a bookkeeper, and Norman quickly learns English and thrives as a student. After seven years, Ray finally is granted a passport and is able to rejoin the family in St. Louis, where he becomes a successful landscape architect and designer of Japanese gardens.

Though authored by Judy Mundle, a close friend and co-worker of Janet's, the book is written in Janet's first person voice. Though all of the names in the book are changed, "Janet" was known to be Janice Kiyoko Hattori Koizumi, who was ninety-nine years old when the book was published. A longtime member of the St. Louis chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League , St. Louis declared May 7, 2019 to be Janice Hattori Koizumi Day in the city. She passed away just short of her 102nd birthday in Chicago. ^[1]

Might also like: Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese-American Internment Camp by Mary Matsuda Gruenewald; Gasa Gasa Girl Goes to Camp by Lily Yuriko Nakai Havey; Kiyo's Story by Kiyo Sato