The Evacuation Diary of Hatsuye Egami (book)

Translation of the wartime diary of Hatsuye Egami, who carefully describes her experiences and observations while incarcerated at Tulare Assembly Center during World War II.

This volume begins with an introduction by the editor, Claire Gorfinkel, whose father was one of the attorneys who assisted Japanese Americans filing for losses immediately after World War II. Through her affiliation with the American Friends Service Committee , she helped to organize a number of exhibits displaying documents and artifacts demonstrating the AFSC's support of Japanese Americans during the war. She was given sections of the diary of Hatsuye Egami during this time.

The rest of the book is Hatsuye Egami's diary, translated into English from Japanese by James Sakoda , a Berkeley student who was involved in sociological research of Japanese American incarceration. The diary begins with the day Egami, her husband, three daughters, and a son were forcibly removed from the Southern California city of Pasadena to Tulare Assembly Center. She shares her observations about the journey from Pasadena to Tulare; her first impressions of the assembly center; how she attempted to transform their barracks into a comfortable living space; her eldest daughter's relationship and engagement with a neighborhood boy who had been sent to Manzanar ; and various other observations of life in the assembly center.

Hatsuye Egami was an Issei woman who immigrated to the United States at 21. She was called over by her uncle who was a Baptist minister; her father was also a Baptist minister in Japan. By the time Pearl Harbor was attacked, she was married with four children.