"Please don't cry," wrote Iwao Matsushita to his wife Hanaye,
telling her he was to be interned for the duration of the war. He
was imprisoned in Fort Missoula, Montana, and she was incarcerated
at the Minidoka Relocation Center in southwestern Idaho. Their
separation would continue for more than two years. Imprisoned Apart
is the poignant story of a young teacher and his bride who came to
Seattle from Japan in 1919 so that he might study English language
and literature, and who stayed to make a home. On the night of
December 7, 1941, the FBI knocked at the Matsushitas' door and took
Iwao away, first to jail at the Seattle Immigration Stateion and
then, by special train, windows sealed and guards at the doors, to
Montana. He was considered an enemy alien, "potentially dangerous
to public safety," because of his Japanese birth and professional
associations. The story of Iwao Matsushita's determination to clear
his name and be reunited with his wife, and of Hanaye Matsushita's
growing confusion and despair, unfolds in their correspondence,
presented here in full. Their cards and letters, most written in
Japanese, some in English when censors insisted, provided us with
the first look at life inside Fort Missoula, one of the Justice
Department's wartime camp for enemy aliens. Because Iwao was fluent
in both English and Japanese, his communications are always
articulate, even lyrical, if restrained. Hanaye communicated
briefly and awkwardly in English, more fully and openly in
Japanese. Fiset presents a most affecting human story and helps us
to read between the lines, to understand what was happening to this
gentle, sensitive pair. Hanaye suffered the emotional torment of
disruption and displacement from everything safe and familiar.
Iwao, a scholarly man who, despite his imprisonment, did not falter
in his committment to his adopted country, suffered the ignominity
of suspicion of being disloyal. After the war, he worked as a
subject specialist at the University of Washington's Far Eastern
Library and served as principal of Seattle's Japanese Language
School, faithful to the Japanese American community until his death
in 1979.
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