Title
Ritsuko Terayama and Sumiko Furuta at window of ferry crossing Puget Sound, 1942
Preview
Creation Date
1942
Description
This image shows Ritsuko Terayama (left) and Sumiko Furuta (right) looking out the ferry window as the cross Puget Sound on their way to an incarceration camp. Civilian Exclusion Order No. 1 was issued at Bainbridge Island, ordering 227 residents of Japanese descent to leave with six days' notice. They departed by ferry on March 30, 1942. The island had a total of 276 Japanese American residents at the time; those who were away from the island at the time due to study, military service, or other business were not permitted to return. After their forced removal from Bainbridge Island, they were sent to Puyallup, then to Manzanar War Relocation Center in California.
Sumiko's brothers Arthur and Noboru served in the US Army during WWII, despite their families' incarceration. Arthur served in the 442nd Infantry Regiment, an all-Japanese American unit. The 442nd became the most decorated unit in US military history for its size.
On February 19, 1942, shortly after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and United States entry into WWII, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, calling for the exclusion of all civilians of Japanese descent from "designated military areas." In March 1942 Japanese Americans living on Bainbridge Island were the first in the country to be taken from their homes by the federal government because they were considered a threat to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard on the Kitsap Peninsula. More than 9,000 Japanese and Japanese American people living in the Pacific Northwest were forced into incarceration, most at the isolated Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho, until 1945.
Caption information source: Email exchange with Constance Williams, Sumiko Furuta's daughter, April 2021
Rights
MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, PI28056 https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/imlsmohai/id/3685/rec/58