Why???

by Peter Twitchell

I have happy memories of growing up on the other side of Bethel a quarter of a mile upriver. From the old Civil Aeronautics Administration (C.A.A.), as it was called, and the Army Airforce Base on the same compound.

I was told by my mom Sarah that she and her Japanese husband Toni Sumi worked the 160 acre “Sumi Fur Farm Homestead” as it was called in the BLM records. They bought a horse and cleared the land, putting all tree stumps out so that they could plant 3 big gardens to grow vegetables to feed their mink.

They had young lads likes Art Dull Sr., Charlie Guinn working in the ice warehouse to grind raw salmon and vegetables together to feed the 500 plus mink on their fur farm.

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, all Japanese immigrants were gathered up and put in prisons called Internment Camps. Toni was taken away from Mom and placed in a camp in New Mexico called Lordsburg, N.M.

In the late 90s I ready a report in a research paper that there was over a hundred thousand Japanese interned at Lordsburg where two (2) Japanese men became sick. They report said they were executed.

Mom got her Japanese husband’s cremated ashes. Mom showed me 2 8×10 glossies of at least 200 Japanese men in white shirts and black suit jackets for an internment camp where men, women, and children were placed.

In the mid 1970s the Bethel Native Corporation deeded to me 4.9 acres of land. Why the government took her 150 acre fur farm was never explained to Mom.

In 1971 two individuals came to Mom to sign her up for land claim to which she answered, why? They’ll just take it away again!