Japanese internees want you to remember when they were incarcerated at the LA County Fairgrounds

Bacon Sakatani can’t help but laugh when he remembers reporting to Covina Park with only what he could carry 74 years ago.

“It just didn’t hit me at that time,” Sakatani said on a recent afteoon in his West Covina home. “I think I took a baseball glove.”

As a result of Executive Order 9066 signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Feb. 19, 1942, Sakatani, his family and more than 5,000 other men, women and children of Japanese descent were bused to the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona where they were detained for three months before being sent to an intement camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming for the remainder of World War II.

Sakatani was 12 years old at the time. As an adult, he came to understand what is considered one of the most serious injustices by the American govement.

Resting his chin in his hand, the 86-year-old shook his head.

“We accepted all this and we said we had to prove our loyalty,” Sakatani said almost in disbelief. “I don’t know. They really brainwashed us to think like that.”

Now, he and 26 other Pomona inteees and descendants are working with the Pomona Historical Society and the Los Angeles County Fair Association to erect a plaque at the fairgrounds to recognize the role it played during the war and the Japanese intement.

It was one of 13 temporary detention centers in Califoia used to confine Japanese-Americans until more permanent war relocation camps, such as those in Manzanar and Tule Lake, were built. In 1980, the centers were named state landmarks and while most now bear a memorial plaque acknowledging their significance, Pomona is one of only a few sites with no trace or mention of the war.

“A very important historic event occurred there, and it should be recorded and let the people know exactly just what happened there before it’s forgotten,” Sakatani said. “Probably most of the people in this area have no idea what occurred there.”

Dwight Richards, vice president of operations for the fairgrounds association, said the fair is open to creating some kind of a memorial. He plans to meet with Sakatani and representatives from the historical society next week to discuss a plan to make it happen.

“There’s nothing on grounds recognizing it,” Richards said. “It’s not something that we’re super proud of, but this was a different time and a different era, and the fairgrounds has a pretty rich history.”

At the fairgrounds, Sakatani, his mother and four brothers and sisters slept on canvas bags full of straw in a small wooden barrack. They were later joined by his father who had been taken away soon after the Dec. 7 attack at Pearl Harbor and sent to a little-known detention center in Tujunga for civilians classed as enemies of the United States.

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When Sakatani talks about their time in Pomona, he doesn’t use the word “live” to describe the daily routine inside the chain-linked fences and barbed wire.

“It was not normal living,” he said.

There was a mess hall where all inteees waited in an hour long line to be fed. They abided by a curfew and were subjected to a bed check.

Still, the inteees tried to create some semblance of a community.

They set up baseball teams and held a weekly talent show. A newspaper called Pomona Center News was circulated throughout the camp.

“We just made the best of it,” Sakatani said. It wasn’t until much later that he realized his freedom had been taken away.

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, pausing for a moment. “We were the wrong race.”

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