Bill Izumi Nakagawa, an architect from Washington, testified before the Commission about his family’s forced removal, their losses, and his own journey from the assembly centers to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. His words drew from diary entries kept at the time, offering a vivid picture of daily life under incarceration.

• Life Before the War: Lived with his family on a 25-acre truck farm in Bingen, Washington, across the Columbia River from Hood River, Oregon. Owned farming equipment, vehicles, and boats, all sold off at a fraction of their value under evacuation orders.

• Cultural Fear: His mother burned her beloved Japanese records, fearing they might cause trouble. Their spring cabbage crop, nearly ready for harvest, was left to rot in the fields.

• Evacuation at 19: On his birthday in May 1942, he and 600 others boarded trains from Hood River to Pinedale Assembly Center in California. He described the exhaustion of the train ride and first impressions of camp life in diary entries.

• Work and Wages: Began working at Pinedale, enduring 110-degree heat for $4.99 a half month. He saved his first paycheck as evidence of their meager pay. Later transferred to Tule Lake, then Jerome in Arkansas.

• Camp Conditions: Food was monotonous — “lamb stew, lamb stew, and lamb stew.” Despite hardships, he witnessed meetings where young men volunteered for the U.S. Army, defying block managers who questioned their loyalty.

• Military Service: Passed his physical in Chicago but was restricted to the infantry due to discrimination. Joined the 442nd Regimental Combat Team; his brother Kiyoshi served in Military Intelligence.

• After the War: Returned with no farm to go back to, settling in Kingsburg, California. His mother passed away young at 57, which he attributed to the strain of repeated uprooting.

• On Injustice: Declared three main wrongs — the evacuation of U.S. citizens, the reclassification of draft status from 1-A to “enemy alien,” and the denial of his right to choose his military branch.

• Redress Demands: Urged resettlement of unpaid claims from 1948, fair monetary compensation including for time lost in camp, and inclusion of incarceration in U.S. history textbooks so future generations would learn from the injustice.