Donna Sugimoto

Descendant Donna Sugimoto granddaughter of Shinsuke Sugimoto Spoke at Descanso Gardens on March 8

Descanso Gardens Talk – Saturday March 8, 2025

Hi. My name is Donna Sugimoto and I am the Board Secretary for the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition and committee member of the Marc Stirdivant Scholarship for Justice. I am the descendant of Shisnuke Sugimoto who was a detainee at Tuna Canyon.

Many of you know about the mass incarceration in U.S. concentration camps like Manzanar. We’re here with our exhibit, “Only the Oaks Remain” to teach the story of Tuna Canyon Detention Station, which began before the mass incarceration, and to show you the difference in how the prisoners ended up there.

Although my grandfather was imprisoned in Tuna Canyon, just prior Mr. Yoshimura’s detainment, I myself only learned of the detention camp’s existence nine years ago. I never heard about it in school, and my family had never spoken of it. Growing up just on the other side of the mountains in Burbank and passing its location many times, I only knew it as “Verdugo Hills Golf Course.” I even recall playing Frisbee golf there once, completely unaware of its dark past.

Years after my dad’s passing, my siblings and I were sorting through his boxes from the back of a closet. We knew our dad was imprisoned in Amache as a teen with his family during World War II, but like many who had been in the camps, he almost never talked about it. In a stack of old letters and postcards written by my grandfather, I saw TUNA CANYON DETENTION STATION stamped in blue ink on an envelope. I’d never heard of it before and became curious.

I read through the letters and after some research contacted Kyoko Oda, president of Tuna Canyon’s coalition. She told me that my grandfather’s name was indeed listed on an Honor Wall of detainees compiled by Dr. Russell Endo for the “Only the Oaks Remain” exhibit to be shown at the Japanese American National Museum. I was shocked to learn Tuna Canyon’s history and that my grandfather and so many others had been unjustly held there.

Shinsuke “Sam” Sugimoto was an Issei, first generation Japanese, born in 1884 in Kyoto, Japan. In 1906 at age 22, he immigrated from Japan to Canada, attended Western Business College, and eventually became a naturalized British Subject in Canada.

He then spent two years at Harvard, majoring in English Literature and Chemistry. By age 27 he traveled to England and Japan to live and work.

He ultimately landed in Northern California, settling in Marysville, north of Sacramento, where he met and married my grandmother in 1918. They had four children–my dad, the youngest, along with his two sisters and a brother. My grandfather supported his family through various occupations—sales, real estate, insurance, and accounting. For several years he served as the Secretary of the Japanese Association of Marysville.

In 1928 he moved his family to Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles. For almost 15 years, including the Great Depression, he was a part of the fabric of the growing Japanese community there. He was a hardworking businessman who did what he had to as a father and husband, from preparing tax returns to working as a janitor at the neighborhood YWCA. He also taught and practiced kendo—a Japanese martial art, at the local dojo.

On Feb 21, 1942 the FBI arrested my grandfather.

Though there were no formal charges, he was considered a “dangerous enemy alien” solely because he was from Japan and was involved in martial arts—He was on a list of members of a kendo organization. The life he’d worked so hard to build was stripped away, along with his freedom, due to Proclamation 2525.

He wrote in one of his letters, “Was arrested so suddenly that I had no time even to dress so my business of income tax was so untidy.” Although incarcerated he worried about the unfinished tax return for his client Mr. Wakizi.

My dad was just in high school when his father was taken away. His sisters were both recently married and living with their husbands. That left my young uncle Roy to take care of my grandmother and their family matters. I can’t even imagine how traumatic that must have been for them, and for all the other families—to be left not knowing if you would ever see your loved one again.

My grandfather, who was 5 feet tall and taking daily insulin for his diabetes, was first put into the LA County Jail, and then transported to Tuna Canyon, where there were guards in towers and barracks surrounded by barbed wire.

Tuna Canyon held community leaders of Japanese, German and Italian origin, and others targeted by the government. Doctors, reverends, teachers, fishermen…all were cruelly separated from family and freedom solely as a result of Presidential Proclamations 2525, 2526, and 2527…Guilty before proven innocent.

For weeks my grandfather was held in Tuna Canyon, uncertain about his future. He was allowed just a few short visits from his family through the barbed wire fence.

That March my grandfather was put on a train to the DOJ camp in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Mr. Yoshimura was later taken there as well, although I’m not sure if they knew one another.

When Executive Order 9066 came into effect, my grandfather, being so far away, was left helpless as his loved ones prepared for their forced “evacuation.” Each family member could only take with them what they could carry. They asked their non-Japanese landlord to hold onto some of their belongings, hoping they could one day return—a Kelvinator refrigerator, a gas heater, fans, and a few boxes of dishes, glasses, and utensils. All else was disposed of.

After three long months, Shinsuke finally had a parole hearing before being transferred out of Santa Fe. In a document I read he was asked which country he was interested in winning the war. His answer revealed his concern about more loss of lives during the war and his wish for “peace not brought about by any side ‘winning,’ but peace without victory. A negotiated peace.”

My grandfather was sent to join his family in the relocation camp at Santa Anita Racetrack. There the Sugimotos were forced to live among thousands in cramped tar paper barracks—which was considered “fortunate” since many had to live in the horse stalls.

They were later sent to Amache concentration camp in Colorado. Far from their Southern California home in Boyle Heights, they tolerated harsh camp life in extreme weather conditions for nearly three years.

I wish I could tell you that my grandfather was a survivor of this long and dark chapter in America’s history. But four years after he was first taken to Tuna Canyon, and after suffering two strokes while in Amache, my grandfather died, still a prisoner, at age 61. — He never saw his freedom again.

Sadly, I never had the opportunity to know him. I only know his story through his letters, photos, and artifacts, a trip to the National Archives, and through Tuna Canyon historian Dr. Endo’s extensive research.

FBI files from the National Archives show that the US government later questioned if he should have been arrested and detained in the first place. Presidential Proclamation 2525 applied to “Japanese citizens over the age of 14” who were living in the US. He was a naturalized British citizen.

In the exhibit you’ll see a photo of one of three of my grandfather’s handkerchiefs filled with signatures in kanji by prisoners in Santa Fe. The hand-painted purple iris flower in the center seems fitting, here in the gardens. While I don’t think that Mr. Yoshimura signed it, 11 signatures are from men who were also prisoners of Tuna Canyon.

That handkerchief is now at the Smithsonian, along with his other artifacts. Some items have already been displayed in the National Museum of American History, and they are now part of their online collection where they can contribute to the larger story of this time.

What happened at Tuna Canyon is still so relevant today!

Gathered here under these oaks, similar to the ones at Tuna Canyon, we can remember and honor the thousands of lives that were abruptly altered forever.

The barbed wire, guard towers, and barracks of Tuna Canyon are all gone. But we’ve been able to get Historical Cultural Monument #1039 status and our hopes for the Tuna Canyon site is to be properly memorialized and to create an inspirational and educational setting for all people to visit, reflect on its tragic past, and build a brighter future for our nation. We hope to teach current and future generations its history so that something like what happened to those held at Tuna Canyon never happens to anyone again.

Unfortunately today a private developer owns the site, and its destiny is in limbo. You’ll see only an abandoned golf course overgrown with weeds. But if you look past the neglect, you can visualize those resilient community leaders like Fred Waichi Yoshimura and my grandfather, Shinsuke “Sam” Sugimoto, and all the others who lived among the oak trees that still remain.

Those old oaks know the truth. And, now you do too.

Thank you.