Petaluma man speaking at event recalling Japanese American WWII deportees

It’s well known that after the United States made a sudden entry into World War II following Japan’s attack in 1941, more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up and sent to interment camps.

Henry Kaku, a Petaluma resident, is keen to talk about the thousands of those detainees who resisted being locked up and ordered to swear their unconditional loyalty to the U.S., and for that were sent to Japan. Among the deportees were Kaku’s parents, both native-born American citizens.

On Saturday in Sebastopol, Kaku will speak at a Day of Remembrance hosted by the Sonoma County chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League.

The event starts at ?2 p.m. at the Enmanji Buddhist Temple on Gravenstein Highway South. It will begin with the screening of the one-hour documentary film, “Resistance at Tule Lake.”

Directed by Konrad Aderer, the film tells of the incarcerated Japanese Americans, ?most of them residents of the West Coast, who defied the injustices inflicted upon them at the Tule Lake Segregation Center.

“They were a minority within a minority,” Kaku, 70, a substitute teacher, origami master and judo instructor who for years managed the gift shop at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, said of his parents.

For resisting interment, his parents and his older sister, then an infant, were stripped of their American citizenship and in March of 1946 were shipped to Japan. Kaku was born there in 1948.

“When I was born I was stateless. I did not have a country,” he said.

Following the screening of the documentary, Sonoma County history author and Press Democrat columnist Gaye LeBaron will moderate a conversation by Kaku and James Okamura.

Both had family members locked away at Tule Lake, where acts of resistance included rioting.

Kaku will speak about the outrage felt and displayed by internees including his father, who was born in California and had joined the U.S. Army prior to America’s entry into the war. With the Japanese attack on American forces in and near Oahu, he was discharged from the Army, and then he and his family and about 5,000 others were shipped to the internment camp at Tule Lake.

His son said the family was allowed to return to the United States and resume their lives as Americans in 1956.