Paramus Post | When Japanese-Americans were interned, an outraged librarian made sure the children weren't forgotte

Although not an Okie -- this librarian would have made Ruth Brown proud.
Paramus Post - Local News and Lifestyle Webzine - When Japanese-Americans were interned, an outraged librarian made sure the children weren't forgotten

Clara Breed was an Iowa-born preacher's daughter who grew up to be a librarian, not the kind of background normally associated with someone who rocks the boat. But these were not normal times.

On this day - Feb. 19 - in 1942, two months after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order clearing the way for some 120,000 U.S. residents of Japanese descent to be evicted from their homes and imprisoned.

Breed, the 35-year-old head of the children's department at San Diego's downtown library, was quietly outraged. She knew many of the local residents affected by the order; the kids came in to get books all the time. She marveled at how respectful and loyal they were.

Most of them - about 70 percent - were American citizens, born here. They were no more a threat than she was, Breed believed.

But few shared her warm feelings. About 2,400 American servicemen had been killed at Pearl Harbor, with thousands more injured, and many people on the West Coast feared another sneak attack. They clamored for the president's eviction order to be enforced, especially after a Japanese submarine shelled an oil field near Santa Barbara, Calif., in late February.

On April 1, notices were posted on telephone poles, doors and walls throughout San Diego: "All persons of Japanese ancestry" had one week to get their affairs in order before they would be evacuated. It may have been April Fool's Day, but it was no joke.

They sold what they could, stored treasures with sympathetic friends, and abandoned the rest. When their time was up, they took only what they could carry, and headed to the train station for destinations unknown. In all, more than 1,100 Nikkei were forced out of San Diego.

According to a new book about Breed, the librarian felt she had to do something, especially for the children. At the library, and then at the train station on evacuation day, she handed out postcards with her home address and urged the kids to let her know how they were doing.

"You said once that you were afraid of dissension among the Japanese," she wrote in a letter to one of the youngsters who was leaving. "I have moments of being afraid of America. I want so much to have her live up to your unshaken belief in her."

Breed was being a friend to the evacuees, but once a librarian always a librarian. No matter where they wound up, she promised she would send books...