Nancy Oda: From Tule Lake to Tuna Canyon
By Ellen Endo
Sometime during the 1970s, Nancy Kyoko Oda and her father Tatsuo Inouye visited the sites of former World War II concentration camps, attending pilgrimages in Poston, Arizona, and Manzanar, California. The experience set in motion a journey that has spanned four decades and recently brought her father’s story to light.
Tatsuo, who passed away in 1999, was a fourth degree kodokan judoka judo master, poet, and business owner who lived by the eight principles of the samurai’s Bushido Code: righteousness, courage, compassion, respect, truthfulness, honor, loyalty, and self-control.
Oda helped lead a movement to recognize the Tuna Canyon Detention Station, a former WWII confinement site north of Los Angeles that held Japanese, Italian, and German immigrants without due process after the outbreak of the war.
“My parents and grandparents were shuffled like cattle when they met the train in Palmdale on May 20, 1942,”
wrote Oda in the book, Tule Lake Stockade Diary, a translation of the wartime journal that Tatsuo kept while confined in the Tule Lake Segregation Center jail from November 1943 to February 1944.
A serious illness and the passing of a loved one nearly derailed Oda’s personal mission to complete translation of the diary, but it was a commitment she had made to herself. “The story that I share is in honor of the 120,000 who suffered social injustice during World War II but also for minorities who are suffering today,” explains Oda, a retired teacher, school administrator, and past president of the San Fernando Valley Japanese American Community Center.
Her reflections of an often-painful past are offset by optimism.
“My grandchildren are children of the future in that we’re about 50 years apart. Their view of the world is important to me. I want them to also include knowledge of our history.
Decades earlier, Oda and her father began the task of transcribing his wartime diary. Tatsuo, his wife Yuriko, and two daughters were originally sent to the War Relocation Authority (concentration) camp in Poston, Arizona, but were sent to a higher security facility in Tule Lake, Northern California.
Oda sees hope in the younger generation, more specifically her four gosei grandchildren. They are all bi-racial. “I believe that they are a bridge to the future because they’re multi-cultural, multi-ethnic.”
Her eldest grandson, Alexander, is working toward his master’s degree in African American history at the University of Albany in New York with the intention to become a professor. He lived with Nancy and her husband, Kay, for three years while studying for his B.A. degree at Santa Barbara. “I guess you can’t escape history in our house,” she muses.
Grandaughter Arielle Oda
Her granddaughter, Arielle, has been accepted into the MBA program at Clemson University in North Carolina. Small in stature, Arielle became the first woman of color to play softball for Clemson, a Division 1 school. Nancy feels it is her perseverance and good spirit that will help her succeed in school and in life.
Grandson Devon is an undeclared major at the California State University at Northridge. Nancy admits that Devon surprised her when he stepped to speak at her sister’s funeral. “This was the first time I saw Grandma cry,” he said. At that moment, Nancy realized that Devon understood the importance of family.
Kyle, the youngest grandson is a 10th grader at Taft High School.
Nancy Kyoko with her parents Tatuso and Yuriko Inouye
Born in Tule Lake, she was the youngest of three daughters. Her father bestowed upon her the Japanese name Kyoko, which means “harmony” and “cooperation.” It was a gift that has shaped Nancy’s entire life.
Looking back on her family’s experience in camp, she recalls, “Although many people were able to take pictures, I had none because we were in a segregated camp.” To visualize her childhood without baby pictures, she relied on the words in a poem her father had written for her two weeks after she was born.
When she was old enough to understand the meaning behind the poem, his words became her personal mission: “to build teams, to build harmony.” She obtained her teaching credential and quickly rose from classroom teacher to administrator. She served as principal at Hubbard Elementary School in Sylmar and then was chosen to take over a new assignment, Maurice Sendak Elementary School.
Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) was an openly gay writer who created Where the Wild Things Are, one of the most beloved children’s books of all time. “It was a new school. The kids seemed to fit the book title. They were kind of wild. But I had in my mind that I could do this, and I remembered the name my father gave me. I decided to put action to the words and build teams to create harmony.”
Kay and Nancy near Castle Rock Mountain by Tule Lake
Similarly, her involvement with Tuna Canyon was foisted upon her. “(One day) Nancy Takayama called me to say, ‘We’re going to go downtown to testify at the City’s Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee. I want you to speak because you’re the president of the San Fernando Valley Japanese American Community Center.’
“You know, I very rarely refuse anything. I’ll do anything to help someone. So, that’s how it started,” Oda explains. Soon, she met Tuna Canyon advocates Kanji Sahara, Lloyd Hitt, and people with the Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress.” She listened to their rationale and agreed there was work to do.
“And then it’s meeting all these people. I didn’t know any of the people at the PLUM hearing. I didn’t know anybody on the initial committee…but they were all from different organizations in Tujunga. I had to sort that out. Figure out what’s motivating all of them and which direction do we want to go.
Nancy with her husband Kay
“(The timing) was perfect because I had just retired and I was just about ending my term as president of the SFVJACC,” Oda recalls. She had decided to translate her father’s diary but had to put it off for a while when she took on leadership of the Tuna Canyon project.
“I thought I would finish (the diary) in three years, but then Tuna Canyon was such a whirlwind, educating myself about what it was, finding documents, and so it became initially an academic study. Then it became a passion.
“You know, the kids that are in detention camps in Adelanto. This made my eyes get bigger and bigger because that’s similar to what my older sisters experienced when our father was taken away from them (during the war).
“When you see what’s happening in today’s world—70-plus years later—you realize that we haven’t learned our lesson.”
“You’re no longer intellectual. You’re passionate and you’re angry. You feel like this cannot be here. This is my America. It’s kind of dangerous, because I’m supposed to rest right now, but I think this is all happening the way it’s supposed to happen.
“All I know is that if you stand down, you’re going to lose. So, you have to stand up and do educational outreach and build a base of your own.”
When the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred in 2011, Oda had just become SFVJACC president and helped organize a fundraising event to benefit orphans in Japan. She was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun with Gold and Silver Rays from the Japanese Foreign Ministry in 2020 for helping to strengthen U.S.-Japan relations.
“I think the next generation should go to pilgrimages (to the wartime camps). Also, I think they should stand up for marginalized people. We can’t just let bad things happen. We have to shed light on (issues).