Photo by Dorothea Lange & National Archives
Many families sent away to relocation camps could not keep up on their bills and locals had a chance to buy their properties at auction.
Even before the war Japanese-Americans suffered prejudice. Their children were not allowed to go to school with white children, and sometimes people begrudged their success in business and farming.
Bob Fletcher didn't care what his
neighbors thought. He lived in the
Tsukamoto's bunk house and worked farmers' hours, dawn to dusk, for three years.
“Never did agree with the evacuation,” Bob told The Sacramento Bee in 2010. “They were the same as anybody else. It was obvious they had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor.”
After the war, most Japanese-American farmers came home to nothing, but Marielle remembers arriving to
find her family's house just as they had left it, but newly cleaned for their homecoming by Teresa Fletcher, Bob's new wife.
Teresa lived in the bunkhouse with her husband, though she had been invited to stay in the house. The Fletcher's used only half of the farms' profits for themselves, leaving money in the bank so the relocated families could make a new start.
As is often true of people who act selflessly, Bob didn't
think he was extraordinary. “I don’t know about courage,” he told the Sacramento Bee. “It took a devil of a lot of work.”
How do we cultivate this selfless quality, where we act with generosity, do the right thing, stand up for others being persecuted and it's just all in a day's work? Let me know what you think!
