Bringing the Marginalized into Conversations about American Raciality - Erin Kane - Keely Gaeta - Emily Norris

“Concentration Camps and a Growing Awareness of Race" Diane Fujino

The Crusaders originated in Yuri Kochiyama's Sunday school class of teenage girls in the Santa Anita Assembly Center, a converted horse stable turned internment camp. All of the girls in the Sunday school class wanted to do something related to service. It started out small, but when the letter writing campaign began, the small group of 5 girls grew into 60. "What do we do now?" was the question on their minds. The answer was to begin writing letters to Nisei soldiers. "Every Sunday, girls would come in with new names and addresses obtained from people in [their] camp. As time went on, the letter writing campaign expanded to Japanese American orphans and tuberulosis patients. After leaving Santa Anita, the Crusaders began to establish other letter writing campaigns at the camps they were dispersed to. The inability to establish campaigns was due to a "lack of advisors". This indicated that Yuri was the glue that held the Crusaders together. While all active in the letter writing campaigns were extremely important in keeping Nisei soldiers in connection with their communities back in the U.S., Yuri's spirit was ingrained in the soul of the Crusaders. She was able to organize younger children into Junior Crusaders and Junior Junior Crusaders. At the Jerome camp she was sent to, Yuri had a column "Nisei in Khaki" published in the camp newsletter the Denson Tribune. Her efforts were crucial in strengthening the Japanese American sentiment during a time of discrimination and uncertainty.

"That note came at an opportune moment, in the midst of our fighting somewhere in Italy and to think that your are all back of us and boosting, means a terrible lot to us" "Sure, we may grumble and gripe to ourselves at times, but we know that the status of our families back home in Hawaii, as well as you people on the mainland, depends a great deal on our showing here, so we take it and we like it" "You can rest assured that with all your backing we won't fail you and the public in any way"

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