Caring for Those in Need

Caring for Those in Need. Manzanar Hospital. , Life began and ended at Manzanar. Doctors and nurses delivered 541 babies. Of the 11,070 people incarcerated here, 150 died. , , "Here people are all scared, worried, and...you can't tell them not to worry because you're in the same position... You don't know what the outcome of the war is going to be. It's just impossible to kind of counsel them. You have to console them." , - Dr. Masako Kusayanagi Miura , , The dust, poor food, and crowded conditions of Manzanar's early weeks heightened fears of serious illness or epidemic. Rose Bannai Kitahara "started working as a nurse's aide for the Public Health Department, going from barrack to barrack in the howling dust storms, around open ditches to urge residents to complete their typhoid shots." , , Initially, doctors treated patients in a single barracks without running water, adequate supplies, or equipment. Dr. Masako Kusayanagi Miura recalled only "five doctors and ten thousand people... we had old people, young people, women, children, everybody." , , In July 1942, patients, staff, and equipment finally moved into a new 250-bed hospital complex built here. In sixteen connected buildings, the hospital housed operating rooms, laboratories, pharmacy, dental and eye clinics, a morgue, and staff quarters. Over a period of 3½ years, the hospital staff treated more than 70,000 cases. , , Most hospital employees were Japanese American. The hospital offered classes in nursing, stenography, and other fields. "When I first went to Manzanar hospital to work, I didn't know any medical terminology," said Mae Kageyama Kakehashi. After the war, she continued her career as a medical stenographer. , , "Strange how hate is brewed." , - Nurse Toshiko Eto, , after the "Manzanar Riot" , , On the night of December 5, 1942, six masked men severely beat suspected FBI informant Fred Tayama in his barracks. He was brought here to the hospital. The next day, angry protesters gathered outside, determined to "finish off" Tayama, but he hid in the underside of an orthopedic bed. That night, Military Police shot ten Japanese Americans during the "Manzanar Riot." , , James Ito, 17, was killed instantly and the other men were rushed here for emergency care. Hospital orderly Paul Takagi remembered hearing Jim Kanagawa, 21, pleading "I don't want to die." Nineteen-year old Takagi quit his job. Jim Kanagawa died five days after being shot, on December 11.