Camp Santa Fe Poetry Group, 1943-44 www.ManyMountains.org

Beginning in January 2006, sixteen second through sixth graders learned for weeks about the Casa Solana neighborhood located near their school and its historical significance as the site of a Japanese internment camp during World War II. The Casa Solana project was one of nearly 20 Student-Produced Operas undertaken by The Santa Fe Opera and partner schools during 2005/2006. Working with classroom teachers and artists-in-residence selected and trained by the Opera, students researched a subject in depth, then wrote and performed their own opera based on what they’ve learned. Andrea Fellows Walters (Director of Education and Outreach for The Santa Fe Opera), Acushla Bastible (Artistic Manager of the Student-Produced Opera Program), Artist-in-Residence Julie Trujillo, Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Leslie Carpenter, Carlos Gilbert Elementary Principal Kristy Janda and classroom teachers Kathy Shapiro and Kathy Byrnes formed a team to help the Carlos Gilbert students research the subject in depth and their academic and artistic endeavors. With this support, students met with New Mexico State Archivist Dr. Estevan Rael-Galvez to learn how to use resources like maps, photos and written materials available from the New Mexico State Archives.

One day in late February, the students took an afternoon field trip to pound some pavement (and a lot of dust) around the actual site of Camp Santa Fe. First stop: the dog park. Due to Santa Fe’s strict leash laws, there is really only one place dogs can run free and that place is a zig-zag of dusty trails with an expansive southeastern view of the city and the entire Casa Solana neighborhood. At the top of this hill is a granite memorial with a plaque that honors the memory of the men of Japanese descent who spent the duration of World War II in forced confinement at Camp Santa Fe.

Lonesome Moon by Tameichi Wada, Camp Santa Fe, January 1944 www.ManyMountains.org

The children gathered around the rock and listened to Dr. Rael-Galvez. “What is a memorial?” he asked. “Something that stands out in a landscape to remember something.” Dr. Galvez began by asking the children to think of their birthdays. On the same date every year their families bake them a cake or bring them presents. He drew the comparison between these familiar days of remembrance and the commemoration of history in general. “History,” he said, “is living. It’s what you do every day.”

The history of Camp Santa Fe began right after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, when the FBI started to round up the families of issei (Japanese-born American) living in the western United States. Most of the nearly 100,000 detainees were sent to camps run by the newly created War Relocation Administration; Camp Santa Fe, however, was one of four camps run by the Department of Justice to house “potentially dangerous enemy aliens.” Its residents were mainly middle-aged men who held prominent positions in Japanese-American communities, such as Buddhist and Shinto priests, bankers, artists, journalists and language teachers. They were treated as prisoners of war in the camps, which operated according to the rules of the Geneva Convention.

Built up from an old Civilian Conservation Corps barracks, Camp Santa Fe was expanded to accommodate 2,000 detainees. The camp was surrounded by 12-foot-high barbed wire fence that was patrolled by dogs and armed guards. Guards were also given balsa sticks, but these proved more a source of humor than intimidation as the sticks broke whenever they came in contact with solid objects.

A week before the first detainees arrived in March, 1942, The New Mexican warned local readers: “The holding of a large number of enemy aliens in this area is far more dangerous than the detention of criminals at the state penitentiary.” However, life in and around the camp, referred to by the detainees as San Ta He, meaning “Many Mountains Surrounding,” was peaceful. The men, whose average age was 52, organized baseball teams, golf tournaments and Sumo wrestling contests, published a one-page daily newspaper, staged Kabuki plays and string orchestra concerts, built Japanese-style bathtubs and raised enough vegetables to trade the surplus to a local military hospital for fish.

At first some of the detainees were allowed to leave the camp to take on small construction projects for the police or the army. This practice ended when the first New Mexican soldiers returned home with stories of Japanese cruelty and the horrors of POW camps in Japan. With public opinion turned so vehemently against them, the internees (who, at peak periods, comprised 10% of Santa Fe’s population) were no longer allowed to leave the grounds. Santa Feans had to be persuaded not to mob Camp Santa Fe, finally convinced by the logic that Japan’s mistreatment of American POWs would increase if the detainees were harmed.

Few modern-day residents know there was an internment camp located in one of their still and sunny neighborhoods. On the blustery February day in 2006, a few of the older girls from Carlos Gilbert Elementary lingered in front of the memorial after the group moved on. When asked their opinion on internment camps, the students demonstrated thoughtfulness and a surprising amount of knowledge. Pearl talked about the people who were interned merely because they looked Japanese. Sarah spoke up about the two American-born Japanese men who died in the camp. She added, “We used to call them aliens ‘cause they weren’t like us.” Daria, a second-grader, vacillated, “I don’t think internment camps are good. Except if it’s for war.”

More than 60 years after the last prisoner left Camp Santa Fe, the children of the city gathered to honor their memory. On May 17, 2006, the students at Carlos Gilbert Elementary performed their own opera entitled The Face of the Enemy. Using the operatic form, which incorporates nearly every other artistic discipline, they were able to understand and communicate a subject that deals with far-reaching cultures, locales and implications. The children entered carrying suitcases emblazoned with words that were choreographed into sentences like “JAPS GO HOME” and “YOU ARE NOT WANTED.” Each child sang, danced and recited historical facts in what was ultimately a touching story told from the internees’ point of view. The gym of Carlos Gilbert Elementary was packed with parents, community members, and even some of those who remembered the camp. The project succeeded not only in content and performance, but, most importantly, in the way that those who were present are likely to look very differently at their own backyards.

This project was made possible due in part to a grant awarded by the History Channel to the The New Mexico Office of the State Historian in Santa Fe. This “Save Our History” grant allowed The Santa Fe Opera and Carlos Gilbert Elementary School to partner for a “Here in Our Backyards” project. It was one of 26 “Here in Our Backyards” projects around the country that encouraged communities to take an active role in the preservation of their histories.