Beyond the barbed wire, a string of skinny goldens
By Darrell Kunitomi, Special to The Times
Darrell Kunitomi is an avid fly fisherman who lives in Echo Park.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-os-escape20apr20,0,5338212.story


-

Heihachi Ishikawa was 53 when he was interred at Manzanar in 1942, and although
he's dead, his exploits live on and should serve as an inspiration to thousands
of anglers preparing for Saturday's opening of the Eastern Sierra trout-fishing
season.

-


The angler in this photograph has no smile and no first name known to us. He's
remembered only as Ishikawa, Fisherman ¡ª a sweet and haunting mystery from a
dark chapter in U.S. history.

Toyo Miyatake made this portrait during World War II at the Manzanar War
Relocation Center. It is on display at the Eastern California Museum in
Independence, Calif., with other images that Miyatake made inside the camp.

No one knows exactly how Ishikawa slipped away to go fishing. He holds the only
evidence of his travels, freedom in a string of trout. His portrait embodies the
vibe of Cole Porter's 1944 song "Don't Fence Me In."

Oh give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above

Don't fence me in

Ishikawa had the face of those who "suddenly and deliberately" attacked Pearl
Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Within three months, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed
Executive Order 9066 authorizing the internment of Japanese Americans.
Two-thirds were American citizens. Manzanar, 220 miles north of Los Angeles, was
the first of 10 camps constructed of wood and tar paper. FDR called them
concentration camps.

Manzanar would house 10,000 people and become the biggest city between Los
Angeles and Reno for the duration of the war. Ninety percent of its residents
came from the Los Angeles area. There were some newlyweds too, Jack and Masa
Kunitomi, my parents.

The curtain of time obscures Ishikawa's full identity. Archie Miyatake, the
photographer's son, recalls Ishikawa. "He lived in our block, but I never knew
his first name. He fished a lot. He was gone for two weeks at a time."

The War Relocation Authority recorded 156 Ishikawas throughout the 10 camps;
seven men his age, with that name, were at Manzanar. The man in Archie's block
had a birth date of 1899, making him around 55 at mid-war. His first name was
Heihachi, but we can't be sure he's the fisherman.

Send me off forever, but I ask you please,

Don't fence me in

Ishikawa found himself between a rock (Mt. Whitney, highest point in the Lower
48) and a hard place (Badwater in Death Valley, the lowest). He must have looked
at the six-strand barbed-wire fence and dreamed and schemed, finally obsessing.
And he left.

"He must have gone at night," says the younger Miyatake. "That's what we did.
But we only went up the stream, Shepherd Creek. We didn't go where he went."
Native American guide Richard Stewart says, "No one knows exactly where he
went."

Perhaps a guard dozed when Ishikawa snaked past the machine guns and rifles in
the towers, climbed the alluvial fans through scrub brush, then followed an
ancient Paiute trail in Shepherd Canyon that eased the nearly vertical pitch of
the Sierran escarpment.

The fine brace he displays are the state fish, the riotously hued golden trout
that exist at high elevations. Ishikawa may have fished the lakes at 11,000
feet, where there is but sky and rock, water and ice, where every granitic ledge
is as sharp as a 1950s Cadillac fin.

It is a supremely spare landscape, mind-bending, almost psychedelic in the
scarce air. It has the stark beauty of a Zen garden, the perfect retreat for a
prisoner of his ancestry. He went a ways to find it: He left the wire behind at
3,900 feet.

These are trophy-size goldens. They're a species known for overpopulating and
having stunted growth. He must be holding lake fish, fish that have wintered
over a few years but bear snaky bodies and oversized heads. There isn't much for
a fish to eat where Ishikawa explored.

So he caught a bunch, probably with grasshoppers ¡ª that irresistible trout bait
¡ª then lugged the catch down the mountain and back through the wire. Miyatake
then took the photo inside the camp. He also took the memory of Ishikawa's first
name with him when he died in 1979.

Others tell fish tales earned by slipping away from camps like Heart Mountain,
hard by the side of the Shoshone River in Wyoming. But no man seems to have gone
so far, so high and so alone as Ishikawa, Fisherman.

Ishikawa must have felt he was on the roof of the world, compared to his
government quarters below at Manzanar. I hope he found peace of mind and the
happy loneliness common to solitary fishers. Local lore tells of Japanese
characters inscribed on rocks up there. Maybe he left us his first name on the
rocks of the Sierra.

I want to ride to the ridge where the West commences,

Gaze at the moon till I lose my senses

In my mind's eye I see him sitting by a fire miles above the camp his country
forced him into. He's picking at a golden he's cooked, wrapped in grasses,
encased in mud, steamed to succulent perfection in the coals. He's using pine
twigs as chopsticks.

His fire lights the boulders around him, and he's made a bed of soft pine boughs
and will sleep with only a wool blanket issued by Uncle Sam. Maybe he smiles at
the heavens above.

He's all alone under the Milky Way. He's watching shooting stars. And, as the
poet said, he looks up in perfect silence, free.

----------

"Ishikawa, Fisherman" is on display through Aug. 1 at the Eastern California
Museum in Independence, Calif. It's part of a 76-photo exhibition titled
"Personal Responsibility: The Camp Photographs of Toyo Miyatake."


=======================


Internment camp detainees risked all to fish
By Ed Zieralski (Contact) Union-Tribune Staff Writer
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/mar/21/1s21outdoors222557-internment\
-camp-detainees-riske/


He was known as ¡°Ishikawa Fisherman,¡± a seemingly mythical person who
disappeared for weeks at a time and returned with a stringer of trout.

But Heihachi Ishikawa actually was a legendary and brave Japanese-American who
would risk his life and sneak out of the well-guarded Manzanar World War II
internment camp north of Lone Pine to go fishing.

Ishikawa's mini-journeys from the mundane life in the relocation camp took him
high into the Sierra where he created his own adventures with handmade fishing
gear and caught California's golden trout.
For 65 years, a photo taken of Ishikawa by fellow Manzanar internee Toyo
Miyatake was the only photographic evidence that more than 150 of the Manzanar
internees ¡°escaped¡± camp to go fishing. Manzanar was the first of 10
internment camps that housed an estimated 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were
forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast at the start of World War
II. From March 31, 1942 to Nov. 21, 1945, Manzanar would hold more than 11,000
internees.

Ishikawa's incredible story of living off the land in the hard Sierra mountain
range for a couple of weeks at a time is one of many incredible stories of
survival that make up Cory Shiozaki's work in progress. Shiozaki's partially
completed documentary, ¡°From Barbed Wire to Barbed Hooks,¡± will preserve the
stories of how Japanese-Americans used their ingenuity and called on their
bravery to fish Sierra streams and lakes.

¡°The most important message I got after getting all the oral histories and
experiences of the internees is how they were able to endure,¡± said Shiozaki,
59, a film maker from Gardena. ¡°The fabric of their character was like bamboo.
They bent, but they bounced back and rebounded. There is an expression in
Japanese, 'shigataganai,' which loosely translated means, 'it can't be helped.'
They embraced that and found a way to live through it. That, more than anything,
has inspired me to continue this project and has made me proud of my
Japanese-American heritage.¡±

Shiozaki will display photos, fishing equipment made in the camp and other items
from Manzanar at next week's Fred Hall Fishing Tackle and Boat Show which runs
Wednesday through Sunday at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. He said he has exhausted a
$30,000 grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program that
enabled him to begin the project. Now he seeks funding so he can finish it.
¡°I'm determined to get this done, one way or the other,¡± Shiozaki said. Even
though his parents were in internment camps, Shiozaki didn't learn of the camps
until he read about them in a U.S. history class in high school. He later used
Manzanar as the subject for his senior film project at Long Beach State.

¡°When I first heard about them I was angry because this country took over
120,000 Japanese-Americans out of their homes and businesses without due
process,¡± Shiozaki said. ¡°And then after 9-11, it did the same thing to 5,000
Arab Americans, incarcerated them based on their ethnicity. Freedom is not
free.¡±

These days, Shiozaki is a docent at Manzanar. He also developed a lecture, tour
and artifacts exhibit about the lives of the Manzanar anglers. This year marks
the 40th anniversary of the annual pilgrimage to Manzanar, an event that usually
coincides with the Sierra Trout Opener. Shiozaki gives walking tours that
weekend and also serves as historian for the Manzanar Committee, a non-profit
organization that also is sponsoring his documentary. He said any donation or
sponsorship to help him finish his documentary would be tax-deductible.

Shiozaki has been an avid Eastern Sierra trout angler since 1994. He figures he
once spent 50 to 100 days a year in the Sierra. He guided fishermen from 2004 to
2008 and worked at the tackle shop at Crowley Lake.

¡°I noticed a whole bunch of Japanese-Americans up there fishing,¡± Shiozaki
said. ¡°I'd passed Manzanar over 1,000 times, and I wondered if there was some
connection to Manzanar, if somehow some of these fishermen's first experience
trout fishing was at Manzanar.¡±
When Manzanar opened as a National Historical Site in 2004, complete with an
interpretive center, Shiozaki began asking if any of the surviving internees had
fished. That started his journey. He heard tales of how one internee was shot at
while trying to sneak out to fish. Another angler died in a blizzard when he
turned the wrong way heading back to camp. They risked their lives because, as
one of them, Archie Miyatake of Montebello, son of famous still photographer
Toyo Miyatake, said: the air just ¡°smelled better¡± outside the camp when they
were fishing.




================


Ishikawa Fisherman
http://home.earthlink.net/~fearnotrout/id5.html


Probably the most remarkable person that I have found during my research of this
project was a man who took the challenge that only few men would attempt to do
even by todays standards and that is to pursue the "Golden Trout".

This man's identity has been a mystery for decades and he is only known by his
family name of "Ishikawa". This man lived in the same block as the famed
photographer Toyo Miyatake who lived in Block 20, Barrack 12, Apartment 4. This
man's first name is believed to be "Heihachi" because records show there was a
man by that name in the Manzanar registry who was about his age presumably in
his mid 50's. This man was known only as "Ishikawa Fisherman" among his fellow
internees and became somewhat of a legend in Manzanar because he would leave the
camp for weeks at a time carrrying only scarce amount of rations in his trek to
go after the "golden trout". It is presumed that he must have had to catch a lot
of trout to survive being away from the camp the weeks he was out. There was no
way he could carried enough provisions to sustain life without living off the
land.

I could only envision this man fishing in solitude high in elevation over
12,000' and being closer to the heavens then the rest of internees who were
stuck within the confines of the barbed wire below. I can also imagine this man
having to drop down below the snow line to timberline to cook his trout on an
open fire enjoying his brief moments of freedom.

Archie Miyatake recalls the day that his father Toyo took this photo. Upon
returning to camp, Toyo who was a trout fisherman before he was interned saw
"Ishikawa Fisherman" with trout that he had never seen before. He was so
impressed with its beauty, he detained Mr. Ishikawa while he ran to get his
cameras. Not only did he take a phtograph in black and white but he also shot
some color Kodachrome photos of his catch. During this time, color film was
extremely difficult to come by but Toyo was not going to let a once in a
lifetime photo opportunity slip by.
==============


T¨­y¨­ Miyatake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_Miyatake


T¨­y¨­ Miyatake (ŒmÎä–|Ñó,[1] Miyatake T¨­y¨­; 1896¨C1979) was a Japanese
American photographer, best known for his photographs documenting the Japanese
American people and the Japanese American internment at Manzanar during WWII.

Life
Miyatake was born in Kagawa, Shikoku in Japan in 1896. In 1909 he migrated to
the United States to join his father. He settled in the Little Tokyo section of
Los Angeles, California.

With an interest in arts - most notably, photography, which he studied under
Harry K. Shigeta[2] - Miyatake began associating with the local arts community.
In 1923 he bought his photo studio. Miyatake encouraged fellow photographer
Edward Weston to exhibit his work and Miyatake is credited as giving Weston his
first gallery showing.[citation needed]

At the time Miyatake met his future wife, it was his brother that was courting
her. He began spending time with her under the guise that he was using her as a
model. His brother was crushed and it is said that he "died of a broken heart"
at an early age.[citation needed]

Before WWII, Miyatake's photography won awards[citation needed] as he
photographed various personalities.

During WWII Miyatake was interned at Manzanar relocation camp in the Owens
Valley. He smuggled a camera lens into the camp and constructed a camera body
from wood. The pictures he secretly took at the camp are the only ones that show
the plight of US Citizens detained in the camps during the war.[citation needed]

After the war, the family returned to Los Angeles, where their home had been
entrusted to some of their white friends during the internment. Unlike many
families who lost their homes, the Miyatakes were able to resume their life and
also provided shelter to a few less fortunate internees and their families. In
post-war Little Tokyo, many residents were unable to afford Miyatake's services
and some opted instead to barter goods to have him photograph weddings and
portraits. With his wife Hiro running the front office, she once negotiated his
services for a Steinway piano and another time, she negotiated for a litter of
poodles.[citation needed]

After the death of his wife Hiro in 1971, Miyatake moved from his home on Third
Street in East Los Angeles to live in neighboring Monterey Park, with his
daughter and her family.

He remained active in the studio throughout this period. In the early morning,
Miyatake could be seen walking around Monterey Highlands Elementary School for
exercise. The last image he captured on film was taken at this park. The film
was discovered and processed after his death.[citation needed]

Before his death in 1979, Miyatake and Ansel Adams produced a book together
called Two Views of Manzanar, a compilation of their photographs during the
internment.

Offspring
All of Miyatake's children were involved in photography and the family business.
Archie, the eldest son, ran the family studio after T¨­y¨­'s death in 1979.
Robert Miyatake worked in the studio and later opened his own photographic color
lab in South Pasadena, California. Richard (Tabo) worked in the family studio as
well and left to work in photographic production. Youngest child and only
daughter, Minnie, also worked in the studio performing clerical and
business-related duties. A handful of Miyatake's grandchildren continue the
tradition to this day.[

Toyo Miyatake
The Toyo Miyatake Studio moved in 1985 to San Gabriel, California, where it
still operates today. The studio is now managed by grandson, Alan Miyatake.[3]

Miscellaneous
One of Miyatake's prized possessions was his white 1957 Ford Thunderbird, which
now belongs to his youngest grandson, Mark Takahashi.[citation needed]

Miyatake was easily recognizable in Little Tokyo, wearing his trademark black
beret and bowtie.[citation needed]

In the TV movie Farewell to Manzanar, Pat Morita portrays Zenahiro, a character
based on Miyatake.[citation needed]

In 2002, Robert A. Nakamura made the film, Toyo Miyatake: Infinite Shades of
Gray, documenting the photographer's life and work.

In 2009, the film, Toyo's Camera was released, documenting the internment of
Japanese Americans during World War II through the perspective of the
photographer's images. Narrated by George Takei, music by Kitaro.
http://www.toyoscamera.com/


===========


Toyo Miyatake
Photographer (1895-1979)
http://www.discovernikkei.org/wiki/index.php/Toyo_Miyatake


Toyo Miyatake (1895-1979) was a leading figure in the Los Angeles Little Tokyo
area and a noted photographic artist. He was born in Kagawa, Japan and
immigrated to the United States in 1909 to join his father. At age 21 he took up
the study of photography.

In 1923 Miyatake purchased the Toyo Photo Studio, which coincidentally bore his
own name. He became an established photographer, associating with photographers
such as Edward Weston and winning prizes in exhibitions including the 1926
London International Photography Exhibition.

In 1932 he photographed the Olympic Games in Los Angeles for the Asahi Shimbun
and eventually started his own studio. During World War II, the Miyatakes were
sent to Manzanar concentration camp. After the war, Miyatake reopened his studio
in Little Tokyo and worked as a freelance photographer for the Rafu Shimpo
newspaper, the largest Japanese American newspaper in the United States.


========


For some Manzanar internees, trout fishing symbolized freedom, adventure
Pete Thomas
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/outposts/fishing/


Heihachi Ishikawa was 53 when he was interred at Manzanar in 1942, and although
he's dead, his exploits live on and should serve as an inspiration to thousands
of anglers preparing for Saturday's opening of the Eastern Sierra trout-fishing
season.

Those are golden trout on Ishikawa's stringer; they were captured in the high
country by a determined fisherman who went under the barbed-wire fence and hiked
to or beyond the 10,000-foot Sierra crest, and spent days camping and fishing.

Despite limited funding, Cory Shiozaki is nearing completion of a documentary
about the estimated 300 to 400 Manzanar internees who would sneak past guards
under the cloak of darkness to fish nearby creeks and far-flung lakes. The
project is entitled "From Barbed Wire to Barbed Hooks: Fishing stories from
Manzanar."

I recently spent a day at Manzanar with Cory and three former internees to
research a story scheduled to run before Saturday's trout opener. All three
gentlemen shared wonderful yarns about what it meant to be on the other side of
the wire with homemade fishing poles in hand.

Said Archie Miyatake, 84, who was 16 when he first went AWOL, or angling without
leave: "Once you were out, you feel like you were in a free area. It was quite a
nice feeling just to be out, just to know you could sneak out."


=======


Manzanar: "From Barbed Wire to Barbed Hooks"...fishing stories from Manzanar
http://www.fearnotrout.com/


I am compiling information for an exciting project documenting the history of
Manzanar internees who snuck out of the Internment camp under the noses of armed
military guards to go trout fishing. I want to tell the story of the Japanese
American internees -- imprisoned as "enemy aliens" during World War II as a
result of Executive Order 9066 (even though they were American citizens) ¨C who
sought to experience a feeling of freedom, however brief, as they matched wits
with the wily trout of the famed Eastern Sierra fishing grounds.

On Labor Day Weekend 2009, I am planning my 4th Annual Lecture & Walking Tour at
the Manzanar National Historic site & Interpretive Center sharing my research
screening an 18 minute video presentation and afterwards leading visitors to
fishing spots on a walking tour. For further details contact Visitor
Information: 760-878-2194 Ext. 2710

So far, I have researched archives at the Manzanar National Historic Site &
Interpretive Center and interviewed 25 actual survivors, who shared their
experiences. The Manzanar Relocation Center was opened March 21, 1942, and with
10,000 internees, was instantly the largest town for 200 miles in any direction.
In the early days, there was even the threat of being shot for venturing beyond
the barbed wire fences. Nevertheless, for the imprisoned fishermen, it was worth
the risks to enjoy brief moments of doing something a free man takes for
granted... something like trout fishing

For the past 16 years I have been an avid trout fisherman, spending between
50-100 days a year at it, mostly in the Eastern Sierra. I concentrate most of my
time fishing at Crowley Lake, and for some years now, I've been a seasonal
employee at the tackle shop there. A few years ago, I became a licensed and
bonded trout fishing guide.

While working at Crowley, I noticed thousands of Japanese Americans, including
Nisei (second generation), Sansei (third generation) and Yonsei (fourth
generation), coming annually to fish. On some days, as many as half of the
anglers would be of Japanese descent. I already knew that the Manzanar
Relocation Camp was nearby -- down in the Owens Valley along Hwy 395 near
Independence and on the way to Crowley from L.A. -- and I began to ponder the
question, "Did any of Japanese Americans who fish the Eastern Sierra today get
their first experience trout fishing while they were interned at Manzanar?"

I visited the Manzanar National Historic Site & Interpretive Center in 2004 to
find out if there were any records or information about its internees leaving
the compound to go trout fishing. Ranger Richard Potashin confirmed that,
indeed, there were internees who went trout fishing, and there were even some
who actually did sneak out when the heaviest security was being enforced. I was
on the right track!

I explained to Ranger Potashin that Manzanar had always been a subject of
critical importance to me because of my own Japanese heritage. (In fact, it was
the subject of my senior film project while a film student in college.) Because
of my interest in this subject, I was invited to become a docent at theHistoric
Site & Interpretive Center, and since then, I've developed a lecture, a tour and
artifacts exhibit about the Manzanar fishermen. I have already interviewed about
a dozen people, including actual survivors who shared their stories. Some of
them even donated artifacts like their original fishing gear for the exhibit.
I'm continuing my research and am currently compiling an archive of audio and
video interviews for the Interpretive Center's historic database. A documentary
film is also in the works.

If anyone reading this knows someone who was sent to Manzanar and went trout
fishing while they were interned, please have them contact me so I can ask them
to be interviewed for this time sensitvie project.

This project is based on careful research from interviews, documents, resource
information from the Eastern California Museum and the assistance from the
Manzanar National Historic Site and Interpretive Center. Any comments,
corrections, or additions are welcomed and appreciated.

In 2008-2009 I was awarded a grant from CCLPEP (California Civil Liberties
Public Education Program). This grant was utilized in filming the oral
histories of surviving internees who shared their experiences of leaving the
barbed wire of the camp just to enjoy brief moments of freedom from their
incarceration by going trout fishing. I am committed in completing this
compelling documentary film but I am in need of the community's support. If you
would like to help, please send your tax deductible donation to:

The Manzanar Committee
1566 Curran St.
Los Angeles, CA 90026

Please place in the memo bar that it is for the "Barbed Wire to Barbed Hooks"
project. The Manzanar Committee is a registered 501 (c)3 non-profit
organization and all donations are tax deductible.