| A young evacuee of Japanese ancestry waits with the family baggage before leaving by bus for an assembly center in the spring of 1942. Yuki Helen Okinaga Hayakawa Llewellyn (April 22, 1939 – March 8, 2020) sits with her family’s luggage, eating an apple at Union Station in Los Angeles after they left their home in Little Tokyo for the Santa Anita Racetrack Temporary Assembly Center. She later told Paul Kitagaki, “[My mother] got me this red corduroy outfit, and that’s what I am wearing. And she got me those lovely shoes because [I[ didn’t have anything to wear.” After months at Santa Anita, Hayakawa and her mother transferred to Manzanar, where they were held until October 1945, when a family sponsored their release to Cleveland, Ohio. Hayakawa spoke only Japanese, and initially fought frequently with other children who identified her as Japanese and blamed her for the war. Her mother stopped the fights, though, and Hayakawa learned to extricate herself from confrontations. Her mother ran a bordering house for Nisei veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. She was active in the effort to gain redress in the 1970s, that eventually culminated in Ronald Reagan signing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted redress of $20,000 and a formal presidential apology to every surviving U.S. citizen or legal resident immigrant of Japanese ancestry incarcerated during World War II. In 2005, Llewellyn returned to Manzanar for the 1st time since childhood. Since she was 2 years old when she entered the camps, she had little memory, beyond holding up sheets for privacy over the open toilet doors for her mother, who would do the same. Hayakawa married, had a son, became a college dean, and died of a long illness in March 2020. Photo by Clem Albers, WRA photographer. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1702.jpg |
| Image Size | 740.62 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2932 x 2292 |
| Photographer | Clem Albers |
| Photographer Title | War Relocation Authority’s Photographic Section (WRAPS) |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 1, 1942 |
| Location | |
| City | Los Angeles |
| State or Province | California |
| Country | United States |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-210-G-2A-6 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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