Maybe Once-in-a-Lifetime Chance

About a dozen years ago, when my colleague Kam Jacoby and I were beginning a book of photos and essays about Guadalupe, California, we had the honor of meeting Mr. Harry Masatani, one of the town’s esteemed citizens. Mr. Masatani — “Call me Harry” — welcomed us into his large, yellow Victorian house, one of the oldest in Guadalupe, and talked to us about hard work, service to country, forgiveness and friendship, and his enduring ties to the community. Kam and I never finished the Guadalupe project, but now and then I look through my notes and photos, and it seems to me that stories like Harry’s were meant to be shared. His experiences seem particularly meaningful in the current time.

Harry was born in Santa Maria in 1926 to a Japanese immigrant father and a mother born to Japanese parents in Honolulu. He enjoyed what he described as a “nice American childhood” in Guadalupe, where his family ran a grocery store, Masatani’s Market. (The Masatani family still owns and operates the market to this day.)

But one day in 1941, when Harry was 15, everything suddenly changed. In his words:

“Wartime. Japanese. You know what happened to us? We got locked up. On December 6, we are Japanese Americans … you know? December 8, we are classified as enemy aliens. The very next day after December 7, we’re enemy aliens … huh? How ’bout that? Not Americans anymore.”

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to inland “relocation centers.” It was a shameful moment in our history.

“They rounded us up,” said Harry. “First, the FBI came and picked up all the heads of the household, all the men, so just the women and children are left. And shortly after that came the order to evacuate the West Coast.”

“That old man you saw sitting there at the desk today at the American Legion Hall,” he continued, “that’s my friend Bindo Grassi. He was in the Army then, and when the Army came to round up the Japanese, he was one of the guards. Can you believe that? Now we’re like brothers!”

And they truly were. It was a delightful experience to see them together. (Bindo died in 2019 at the age of 96.)

Harry’s father was deported to North Dakota, and Harry and his mother ended up at the Granada War Relocation Center in Colorado. Forced to abandon their business and their home, they were interned in tar paper barracks surrounded by barbed wire fences and guard towers where each day began, ironically, with a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

In 1945, Harry was drafted into the Army to fight for America, and he dutifully went off to train at Fort Knox. “If you’re an American, you have to fight for your country,” he said, “even if it is fighting against your father’s country.”

The war came to an end that year, after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Harry completed his military service in Hawaii.

He spoke without a trace of bitterness as he sat on a sofa in the parlor of his house. Behind him was a red and white blanket adorned with a banner: City of Guadalupe, Est. 1840, Inc. 1946 and three illustrated highlights: the jail house, the city hall, and the fire department. We climbed the stairs to a wallpapered bedroom where Harry pointed out a bullet hole in the wall, a remnant of a long-ago protest from a local citizen who was displeased that a Japanese family had purchased the grandest house in town.

Harry Masatani is someone who could have remained angry but is kind and generous instead. He’s a man with a twinkle in his eye, someone with the sort of wisdom that includes a sense of humor. It was memorable and humbling to talk to him.

He taught me a little lesson, too. He led Kam and me up two flights of stairs to the attic, then pointed to a narrow doorway leading to a ladder poking through an opening in the roof. From there, you lift yourself to get onto the widow’s walk overlooking Guadalupe, with visibility way out to the dunes. Kam of course went up the ladder without hesitation, slid open the hatch, and emerged out onto the roof. I started up and then got scared … to be honest, I’m just leery of heights … and I was already worrying about getting back down afterward, trying to picture how I’d lower myself through the opening and backward down the ladder. I realize I was overthinking it, but I was just afraid, so I simply gave up and stepped back down into the attic where Harry was waiting for us.

But Harry wouldn’t let me give up.

“Maybe once-in-a-lifetime chance,” he said. “You’ll be happier if you go up there.”

I went. He was absolutely right.