Pen pal from the past

Sydney Derrick, 75, was recovering from surgery in Brendan House when she came across a fragile, faded letter stuck in a notebook she used to make lists and to store clippings.

"I was going through all this stuff - recipes, that sort of thing," Derrick said.

She drew a blank about how it ended up in her notebook. Derrick speculates that she must have been cleaning out a box or drawer or something when she found the letter she had tucked away as a girl of 9.

"I must have saved the letter because of the drawings," she said.

Written by Isamu Ogawa, the letter was embellished with exquisitely-drawn pictures of Batman, Robin and the Joker, popular comic book figures in the 1940s. She had no idea the tissue paper she tucked away had an even greater historic interest.

Dated March 3, 1943, the letter bore the return address "Block 24, Bar 2, Apartment D, Heart Mountain, Wyoming." Isamu was one of 11,000 Japanese American citizens and residents living behind barbed wire at an internment camp known as the Heart Mountain Relocation Center.

At the time, Derrick was living in Whitefish with her father and mother, Lloyd and Francis Combs, along with a sister and brother. She was born in Kalispell in 1934 but the family moved to Whitefish when her father got a job with the railroad.

"My dad was a switchman," she said. "He became the international vice president of the United Transportation Union - not bad for a kid from Kalispell."

Derrick has little recollection about the pen-pal arrangement with Isamu. She assumes that her teacher obtained names and addresses of children at the internment camp and had the class write to them.

Because of the date, she knows she was 9 and most likely in the fourth grade.

Although details about her pen pal remain fuzzy, she remembers the mood of the times after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and this country declared war.

"I was a little girl that hated the Japs," she said. "But that didn't include the ones we knew (in Whitefish). Those were our family and friends."

Derrick recalls that most people thought that rounding up Japanese Americans was terrible. She said that Whitefish was a small, close-knit family in those days.

She recalled that every parent in town kept an eye on all the children.

Children could play outside even after dark anywhere in town without a worry.

Everyone knew everything about everyone else, for better or worse.

"If you knew a family, you knew they weren't disloyal to the United States," she said.

As a 9-year-old, Derrick had no problem distinguishing the boy she had as a pen pal from the country that attacked the United States. The letter reveals a typical American boy who played football and loved "Batman" comics.

As Isamu wrote, he was in a hospital bed recovering from an injury he received in a game with School Block 28.

"I was playing first string guard on our team. There was still snow on the ground and you know the rest," he wrote.

He thanked her for her letter, saying he was getting really tired of the hospital bed and tells her the weather in Wyoming turned cold and snowy after a warm spell. Nothing in his letter hints at the abysmal conditions that were later reported on the historical Web site, www.heartmountain.us

"Conditions at Heart Mountain were harsh. Whole families were moved into unfurnished single-room quarters in barracks served by communal latrines. Privacy vanished. Communal meals in Spartan mess halls - among with many other factors - contributed to the disintegration of families. With only bare walls and tarpaper to protect them from the Wyoming wind, internees shivered in the winter and sweltered in the summer."

His letter demonstrates the resilience of the people, young and old.

According to the Web site, the Japanese at Heart Mountain built a vibrant community between 1942 and 1945, complete with an independent newspaper, democratic self-governance and sports, as reported by Isamu.

With the rediscovery of this letter, Derrick wonders what became of the talented young artist who proudly proclaimed "P.S. Pictures on back were drawn by me and I didn't copy."

"I'd love to find him," she said. "He has probably forgotten all about it too."

Assuming he was about 11, Isamu would be in his late 70s or might have surviving family who could fill her in on his life after Heart Mountain.

The war changed Derrick's own family forever. She lost her 20-year-old uncle Donald Combs, a navigator on a B29 bomber when a Japanese pilot flew directly into his airplane over Nagoya, Japan.

She went on to have two sons and worked in politics for quite a few years in Olympia, Wash. As with many of her generation, Derrick said she had a difficult time overcoming the resentment she felt toward Japan about the war.

A face-to-face encounter about 20 years ago finally put an end to her bad feelings. Derrick said her boss in Washington had her shepherd around two visiting Japanese businessmen.

She had reservations until she met them as fellow human beings.

"They were so nice," she said. "We had so much fun."

Derrick encourages anyone who might know of Isamu Ogawa to contact her at (406) 890-2329.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.