Brought Together for the Sake of a Little Girl

I knew that she was my sister, but I felt no familial tie with her until years later. Dorothy was the little girl who came to visit us with the Lanphears. She looked Japanese like us, but after a short stay, she would tug at the big, red-haired man’s pant leg.

“Ira, let’s go home.”

Mama would hear and quickly look away.

Home to Dorothy was the Lanphears’ large, two-story house in Azusa. She could not remember living in the old farmhouse in Covina where she had been born and nurtured the first year of her life.

She could not remember playing by the small roadside stand where Mama sold vegetables and berries. Like many Japanese parents in California before World War II, our parents, Kamehachi and Hana Tamaki, supported themselves and their American-born children on the yield from their truck farm.

It was at the roadside stand in 1928 that two families, worlds apart, came together because of a 15-month-old child who still crawled on the sod around her mother’s feet.

Ira and Anna Lanphear were regular customers. They would see my sister struggle to rise to her feet only to fall whimpering to the ground. She could not stand. She could not walk.

Before her first birthday, Dorothy had been scampering around the house. When she was a year old, she ran into the driveway as Papa was backing out his Model A Ford. She was too small for him to see her. A tire ran over her hip and pelvis area.

After an operation and a few days in the hospital in Covina, Dorothy was released. I was 9 and the oldest of the children. I interpreted for my parents at the hospital.

Our parents could not afford follow-up services. Three months later, Dorothy could only crawl. Mama and Papa accepted the possibility that she would never walk.

“ Shi-kata-nai ,” they would say. It can’t be helped.

But the Lanphears rejected such a passive philosophy. When they heard about the accident and its aftermath, they could no longer bear to witness Dorothy’s futile struggle.

They asked if a doctor friend of theirs could examine her. With our parents’ consent, this doctor referred Dorothy to Orthopedic Hospital in Los Angeles. According to the specialists there, the bones had not been properly set and Dorothy would require corrective surgery.

They advised that more operations would follow and that Dorothy would need constant care in a safe environment, not in a house full of active youngsters.

Mama was pregnant with her sixth child. She agonized with Papa: “What shall we do? How will we manage?”

One evening, the Lanphears unexpectedly appeared on our doorstep. They had always come to the stand, never to our house.

“Can vee take Dorty home after de operation?” Anna Lanphear asked. She had not lost her Swedish accent even after 22 years of marriage to an American.

My parents seemed to understand her English. After a long pause, they bowed. Mama’s eyes were moist as she spoke. I translated.

“My mother says you are very kind. But they cannot pay,” I said.

“Vee vant nutting. Jus’ vant to see Dorty valk. Vee take care of medical bills, too.”

Mama and Papa were incredulous. Why would anyone, especially Caucasians, want to help them?

They had mixed feelings about anyone else caring for their daughter, but they knew the Lanphears were good people. Dorothy’s well-being must come first. They had no choice but to accept the extraordinary offer. They rationalized that Anna and Ira missed having children around since their twin sons went away to college and that Dorothy would fill a void in their lives for a while.

The following week, Dorothy was checked into Orthopedic Hospital for the first of many surgeries. Between hospitalizations, Anna attended to her every need. Whenever Dorothy was confined to a cast, Anna fed, dressed, sponged and toileted her. When she underwent physical therapy, both Lanphears supported her and exercised her until she could walk by herself. Then the hip bone would slip out of its socket again and the entire process had to be repeated. Another operation, another cast, another round of therapy. And another year of bonding with her surrogate parents.

Dorothy addressed them as “Annie” and “Ira.” When Mama admonished her for being disrespectful, Ira interceded: “It’s all right . . . it’s simpler.”

My sister responded more readily to Dorty than to Do-shi, my parents’ pronunciation.

Ira was 6-foot-2, weighed 220 pounds and was fair-skinned with thinning, sandy-colored hair. Anna, with Nordic good looks, came to his shoulder. She was all softness and warmth. Then there was tiny Dorothy, with her jet-black hair, olive skin and almond eyes. She could not see what an unlikely family they presented.

The Lanphears never concerned themselves with appearances. What they did for Dorothy was from the goodness of their hearts. No parents could do more for their own offspring. In addition to providing the special care that Dorothy needed, Anna did the motherly things: dried the tears, brushed the hair, taught the manners and listened to the problems.

Ira did the lifting and the driving. Until Dorothy was of school age, he would carry her--often with a full-body cast--against his massive chest as if she were weightless. He would drive her to medical appointments, to the hospital and to our house for visits. After she turned 6, he would drop her off at school whenever she was able to attend class. In between, there were tutors. But much of her learning and her values came from Anna and Ira.

She was the baby sister to their grown sons. Lanphear friends became her friends and remained steadfast through the months after Pearl Harbor, when anti-Japanese hysteria ran high.

Other townspeople ostracized the Lanphears . . . but no one dared offend Ira directly.

“How the hell can you condemn these people? You don’t know beans about them” was his angry retort to someone as I was leaving the grocery store.

In the spring of 1942, the Western Defense Command implemented President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 to remove “all persons of Japanese ancestry” from the West Coast.

Despite the upheaval in our lives, Dorothy’s schedule for surgery did not change. In April, she underwent another hip operation.

Our uncle in New York had paid the fare for our two younger sisters, Mary and Aki, to join his family there. Dorothy was in a cast from the waist down. I felt sure that she would not be moved. Surely there were extenuating circumstances that would apply to a disabled girl requiring medical supervision. What possible threat did she pose to national security?

“Don’t worry, Dorothy,” I said. “You’ll stay with Anna and Ira. After all, you’ll need medical follow up.”

Mama was skeptical: “The law orders anyone with Japanese blood to go. That means Do-shi, too. Shi-kata-nai. “

Anna was less resigned: “Over my dead body.”

The Lanphears left no stone unturned in their fight to keep Dorothy close to them, where medical attention and treatment were available.

Not knowing whom to contact, Anna began her battle at the local draft board. She was referred from one military office to another. The gentle lady became a single-minded woman of action. She went up the chain of authority at the Western Defense Command: a lieutenant, a captain, a major. But to no avail.

In the meantime, my parents had sorted out their worldly goods and packed what they considered essential into suitcases and boxes. They were allowed two bags or boxes each. Valued but nonessential items they stored in the garage. Their house furnishings were left behind, their car loaned to a Lanphear son.

In June, Dorothy was transferred from the hospital to Rancho Los Amigos in Downey for physical therapy.

In July, Mama, Papa and my two brothers, George and Paul, entered a holding center at the Pomona Fairgrounds, less than 10 miles from our home. Hundreds of other Japanese from the San Gabriel Valley area were detained there in jerry-built barracks to await removal inland.

Friends were permitted to visit through a barbed-wire fence. The Lanphears brought news of Dorothy’s progress. The first time they visited, Anna choked up and turned away. She could not talk to her old friends through a barrier.

Ira, red-faced and perspiring, yelled: “They’ve got you all in a goddamn jail!”

But on the second visit, Anna was smiling and eager to deliver good news. She had taken her plea to a general in the Western Defense Command. He agreed that Dorothy would be exempt from relocation if she was unable to walk at the time of her family’s departure. Mama and Papa were as relieved as Anna was elated.

But on the day that all the detainees were preparing to leave for more “permanent” settlement somewhere out of state, a long, black ambulance pulled through the guarded gate and stopped in front of my parents’ unit. Two attendants in white handed down to Mama a young teen-ager leaning unsteadily on crutches.

Kamehachi and Hana Tamaki--with Sachi, Dorothy, George and Paul--were interned in Hart Mountain, Wyo. After the war, the family moved to New York, where their relatives lived. Eventually, some members of the family returned to the Los Angeles area. Kamehachi Tamki died here in 1968. Hana Tamaki lives in downtown Los Angeles. Sachi Tamaki Kaneshiro is a retired social worker in Oceanside. Dorothy Tamaki Kuwaye works for a Los Angeles doctor. Ira Lanphear died in 1945, Anna Lanphear in the mid-1980s.