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Chapter 3 To Manzanar At the time of Pearl Harbor, Joseph Kurihara was on the high seas navigating the Belle of Portugal, a handsome, state-of-the-art, 130-foot craft, the second largest tuna vessel based in California. The Belle was one of many Portugueseowned boats, which dominated tuna-fishing out of San Diego. Kurihara spent many months at sea on this craft in search of tuna, venturing as far as the Galapagos Islands, nearly three thousand miles south of San Diego.1 Tuna fishing was strenuous work, both physically and mentally. A typical fishing trip lasted seven or eight weeks, covering round-trip distances of six thousand to eight thousand miles from southern California down the coasts of Mexico, Central, and South America, and westward about 850 miles. Tuna boats held from 150 to 350 tons of fish, with crews of twelve to twenty men, depending on the size of the vessel.2 The boats traveled the seas in search of widely scattered schools of yellowfin and skipjack tuna. Of the two species, yellowfin was much larger, with individual fish weighing up to several hundred pounds, while skipjack rarely attained thirty pounds. Yellowfin tuna was the predominant species, brought higher prices than skipjack, and were the prized catch, but both species were caught and sold.3 The catching of tuna alternated between long periods of mundane activities relating to searching for tuna and live bait, and icing down the catch, and then relatively brief periods of intense and strenuous activity, excitement, and risk.4 When a school of tuna was located, a frenzy of activity ensued. Live bait was tossed in the water as chum to attract the tuna to the boat. When the tuna were biting, a crew of fishermen might haul in as many as twenty to fifty tons on a good day.5 To facilitate the fishing, the aft section of tuna boats rode low in the water . The men stood at or below water level, outside the boat itself, on special walkways lowered from the sides of the boats. They used poles and hooks, and the “weight and the muscles of [their] arm[s] and back[s]” to haul in the tuna. To land an especially large fish required as many as five fishermen and five poles for a single hook. While fishing a school of small tuna, a man could be pulled into the water by the unexpected arrival of an especially large fish. In rough seas, the men fished in waist-deep water with waves crashing on them. In this backbreaking and exhausting endeavor, the men might work from dawn to dusk, using their “every ounce of strength and energy.”6 Kurihara was spared the risky and strenuous tasks of fishing. As navigator he had a key role. Not only did the captain and crew expect him to navigate with precision, they relied on him to find schools of tuna. This job placed him in the pilot house on the upper deck, where he commanded a wide view of the surrounding ocean, helpful for spotting the flocks of seabirds, schools of porpoises, and patches of roiled waters indicating the presence of tuna schools.7 The search for tuna took Kurihara far from shore for weeks at a time, with the success of each voyage depending on how well he and the crew dealt with the conditions they encountered at sea. Tuna schools chose when and where they would appear. Storms and high waves could emerge without warning and sweep over the fishing vessel. These were challenges tuna fishermen honed their skills to meet. For Kurihara, however, there were additional forces at work that would soon prove a far greater challenge than any he encountered at sea. Kurihara was employed in an industry that provided one of the relatively few opportunities for good, well-paying jobs open in California to persons of Japanese ancestry. Hundreds of Japanese worked as tuna fishermen on Japanese fishing vessels or in the canneries and other businesses related to the tuna fishing industry, both in southern California and in the Mexican territory of Baja California. This concentration of Japanese along the west coasts of the United States and Mexico did not go unnoticed as tensions rose between Japan and the United States through the 1930s. Following Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) became concerned about Japan’s long-range military ambitions and the evident need to counter those ambitions...

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