Month: February 2022

Remembering Japanese Internment

As today marks the 80th anniversary of the Feb. 19, 1942, presidential order authorizing the internment of Americans with Japanese ancestry, I recalled an April day in 2016 in Bridgeton, NJ. On that Wednesday as spring got underway, I spent a delightful morning talking with 92-year-old Frank Hitoshi Ono.

Talking with Frank H. Ono and Japanese Internment
Mr. Ono greeted me as I arrived at his home on a Wednesday in April 2016 (Photo: Dixon)

At the time I was doing some fieldwork related to developing a program for the Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center in Cumberland County, NJ. The Center presents the stories of relocated Japanese Americans, wartime refugees, and migrant laborers to the “largest vegetable factory on earth.” As part of the research, I met with a number of people including Mr. Ono.

When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Mr. Ono, 18, was living in San Pedro, CA, where his family had a tuna fishing business. Worried that people of Japanese ancestry would act as spies, the United States Government ordered about 120,000 people, mostly U.S. citizens, placed in internment camps.

This forced relocation included the Ono family, the teenage college student ending up at Camp Manzanar, CA. As the war dragged on, a large-scale commercial agricultural enterprise in South Jersey, Seabrook Farms, needed employees due to the wartime labor shortage. Consequently, about 2,500 residents of the relocation centers were permitted to come to the fields of Cumberland County to help harvest crops and support processing operations. Mr. Ono’s family was in that group.

18-year-old Frank Ono at the Manzanar Relocation Center. He was working as a mailman at the camp. (Source: Ono)

After the war, Mr. Ono got a job with a radio sales and service company in Bridgeton and within a couple of years, he established his own business in Millville, the Arrow Radio & TV Sales & Service Company. As television came in and tubes gave way to transistors and other things he kept up with the times. He operated the business for about 40 years, eventually selling it when he retired in 1985.

He had many talents and hobbies, but in retirement, he focused on educating people about this period of history, and he was deeply involved with the Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center.

I thoroughly enjoyed that spring morning six years ago and still recall his rich, vivid stories. I was fortunate to have met Mr. Ono, and have the opportunity to directly learn about a different time and place in our nation’s past. It’s an experience I will never forget so as my newsfeed alerted me to the 80th anniversary of Japanese Internment the conversation from some years earlier was still fresh in my mind. As Mr. Ono remarked, this is a story that more people need to know, and I was thankful that he shared the accounts and his photos with me.

Frank Hitoshi Ono, 97, of Bridgetown passed away on Sunday, September 5, 2021.

For More on Seabook Village and Japanese Internment See

A photo album of the visit with Mr. Ono on Facebook

For the history of Seabrook Village see this article on the Densho Encyclopedia.

Enslaved Person Led British Invaders into an Ambush

When the War of 1812 arrived on the Chesapeake Bay, it created opportunities for enslaved people to flee with the British to freedom. The invaders liberated some 4,000 people and “used several hundred in their army in a special unit known as the Colonial Marines,” according to the National Park Service.

As the British offensive moved into the northern Chesapeake in April 1813, about nineteen percent of the people in Cecil County were enslaved. Of these 2,467 individuals at least one, Hetty Boulden, held as property by Frisby Henderson of Frenchtown, helped the local militia turn the British back during the attack on the Elk River. Boulden faced great personal risk in undertaking this action.

In some incidental old newspaper sketches that faded from memory long ago, her story had been mentioned. But as time moved on historians largely forgot it in the written volumes about the past in this area.

Thus as the Historic Elk Landing Foundation started seeking to develop its interpretations of the site, the nonprofit foundation commissioned a study to assess and further research the narrative to see what could be determined from those few elusive traces. So I undertook a study of the questions centered around Hetty Boulden and her life.

Part of the strategy of the Historic Elk Landing Foundation (HELF) was to develop historically accurate character interpretations of individuals directly associated with the British incursion on the Upper Elk River in April 1813. HELF was particularly concerned with presenting some underrepresented accounts involving people passed over by the customary local historiography.

There was an assortment of individuals who could have been integrated into this cohort of additional, including women, African Americans, enslaved people, indentured servants, immigrants, and society outcasts, if carefully sourced clues could be developed to trace the narratives back through time. But using an evidence-based standard Boulden presented the strongest narrative, based on available traces.

Elk Landing Stone House
The stone house at Elk Landing was built around 1800 (source: Mike Dixon)

Thus, this report, prepared at the request of HELF investigated the life­ story of this Cecil County citizen, using customary research methods and evidentiary guidelines to develop proof points and flush out determinations supported by the historical record. The investigation confirmed that an African American female by the name of hetty or Hettie Boulden lived in Cecil County for most of the 19th century. Also, there is evidence to support the narratives that she was present when the British came up the River and that she was involved in misdirecting and helping to resist the enemy’s advance on Elkton.

The full report provides the details and assesses the validity and reliability of the evidentiary traces that were discovered during this investigation.