Humble,” “hard working” and “persevering.” These are words Dawn Kamiya of Santa Maria uses to describe her Japanese American brethren. “Survivor” would also be appropriate.

A new exhibit at the Santa Maria Valley Historical Society Museum, chaired by Kamiya, reflects life for Japanese American families in the Santa Maria Valley. Photographs show weddings, funerals, businesses, farms and markets. They show a social community that gathers for dinners and plays sports together.

But they also reflect on some of the darkest days: the deportation of thousands of Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II. One shows two young friends who were separated for reasons beyond their comprehension. A 1942 photograph shows a group outside Christ United Methodist Church being rounded up by armed soldiers.

“That’s kind of the trigger point,” said Ethel Landers, a member of the historical society’s board who is heading up a multicultural effort at the museum, referring to the war and the dramatic difference between Santa Maria’s Japanese American community before and after World War II.

Today that community, according to Kamiya, is a quiet group that is intricately embedded in the Santa Maria Valley. They are farmers, doctors, attorneys, teachers, city workers, highway patrolmen, financial advisors, mechanics, real estate agents, restaurant owners, salespeople and more.

Family names that are well-known in the valley include Aratani, Minami (for which the Minami Community Center is named), Hamada, Koyama, Tomooka, Furukawa, Tani, Matsuoka, Hirata, Saki and Kagawa.

Before the war, many local Japanese American families lived in Guadalupe. The community thrived there but was not without strife. The California Alien Land Law of 1913 banned them from owning land, and the Depression was hard on the minority group, said Kamiya.

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Then Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941. According to historical information provided to the museum by Ralph Ohta, almost immediately after the attack, many prominent Japanese American businessmen in communities around the United States were rounded up and taken to makeshift detention facilities.

During the next year, at least 10 internment camps opened to house at least 120,000 Japanese Americans. The camps stayed open through the duration of the war, with the last closing in October 1946.

According to Kamiya, only 25 percent of the Japanese American residents who once lived here returned to the Santa Maria Valley after being released from internment camps after the war.

Kamiya herself was born in the Gila River, Ariz., internment camp. After the war ended, her father, who hailed from San Luis Obispo, was recruited to serve as a civilian military intelligence instructor teaching the Japanese language.

Eventually her family returned to Guadalupe.

Kamiya was too young to remember life in the camps, and her parents didn’t talk about it. Her father, she said, was always proud to be an American.

“The second generation had to start over again like a first generation,” said Kamiya, noting the obstacles Japanese Americans faced after the war.

Prejudice was palpable, as evidenced in newspaper clippings and photographs of publicly posted signs that are included in the exhibit.

But there are also signs of sympathy in the Santa Maria photographs. In one, several white men wave goodbye to their friends as the Japanese Americans depart by train for a internment camp. In another, a local businessman poses with a Japanese American worker he hired despite people lashing out at him.

Many Japanese Americans, including some from the Santa Maria Valley, went on to achieve great success in the United States.

George Aratani, son of Setsuo Aratani, who grew up in Guadalupe and graduated from Santa Maria High School, was among those taken to the camps.

He went on to found Mikasa China, Kenwood Electronics and import/export business American Commercial Inc. The book “An American Son: The Story of George Aratani,” by Naomi Hirahara, tells his story.

Kamiya wants to make sure the stories of others from her community are told, too.

“Part of my passion is to try and preserve that there were Japanese here in the valley and they did make a difference,” she said.

NOW SHOWING:

The exhibit honoring Santa Maria Valley residents of Japanese descent, on display at the Santa Maria Valley Historical Society Museum through April 6, was made possible through a grant from the James Irvine Foundation, distributed by the Santa Barbara Foundation.

While this exhibit focuses on Japanese Americans in the valley, two more are planned to cultivate the history of other cultures that have greatly affected the valley. In June, the Filipino community will be featured and in September the Hispanic community will take center stage at the museum.

As Ethel Landers, chairperson of the project, has discovered during her tenure as a board member of the historical society, the history of the Santa Maria Valley is often told from a decidedly white point of view.

"The whole idea is to improve our archives," said Landers.

As a result of the Japanese exhibit, for example, the museum1s archives, including photographs, information and artifacts, of Japanese Americans who contributed to the Santa Maria Valley are much improved. Thanks for that goes mostly to Dawn Kamiya, who served as chairperson of the Japanese exhibit, tasked with spreading the word among the Japanese community that she was in search of photographs and artifacts that could be loaned to the museum.

Landers is currently searching for members of the Filipino and Hispanic communities to act as chairpeople for those exhibits. Their biggest task will be to rally support of the people in their communities to share their personal archives with the museum.

"It's only as good as the community supports it," Landers added.

Money from the grant is also being used by Landers, a local artist, to create a new design that will reflect Santa Maria as a multicultural community. The design will be put on various merchandise and sold at the museum. The hope is the items will generate funding to make multicultural exhibits a regular piece of the museum.

Anyone interested in chairing a committee for the Filipino or Hispanic exhibits, or in loaning photographs or other artifacts to the museum for these exhibits, can contact Ethel Landers at 929-1444.

Emily Welly can be reached at 739-2220 or ewelly@santamaria times.com.