Elsie Marie Dodson did not attend high school in 1957. She wasn’t skipping
class. It was the year that Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus shut down Little
Rock’s public high schools in a belligerent standoff that historians
have called the most severe test of the Constitution since the Civil War. Faubus
preferred to close the schools–-and deny blacks and whites an education-–rather
than integrate public schools.
Theodore Sumida was a sophomore at the University of California, Los Angeles
in 1942 when the federal government issued Executive Order 9066, empowering
federal agents to detain 120,000 Japanese Americans at 10 camps nationwide
after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Instead of sitting in lecture
halls, Sumida and his family were forcibly relocated to an Arkansas military
base,. where the young student was transformed into a lumberjack earning
about $12 a day.
On Saturday, Dodson and Sumida shared their stories at the Peabody Hotel
in Little Rock as a light rain fell on the Arkansas River. Dodson, a warm
and effusive woman, awoke before dawn to prepare to meet with our group of
traveling journalists. She was waiting for us when we arrived.
Sumida began his journey in California. He had traveled to Arkansas for
the first time in more than 60 years to return to the camp where his family
was interned. I met him during a coffee break at a conference titled “Life
Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in World War II Arkansas” that
coincided with our visit.
As I listened to their stories, I realized that both Dodson and Sumida’s
lives were irrevocably altered because of government policies of discrimination.
And yet, both Dodson and Sumida overcame that hardship with grace and emerged
wiser and stronger because of their experiences.
Dodson-–who was known to her classmates as Elsie Marie Robinson-–was
one of three black students to integrate Little Rock’s all-white Hall
High School when the rule of law prevailed and public schools reopened in
1959.
One of the first things Dodson noticed about her new school was that white
students were permitted to buy class rings in their junior year, whereas
students at the all-black Dunbar High had to have their grades and paperwork
in order during their senior year to be granted the same privilege. It was
a lesson in entitlement versus merit.
Although Dodson endured hardship-–she recalled finding gum, tacks,
and rubber feces in her chair, and students stepping on the backs of her
shoes as she walked down the halls-–what she most wanted to talk about,
and what she had written down so as not to forget, were the acts of kindness
that others bestowed on her as she walked through the fire.
She wanted to recall the black janitors and cooks who watched out for her
and made her feel protected at Hall High. She wanted to recall NAACP state
president Daisy Bates, who invited Dodson and her fellow black classmates
to her home to talk about their experience, making her feel that she was
not alone. She wanted to recall the father of a Quaker classmate who allowed
students of all backgrounds to gather at his home and develop common bonds.
And she wanted to recall the white students who, although they remained silent,
reached out by making eye contact with her. “You knew they were saying ‘hi’ and ‘you
are welcome here,’” she said.
Dodson went on to marry her high school sweetheart, John Dodson, whose
military career opened doors to the couple and their two daughters throughout
the United States, as well as Guam and Japan.
“Our kids attended the Department of Defense schools and listen,
they were able to compete with the children of the world,” Dodson said
proudly.
Later that afternoon, Theodore Sumida shared his story over a cup of coffee
and a chocolate chip cookie. There was no trace of bitterness in his voice.
He related how his family lost its electronics business in the Little Tokyo
neighborhood of Los Angeles and endured long periods of separation as a result
of their internment during World War II.
Sumida’s father spent a year interned in Montana before he was reunited
with his wife and children at the Rohwer camp in Arkansas. The young self-described
jock would later be sent to work on a railroad in Kansas. His mother and
sisters would work at a hospital in Cincinnati. And the family would eventually
regroup in Washington, D.C., where Sumida would complete his studies at Georgetown
University.
Sumida, who was born in this country and whose parents migrated from Japan
three decades before World War II, said he and his family willingly obeyed
the government order to relocate as a show of loyalty to their adopted homeland.
He hoped that by telling his story others would not be discriminated against
in the name of national security.
“We grew up being Americans even though our parents were from Japan.
We considered ourselves 100 percent Americans even though we knew that out
there in the greater American society, we were second-class citizens,” Sumida
said. “I think that we cannot convict people of disloyalty on the basis
of their face… you are losing more than you gain.”
