I'm author Ken Mochizuki and
I thank you for watching this segment
of our graphic novel,
Those Who Helped Us.
While the main characters
are largely fictional,
most of the people depicted here
helped the
incarcerated Japanese-Americans
in real life.
Arthur Kleinkopf served
as the supervisor of student teachers,
and then he became
the superintendent
of education at the Minidoka camp.
His wife, Edith, taught sixth grade
at one of the camp's elementary schools.
Mr. Kleinkopf
kept an extensive
diary of his time at the camp,
and from this account,
we were able to build the stories
of Sumiko, Yuri, and life in the camp.
Little is known about Kleinkopf's life
after the camp ceased operation,
except that he passed away
at Twin Falls, Idaho,
and is buried there.
Reverend Emory Andrews was
the first English
language minister
at the Japanese
Baptist Church in Seattle.
He started in 1929. When his congregation
was removed to the Minidoka camp
during World War ll,
he made 56 trips from Twin Falls, Idaho,
to Seattle and back
to deliver personal possessions
that members of his congregation
had stored at the church.
After the Minidoka camp closed,
he returned to Seattle
and continued
being pastor of that church until 1955
and then pastor emeritus
for the rest of his life.
As a missionary in the Philippines,
Margaret Peppers
then served as a rural Episcopalian minister
in western
Washington
and later became
coordinator of Christian education
at Saint Peter's
Episcopal Parish in Seattle.
She lived near the Minidoka
camp to continue ministering
to her congregation.
She is known as the only white
Episcopalian minister
to work in the camps
for Japanese-Americans
during World War ll.
After the war,
she departed to Arizona
to work among the Navajo tribe.
Tom Bodine
attended Quaker schools in Philadelphia.
At the outbreak of World War ll,
he assisted German refugees
at Hartford, Connecticut.
Joining the American Friends
Service Committee,
he became the field director
for the National Japanese
American Student Relocation Council.
He is credited with resettling some 4,000
Japanese-American students
and placing them into
about 600 institutions
of higher learning.
With the end of the war,
he returned to working for Connecticut
General Life Insurance, his employer
before the war.
Ordained in 1921, Father Leopold
Tibesar was assigned
to become a pastor in Japan in 1926.
In 1935, he was named
Local Superior of Maryknoll Seattle.
Then went with the Japanese-American members
of his congregation to Minidoka. In 1945,
he assisted with Japanese-American
resettlement in Chicago,
returning briefly to Seattle
and the following year was again
assigned to Japan.
Returning to Seattle in 1963,
he was honored by the Emperor
and government of Japan in 1968
for his work among the Japanese
and Japanese-Americans.
These are
just a few
examples of those
who helped from across the country.
These were bonds
that were not so easily broken,
no matter
what political and racist attitudes
influence what others said and did.