'VANISHED: LOMPOC'S JAPANESE' AUTHOR TO DISCUSS STORY OF FARMING COMMUNITY

Author John V. McReynolds will discuss his book, Vanished: Lompoc’s Japanese: Only Two of 100 Families Returned at a public program at the Japanese American National Museum on Saturday, June 18, beginning at 2 p.m.

During World War II, the U.S. government unconstitutionally forced people of Japanese ancestry to leave their homes and businesses on the West Coast and thousands ended up living in domestic concentration camps. Many, but certainly not all, of these Japanese American families returned after the war. Certain areas, however, saw few or none of the Nikkei coming back to restart their lives. Lompoc, California was a farming community where some Japanese-run businesses thrived, but only two families were known to return to Lompoc after the war.

McReynolds, a well-published writer and author, has lived in Lompoc for decades and even produced a book on the history of the region. However, in his book about Lompoc, McReynolds made no mention of the Japanese and their forced removal. When his friend George Yoshitake asked McReynolds why there was no mention of this fact, he said it was because he did not know how to contact any of the displaced families.

Yoshitake immediately provided contacts to McReynolds, but his research took over 16 months and, to some degree, did not solve the question of why so few Nikkei returned to Lompoc. McReynolds said that most of the adults from that era were gone and their children were uncertain of why they never went back. However, McReynolds uncovered several events that were disturbing and could explain why more Japanese never returned.

In March of 1945, the local newspaper reported a "mystery fire" of a home owned by Toshio Inouye. Two months later, a landlord was quoted in the newspaper as having received anonymous threats against him for renting to Japanese. McReynolds documents that fact that a local owner of a vegetable packing shed saw his business thrive when all the Japanese Americans were removed and the owner was very open about not letting any of them come home.

In all, McReynolds spoke to members of 49 of the 100 families in his research. Eventually, five decades after the war, some of the Japanese Americans were invited to a high school reunion.

McReynolds’ wide range of investigative writing has been published by twelve Central Coast newspapers and magazines. His sports writing has appeared in The National Pastime, Grandstand Baseball Annual, Elysian Fields Quarterly, Mindprints, La Voz del Beisbol Latino and the Viva Beisbol website. In 2009 he was a finalist in the Environment and Agriculture category of the California Newspaper Publishers Association annual competition.