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Frank Kitamoto
	1940-2014
When Japanese Americans returned home after being incarcerated in internment camps during the second world war, no one wanted to talk about their experiences. It was too painful. They wanted to move on.
Determined to ensure that what his community experienced would never happen again, Frank Kitamoto broke that silence.
Kitamoto, a dentist, was a leader of Bainbridge Island's Japanese American community in Washington state, who spread awareness about Japanese internment camps.
He died at a Seattle hospital of heart and kidney complications. He was 74.
Kitamoto was two-years-old in 1942 when he, his mother and three sisters were sent to the Manzanar War Relocation Centre in California after president Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. His father, who had already been rounded up by the FBI for questioning, joined the family later.
The Japanese Americans on Bainbridge Island were the first group in Washington to be taken to the internment camps, he said in a 2007 TV interview. The Kitamoto family stayed in Manzanar for 11 months, then they were transferred to Minidoka War Relocation Centre in Idaho.
Kitamoto's earliest memories were from the camps, so, he said, he didn't know what he was missing then. Later, he realised how difficult it must have been for the adults.
Kitamoto was five when his family returned to Bainbridge Island near the end of the war. He struggled with identity, said Gerald Elfendahl, who met him in the early 1980s when they worked together on an exhibit at the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum, where Elfendahl was the curator.
Kitamoto later worked with others to create an oral-history project, which he presented to students in Washington and across the nation. When Kitamoto's exhibits and the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial were completed, the same men who initially had been opposed came forward, said his sister, Lilly Kodama, of Bainbridge Island.
"They told Frank they were sure glad he didn't pay any attention to them," Kodama said.
Kitamoto had a successful dental practice on Bainbridge Island. In his offices, there were rooms filled with heirlooms donated to him by Japanese American families.


Japanese American community leader Frank Kitamoto dies, aged 74

Frank Kitamoto

News

World

Community leader spread awareness about the wartime experiences of Japanese Americans


When Japanese Americans returned home after being incarcerated in internment camps during the second world war, no one wanted to talk about their experiences. It was too painful. They wanted to move on.


Japanese American community leader Frank Kitamoto dies, aged 74

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Community leader spread awareness about the wartime experiences of Japanese Americans

Community leader spread awareness about the wartime experiences of Japanese Americans