Satoru Maeda Heart Mountain Photo Album

Satoru Maeda (1922-2017) is a Kibei Nisei who was born in Los Angeles, California to his Issei parents immigrated from Hiroshima, Japan. He and his siblings were sent to Japan for education, and he and his brother returned to the United States prior to World War II while his sister remained in Japan. During the war, he and his parents were incarcerated in the Heart Mountain camp in Cody, Wyoming on May 12, 1942 and transferred to the Tule Lake Segregation Center on September 21, 1943 as incarcerees who decided to return to Japan. His brother’s family was incarcerated in the Gila River incarceration camp in Rivers, Arizona on May 6, 1943 and also transferred to the Tule Lake Segregation Center on October 3, 1943. His parents, Kumejiro and Natsu, returned to Japan on December 25, 1945 while he was further transferred to the Santa Fe Internment Camp in New Mexico on January 26, 1945. It is unknown whether he returned to Japan or remained in the United States afterwards.

After the war ended, he reestablished his life, returning to the Sothern California. He became a gardener and resided with his wife in Santa Monica. Even though the exclusion orders were rescinded and Japanese Americans were allowed to return from incarceration camps, discrimination and prejudice were still lingering in postwar America. Banks were reluctant to lend to Japanese Americans, for example. However, his non-Japanese American friend helped him to get a loan from a bank and he was able to purchase a duplex apartment in Santa Monica and became a landlord. He and his wife had no children, his wife passed away years earlier, and he passed away in 2017.