Oki, Tom Yoshio

Tom Yoshio Oki was born October 28, 1919, in Sacramento, California, the first of four children of Hidejiro and Yuki, who were immigrants from Japan. Hidejiro Oki leased land for a truck farm, which Oki managed because of his father’s advancing age. The family arrived at the Pomona Assembly Center on May 14, 1942. They arrived at Heart Mountain on August 13, 1942, the second day the camp was open. They lived in apartment 1-23-D. Oki had leave clearances in 1943 to work on the Northern Pacific Railway in Idaho, where his brother Tadashi also worked, and at Blue Mountain Canneries in Dayton, Wash. Oki answered No to Question 27 and Yes to Question 28 on the 1943 loyalty questionnaire. He was arrested on November 21, 1944, and charged with violating the Selective Service Act. Oki was tried and convicted in July 1945 and sentenced to two years in the federal prison at McNeil Island, Washington. Camp officials said Oki was “rationalizing his refusal in terms of reaction to the damage done to his family by the evacuation from the West Coast.” He was pardoned on December 24, 1947, by President Harry Truman. After prison, Oki returned to Los Angeles, where he was a supervisor in a vegetable plant. He married Yuki “Suzie” Sakioka, a former incarceree at the camp in Rohwer, Arkansas, in 1956. Tom Yoshio Oki died in Oxnard, California, on April 25, 2024, at age 104. Suzie died 19 days later at age 103.