The Joseph Kumao Sano papers are divided into three series: Personal Papers; War-time Imprisonment and Military Service; and Scrapbooks and Artifacts. His personal papers primarily consist of biographical material; identification and permits; and documentation from Sano's work with the California Bank. It also includes correspondence between Sano and his family.
Materials in the War-time Imprisonment and Military Service series document the forced removal of the Sano family from California to the Santa Anita detention center and the Jerome concentration camp; and Sano's work for the Army Intensive Japanese Language School, the Strategic Bomb Survey, and his service during the International War Tribunal for the Far East. It also includes his work post-war with the Bank of Japan.
The Scrapbooks and Artifacts series contains scrapbooks and albums documenting Sano's life until the forced removal of Japanese Americans in 1941, his work for the International War Tribunal for the Far East, certificates, Bank of Japan photographs, and personal photos of the Sano family. Also included are a number of objects collected by Sano during the war in the United States, and from Post-war Japan.
Researchers should note that this collection documents the forced imprisonment of Japanese Americans at the Santa Anita detention center and the Jerome concentration camp. For more information regarding language and the arrangement of this collection, please see the processing note.
Joseph Kumao Sano (also known as Joseph K. Sano) was born on Awaji Island, Japan on March 4, 1890. He came to the United States in 1906 and served in the United States air service during World War I, after which he was granted naturalization as a United States citizen by a special act of Congress in 1919. Sano returned to Japan in 1924 where he married Sakae Ikuta. Together, they came to Los Angeles where they had three children: two sons, George and Roy, and a daughter, Alice. Sano graduated from the University of Southern California with a law degree in 1926 and continued his post-graduate work at Balboa Law College from 1938 to 1940. He opened his law office in Little Tokyo Los Angeles, the city's business center for the Japanese community. Simultaneously he established two branches of the California Bank, principally for the Japanese community -- one on Terminal Island and one in the center of Little Tokyo.
In 1942, by executive order, Sano and his family were forced to move to the Santa Anita (racetrack) Assembly Center in Arcadia, California, a temporary illegal detention center for citizens of Japanese ancestry. In November of 1942, Santa Anita was closed and Sano and his family were moved to the Jerome concentration camp in Arkansas, where they remained until 1943 when Sano moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sano had been contracted to work as a Japanese language teacher at the Army Intensive Japanese Language School, hosted at the University of Michigan. The Army course was designed to train American soldiers in Japanese language, culture, and geography. In 1945, he was instructed to participate in the Strategic Bombing Survey where he studied the effects of the atomic and hydrogen bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In December of 1945, he was sent to Tokyo for the International Military Tribunal of the Far East where he served as one of three language and court arbitrators, Sano being the bilingual arbitrator.
In 1948 Sano began working as a property control officer for the Bank of Japan. He was in charge of monitoring the transportation of gems and precious metals, such as gold, that were confiscated during the war from the Japanese people and were to be melted down for Japan's war effort. He continued to work there until 1951. He passed away in 1964.
The Joseph Kumao Sano papers were originally processed by Hannah Jenkins in 2013. In August 2023, processing archivist, Gideon Goodrich, reprocessed the collection to include two donations from 2018, and to make necessary changes to the arrangement of the materials. In addition, the finding aid was reviewed and revised to address outdated and harmful descriptive language.
The title of the collection was changed to the Joseph Kumao Sano papers, because Kumao is Sano's given Japanese name. An initial (commonly used for middle names in English) was not appropriate in this case. References to Japanese American "relocation," "evacuation," and "internment" during World War II were removed and replaced with community recommended/currently accepted terminology in 2023, such as "Japanese American incarceration" and "forced removal". Please note that the term "concentration camp" is also used in this finding aid to refer to permanent detention centers - this reflects how the US government referred to the camps internally and the living conditions within the camps.
This finding aid contains original creator-supplied titles. Devised titles are enclosed in brackets on the physical folders, and all other folder titles are original. Original folder titles have been maintained to preserve the original context of how the creator labeled their files; they may include outdated or harmful descriptive language.
