Trying to Right a Terrible Wrong
By TRISTAN SEDILLO
Rafu STAFFIntern
Sunday, Aug. 3, 2008

Documentary project sheds light on two Caucasian women standing against the grain of society at Gila River.

Elementary school teacher Frida Mix, a former suffragette, takes a photo with her first graders at Gila River.

A youthful Ruth Mix smiles in the photo at left, taken when she was 15 years old and a volunteer nurse’s aide at the Gila River camp hospital. At right, 77-year-old Ruth Mix in 2005, finally discussing what she saw at the camp more than 60 years after her experiences.

Claire Mix was always puzzled by the fact that her mother, Ruth, didn’t like fireworks. Firecrackers made her jump, and she dreaded the Fourth of July. When she was 12 years old, Claire found out the truth. Ruth Mix had spent her adoles­cence in what she described as a “war zone” — the Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona. The sound of fireworks reminded her of the gunshots she would hear as guards fired at the fence of the concentration camp from the watchtower to stave off any escape attempts. According to Claire, these experiences changed her mother forever.

Ruth Mix volunteered at Gila River for three and a half years, from 1942 to 1945, as a nurse’s aide in the camp hospital. At 5 foot 8 and a half inches, with bright red hair, Ruth stood out as the only Caucasian on staff. It took a lie from her mother, Frida, to get the 15-year-old onto the grounds, where camp administrators were told she was 18. However, Frida thought it was important for her daughter to understand the injustice against her fellow Americans and to do what she could to help them. Her motto was, “we must right a terrible wrong.”

For years, Claire pressed her mother for more informa­tion about her experiences working at the camp, but remained mum, unwilling to revisit the horrors she had seen. Though details arose more frequently as Claire got older, it wasn’t until Ruth Mix was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 that she told her daughter, “time.”

The result was four hours of interview footage that dealt with issues and memories so emotionally charged that she was unable to keep from openly weeping for most of the interview. For this reason, only 37 minutes of footage were usable, but in those minutes was enough anguish over one of the United States’ greatest atrocities, from the perspec­tive of a 15 year old girl standing apart from her society, that Claire felt she had to reach as many people as possible with the weight of this story — something she thought could best be done through the medium of film.

Claire started work on a documentary, “Gila River and Mama,” and began meeting with camp survivors and friends of her mother and grandmother. One of the biggest issues Claire hoped to address was the fact that American society was still woefully ignorant about the Internment.

“Nine out of ten people don’t know about the camps. That just fuels the fire within me to have the documentary made and have it put in colleges and in the high school curriculum. It’s important to preserve this history.”

More than just educating, though, Claire hopes to make a film that will incite people to action. By showing that some Caucasians did indeed help the Japanese American internees and go against the grain of what America ac­cepted, she wants viewers to realize their own capacity as individuals to make a difference.

Ruth Mix learned this at an early age from her mother. Frida Mix, a suffragette who had been arrested twice for picketing, lived in Washington and taught illiterate adults of all races and creeds to read, believing that everybody deserved an education and to be treated like a human being.

When her friend Eva Strickland, a teacher at Gila River, told her about the situation at the camp, Ruth moved her daughter down to Arizona, seeing it as her duty to help those in need.
Frida and Ruth lived in the Caucasian living quarters at the camp during the summer and commuted from Phoenix during the rest of the year, when Ruth attended school. At Gila
River, the camp director warned the white employees not to fraternize with the internees, lest they be accused of conspiracy and treason. Among her Anglo classmates, Ruth was called “Jap sympathizer” and accused of killing babies out at the camp.

In fact, teenage Ruth was helping physicians to deliver babies at the hospital’s maternity ward. Though the employees were taught to keep everything sterile, the lack of resources allocated to the camp meant that there was a chronic shortage of medicine and beds. Over half the babies Ruth helped to deliver were either stillborn or died within a week. Infections ran high in that environment, and Ruth had the experience of growing close to patients only to have them pass away without leaving the hospital, leaving the young nurse’s aide devastated.

Nevertheless, Frida and Ruth did form lasting bonds at Gila River. Though the internees were initially as suspicious of the white employees being spies as the U.S. government was of Japanese Americans, they soon overcame their fears of each other and the camp administrators and began holding clandestine dances and English classes for the Issei.

Frida and Ruth smuggled in supplies from outside, through the laundry or hidden under seats in cars. Ruth soon acquired a nickname – Taiyo, short for “sona shojo wa taiyo no yona kami wo motzu,” or “girl with hair like the sun.” They still faced hostilities from the world beyond the camp. When the grocery outlet that the Mixes patronized for their supply runs caught on to what the two were doing, they were refused service. Ruth, a member of her school paper, tried over and over to print articles on the conditions in the camp, but found they were always refused.

The only way to record the state of the camp was to let the internees document it themselves – which they did with the dozens of rolls of film Frida and Ruth snuck in. Partially due to their efforts, Gila River is one of the most well documented internment camps today.

Now, Claire Mix is continuing her mother and grandmother’s legacy, still trying to spread the story of Gila River.

She recently received a grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program with the help of Hayao Shishino, president of the Gila River Historical Committee. However, she still needs donations to help fund the documentary, which she hopes to complete by July 2009. Right now, Claire is focusing on talking to former internees, an experience she describes as emotionally charging.

“One person says that his grandpa died in the camps, another tells me her mother lost a baby there. Every story is extremely emotional. Lots of people don’t even talk about it. The memories are just too painful. They took away part of their identity – their humanity. They took away their homes for God’s sake.”

Claire has said that the Japanese American community has been tre­mendously supportive of her. Screen­ings of clips from the unfinished film have met mostly with tears or stunned silence. Hoping to elicit an emotional response, Claire has highlighted the injustice of the incarceration of inno­cent citizens in both her documentary and an original screenplay, entitled “The Girl with Hair Like the Sun.” She wants to teach young people especially about standing up for what’s right in the present day.

“I want people to know, especially in this era of hatred about Arab Ameri­cans, Iranian Americans, that just because people look different doesn’t mean you have to be afraid of them. They are Americans, and they are hu­man beings.”

 “Gila River and Mama” is currently in production. To make a donation to help complete the documentary, please make checks payable to Gila Reunion Claire Mix Fund c/o Kimi Taira, 2001 W. 245 Street, Lomita, CA 90717. To see interview clips and learn more about the film, visit ruthmix.clairemix.com.