At age 92, Jack Caldwell has a lot to remember.

Recently, he came across a photo of the starting 11 players on the Port Townsend High School football team from his senior year, 1941-42, and it sparked his memory of a historical connection with the 75th anniversary of America’s entry into World War II.

One of his football teammates was George Nakano, who was born and raised in Jefferson County, the son of parents who emigrated from Japan.

“I know that picture had to be taken just before Pearl Harbor, in November 1941, and then [George] didn’t show up for practice. He never missed a practice,” Caldwell said. “We didn’t know for a long time what the hell had happened.”

In 1941, the football season extended into early December. Port Townsend always had a huge rivalry game against Port Angeles around Thanksgiving, Caldwell noted.

“I came across this photo and I just couldn’t help but realize that it was taken just before Pearl Harbor and then [George] ends up in a prison camp, basically,” he said.

In the wake of Imperial Japan’s attack on U.S. Navy installations at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and elsewhere in the Pacific, the American government quickly began an effort to contain Japanese living in North America, even those born in the United States.

The Nakano family of the Eaglemount area were among those Americans of Japanese descent who were forced to leave. The Nakanos, along with the Kawamoto family of Lake Leland, were shipped to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California, according to official records.

Toichi Nakano and his wife, Shiku, raised a family in Jefferson County that included children Smith, Minnie, Lois, George and Evangeline.

“They were just regular kids and all of a sudden they were gone,” Caldwell recalled of the Nakanos. “It’s hard for the younger generation to really think about that, but the Japanese people went through hell during that period because our government didn’t know what to do. We were in a panic with Pearl Harbor. We thought everybody who was Japanese was an enemy, but they weren’t; they were wonderful, wonderful people.”

Marge (Sullivan) Abraham was a classmate of Evangeline Nakano, PTHS Class of 1943, and was friends with her brothers and sisters.

“They were just gone,” Abraham recalled of the Nakanos’ absence in December 1941. “One day they were just all gone, and no one knew what happened to them until a little later. Then we realized they were being relocated.”

Abraham said that eventually people who knew the family saw photographs of them boarding a train, probably in Seattle, as part of the forced relocation.

In particular, she remembers Evangeline as being an artistic person, and her older sister, Minnie, as being “a wonderful, wonderful young woman” who worked at the Jefferson County Courthouse after the war.

“We were just all friends,” she said of their school years, “and went to each others’ homes. You didn’t think of them as being Japanese. You thought of them as being American.”

While Port Townsend had a fair share of Chinese families in the late 1800s and early 1900s, most of them connected to the seaport businesses, Japanese families seemed to settle in the Leland area in the 1920s to work in the lumber and farming trades. Japanese families here included the Onos, Funais, Nakagawas, Ishidas, Tanemuras, Kawamotos and Nakanos, according to “The Story of Old Leland” by Mary Beth Munn Yntema, published in 2000. When logging jobs ended in the Leland Valley in the early 1930s, many Japanese families moved on: the Kawamoto and Nakano families stayed.

Kaichi and Itsuno Kawamoto came to Jefferson County from Canada in the early 1900s. Kaichi Kawamoto took on a variety of lumbering and farming jobs, eventually becoming a foreman with the Port Townsend Southern Railroad. Kawamoto employed other Japanese men, including from the Nakano family. The Kawamotos raised four children in the Leland, Eaglemount, Crocker Lake and Quilcene areas: Joe, Jeanette, Pauline and Alice.

Although the Nakano and Kawamoto families were forced out, Jefferson County – much like Bainbridge Island and Vashon Island – had people who protected the property left behind.

According to the Lake Leland history book, the Kawamoto family was removed in June 1942, each member allowed one suitcase apiece. Jack and Fern Dyke, who had retired from Leland to Blyn, moved to the Kawamoto farm to keep the property intact and the dairy operating until the family was allowed to return, which it did.

A similar thing happened to the Nakano family’s property in Jefferson County. According to Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader files, in December 1944, the Nakano family returned from the relocation center. “After being away from their home in this county since the government evacuated the Japanese to relocation centers, Mr. and Mrs. T. Nakano and children Minnie, Lois, George and Evangeline returned Monday and are busy getting settled on their ranch near Eaglemount.”

Smith J. Nakano, their oldest son, had enlisted in the U.S. Army and became part of the 442nd Infantry Regiment, composed of Americans of Japanese ancestry. According to Leader files from September 1945, “Pfc. Smith Nakano, son of Mr. and Mrs. T. Nakano, Star Route 2 residents, recently was awarded the distinguished unit badge for his part in three battles as a member of the 2nd battalion of the famed 442nd Japanese American Combat team. Pfc. Nakano, former local high school student and employee of the railroad here, served as a rifleman in the actions for which all members of his unit were decorated.”

In 1993, Leader files indicate, Evangeline Nakano received a Port Townsend High School diploma as a member of the Class of 1943; she had missed her senior year at PTHS after being shipped with her family to an internment camp. Abraham recalled that Port Townsend’s Nora Porter, with the aid of Lynn Kessler, a state representative, helped make it an actual diploma, not just an honorary diploma.

During World War II, Jack Caldwell had graduated with PTHS’s Class of 1942 and immediately left town with Jim Daubenberger, going to San Diego to enlist in the U.S. Navy. After the war, he returned to his hometown, and has lived a long and happy life.

But when he hears talk today about banning immigrants because of religion or skin color, and taking rights away from people who have been good American citizens, Caldwell gets rankled.

“It was wrong what happened to the Japanese-Americans,” Caldwell said, “and it would be wrong to do the same type of thing again.”