Alice Hirai,
Imprisoned Citizen

BY KATHERINE CLARK

As a child imprisoned in the Topaz internment camp, that was all young Alice Setsuko Sekino knew. She showed courage, resilience and determination as she navigated life in captivity with her family. After World War Two, Alice embraced life in Utah and settled in Salt Lake City as a nurse, an advocate for the disability community, and an advocate who educated people on the Japanese-American internment camps and her experience growing up in one. Alice even played a role in the movie American Pastime, a 2007 fictional film about a young baseball player who was imprisoned in Topaz. 

Alice was born in San Francisco on November 8, 1939 to Takasaburo and Lillian Sekino. Her father came to the United States in 1923 as a young man from a farming community near Tokyo. He ended up in San Francisco, working a blue collar job. Alice’s mother and grandparents came from Hiroshima and bought two apartments in San Francisco’s Japantown. The maternal side of Alice’s family soon became one of the city’s wealthy families. Alice lived with her parents and brother in an apartment in San Francisco until 1941.

Alice was two years old when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred and Executive Order 9066 was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It authorized the forced imprisonment of those from Japanese descent. This included Alice, who, though born a US citizen and still a child, was imprisoned due to her lineage and sent to the Topaz War Relocation Center near Delta, Utah. This was the same for countless Japanese-American families and citizens from the West Coast who were sent to ten prison camps across the western United States. 

Fortunately for Alice, she and her family, including grandparents and aunts and uncles, were able to stick together in Topaz, living on Block 12. Because of her young age, Alice’s parents and extended family attempted to make this life seem as normal as possible for her. With 6 families living in one barrack, and the Sekinos all in one room with only cots for beds, the family grew close. Her father was a cook at the camp, and Alice remembered she and her brother running out of the room to great him as he came home with their meal, “so excited to see him come home,” (Alice Setsuko Sekino Hirai Interview, June 3, 2008). To make the space feel more home-like, Alice’s father built them furniture from spare wood around the camp. Alice eventually donated these pieces to the Topaz Museum in Delta, Utah. 

Another shaping force of Alice’s experience in Topaz was her father’s positivity. Growing up on a farm, he felt that Topaz wasn’t much different. Alice mentioned in an interview in 2008, “…he says that going to Topaz, we had a bed to sleep in, we had food, we had, we didn’t have to have outhouses, we had actually latrines, and he says it really wasn’t that bad.” Alice said that when she was younger, she took this nurturing environment for granted, but looked back and thought, “That’s just amazing.” 

Even though her parents tried to maintain normalcy in this dire situation, there was no hiding the obvious injustices happening within this camp. Alice recalls hearing about a four-year-old girl molested by a teenager. At the time, she remembers that nothing was done to stop it, and that didn’t feel right to her. However, it made her aware that those types of things were happening, saying, “…if it happened once, it must have happened a number of other times.” 

When the camps were shut down at the end of the war in 1945, Alice and her family were given $25 and sent off. A family that was in Topaz with the Sekinos owned a duplex in Salt Lake City and let Alice’s family stay there. After a year, her family moved back to San Francisco but because of the sudden removal of the Japanese-American population, their apartment and the rest of the city had since been occupied by others. The Sekinos moved back to Salt Lake City in 1950 when Alice was 12, where the situation was better. Alice noticed a difference in Utah. She noted, “The Japanese here in Utah are a lot more friendly and more open.” 

After returning to Utah, Alice attended West High School and graduated in 1958. She met Mack Hirai as a junior and fell in love, but he said they wouldn’t get married until she got her degree. Alice attended the University of Utah for a nursing degree, which she used to serve as a public health nurse, home health nurse, school nurse, floor nurse, and more. She graduated in June of 1962 and married Mack that summer. Mack and Alice had three children, one of whom had a disability. This inspired Alice to become involved in the disability community, advocating for rights and creating programs for their needs. 

As her children began elementary school, their teachers discovered that Alice had been in Topaz and asked her to present to their classes. This soon evolved into presentations for schools and adult groups across the area. Alice worked for 54 years as a nurse, working with the senior population. She also gave presentations at senior centers, always bringing up the generational hate she felt then, but the love she felt now. 

Alice Setsuko Sekino Hirai passed away on December 24, 2016. She is remembered for her work within the disabled community, as a nurse, and an educator on the Topaz internment camp.

For more perspectives on life in Topaz, see our bios of artist Miné Okubo and teacher Eleanor Sekerak.

Katherine Clark is a student at Lone Peak High School and a former state winner of Utah’s National History Day competition.