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Editor's note This is one in a series of columns looking back at regional news in 2014.lt will continue through Jan. 1.Roy Ebihara was 8 when he was run out of town because of his race, but he was excited to return home in 2014.Micah Thompson pitched a fit when she saw trees being cut down at thePortales cemetery, and shedid something about it.Tommy Mares Jr., Fort Sumner s unofficial town watchman for decades, stillbrings smiles when friends remember his orange vest and the whistle he used to stop traffic when the firealarm went off.A lot of people made news around eastern New Mexico in 2014. Here are a few who won’t soon be forgotten.‘lust welcome me home’Ebihara was among 32 residents of Clovis’ “Japanese Colony” who were forced out of town a few weeks after the lapanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.All 10 of the men in the group had worked for therailroad in Clovis for 20 vearswor more. All 17 of the children were born in Clovis, most were active in the public schools and many attended•rthe Christian churches.But suddenly their loyaltym ¥ ¥to the U.S. was in question. Officials loaded them all into state patrol cars and relocated them to Fort Stanton inthe middle of the night on lan. 23, 1942, claiming it was for their own safety.“I cried andcried myselfto sleep offan on,”Ebihara remembered.“We traveled for endless miles in the darkness.”The families scattered around the country after being released from government custody, learning to be farmers or factory workers, pretending to be Chinese out of fear for their lives. None attempted to return to Clovis; the children assumed they were not wanted in the community where they grew up.But this spring, Adrian Chavez, a Clovis native who’d learned about the 32 in a college history class, asked city leaders to apologize to members of the Clovis colony who were still alive, and invite them to return home.Ebihara, Lillie Kimura Kiyokawa and some of their family members accepted the city’s invitation and they«f ¥were honored guests for the annual Pioneer Days parade.“It’s been wonderful,” Ebihara said near the end of his visit. “The people have been more than gracious. It’s almost making me cry, because along the parade route, people had come up and said, i’m so sorry’ andmbeing apologetic, and 1 said, Please don’t be. Just welcome me home and I’m happy.”’David StevensEditor
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Portales News Tribune
Portales, New Mexico, US
Thu, Dec 25, 2014
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USA 03 Jul 2019
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