For FOWC with Fandango: WOUND

In Puyallup Washington at the Puyallup Fairgrounds – where every year a jingle hit the airwaves that invited you to ” do the Puyallup ‘ in the exact spot where Camp Harmony’ once stood.

Before it was called The Western Washington Fairgrounds where you can now do things like eat fair food and pet giant Clydesdale horses  where you can see fireworks shows and ride carnival rides and watch people get blue  for their champion show rabbits and catch concerts by cool acts Joan Jett,   during WWII American citizens of Japanese ancestry were sent  to ” Camp Harmony ” ( now the home of the Fairgrounds ) and trust me, nobody sent there was bopping along to jingles like ” Do the Puyallup ” as they lined up in the mud and waited to be ‘processed’.

My friend’s family were among those Japanese- Americans sent to Camp Harmony and here’s the kicker- he was in the  US Army at the time. While he was off fighting for the United States, his family were sitting in Camp Harmony.

If you’re wondering if he ever got over the fact that while  his family were in a detention camp and he was not, he never did.

Bainbridge Island High School pupils bid farewell to their Japanese American classmates, March 1942

The location for the assembly center AKA Camp Harmony  was on and around the Western Washington Fairgrounds in Puyallup, Washington. It consisted of four distinct areas:

• A, with a population of about 2000, located northeast of the fairgrounds.
• B, with a population of about 1200, just east of the fairgrounds in the vicinity of the current Blue parking lot.
• C, with a population of about 800, located northwest of the fairgrounds.
• D, with a population of about 3000, located on the fairgrounds proper in the area including the racetrack and grandstand, east of the roller coaster

• 

  Internees lined up in the rain, Camp Harmony (Puyallup Assembly Center), 1942

You have to understand, all of these places listed above I’ve parked there, I’ve walked all over the fairgrounds and rode the roller coaster.

The Puyallup Fairground/ Western Washington Fairground  is a happy clappy place where you can eat cotton candy and send your kids off to play in a boucy house and you can even visit a ghost town but that doesn’t really change the fact that the Puyallup Fairgrounds WERE a concentration camp designed to hold American Citizens.

And today it would seem that the Trust Fund Brat who is now the President Elect wants to bring back places  like Camp Harmony and fill it with people brought there at gun point by US Soldiers.

Some wounds never heal like the one left behind by Camp Harmony.

Eventually they fester and pop and ooze  no matter how many bandaids you slap on them.

Puyallup Assembly Center, ” Camp Harmony “1942