Orphan Discovers Japanese Ancestry the Hard Way

Sixty-nine years ago Dennis Bambauer learned he was an ethnic Japanese when he was whisked by armed military police from his Los Angeles orphanage to the Manzanar Japanese Internment camp in Southern California. It was the spring of 1942, a few months after Pearl Harbor, and the government forced all West Coast Japanese and Japanese-Americans into detention camps to avoid espionage or other collaboration with the enemy.
Until his detention, the 7-year-old orphan with fair skin and light hair had no idea his birth-mother was Japanese.  He was housed with 100 other children at Manzanar’s Children’s Village.  “We were told when to get up, when to go to bed.  We had rules,” Bambauer recalled years later in Redding, Calif.  “Our lives were controlled by the orphanage, the military and the U.S. government.”
After a year, he was adopted by Dr. Lloyd and Winifred Bambauer of Bishop, Calif.  He took their last name and eventually became a teacher and helped establish the California Teachers Association office in Redding, Calif., in 1971.
When the U.S. government paid $1.6 billion in reparations to those interned in the camps, Bambauer received $20,000, which he donated to nonprofits in the Redding area.
Sources: Araya, Kibkabe. "World War II changed Redding man's life." Record Searchlight/Redding.com 6 Dec. 2010. Web. 3 Oct. 2016. http://www.redding.com/lifestyle/world-war-ii-changed-redding-mans-life-... "Dennis Bambauer describes his memories of the Manzanar Children's Village. Orphaned as a child, he was removed from the Children's Home Society Orphanage in Los Angeles and taken to Manzanar." Densho Encyclopedia. 11 Oct 2012, 15:53 PDT. 3 Oct 2016, 12:18 http://encyclopedia.densho.org/sources/en-denshovh-bdennis-02-0005-1/>; Tawa, Renee. "Childhood Lost: the Orphans of Manzanar." Los Angeles Times 11 Mar. 1997. Web. 3 Oct. 2016. http://articles.latimes.com/1997-03-11/news/mn-37002_1_manzanar-orphans…;.