Baptists in Arizona during World War II

Baptist History and Heritage, Summer-Fall, 2001 by Nelda Kent

In 1942, Miss Elizabeth T. Watkins, missionary from Japan, was appointed by the Home Mission Board to work with Japanese in Arizona. These were Japanese Americans who were uprooted from their homes and property on the West Coast, since initially there had been fear of a Japanese invasion. In many cases, the people were given only forty-eight hours to settle all their affairs. Two of these relocation centers were in Arizona. Poston was along the Colorado River and eventually had a population of 18,000, becoming Arizona's third largest "city." The other was on the Gila River in the central part of the state.

Marry Masugago, in her recollections said, "Fewer than nine months after the stunning dawn attack on Pearl Harbor, more than one hundred thousand men, women, and children had been rounded up.... Located within Indian reservations, Poston and Gila River sites were barbed wire enclosures maintained by a small detachment of military police. (8)

In the summer of 1944, six young people from the Gila River relocation camp attended the Southern Baptist Camp near Prescott, Arizona. The ABB reported that "the six Japanese Intermediates ... proved a blessing to the camp. Our boys and girls delighted in fellowship with them." (9) Several churches underwrote the expenses of the Japanese children. First Southern of Phoenix sponsored a Sunday School at Poston; fifteen to thirty attended each week.

Ira Hamilton Hayes was born in Sacaton, Arizona, in 1923, on the Pima Indian Reservation between Phoenix and Tucson. He enlisted in the Marines at nineteen and was in the initial assault on Iwo Jima in February 1945. Joe Rosenthal, in late February, took a photograph of five marines and a navy corpsman as they raised the American flag on the top of Mount Suribachi. Ira Hayes is at the left in this picture. Three of the men survived the battle and were shipped home to promote war bond drives. Unable to cope with this and expressing a deep sense of guilt that he had survived and so many others did not, Hayes started to drink heavily, dying of exposure at thirty-three on January 24, 1955. A memorial park, named in his honor, is located just a few miles from where Ira was born.

Sara Cook Bernal, his niece, lives near the park. In speaking of him, she called him a reluctant hero who only wanted to be left alone. In 1939, the C. F. (Frank) Fraziers were appointed as full-time missionaries to the Pima Indians where he pastored the First Pima Baptist Church of Sacaton. Through the influence of this well-loved Baptist preacher, the Hayes Family presented the flag from Ira's coffin to the Arizona Baptist Archives.

Notes

(1.) Marshall Trimble, Arizona: A Cavalcade of History (Tucson: Treasure Chest Publications, 1989), 294.

(2.) Ralph T. Bryan, A History of First Southern Baptist Church, Phoenix, Arizona 1921-1996 (Phoenix: First Southern Baptist Church, 1996), 25.

(3.) Letter from Sgt. Wendell R. Hopkins to Dr. C. Vaughn Rock, October 25, 1944.

(4.) Letter from Mrs. Ed (Mary) Cain to Nelda Kent, February 2001.