Hannah Tomiko Holmes, 53 years old at the time of testimony, spoke before the CWRIC with the help of an interpreter, bringing forward a story rarely heard: the forgotten struggles of disabled Japanese American children during WWII incarceration.

• Early Life & Deafness: Hannah had been deaf since age two. Before the war she was a student at the California School for the Deaf in Berkeley, one of 11 Japanese American children forced to leave when exclusion began.

• Denied Education: She testified that every public institution for deaf, blind, and disabled children on the West Coast refused to take Japanese American students back once the war started. At Manzanar, while other children received classes through high school, disabled children were left without meaningful instruction.

• Manzanar Isolation: Assigned caretaker “too busy” to help. Lessons were below grade level; typing she had to teach herself. She felt cut off from other children and stigmatized.

• Failed Attempts at Schooling:

  
  

  • At Tule Lake, a “Helen Keller School” was created but lumped together children with deafness, blindness, and paralysis under a teacher who even banned sign language. It collapsed within months.

  • Attempts to enroll Hannah at schools for the deaf in Arkansas, Idaho, Pennsylvania, and Colorado all failed—blocked by tuition costs or outright refusal.

  
  

• Belated Opportunity: Not until 1943 in Chicago could she continue at the Alexander Graham Bell School (which used only oralism, not sign language) and later at the Illinois School for the Deaf, where she finally graduated in 1948. By then, many peers never returned to education at all.

• Naming the Loss: She named classmates who never picked up the pieces after camp—lives permanently stunted by exclusion.

• On Redress: Called for reparations not only in money but in concrete tools for independence: teletype phones, captioning, hearing aids, Braille writers, mobility aids, transportation—so that disabled Nisei could live with dignity and not burden families.

• A Letter from Helen Keller: In 1943, she wrote to Helen Keller about the Tule Lake school and received a heartfelt reply. Keller’s letter, read into the record, reminded her that “courage in conquering obstacles will be a lamp throwing its bright rays far into other lives.” Hannah said Keller was their only friend.

• Closing Reflection: Hannah framed her testimony as both personal and collective, showing how war and prejudice robbed children not just of freedom but of education, leaving invisible scars.