Biography:
George Hitoshi Yamamoto was born on August 31, 1926, in Campbell, California, the oldest of four children of Kenzo and Sueka Yamamoto. His father was the foreman of a berry farm. The family was sent first to the Santa Anita Assembly Center, where they arrived on May 26, 1942, and then to Heart Mountain, where they arrived on September 17, 1942. They lived in apartment 24-1-B. Yamamoto applied for a leave to attend the University of Wyoming in Laramie, but there is no indication he actually left Heart Mountain for college. Instead, he left Heart Mountain in 1944 to work on a farm in Idaho. While Yamamoto was in Idaho, Heart Mountain doctors determined that his mother was in poor health and would benefit from a visit from Yamamoto. He was in the second group of draft resisters tried and convicted in July 1945, and Yamamoto was sentenced to two years in the federal prison at McNeil Island, Washington. In a 2020 interview, his younger brother David said Yamamoto wrote his parents often and said he was beaten by the prison guards. After prison, Yamamoto returned to the San Jose area, where he soon developed cancer, David Yamamoto said. George Hitoshi Yamamoto died on May 2, 1947, in Santa Clara County, California.