The headline in your March 23 edition, “Academic recovery could take years,” took me back 81 years, to 1942, when as a 15-year-older, I was one of the 120,000 Japanese Americans evacuated from their homes in the Pacific Coast region and incarcerated in what were then called “War Relocation Centers” — in my case, Poston III on the Colorado River Indian Reservation.

It was there that I experienced my “pandemic learning loss,” despite the efforts of socially motivated Caucasian “outside” teachers and internees who either previously had attended college or had degrees, who were recruited to enhance the educational experiences of school-age children.

During this initial stage of incarceration, our school, Poston III High School, was a collection of barracks with thin walls separating one classroom from the other. I don’t recall any books or supplies; the creativity of teaching fell on the shoulders of those teachers, and much of which fell within the category of child care rather than education.

I do remember it was always hot and dusty; Poston was built on the former desert flood plains of the Colorado River, with a fertile, fine powdery soil that was the cause of other problems.

For those school-age children who endured two additional years of incarceration (1943-45), I firmly believe that their educational experiences were greatly improved with the construction of permanent, adobe-brick school buildings, recruitment of additional teachers, the input of additional resources and the raising of educational standards.

Evidence of those improvements can be found in the 1944 and 1945 yearbook, “Campus Echoes”; and in two volumes of the “Hi Times Spotlight Poston III 1943-1945,” published by the Japanese American Historical Society of San Diego for the Poston III reunion, April 18-20, 2008.

In my case, nearing the end of my first year of incarceration on June 1943, I had a part-time job as messenger at the Poston III employment office. Remember: this was during World War II and a critical labor shortage existed on the “outside.” Companies sent want-ads to these camps to recruit, among other categories, sugar beet field workers and hotel workers.

I came across one ad recruiting dishwashers from the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colo. I shared this ad with friends and four of us decided to take the challenge of leaving the camp. My three friends had finished high school while I had only completed my junior year.

We lasted several months as dishwashers and, at the end of the summer, my three friends went on to the big city of Denver seeking more remunerative challenges, but were soon drafted into the Army and sent overseas. I went on to Evanston, Ill., to attend Evanston Township High School (ETHS), at that time a highly regarded, suburban Chicago high school along with Oak Park and New Trier high schools, supporting myself as a live-in school boy, serving seven elderly persons breakfast and dinner at a private dwelling.

It was in this context that I survived my “pandemic learning loss” with the support of a caring and outstanding teacher, James D. Kirkpatrick, who incidentally had been an exchange teacher in Honolulu on Dec. 7, 1941; a strong and innovative academic program (ETHS had one-fourth of its student body enrolled in the Core Program); a supportive school administration; and an Evanston community that placed high value on education.

Those elements sure appear similar to those identified today by reviewers of Hawaii’s educational system as strengths in Hawaii’s effort to minimize its “pandemic learning loss.”

John M. Hayakawa is a retired faculty member of the University of Hawaii School of Public Health (1967-92).