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Did you find that your race played a larger role
in High School than it did in grade school?
Yes.
We happened to live and go to school in a very racist area. We didn't
realize it at the time, we thought that was the way it was. The school, though not segregated, there were cliques and there were people
who were from the town of Auburn—where we went to school it was
ten miles from our town in Loomis—these students were of a separate,
very exclusive group, and they were called "The Four-Hundred." They were children of the prominant families in Auburn. Then there
were the Japanese-Americans and there were also white kids who
were not from affluent families. That's the kind of school we
went to.
It
was quite racist. When the war started I had a favorite teacher
and I took public speaking from her. That's where I developed
my speaking skills and also being up on the stage. And I did very
well in that class. I'm sure she would've remembered me. I wrote
to her from camp that I was interested in forming a theatre group.
And since she was a teacher—a drama teacher—and she had directed
plays for the school, I thought she would send me at least a letter.
But there was no letter. So that was one of the frustrating things
about being in camp and trying to find friends outside.
Later,
I learned that she was one of the leaders of the Anti-Japanese group
in town, of which there was a large group of people. Auburn, Placer County
was a very racist place. So that determined how I felt later in camp.
Not having any friends outside, I would think "Well gee,
they abandoned me and they put me in camp" and so fourth. That determined my course of action.
What was running through your head when you found out someone you were very close to, was essentially anti-you?
It was very disappointing, it probably affected how I felt about myself as an American, being put in camp and then people I thought were friends turning against us. I'm sure it affected my decision, when it came time to prove that I was loyal or that I was willing to serve in the service.
You said your town was very racist, but you said
you didn't realize that till you were older? Do you remember experiencing
any racist things while you were in school? Or was it just after?
We
were placed in a certain place and we knew our place.
When you say we are you saying 'Japanese-Americans'?
Yes. The non-white students. I consider myself one, as well
as there were Mexicans and others who were not considered privileged.
At the time, we knew our place.
I was going to talk about being bussed to the school,
and we were bussed home. All the social activities took in
the evening, so we were ten miles away and we had no way of going
there, so we never thought of participating in any of the extra-curricular
activities, except for sports. If one is an athlete, then you were
accepted more and you tended to participate. But, these athletes
the only way home was to hitch-hike. So, if you wanted to do that
then you went out for sports.
Were you a Japanese citizen while you were growing up?
No—well, I had Japanese citizenship, dual citizenship, but when the war started, I think I gave up my Japanese citizenship. So, I had very little connection with Japan, except that I was going to a Japanese language school, so I was learning the language. And we spoke it at home, because our parents didn't speak English all that well. But other than that, no. Although I did take up fencing—kendo—as a child. I still remember the moves from that.
Was it hard to give up your Japanese citizenship?
No, it wasn't. Other than the language and the kendo and the food and the picnics that we went to, we were just Japanese Americans, and probably more American than Japanese.
What was your relationship with your brothers and
sisters?
My
brother and sister, while they were a bit younger—meaning
they were younger. And as I write, I was the oldest in the family
and of course I had to set an example. Whenever they had a problem,
they came to me and they're stuck with a problem. I was never
part of their game, because I was the oldest. I wasn't interested
in their games.
For
some funny reason they liked to play cars, constantly, and I could
not understand this. They would crawl on the ground and make car
noises. It was fascinating to them. They would play that game all
the time. And these cars were not real cars, they were blocks of wood.
They imagined that they were cars and trucks and so forth. They would make these car noises. Strange. Old cars in the thirties,
they made a lot of noise.
Yeah,
I didn't really play with them, I was by myself more. As I write in
my book, I would get up on the top of the billboard—we had a billboard
next to the store—and the billboard advertised cigarettes. You
wouldn't find that today. "Smoke a camel" and so forth.
So I'd sit up there and watch the world as my world—my limited world.
So I spent my childhood quite a bit by myself and not with my brother
or sister. They today even think that I was rather odd.
Do you remember where you were on the day of Pearl
Harbor?
I,
actually, was chopping wood. That was one of my duties. It was in
winter, December 7th, and it gets quite cold where we live. We had a wood stove and we had these logs of oak, I guess they were.
But they would come like this, and I would have to chop them to smaller
pieces so that they would fit into the stove and also burn. That's
what I was doing when I heard about Pearl Harbor.
And do you remember how you felt?
It
was a surprise. I guess we began to wonder what would happen to us.
There were rumors and all kinds of news reports and reports on
the radio, especially, where they said that there were Japanese spies
and they were apprehended and so forth. It was kind of... well,
we didn't know what was going to happen. And, I don't know, that's
how it was.
Did people start to treat you differently?
That was one of the fears, how we would be treated.
Did you still have the store?
We were not doing the store at that time. We would hear comments from people sometimes when we go to town for shopping. Then we would hear people talking or people would tell us things.
Can you give us an example?
That we had to be careful, that we should—I don't know. Of course, no one knew what was happening or what was going to happen. It seemed to be closing in on us. People who lived on the coast were moving into our area because our area was still a free area. But people on the coast were moving inland. There was a lot of uncertainty and things like that.
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