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4-Leaving for Internment
Did the government ever tell you why you were being interned?
No, they never told us. It was something—we were so naive, which you would never do today, but we were so naive that we just accepted what the government said. We said, "This is unfair, it's not right," but nobody thought about any organized kind of resistance or anything. And let me add, places like the ACLU did not protest it either. There was nobody that protested it except for the American Friends Service Committee, a few church groups, but that was it. When we look through the commission hearings—they had hearings before we left—they knew that they were going to leave us, but they had put together a commission to hear—and this was way back in 1941/'42—and they had a commission that looked as to whether they should send us in or not and it was just a loaded committee. People who already had started in motion the things that they were doing already to get us into the camps. When we read that now, it’s very interesting, commission hearings in 1942 that put us in; the government never told us why. They just made us go.
Can you talk about your experiences when you first saw your father?
It was a Department of Justice camp my father went to, they had individual hearings. We never had individual hearings. There was never an opportunity for us to protest about our innocence, or whatever. My father had that opportunity in that Department of Justice camp, and they came to the conclusion (I got a copy of the report that they had, a lot of which was blacked out but still I could see the copy) that my father was no threat to the United States. So he was released and he came to us in the camp. He stayed with us in the camps until 1945.
Was he forced to remain in the camp with you?
Yes. He could not go back to California. As far as our property was concerned —the lease for the hotel—my father had bought a property in Japantown under my sister's name, so that my sister could be the owner because she was a citizen, and he could not be an owner. He bought it under her name, so he had that. He had two pieces of property. And the first one, a very wonderful guy, Mr. Pearson, who was black, was one of our residents in our hotel. We said, "Oh, he'll take over," and he took over for us, collected the rent, etc., and we told him "just keep it. Keep the-whatever it is- and all." He kept everything, it was there and everything was still in order when my father went back, and then my father gave up the lease and decided to live in the other apartment building that he owned in Japantown which later, was re-developed out. My father was an entrepreneur. He bought some property, which helped him.
How did you prepare to go to the camp?
That was really a difficult thing. We had five days in which to prepare. I don't know how it is with you, but for us to go on a trip, it takes us about that time to figure out what we're going to take, and how we're going to get there, etc. We didn't know where we were going, we didn't know how long we were going to stay, we didn't know what was going to happen to us. So what do you take, you know? We went, most of us, very unprepared. My mother was so cute, though. We were so poor, she says, "well, don't bring your good clothes?" We said, "If we don't bring good clothes, what are we going to wear?" She said, "Well, wear the things you're going to throw out." We were so poor; we didn't have very much, so we were going to take whatever was serviceable. But again, one little suitcase—what could you put into it? So we wore the same thing over and over again, and while we were in camp we were allowed to get things from Sears Roebuck, or Montgomery Wards. So sometimes you go out to a dance and about five people have the same dresses on because we all get it from Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Wards.
It was, again, a very difficult time, because of my sisters: one was in Berkeley, the other in Japantown, and they were with their families, they had little babies and all. It was, again, that separation. The night before we left we all got together and we cried. We just cried, because we didn't know when we were going to see each other again. Because we were young—we were only—we were young, life was looked on very differently from my parents who were—and now that I'm 84, my parents were young at that time. My father was in his 50's, my mother was in her 40's, but we thought they were so ancient and so old. It was hard for us to imagine what it must have been for them at that time because they thought—my mother said, "They're going to kill us." I said, "Oh, Mama, we live in America. They're not going to kill us." She says, "Well, they are going to put us in slave labor." And I said, "Look Momma, I don't think they'll do that either." I said, "We have President Roosevelt." I thought at that time President Roosevelt was considered really a liberal person. I think the fact that he was liberal, and yet put us into the camp- it was the politics of the whole thing. There was just a lot of political maneuvering.
What did you do with your belongings?
I'll tell you two things. One was people like my sister, who had gotten married and lived in Berkeley—she had gotten married to this guy who was Mitsubishi, head of one of the Mitsubishi things—he had- they had money. They had got a new refrigerator, just a lot of new things. They had been married maybe two years, so everything was very new. They sold their stuff, because again, we didn't know how long we were going to be away. They sold everything that they had, and she said it was just the most awful thing, because when people heard that they were selling—"the Japanese are leaving and they're selling!"– you've got the people who wanted to get things as cheap as they could. You'd sell refrigerators for $10, you would sell cars for $25, and things like that, very low prices. Yet you found that there were neighbors who were helpful, who were kind. There were people who said, "We'll save this for you" and did. You found all kinds of people in our country, some who would take advantage, and others who wanted to really help cooperate.
Were there people who were not of Japanese descent helping you?
Yeah. There were. In fact, there's a good book out now that my friend wrote about people who stuck their necks out to help us, who really got vilified by other people because they said they would help, and they were helpful. She wrote a book about all these people who also suffered because they came out and said, "This is wrong. You shouldn't put people like that into the camps." They really suffered economically. I think there was a publisher in Seattle who wrote all kinds of editorials, kept in touch with the Japanese, and was in the camps throughout. People like that were threatened, their lives were threatened. Their newspaper lost a lot of ads, and things like that. We could see the good in people, and we could see the negative parts of people.
How did you feel about being interned once you were there?
Once we were there, we were so doggone busy because, again, as I said, I knew so little and here I was in charge of recreation and education. Fortunately, some people came in and took the education part for me, but I was in charge of recreation for 18,000 people, and what do you do with that? We were just really busy organizing all kinds of things, but I learned a lot. It really was a learning experience for me. I learned how to push and how to pull, and the guy I worked for, Spike England, was a football player, or something like that. He was a very kind, very nice guy. I'd never been to Los Angeles, so he took me to Los Angeles when he went on one of his buying sprees. We had dinner out there. I mean, having dinner in a restaurant was like pie in the sky because we were in camp; we had this cruddy food and everything else!
Were you allowed to leave camp?
Because I was going with him, we got special permission. He (Spike England) had this secretary, a beautiful Japanese-American woman, who was being groomed to be a movie star at the time. She just lost everything! But she was his secretary.
Camp Community
Tell us more about being able to leave. What was the law behind that?
You could leave. When we were in Santa Anita, I had an opportunity to leave, to go on to college—for graduate work at Smith College, because they offered a scholarship. My mother cried because she didn't want me to go, because she wanted the family to be together. To her it was very important that the family was together. She also was afraid for me because she said "You're going out all by yourself, you don't know anybody, you're going to be in some east coast city—Smith college is in Massachusetts (I think)— so she refused to let me go. Anybody below 21 had to have a signature from their parents. My mother refused to sign. I wished I had been able to go because it was a real opportunity. They took care of my room and board, they took care of everything for me to go. My friend Ishka Uchida, who became a writer—and her books are now all over—she wrote about her experiences in camp. She and I were recipients of this scholarship. Because I couldn't go somebody else went, I could remember that.
If the camps were so bad, and you had the opportunity to leave and do what you wanted, why did you return?
We couldn't leave. I had a scholarship, that would have a student leave, then you could leave. The way the student leave came about is interesting. People at the University of California and the people who were with the YWCA of the University, they put together a fair play committee. They were the people who pushed to get the Japanese-American students, who were at Cal, to go to some of the other graduate schools. They were behind this push, to develop what they called student relocation committee. They were the people who gave scholarships for people, opening up universities and colleges. Most of the colleges that opened up were colleges that were Christian. Christian Colleges opened up much better than the others. The state colleges did not open up for a long time because, the state, again, is so much a part of the political scene, because its a public university. Maybe about 3000 people eventually left camp to go onto colleges because of student relocation.
Student relocation is still on today, and the reason is because the Japanese American students who were recipients of the aid got together—my friend Nobuko put some of the people together, and they developed the Nissei Student Relocation Committee. We all gave money every year, to make sure that other Asian students—people coming in from Laos, North or South Vietnam—to make sure that they had the opportunities we were offered when we were in camp. This has been going on now for a long time. So every year we give money to this group to make sure that the Student Relocation Committee goes on.
Were students the only people who were able to leave the camps? (4-6)
Well, after a while we went to Topaz after Santa Anita. In Topaz, life was totally different. In Santa Anita there was like impermanence. It wasn't going to be permanent. You could still smell the orange blossoms, and you could still see some greenery because we were in Santa Anita. You could see the trees and everything else. Well we went to camp in Topaz, and it's in the desert, the real heart of the desert. They took all the greasewood and everything out because they were putting the buildings up, so that every time the wind blew you had a sandstorm, all over the place, so much so that you couldn't see. By that time they had the places built, really ugly looking buildings. We were all put into different blocks, and you could hardly see the next one because the sand was around. The thing about Topaz, which I thought was most beautiful, was the nighttime; you could see the stars. The stars were so big, and they were glowing, almost felt like you reached them.
I guess the high school students said that their favorite song was "Don't Fence Me In"—They’d sing it all the time, "Don't Fence Me in". Some of my friends, who were high school students, were there all the way through! They have their high school reunions. What's interesting is the town of Delta. We were twelve miles away from Delta—this was in Topaz—I was heading social service committee. We had social workers in each block, and I was part of the group working together with the different social workers. We took care of problems in the block. We also had Issei, (the first generation people who spoke Japanese) as Block Managers. We used to call them "Blockheads" of our camp. My father was a Block Manager.
Again, it was this time that I really became serious, because now we were getting families that were disintegrating because of the situation. I asked them, how would you like to live in one room with your father and mother, your sisters and brothers all around, your aunts in the next room or whatever; All knowing exactly what you do every minute of the time. It was really a difficult period: Gossip, false gossip, consuming the camp. These were people who had time on their hands, and didn't know what else to do. They would gossip a lot. I could remember when I was in Santa Anita, and I was holding hands with a boyfriend. We were walking around, and when I came home, back to my cabin—back to the horse stall—my mother said, "Where have you been and what have you been doing?" I said, "I was just walking". She got very upset, because the whole camp—everyone in that area—said, "You know, something is going on with your daughter!" You had to be so careful.
How did you feel about everyone knowing what you were doing?
That's right, what you were doing, and I said why would you go on a date? I mean there's everybody knowing exactly what's going on. One of these days I should write a book called "Sex in Camp." My brother in law said "didn't you ever hear about the ambulances?" and I said no, I never heard about the ambulances—we had some ambulances in Topaz—and he said, "guess what they were used for?" They were used when guys would make propositions to the girls and they would go over to the hospital. They would use the ambulances. I said, well, nobody ever asked me! It was really funny. My husband and I didn't get married in camp because you could hear every noise that people made. When we were in camp they just had the tops of the building, but there was nothing under that. So, if you had a fight with your mother or father, everybody in camp knew about it, because people heard. They'd say, "Did you know what was going on in this thing? So and so was having a fight." Fortunately, we didn’t fight in our family, we didn't fight like that, but we knew who did!
They would tell us when people were getting babies. Japanese are not supposed to cry. You aren't supposed to yell. That thing is so strong, I didn't cry and I didn't yell, because I could remember my mother saying "Don't cry and don't yell when you're getting a baby!" But there were some women who cried. Then the whole camp, "Did you know that Masako cried when she was getting a baby?" It was just terrible like that, because everyone knew everybody else's business because there were no secrets in camp. So what happened of course, my husband and I said, "We're not going to get married in camp". There was- they called it a “honeymoon cottage” at the very end of camp—they didn't have one side. That was the “honeymoon cottage” and people would say you know "Did you hear all the noise last night?" So we didn't want that. It was really a strange situation, and the boys used to complain. They couldn't hold hands.
My friend Kiku tells me this funny story. She said she was in high school, and it was the last dance. So for the last dance, they turned the lights out. Totally dark, they were supposed to be dancing in the dark. One night they were doing that, along came this Issei, being this Japanese guy, first generation. He came in and said, "Oh no, what are you doing?" He puts the light on, and everybody just looks so embarressed. You look around, there are boys with lipstick marks on their cheeks! He looked around and began to yell at them, telling them they all had to go home. She said the next morning, all over camp they said "These Nissei kids are going crazy! It's wrong what they're doing." Japanese have very strong things about relationships between boys and girls. They still have some but not as bad. She said it was so embarrassing, because everyone knew about what had happened. From then on they didn't make it totally dark.
Can you explain more about how the relationship between a boy and a girl was supposed to be?
Well, it was very difficult. It was really difficult. They didn't have the privacy. What happened, the good thing is they became friends. They were really friends. It was not just sex, but it was friends. In fact there was very little sex. I said "Boy I could write a book, chapter one, chapter two, I don't know what I'd put in two!" Except for the ambulance situation, and the dances. It was very little. I said, "I should go through their things and see how many illegitimate children were born", because I didn't know any. I did know one prostitute. This was our group—the progressive people—The Nissei Demo said they accept everybody. So there was this woman and we knew she was a prostitute. They were trying to reform her. She wasn't going to reform! She made so much more money doing what she did, servicing the young men in the community, that she wasn't going to be reformed. They finally gave up on her, they said, "I don't think she's going to be reformed. Not when she's making all that money."
Were the young men looked down upon if they requested her services?
Yes, when I'm talking about young men, there were a lot of Issei men. They couldn't get married. Most of them, especially the farm workers—your immigrant group—didn't get married. It was very difficult; I think there was a ruling in 1920 that picture brides stopped. So it was from 1910 to 1920 that the picture brides came, but after that it was stopped. Women could not come to get married to the men in the United States. You had a lot of bachelors; we had an uncle who was a bachelor. They lived a very sad life, a very lonely life. Because they were men they don't know how to bunch up like women do—women always find some kind of a social group. I think of Hisashi and his life was difficult for him. So you had these men, she was servicing these men, who were older. Not so much the Nissei men, because they were still eighteen, nineteen, twenty—they were still in the stage of what we call puppy love. There were a lot of marriages that did go on in camp. I said, "How was it?" They said "difficult". You know, very difficult.
Most people got married just as they were leaving to go out of camp—people didn't want to get married in camp—but they did. I really often wonder how many illegitimate children—I don't know of any single mother, when I was in camp. I did a lot of social work, and I worked with people. They were single only if their husband died young. There was very little divorce in the Japanese family at that time. They were very stable families, but they began to break away. And the reason they began to break away was that in camp, you could eat with your family, but when you're a teenager, would you eat with your mother and father or would you rather eat with your friends? The family began to disintegrate, especially the teenage kids. At least when your children are young, as a parent you still have control over them and they all ate together, but the young people began to eat out. In the end, my mother would just as soon eat with her friends than eat with the rest of us. It was piecemealing the family.
What was interesting was when it was time to leave the camps, the families got together, they made decisions together. Some of us who were at other places, reported back about what it was like in the other places. Whether this would be a good place to relocate. Everybody wanted to go back to California. They loved their homes. The people who were in farming, I think most people did not go back to the farm. The work was too hard, they lost their visas, they lost their farms, so they went into the city. I worked in Chicago, I got out. I could not get out on the student leave thing because of that, so I got out generally, again, because I had a college education, and prospects of jobs were okay for me. You had to have a prospect of a job to go out. They had early releases for a short time. They were like braceros, they were like part-time workers, who went out to work and then had to come back to the camp. They made more money by going out to work, because they got the wages—minimum wages—outside. At camp they got something like sixteen, eighteen dollars a month. When you went out of camp you made something like forty dollars. So people began to go out.
