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6-Political Life During and After

After the camp did your view or how you looked at white people change?

Yes. I think I learned a lot in camp. I learned a lot about families. I learned a lot—all that psychology I took at Cal really became much more real when I saw real people behaving in real ways. I learned a lot about how people handled emergencies, how they handled difficulties. I respected—I learn to respect a lot of people who didn't have much education, but who were very ingenious in the ways they—the ways they dealt with the problems in camp. The fact that the Issei were smart enough to bring seeds of different kinds so that they could grow something. That they looked far ahead enough to see that they used these flowers so that we would be surrounded with flowers. The fact that the Issei—this is like with Issei, cause they were like my mother's and father's generation and we had so little to do with them. To find them—to really participate in classes and learning. It was really wonderful to see. I guess camp—looking at camp right after the camp we were upset with the fact that it was so wrong. That it was wrong for them to do that. That there was—we knew something about civil liberty, but not really strongly. I did a lot of research at that time. When I was in New York I went to the library—read an awful lot to see why—why were we put into camp. I went to the University of Chicago and I think about that time when I went to the University that things began to gel for me I began to see Civil Rights in a different way. As it affected us. I guess for me the camp was a positive and negative. Positive in that learned about myself, I learned about politics, I learned about the country, I learned about international affairs etc. In that way it was a learning experience. It was hard, but you're young. We saw it more as a challenge and an excitement rather than being really sad about what happened. What was sad—I do Oral History now a days and it's so sad some of the people had such terrible experiences. I think we were very fortunate because even after camp New York was great, Chicago was great wherever we went we found jobs—I found jobs (.....) with my academic background. Coming back here was wonderful. I feel that we were particularly—we were particularly lucky. My father had a business that he had bought an apartment house before we left, before World War II. He could come back to that and so he had a source of income. We didn't have the problems that a lot of the other people had. I think we were in that sense fortunate.

How did you become involved politically after you left the camps?

I got involved politically when I went to New York City. I was working at a place called Psychology Inc. and I met some people who were very much a part of the political—New York is so political you can't believe it. We had a mayor LaGuardia who was again a very popular mayor and he made some remark about the Japanese, the Japs or something. So we went on a delegation and I went with some—we had friends, Japanese—American friends, who were part of the Nisei Demos. We got together and we went over to protest and to have him withdraw the remarks that he made about the Japanese. We got very involved with the 442nd, with the Japanese—American units. We would have Saturday night activities for the service men. Basically, dances were socials with them and kept in contact with people in the 442nd. I was with a group called the Japanese American Committee for Democracy. We had a—we rented a place. It was on top one of those wonderful jazz cellars. I can remember—I'm thinking "Gosh I should have been downstairs then," because I love jazz, but we were upstairs and we were very politically aware of Japan. What was happening in Japan. We went to New York we found these Japanese Issei—immigrant group—very different from my parents. They were progressive and—I don't know if I mentioned this but, they would do things like take a tug—a boat and put a whole thing down saying, "Down With The Emperor" and when the Japanese ship—this is before the War—when the Japanese ships came in on their training mission they would go around and around the ship with the "Down With The Emperor!" kind of message. Some of them were communists, most of them were not. It was interesting to be with that group. We helped the Japanese who were coming out of camps and help find places for them and things like that.

We were very much into social services and political services. When we went to Chicago is I really got very active politically. I had my daughter, she was still young so I kind of stayed home for a while when I was in New York. We go to Chicago and I was working for the—first I worked for a black agency—after school programs for black children in the ghettoes in Chicago. When you talk about ghetto it's the first time—again I learned how awful life can be in those ghettoes because they had so little money. I would be in places where people would sleep in shifts going to work because they couldn't afford an apartment of their own. The wallpaper would be newspaper and I said to my husband "Gee, I thought we were poor!" But they were even poorer than we what we were. They really had a hard time and I think I grew by that experience of working with extremely poverty stricken—and yet wonderful—children. I worked with their children and they were delightful.

Then when I worked for the resettlers I worked with—I got active with the Chicago Urban League and with the NAACP. We had a sleep in. I was with the Young Progressives and we had a sleep in 1968 election. We were in Chicago and the beaches in Chicago were all white. Nobody went in there except white people. So, we went with a group of interracial. We had our black friends, and we were with the Young Progressives—Progressive Party. We went in, slept overnight, got a lot of publicity, and we brought it other people and pretty soon it was desegregated.

I worked with the PTA's, I worked—many different groups, but the big thing that I went on was a peace activity. I was at Vassar College and at Vassar College I had gotten a scholarship for some more classes. I had gotten my Master Degree by that time, so I went there—again we had a signature campaign against the development of nuclear weapons, way back in the 60's. Early 60's or late 50's. It was really incredible. 1948 is when we went to Chicago—so it was in the 50's, early 50's. I can remember very much about that campaign. It was to stop the development of nuclear weapons. We went to the black community and we were out getting signatures and everybody signed our petitions. Then there was a white man who was standing close by and he made a grab for my petition. I had my daughter with me and she was maybe about five years old. She began to scream—she thought he was going to attack me—and she began to scream. Somehow all the doors open and about six black men, very big tall, came running out and said "How can we help you?" There is this poor white guy just shivering out there. I said "Well he tried to take our petition," they said " What do you want to do with him?" I just said "Tell him to go away," because I didn't want anything to happen to him. It was something, because we were told by the rest of the Progressive Party people that we were with that we were probably the only incident in the whole city—the police were arresting people with the petitions—but in the black community they were not doing that. They came to defend us. We were saying we could see where our allies were in terms of peace and justice that we could work very well with the black people. When I was with the NAACP we picketed some of the department stores in Chicago, that were refusing black applicants. So we picketed there. My brother—in—law was in a car, was in a streetcar and he saw me. He called me, he said "I'm so embarrassed for you. To see you walking around with a sign and calling for hiring of people of minority groups." I became very active at that time. From then on I was always active in political campaigns etc. Including today.

I'm with the Watana campaign right now, putting together resolutions to present to our city counsel. Worked very hard on the Redress campaign. We were out all the time giving talks and getting support. Basically, we wanted to make sure that no other group would go through what we did. To have all our civil liberties taken away. We had no charges against us—what they call habeas corpus—we had no opportunity to make a defense. We didn't know what the charges were, and we were told, of course, that later on an inquiry by the Supreme, by the Congress that the reason we were put in was because of the fact that they couldn't trust us. As a result of prejudice—a history of prejudice. A history of lack of justice—there is a whole history—I don't know if my husband talked about it, but there is a whole history of injustice towards Asians as well as towards blacks. At this point, we are very much against the war in Iraq and calling for our soldiers to come home.

Would you say there is a connection at all between your internment and your absolute current immediate positions?

One of the things that were very interesting to me was that right after the 9-11—first of all the first group that came out to warn against wholesale jailing of people from the Arab American areas was the Japanese American Citizens League. They realized that, because when we talked with the Arab Americans they said, "Yes, that first group that came out, in all of the United States, was the Japanese American group". The other thing is that we found a lot of Japanese Americans who are active, or who signed our petitions, because of their experience that they had during War World II. The experience of discrimination, of being singled out, of being made scapegoats of something that happened that you had no control over. That was very important to us. I guess what we see now is, although the government under Bush is not pretty, I don't think they could put all the Arab Americans into a camp or all the people of particular religion into camp. I think individuals being picked up on the basis and having—some of the people in Guantanamo have been there four years and have had no charges against them. No opportunity to make a defense, no lawyers—nothing, no trials. That's what happened to us. We are very open and vociferous about the civil liberties of everybody. We realized we were in a totally different situation, that there are terrorists, but there needs to some control over the way the government just handles the situation like that. We see a lot of similarities. We learned a lot politically from that. Especially the rid Habeas Corpus, which was so important.

Telling Her Story

If you have one message that you would like to tell the world what would that be?

It would be that people need to get together for peace and justice. That they really have to make their voices heard and not to just sit by quietly when things happen. As an activist.

Do you have any advice for future generations?

I don't have advice. I just say to learn from your own—to study and learn about your history. History of our government and history of all these things that happened. If you are a minority person, learn your history, so you'll know again what happened in the past. You'll be sure to deal with the president and war in an enlightened way.

If it happened again what would you have done differently?

Ok. Good question. I think that all of us have looked back on what happened. I think that we have to realize that times are very different. That we have had in the past I would say that the last thirty or forty years, we've had in our country a real change. At the time that Pearl Harbor happened we had no friends. Nobody came to our defense. Nobody said it was wrong. Nobody said we support your position, if we decided that we were not going to go. We were all naive. We were isolated minorities, small isolated minorities. We were young, we didn't know the political system. Today it would be very different. Today I think we would go—first of all, we would protest any kind of being put into camps any kind. We would also make sure that we have allies. We would go to all the different groups that are present. For example, I'm thinking of NAACP, The Chinese Progressive Association, all these different—the ACLU, civil liberties organizations of all kinds. To work together with us. To stop this kind of activity on the part of the government. I think that Arab Americans are doing that, which I think is so good.

I would not go, I really would not go. At this point eighty-five years old, I'd sit down and say I'm not going to go. I think at this point that you will get enough support to do that. If I did that last time I would just have been killed or put in jail. They would have carried me out and put in jail. I think today it would be different if you had people who said no we aren't going to go. There were a few people—I think Ernie talked about them—they were a few people who refused and they had to face a very hard time. My feeling is that, today life is different and I feel like we have progressed in our country so much in terms of the knowledge of the general populous. The knowledge of civil liberties. I think if they were going to put the Arab American into camp, all of them, there would be a big out cry. At this point they're being selective and they are just taking different people, which makes it much more difficult to handle. Again because we are all terrified of terrorists. It's much more difficult to deal with. I would refuse to go. They would have to carry me and at eighty-five what do you have to lose?

If you could write a letter to the government during your internment what would you have told them?

I never did. That’s the thing that we were so busy in the camps—I understand Eleanor Roosevelt came to one of the camps. She didn't come to our camp, but she came to one of the camps. I thought "Oh wow what an opportunity to talk to her," but we never thought—we never wrote letters to the editor. I do now, but never did before—letters to the editor. We never thought about writing to our congressmen. In fact, one of the Japanese guys in our hotel used to write letters to the congressmen. I don't know what he was writing about, but he would get my sister to come and write letters for him and he would tell her what he wanted. We used to laugh and say, "Imagine, he's writing to a congressman!" We never thought that it would have any kind of consequence. Now we know if a lot of people write to our government—we know that if there is a lot of format down below—that the government listens. They have to listen. I'm sorry that I never wrote a letter. However, one of my friends were looking at the JCD, which is the group that I went with New York City. I was editor at one point of their newsletter that they had. These are guys that are now researching—they are professors who are researching. One called me and said "Hey, I like the editorial you wrote." I said, "Which one did I write?" Evidently, I was advocating working together with other minority groups, especially with the Afro-American people. I said, "Well, I guess I did write something." Basically, a political thing. I should have written—I could have written—I should have written, but I didn't.

You've been politically active for many years. What's one thing that your most proud of that you have done from an action point of view, that you think has made a real difference?

I'm trying to think of all the things that I have been in. I could give you one that I regret, that I feel that—that was trying to get signatures on stopping the nuclear development. I don't know if Ernie talked about his parents—about his people in Hiroshima, who died. When we went to Japan, we sat with his mother and she told us these sad stories about what happened to Ernie's friends. It was that, that really got to me about how awful—how awful it must have been. Then when we went to see the Hiroshima Museum, we saw that and we thought, "It's impossible you cannot have anything like that!" One of the things that I felt proud of—but we lost—was to stop the development of nuclear bombs. I think, if we had stopped at that time and only the United States had it... Who knows, with science being the way it is. I don't know.

The thing I guess that I was most proud of was when I went to Congress, as part of the Redress campaign. I spoke in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee because they were not going to fund—I think they passed the bill—but they were not going to fund it. We went there to ask for funding for that bill. I got there and I spoke. I talked about my mother and what it meant to her especially. She was one hundred years old at that time. I talked about her and about the Issei—the first generation, the immigrant people—and the meaning that it would have for them to get an apology from the American government. Also to have some monetary help. I think that I was told by a congressman—a Japanese American congressman—that was a very effective plea. We went as a group, so mine was not the only one. We had other people who spoke up too—there about six of us who went. The Committee said we should come up with a recommendation that we give the money to—to ensure that the Redress campaign was not in vain. That we would get some money to people. I felt that we had a part of the hand in doing that. In getting the apology and the money to people. That was probably the one time that I was—one time out of all the millions of times I sat in or paraded around.

Again you don't do it by yourself, it's done with a lot of people. I think the one that we did with Carson Peary and Scott in Chicago had all those immediate results. I was just part of that whole group that went there with the Urban League and the NAACP. We did open up the department stores in Chicago's Loop as a result of the campaign. It was not me, it was part of a group. Most the things that we had victories in—we spoke up against—I spoke up against the Title II, which was in the 50's sometime, where the American government was willing to keep the—some of the camps open to put into centers because there was people who were dissenting against the Korean War. We went at that time to do some work on that. Then there are different things that I worked on that—a lot that I worked on that didn't show any kind of victory. Hopefully, this war in Iraq —we were talking about the Lieutenant Watana's campaign. We have a small group of people that we have working on it. We go to demonstrations to bring the message—this message and we find that there is a growing number of people who are dissenting about the war. Soldiers who are refusing to go and so we think, "Well maybe one of these days that will also"—but ours is again a very small part in that whole development of a campaign. I don't think I make great changes for anything. I think I'm part of a group that makes changes when possible. Many times we lose, but we try.