|
Evacuated
Tell us about the day that you were evacuated.
The day I was evacuated, I was working. As I said, I took a civil service exam when I was working for the county. I got the order to leave in May, and that was five months that I would have been working there. I had to work six months to become a permanent worker. I got a letter from the county clerk—he was a good guy—he said that if my work was satisfactory and if it hadn't been for evacuation, I would continue to be employed there. So he gave me this letter. Of course, after evacuation we started a fight for our rights. I produced the letter and we presented it to the county and I got $5000 paid. We finally got that for the county—that was the beginning—and we also got it for the state and things like that. We tried to get as many people involved as possible in the civil rights fight. Of course, we always had in mind that we were going to move more people whenever we did anything.
Was it hard to leave your house when you were forced to relocate?
One of the things that was happening was the government came in and had this loyalty test. They had two questions of course they were silly questions. After these questions and loyalty was established -those people who said yes-yes to the two questions were allowed to volunteer in the army. If you volunteered for the army you were allowed to leave the camp. If you were a student and a college accepted you and gave you room and board and tuition then you could leave. So you could leave if you didn't become a ward of the government That's why people started to go out, I for one went out and worked for a nursery, fresh air and all that.
Other people did some assembly work very few got jobs as engineers. They mostly got assembly work and things of that sort. After the war ended then people began to get jobs. Some people hired Japanese engineers and found out that they were pretty good workers. So that got around so others started hiring. Although still in California you couldn't get a job, outside of California you could find jobs so little by little it opened up. When the war ended, a lot of Nisei got into these jobs, engineer jobs, because they had the education so the education paid off because of that they started getting decent jobs. That was one of the good things that came out of this war- that was that it opened up the job situation for the Nisei. And of course when we overturned all the laws in California they began to get hired there too.
Tanforan
How did you travel to Tanforan?
We went on a bus, because Tanforan was close by. We gathered at the courthouse—that's where I worked.
What was the date?
May the 10th. I remember that date. I told the people who were working that I was going to leave on May the 10th. When I was leaving, all my workers were lined up on the window waving goodbye to me, which was kind of nice. We went on the bus because it was close. When we went to Topaz from Tanforan we went on the train. They said that we had to keep the shade down, which was stupid, because they said they didn't want people to see us. They didn't want any actions to be taken against us or anything.
What do you mean by that?
Their claim was that people might throw rocks at us or something if they knew that we were Japanese-Americans on the train. They said to keep the shades down during the day, and also at night. You couldn't see where you were going!
How did you personally feel the day you were evacuated? Were you angry?
Or course, we were more or less resigned by that time. I guess a lot of people felt the same way. They didn't like the idea of being sent away.
What about you, personally?
As I said, we talked about this a lot among ourselves, so I knew that we would have to go and do this, and there wasn't anything we could do about fighting it. My feeling was that we would just go along. I didn't have any good or bad feelings about it. I was more or less resigned that we were going to go. I don't know if others felt differently, but I guess a lot of them didn't like the idea. I know that afterwards a lot of them said that they resented it. As far as I was concerned, my personal feeling was that I didn't have any hard feelings or anything against it. We figured it was a thing that was coming anyway, and we couldn't do anything about it.
Did your feelings change once you arrived?
Of course we didn't like the idea of being in a horse stall!
Can you describe your conditions?
You know what a horse stall looks like—it's just got a wooden floor. But these were old horse stalls—Tanforan was an old racetrack—so the floor was all broken up. A lot of urine was underneath there, so it was smelly. That's why it was kind of bad. I don't know, it wasn't a good feeling but I wouldn't say it was resentment or anything. We didn't like the idea of being put in there. You had to keep the front door open all the time because there were no windows. The back was all closed in, and the front door was the only place that was open! If you wanted any fresh air, you had to leave the door open. That's what we all did. Later on—as some of us accumulated enough money—we bought linoleum and put it on the floor. That sort of kept some of the smell down, but it was still smelly.
What did you take to the camp?
I brought my clothing, and we had to bring our own plates, aluminum plates and stuff. It was like going camping. You had to bring your own dishes and cups and everything, knives and forks. Most of us brought these camping utensils.
You left everything else at home?
You were only allowed to bring what you could carry. Of course, some people brought more. They didn't know how much you were taking because we dumped everything out in a certain place and then they put those on a truck and took them. Some people took more than they could carry. If you did take more, you couldn't take a truckload or anything like that. Maybe you took another suitcase or something. Chizu's brother brought his trombone, because he wanted to play the trombone. Maybe she told the story already, but he brought the trombone. There may have been others who brought something like that along. You were young at that time, so you didn't think of the inconvenience you might go through otherwise.
Do you remember your most significant item that you brought?
No, I can't. I brought some civil rights books, but outside of that I can't remember what I brought. Mostly, I guess it was books mostly.
Was it hard for you to decide what to take?
No, it wasn't that hard because it's just a matter of convenience.
After the internment were you able to get any of your items back that you left behind?
Not most people. Some people could. Some people had friends who would keep it for them or who took over their place. They had a small room where they kept all their stuff in there, so when they came back they had it. But most of them didn't have any friends like that. In fact some left things locked up, but these places were broken into and their things were stolen.
How about you?
I lost my stuff too, they were stolen. Course, I was a single person and I didn't have too much to lose. But most of the things that I lost that were important to me were my photos. Albums—I don't know what they did with the pictures, but they were gone. They probably took them and just threw them away someplace.
Pictures of your family in Japan?
Yeah, so those pictures are gone because we don't have the negatives.
Had somebody taken everything when you went home?
Well—they didn't take everything, but what they didn't take they scattered around. You could see that they just took things and scattered around looking to see if there was anything good and then just took the things that they wanted. The people that lost the most, I think, were the farmers. Most farmers borrow money at the beginning. They buy seed and they have to hire people and things of that sort at the beginning. They borrow money and then, when they get the crop, they sell it and then they pay off all their debts. These farmers, they planted their things, but they were evacuated before the crops came out. So they had to leave it. And some of them were so mad. I know some lettuce farmers said that they just poured kerosene on the lettuce and just burnt them because they were so mad that they didn't want to leave it for anybody. So things of that sort happened.
Councilman in Tanforan
Were you ever fingerprinted or identified somehow when being interned?
The only time I remember being fingerprinted was when we were evacuated. They took our fingerprints then. No other place except the army took it.
How did you feel about being fingerprinted?
I didn't feel anything because fingerprinting was just another way of identifying me. That's the way I looked at it. It wasn't because I was an enemy that they fingerprinted me. I didn't feel anything about it. I know some people may have.
In Tanforan you said you were a councilman how did you become a councilman
Oh well when we went into Tanforan as I said all of the Nisei young all of the people in the same area went into Tanforan in the east bay. And because of that we had a nucleus of Nisei young democrats and we came in all together. So we got together right away and we started discussing things and when the camp elections came up we talked about it and said why don't we try one of our people. And so at least we could stymie camp control by doing it.
So we talked about it and the Nisei Young Democrats said lets run me because I am Japanese American, I’ll get the support as the other Japanese as well and they decided to run me although I was a radical at the time because we were fighting the administration we figured it was better to have someone like me in their and because of that it was interesting I didn't know if I would get in or not but we got overwhelming voting.
Did you ever have any doubts about being a councilman?
No because these are camp problems that we would be taking up and I knew the main thing we would be fighting was the administration. So it didn't bother me to become councilman.
Did the guards ever target you because you were a leader?
No I don't think the guards knew I was one of the leaders. They only guarded the fence and the gates. The towers were near the gates and the corners usually. No body tried to climb the fence. That’s another interesting thing about the Japanese. The Japanese very law abiding. Their used to I guess listening to authority I think that’s what it is and that’s why the parents can control their kids a lot better. Children learn from the beginning that they should do as the authority says and the authority in this case is their parents.
Did you feel racism before you were evacuated?
I didn't feel it, but I think farmers probably felt it more then in the city. Some places had shots fired into their house and things like that. They couldn't sell their crop. Nobody would buy it because they knew that they were going to leave anyway. So the crops just rotted out there.
Did you feel like the government itself was being very racist against you and the other Japanese or did you feel that this was more justified?
We knew that racism was involved as far as we were concerned. When Congress set up this commission and published this book, they even said so in there. They said that reason was not based on military necessity but that it was based on racial prejudice and war hysteria and a lack of leadership from our government. Even they said that racial prejudice was one of the reasons.
How did you feel about Roosevelt at the time?
Just like any other leader, we thought that he was prejudiced. He had prejudices. I think sometime before the war he said something too about the Japanese which showed that he was prejudiced. So we knew that, but it's just like General DeWitt, he was prejudiced too. We knew that, but I couldn't do much about it.
Do you believe our society will ever reach a point where there is no more prejudice?
That's hard to say. I wouldn't say that you could get to the point were there is no more prejudice, but there would be less prejudice though. I think there is less prejudice today then there was before the war.
This is something you're fighting for by being an activist?
We fought for this and the reason that we were fighting for civil rights was because we didn't want this to happen again but we know that it is happening today. We have people that are being put into prison without any charges and in some cases the families don't know where they are. Things of that sort. So it still happens, but not as blatantly as it was before. Before they just did it anyway, but today at least, they try to hide.
|
