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4-Released from Topaz - End of War

When you were there, there was a long period of time when you didn't know what was going on in the outside world?

I think some people finally had radios, but we didn't have a radio. Certainly television wasn't invented. We didn't get a newspaper.

Was there a big shock when you were released?

I know when the atom bomb was dropped it was a shock. But then, it was a shock to everybody. I mean people just didn't know what atomic energy was about. But I think that people knew which way the war was going. There were people in camp that wanted you to believe Japan was winning.

What type of people?

There are always people that make up stories. I don't know how else they got them. I think the majority of the people knew that Japan was losing. I don't know. Of course, a lot of the people did leave camp and they could write back. Our letters were not censored. There were some camps where they were censored, but our letters were not censored. I think we get to a position where we kind of don't care what is going on out there.

How did your family react to the atom bomb?

I don't know, because I was gone. I was in St. Louis by then.

Did your parents ever talk about it?

No. I know my husband went to see. He had family from Hiroshima. In fact, probably a huge percentage of immigrants came from Hiroshima. He went to see his his parent's family, in Hiroshima, to see who was there.

Last time I asked you about the loyalty oath, you said something like it didn't concern you back then?

It didn't. I didn't understand all the things about it. All I knew was you had to answer that you were loyal or you couldn't leave camp. So I did.

Now that you've read about it and now that you have heard stories about it...

I would still have signed it.

What are your thoughts about the loyalty oath? What does it mean to you?

I think now that I know a lot more about it, it's ambiguous. There's no way you could really answer it. Like the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" If you say you stopped beating your wife, that means you did beat her once, or before. That kind of thing. It was never meant to be a loyalty oath to start with. I don't think they expected to be.

The young men who were involved in going to war. It was a very diffcult thing for them. And I think it was very difficult for people who had grown up in Japan, or it was more difficult for people who had grown up in Japan.

Where did your husband grow up?

In Alameda.

Was he one of the families that had to be evacuated after the new law?

His family had to be evacuated earlier than the rest of us. All those things, they don't make much sense. Here in Berkeley on University Avenue, if you lived on one side of the street, you got kicked out. If you were on the other side, you were okay. It was like, what's a street? They had to leave Alameda. They could live in Oakland and be just as close to the water as Alameda.

What did your husband think of the loyalty oath?

I don't think we really talked about it. It didn't worry us. It didn't bother him to answer it. I think it meant more to the people who were opposed to it.

What else do you know about your mother's trip to America?

It took my mother ten days to come from Japan on board ship, and I don't know how much in money. There was never any possibility that she could go back and just visit, until way after the war. She did. But she never expected to. She never expected to visit with her mother.

But she did?

No, her mother passed away before she could get there. She always sent them money, but she never expected to see them again. I said something to my mother-in-law about going to a garden in Hiroshima, when I had gone back. I asked her if she had ever been there and she said, "Oh, when we were young, we went to school everyday and we came home and did our homework and whatever-all."

But they didn't go to visit the samurai castles, or gardens, and things like that. That part of the culture—what you might consider the artistic things—we were not exposed to that type of thing. It has always been very difficult because I think that a lot of the things that I thought were cultural could be the times.

My mother was taught by missionaries. She was a teenager—or young student from, say, about 1905 to about 1920—in that time. Her teachers were another generation older, so she's being taught by white Methodist teachers who had cultural values of the late 1800's. "Young girls don't go out with boys, you're not even supposed to talk to them." All this sort of thing.

So my mother's big sin—if you want to call it that—was, there were some older girls in class that wanted to see somebody that was a guy, and she would go with them. She would just sit there and drink tea in the corner while the two of them had lunch together or something like that. That was a big thing. As the generations change, the way you look at things change. It is hard for me to say how much of it was Japanese, and how much of it was that Christian culture that the Methodist people had brought with them in the late 1800's. I think it's probably both.

It sounds like many, many kids didn't feel a strong connection to Japan and they felt very American. What happens when what you think of as home, puts you in this camp. How do you react to something like that?

I think you realize you're helpless. The government never asked me if I wanted to do something or if I wanted something, they went ahead and did it. I think that many of us still feel that way, that the government goes ahead and does these things. We can go vote; we can say how we feel and so forth. But a lot of things, we don't really have much of a say in. Especially when you're still in school, high-school and under, you're powerless. You could only go with the flow of what's happening.

Do you feel it is still that way?

Oh yes. You could try and make the best of a situation. But, there are a lot of things that are going on that you can't do a whole lot about.

It's sounds like when you were in the camp, most of the people were very obedient. Why don't you think anybody tried to rebel?

Because you're looking at rifles pointing at you. They had guard towers all around, and the guards are pointing rifles at you. When I was really little, I was thinking, why didn't the slaves just leave? They can't be watched every minute. The answer, of course is that in the first place, their facial features are going to give them away. And there's no place they can go.

If you go to the east coast and you try to drive between Jefferson's house and Washington's house, it's a long way just in a car. They would have to go all the way up to Canada before they could leave. You just don't think of all the things that could happen to them. Plus, they don't have the knowledge. They don't even know which roads to take. I'm sure word gets back. If you don't want to go to camp—if you don't go through it legally and get your papers and everything—what are you going to? Walk around in the desert? There's no place to go.

What do you think about the people who refused to go to camp and went to court instead?

Actually, when we were in camp and Korematsu decided he wouldn't go to camp, he came back to Tanforan, because he is from San Leandro. I would guess that most of the people thought he was nuts. That he was doing this because he wanted to stay with his girlfriend. It was only after the younger kids could see what he did, and how it could be used, did people begin to see it in a different light. At the time it happened, I don't think that we thought that he was a great guy or anything.

Why do you think people thought he was nuts?

In the first place, anyone that would do anything just to stay with a girl is kind of like, "oh, gosh." And she was the one who turned him! I think that in the case of the others, I think that they were very idealistic. I think they knew what they were doing and why they were doing it. I can't say, because, I was in tenth grade, you know, and I don't know all that much anyway. I think that, at least at that time, I didn't know about it. It's hard to make a judgment.

What do you think would have happened if there were more people like Korematsu?

I don't know. I don't think it would have stopped it.

You don't think it would have made a difference?

It might have. But I don't think it would have stopped our going into camp. I think that whole machine was going and everything was all plotted out.

Do you think he felt the same sort of helplessness that everyone else felt?

I think so.

I'm curious, how did the language barrier between Japanese and English effect their lives?

My mother always took English lessons, but they were never able to speak English well. Because they lived in a Japanese community, they used Japanese here. In the kind of work they did, they didn't have to use a lot of English, and they didn't. They spoke Japanese to us, and when we were little we were pretty good. As we grew older, you could tell. I always say you don't know a language unless you can express how you feel in that language. And I can't.

In Japanese?

I could say if I don't like something, but I can't really tell you how I feel about certain things.

It sounds like a lot of the older people at the camp spoke Japanese.

I think they spoke nothing but Japanese, the older folks. The younger folks spoke nothing but English.

Do you think that language barrier had an effect on what was going on?

I think almost everybody in my age group can understand Japanese well enough to get along. But when it comes to reading and writing, then you really have problems. The Japanese that you usually know is like mother to child: "What do you want for dinner? I'm cold. I'm hot. I won't be home," or something like that. You don't usually try to explain exactly what it is you do at work in Japanese to your parents. You don't get into anything technical. It's what I call "baby Japanese."

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