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Tule Lake

Can you describe the day you moved from the Assembly Center to Tule Lake?

Remember this cook telling us how wonderful the water was going to be? It was in our minds. There wasn't that real terrible feeling. But we knew when the train pulled up to Tule Lake. Oh, I've got to tell you that from Marysville, where the Assembly Center was and Tule Lake, we were on the train and, you know what? They wanted us to pull the shades down, so we couldn't look outside. You figure that one out. The shades were down, we were cooped up in the train and we were taken to a destination unknown. We didn't know it was going to be Tule Lake, but eventually we ended up in Tule Lake. When the train pulled in, just like it happened going into the Assembly Center, the head of the family went to a certain place to get an assignment of the living quarters. In our case, in Tule Lake, we had barracks 46 and unit A. The barracks had maybe four units—long barracks, chopped up in four units. So we kind of lucked out because we had the outside unit. We didn't have another neighbor. We had only one neighbor, where as the ones in the middle had neighbors on both sides, so you could hear what the neighbors were doing, if they were having an argument you could hear that. There were four units in the barracks and we had the outside unit.

We went to Tule Lake, got off the train and we were given this number of the barracks. I guess it was the trucks that brought us to the actual location. I'm not sure how we got there from the train to the living quarters. We went into the living quarters and we could see that in the middle of the unit was, what we call, a potbelly stove. I don't know if your familiar with it, but it's a round potbelly like. You burn coal in it and that was to help us over the winter months. To keep warm, to keep the whole unit warm. There was no restroom or bathroom in the units. The best we could have is a chamber pot. But fortunately for us young kids, once we went to sleep, we didn't have to go to the potty. But if you had to go to the potty, you had to go to another building.  Just imagine how it must have been if you had diarrhea or if you had a baby and you had to get up at the middle of the night to do toilet work. It must have been miserable. But for us young kids, we were playing hard or working hard all day and when we went to bed, we slept. We were unconscious for the night. When I think about it now, I wondered how some of the mothers took it all. If they had a chamber pot, I guess that was helpful. But if you had an infant baby or something else it must have been tough. That was the beginning. We went to the assembly center, so we kind of knew what it might be for us in the more permanent relocation center.

How was Tule Lake different from the first assembly center?

Of course being a more permanent one, there were more people there. It was just a smaller assemble center group. There were a number of assembly center groups that went into Tule Lake so they had at the maximum about 20,000 people there—that's a city. These barracks and then they had these fire breaks in between what they call wards and those fire breaks we used to play baseball, or whatever. Some of the leaders of the community organized churches, organized baseball leagues, organized talent shows for entertainment and young people eventually put together a band and they had dances for the young ones. Then they started a school, but before that, it was in the summer of '42, here again my mother was worried about us kids getting into trouble.

What we did was we joined a carpentry crew and we helped put up the sheet rocks. What they are is—what the barracks were—was you had your one by six's on the outside wall and then black tar paper on the outside of it, but it was very thin, and so during the winter it was very cold, so they were going to put sheet rocks on the inside. What they are is a great big six by eight board that you put against the wall and then nail it. But anyway, that work hadn't been done yet, this was during the summer, so it was time to get ready for winter and that's what we had to do. We joined this crew, my buddy and I, we joined this crew and helped put up the sheet rock on the ceiling and the walls and when that work was done—by that time they had a farm going, raising potatoes and so on. And so they wanted guys to go and pick up the potatoes. Then again, better than doing nothing, we joined that bunch. What we did, I don't know if I should tell you, but we played more than picked up potatoes. Then, in the fall of 1942, they had organized schools, they had a high school and I was a junior then so we attended school in Tule Lake—classrooms organized in barracks—but anyway that's what was done in the camps to keep at least our education going as best they can. The teachers were some of the people from the outside, came in to teach. There were others in the group of internees that were educated that could serve as teachers and between the two groups they taught classes. When I think about it now, I have this grateful feeling towards these teachers that came from the outside. Can you imagine that some people pointed to them and said "Jap lovers" and they couldn't understand why they would spend time in camp trying to teach enemy kids or educate enemy kids. So in spite of all that, and living conditions weren't A-1, as you have normally in the outside, they had to live pretty much like the rest of the evacuees, not as bad, but to spend that time in a desert-like environment and teach and when they went outside some people call them "Jap lovers" and stuff like that. That was a tough time, so I appreciate more of what they did and what they stood for after, when I look back on what happened.

The Loyalty Oath

Could you talk about the Loyalty Oath?

The Loyalty Oath, I don't know, I guess that's what they refereed to, those two questions. Whether you'd be willing to fight for the U.S. and be sent anywhere without question. Question 28 was "Would you foreswear allegiance to the emperor?" so my buddy and I said "Hey, Joe, what do you think of this question?" Number one: we never swore allegiance to the emperor of Japan ever before, why should we foreswear that allegiance? It doesn't make sense." Come to think about it, it's a loaded question; whether you answered yes or no, you're in trouble. It's like a married couple. Somebody asks the man, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" How would you answer that? That makes you laugh? I don't know who the hell put together these questions. Can you imagine, also, are you willing to join the army and be sent anywhere called upon, after being put in camp and being called "enemy aliens" and so on? Why would we want to volunteer for the U.S. army? It doesn't make sense. In my case, Joe and I said "Hey, let's just say 'Yes-Yes' and get sent out of camp, and get sent out of Tule Lake," which would in the process become a maximum security internment camp. I told Joe, "If I wanted to do some damage to the U.S., I wouldn't put up a red flag and say 'No-No' to these questions, I would rather say 'Yes-Yes,' get out, organize something and do something." Doesn't that make sense? Why would I stick my neck out say, "Hey! Here's a red flag! I'm a dangerous guy, you better keep me in this maximum security jailhouse." Anyway, it just didn't make sense, but that's just my situation.

Can you imagine that it caused friction in families? Families were split and kids had to go along with what their father decided. If the father decided "No, I'm going to stay here, No-No" what were the kids going to do? Were they going to say "No, I want to go out and make a living on my own." It's impossible when you're a young kid, so you go along with what your dad wants, and dads madder than hell because of being kicked around so much. It's not so much he's loyal to Japan, he's anti-America for all the mistreatment that he got. Anyway, there were many cases, many very sad cases too. In my case, I got out of camp and went to school, and so on. My life wasn't half as bad as some of the people. I don't know if it happened in Tule Lake but in Manzanar, that's the other camp, there were these orphans—they were all put in camp, they had no mother or father to look after them—but they had a group of orphans and one of our friends happened to be one of the teachers, or guardians, of the orphans. Just imagine how it must've been for these orphans to be put in camp, nobody to take care of them except some friendly internees. Things like that happened. That wasn't due to the Loyalty Oath questions, it was at the beginning.

The loyalty question caused a lot of fury amongst the evacuees and still today there's some hard feelings. Those that answered "Yes-Yes" and those who were already in the U.S. army looked to them as undesirables—those that answered "No-No" to the questionnaires. Hiroshi Kashiwagi, that you interviewed already, he was put in a very difficult position and he was ostracized by the Japanese community in general, but you know the reason he did what he did. There were cases like that, they just had to go along with the family. If you wanted to break-up the family the parents could say "No-No" and you say "Yes-Yes" and you're out on your own. It's hard to comprehend if it was a loyalty questionnaire, they could have designed it a little more fair. Some of the people who were in camp were Japanese citizens and they couldn't get U.S. citizenship and, if they said "No-No" to the questionnaire, what country did they belong to? They were people without a country. It's a terrible situation the more and more I think about it. As far as me and our family, we stuck together and were sent to Amachi, that's in Colorado. And those who answered "No-No" to the questionnaire in Amachi were sent to Tule Lake. All the so called "No-No's" were sent to Tule Lake and that became the maximum security internment camp with tanks and machine guns and so on. By that time I'd gone.

So your parents were in support of you saying "Yes-Yes?"

Yes, they went "Yes-Yes." My mother wanted to keep the family together. So we all got sent to Amachi which is not the maximum security internment camp and then after that I'm going to go on with my story.

Anything else you want to pick up in terms of Tule Lake or the loyalty? Can you recall any discussions or any stories or actions that took place amongst your friends around that? You talked in general about it, but can you think of anything specific you might want to share about that?

There was this group that said "No-No" and a group that was leaning towards "Yes-Yes" and they had come to the point of separation. There was animosity in some cases, where the "No-No's" beat up on the "Yes-Yes'." There was a case where the "Yes-Yes" people had to arm themselves with whatever weapons they could get to guard against the opposing groups. Things got tense in some instances. In our case, we were out of there in time to avoid all that. I can't personally say that this happened, but I hear stories of where these incidents took place. Then the administration did some poor things. They could've maybe explained the situation a little bit better before the questionnaires went forward, but whose to say under those circumstances? We have to put up with it, we have to live with it—that's the hard part. But I think whether you went "No-No" or "Yes-Yes" we were both shooting for the same goal and that would be justice and freedom. I have as much respect for Hiroshi Kashiwagi, for example, for taking the stand that he and his family took as the soldiers, like my brother and his group who were already in the U.S. army. I have a lot of respect for them because some of these people that went into the military intelligence language services volunteered out of these camps.

I have a friend that went through normal draft procedures, he flunked the test. He was either flat-footed or something, but he flunked the test. But when the military intelligence language school realized, "We need more linguists," they went to camp, asked for volunteers and this guy volunteered and he says "You know, I flunked this physical," and they said "Well never mind that, sign here. You're in." And he was one of the best linguists that was in this group of 6,000 that served. Things like that did happen and I personally know the guy, so I have a lot of respect for him. Oh, by the way, when he left camp, they took him out of camp undercover of night, they didn't want the rest of the people to know that he was going to join the army. A situation like that is very tense. Rightly or wrongly it happened that way. I have another friend that joined the "Merrill's Marauders" the very, very famous army outfit that fought in Burma. They were trying to open the road from India in to China to supply the Chinese nationalists who were fighting against the Japanese. I have a friend who went with a group of fourteen linguists, joined this unit called "Meryl's Marauders" named after this guy Gary Meryl the head of that unit. Of course, Roy, my friend, he has fantastic stories to tell, but he volunteered out of the camp in Jerome, Arkansas I think it was or one of the two camps in Arkansas. He's been asked "Why did you do that? Why did you join the army?" He says, "It's better than staying in camp." So, he volunteered and, wouldn't you know, he came out of the service and was put into the Military Intelligence Language Hall of Fame and also he's in the Rangers Hall of Fame, "Meryl's Marauders" were all rangers, and they are enshrined in Fort Benning in Georgia.