<Begin Segment 22>

AI: Well now, in your role as a counselor, I'm thinking that part of your role would be to help students think about their possible future. But in the early part of 1943, it occurs to me that some of the students might have felt quite pessimistic, that as a person of Japanese ancestry, their future might not be too positive in this country. What was your thinking at that time?

RC: Well, I would say all the core teachers were, were directing everything towards a future: "Graduation from high school is the most important thing that you should have on your mind. And then, the rest will take care of itself. Because, by the time you're a senior, you're going to have ideas of where you want to go and what you want to do." And in the public speaking class that I taught, I tried to direct their speeches towards: "Now what?" What's going to happen? What are we going to do? Where are we going? A lot of the boys, of course, felt that they would end up in service. And the thing, the thing that I found out afterwards, so many girls, when they went to the Midwest and the East, became teachers. And I thought that was wonderful.

AI: So at that time, you were really encouraging the students --

RC: Oh yes.

AI: -- to believe that there could be a positive future?

RC: Oh yes. Their future was ahead of them and they had to, they had to work at it, work it out. That's all, that was part of that change that I was talking about, you see. They might not have, not have gotten involved in anything like that if they'd stayed in Oregon and Washington. And they have to look back -- and I think, those that I have met over the years, they had to think that "I am somebody that I never thought I was ever going to be." Now maybe you can understand that statement, and see why I said it. Maybe they were just going to be homebodies, I don't know, or be a traditional Japanese. And you're not, you see. You're Americans. And I see that, right here. Backslapping, punching somebody, as I saw this morning, couple fellows punching each other on the shoulder, totally out of their past, you see. It's gone. And as I say, it goes back to change.

AI: Well, also during this year of 1943, especially, and, but I guess also into 1944, I had a question about what it was like for you to be teaching in the core and your, part of that was teaching U.S. history, of course, and also teaching principles of democracy. And what was it like for you to be teaching about democracy in this situation that, in some sense was not a very good example of, of democracy? They were in a camp situation where they could not fully practice as free citizens.

RC: Well, there were two, maybe... how can I say this? There were two sides to the population. There were those who had decided they weren't going to leave until the end. The other, "There are ways to get out of here, and we're gonna get out of here." And people like Father Tibbesart, the Catholic, Reverend Machado. Now I mentioned the professor --

AI: Oh, Father Kitagawa.

RC: Father Kitagawa. They were, they were mainstays of moving people out. Opening the door for them. And they did a fabulous job of that. And you see, our classes of fifty-eight some days were down to fifty-two, down to fifty, down into the forties. And we were saying goodbye, you see. And so, there, within the community there were these people who had contacts in the Midwest and in the East that were moving people out because they could go. The West was supposed to be someplace they couldn't be. But they could be any other place. They had to have a sponsor. And the sponsors were found by these three men. And they were, you might say they were holy men. And any family that, that realized that and took advantage of that, they were five jumps ahead of everybody else, you see.

AI: So some families were able to take advantage of that?

RC: Yes, yes.

AI: And were able to go out.

RC: (Yes).

AI: But others, for whatever reasons, various reasons, either weren't able to, or didn't want to.

RC: They wanted to go home. They didn't want to go any other place. They wanted to go home. And so they were willing to wait until they could go back home. And, of course, I think going back home, probably was a difficult thing, when they got home. The change was probably greater than they imagined it would be.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.