<Begin Segment 23>

AI: So you lived there a couple of years and then you said you moved to another place, another location?

AS: Uh-huh. Up north.

AI: Still in Chicago or outside?

AS: Still in Chicago. Well, Chicago was so big that if you go a long ways you'd still be inside the, inside the city. [Laughs]

AI: Right. Well, now, while you were living in Chicago, did your, was your father still hoping to move back to Peru or --

AS: Yeah, he was still, at the beginning he was still hoping to go back to Peru.

AI: And what, what did you, what information did you have about your family's status in the United States? Were you still potentially --

AS: We, yeah. We were still classified as illegal aliens and we were still fighting deportation.

AI: So, the U.S. government was still, still planning to deport you to Japan?

AS: Deport, right.

AI: And you were still trying to --

AS: Fighting

AI: -- fighting that. What, what was going on at that time? Did you... were you really concerned that the government, U.S. government might still send you to Japan?

AS: Yeah, we were still... but we weren't too worried by then because we had Wayne Collins protecting us, so...

AI: So at that time he was still working for you and the other Japanese Peruvians?

AS: Right.

AI: And since you were still classified as an illegal alien, did that... but that didn't seem to interfere with your work in Chicago.

AS: No.

AI: That didn't make any difference. And in your mind, how did you think of yourself? Did you think of yourself as being an illegal alien, in Chicago?

AS: No. I didn't even think about it because nothing, it wasn't, there wasn't anything different. The only thing was that we had to report to the post office, to the immigration office, which was in the Chicago post office. We had to go and report once a year, every January.

AI: Now, did you have to do that when you were at Seabrook also? Did you have to report?

AS: No.

AI: You didn't have to. But once you were in Chicago, you did?

AS: In Chicago, yeah.

AI: Did you have, did the immigration office give you any kind of identification or anything?

AS: No.

AI: Nothing.

AS: No, we just had to go over there and report and they, and they check our, our status and that's it.

AI: So even though you were still classified illegally in the United States, the immigration office would just check you off and then you would go back --

AS: Yeah.

AI: -- home and go back to work?

AS: For another year.

AI: Wow.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.