<Begin Segment 22>

AI: Well, so tell me what happened with the renunciation, the process there. First you, first you requested to renounce?

HK: Yes. And then they sent us a form, and we filled that out, and I don't know if we had a hearing at that point. Probably we did. Yes, and then the approval came. But the whole process was very quick, yeah. I mean, there was no time to, to think it over, or to change your mind. Although we weren't about to change our minds. I heard that one guy at the hearing, he was a Kibei, and he couldn't understand the questions too well. And he got so frustrated that he tore up the form, and then saved himself because that stopped renunciation.

AI: Well, when you say that you weren't about to change your mind, what, what do you mean?

HK: I don't think so. I mean, we already made our decision that we would renounce, and I don't know if we would have changed our minds at that point. Because we were so determined to, to go through that process. We thought that we would, it would be difficult, that there would be opposition, but there wasn't. [Laughs] That was the problem; there wasn't much.

AI: What made you think there would be opposition to renouncing?

HK: Well, I think they would value our, our citizenship, and try to impress us that we are doing something foolish. I'm sure they said that, but we weren't even listening.

AI: So then after you had gone through this process, and you had renounced your citizenship, then what was your feeling after that?

HK: Well, it was... I had a funny feeling that I had done something, something wrong, yeah. Something drastic, I think. But it was done. And it was, we were glad it was over, because we, we expected a lot of difficulty, obstacles to overcome in, in doing this. And yet, it was so easy, it just went over, and was fine. They, they were accepting. Yeah. And it wasn't too long after it happened that I felt I had, that no, I didn't want to do that. I really didn't want to do it, actually. I was just going along, and I don't like to talk about my brother this way, but I think he forced the issue, and I gave into that. I regret that most of all. I should have opposed him. He, he's a kind of black-and-white person, has to be one way or the other, and so we had our conflicts through the years because of that. And he had his way.

AI: It sounds like in the interest of family harmony that...

HK: Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah.

AI: You were trying to find some way that --

HK: Yeah, well, yeah. I feel that I should have stood my ground.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.