<Begin Segment 23>

AI: Just before the break, you had been telling about after your decision to renounce, after going through the process, actually.

HK: Yeah, it's hard. [Laughs] It's still a non-resolved issue, I guess, with me.

AI: Well, so then sometime after that then, you heard about Wayne Collins?

HK: Yeah.

AI: And tell about what, what you heard, and what you decided to do at that point.

HK: Yeah, well, I'm going to talk about this on my panel, but we were all concerned because we, we felt that we had made a big mistake. And then we heard that this attorney from San Francisco was coming in, and he was coming in to, to close the stockade. He had heard about the stockade men being held in the stockade. And so he was there, and then we, we approached him, because he also heard about us, and that we were close to being deported, and we weren't even aware of that, but he knew, and that we would be deported. So he, he was also interested in us, and so some of us met with him, and that's when he became very, pretty involved, that he knew how we felt, and that we were, we did it under duress and pressure, and so he said, "Well, I will, if you feel that you want to change your mind and cancel it, then I'll write you a letter," and so he did, and we copied it and passed it around and sent it off to the attorney general. And then I think we asked him to be our attorney soon after that. And, of course, he said that you needed an attorney, and we couldn't get anyone, so he agreed to be our attorney. And I think Tets Nakamura, I don't know whether he was an attorney or not, but, and I don't know whether he was a renunciant or not. I don't think he was. But he was very involved with the committee, and I, I became involved in forming this defense committee, Tule Lake Defense, it was to recruit people who felt the same way about canceling the renunciation. So that's how we got together, and I think he came to Tule Lake a couple times after that, yeah.

AI: Well, it sounds like you had quite a change in your thinking and actions, whereas before you went through the renunciation process, you were really saying how you had tried to fit in with speaking Japanese, you tried to make yourself think Japanese.

HK: Yeah.

AI: But then you had quite a change after going through that process.

HK: Yes. I think the, the end of the war, Japan lost the war, I think that had... I don't know the date, the sequence, but I think that changed my mind.

AI: So after, fairly soon after you finished the renunciation process, then in 1945, then, August was the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then Japan surrendered.

HK: Yeah. So by that time, yeah, I think it was clear to me that I had done wrong, done something wrong, and that I, I quit my Japanese language class, I dropped it and I said, "What's the point? Japan lost the war." And I took up tailoring. [Laughs] There was an old man who did some tailoring, and so we hosted the class at our apartment, and the women came and I was about the only male, and we learned how to make buttonholes. We cut up the small sample... I guess we, it was a pair of pants, men's pants. But beyond the buttonhole, I didn't learn too much more. [Laughs] But I can handle a needle a bit. So that, for their mending and hemming, I do that because it gets done. [Laughs] If I depend on my wife, it never gets done. So I do all hemming.

AI: Well, so, your daily life and your daily activity really changed quite a bit then?

HK: Oh, yeah.

AI: And your thinking, and...

HK: Yeah.

AI: And tell me more about getting the Tule Lake Defense Committee together.

HK: Well, it was mainly contacting like-minded people, and I think everyone felt that they, they did something, they made a mistake, and they wanted their citizenship back. And it's funny, I don't know whether, I guess, the loss of the war in Japan had something to do, although I had no intention of going to Japan at all. I mean, even though we had said so, we only said so because we had to. And I don't know, Japan losing the war didn't affect me that much. People went to, into all kinds of trauma over that, Issei. Camp was very quiet the day after the surrender. It was really quiet. No movement, nothing, no life. And we just went along. I mean, how could... yeah.

AI: Well, as I understand it, there had been some other changes, too, even before Japan surrendered, that a number of people at Tule Lake, who had been very active in the Hoshidan and the Hokokudan, were removed to other camps. So some of those people had left.

HK: Oh, yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah.

AI: And so maybe for some of these reasons, and then eventually Japan's surrender, it changed the atmosphere quite a bit.

HK: Yeah, the atmosphere changed. But once we got the movement going, then I think Mr. Collins came again and arranged some sort of hearing, and why we renounced, and the fact that we wanted to remain here. And so the, the WRA released us in March.

AI: March of 1946?

HK: Yeah, after the, after the hearing, yeah. March of 1946, yeah. And, and then there were years of uncertainty, not knowing whether we had our citizenship or whether we could go to school, we were fortunate that President Sproul was very understanding, I think, that he allowed us to attend as regular students.

AI: At University of California.

HK: Yeah, yeah. Residents. And so we were able to, to go.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.