<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Well, during this time of survival, was there ever an adult, whether it's your parents or another adult or an older Nisei who explained to you what was going on?

YN: No. And there was, because of our lack of understanding, a very divisiveness between the Isseis and the older Niseis. For the Isseis were relegated to a position by the system because of language, they were no longer the empowerment of the community.

TI: And so you would see this happening at Puyallup, places like Puyallup?

YN: I can see the, the animosity between the Isseis and the older Niseis. They didn't like each other.

TI: Did that include your, your parents?

YN: My parents were the same way. They, but they weren't leaders, so therefore they were much more tolerant to the Niseis, because their, their authority was not being challenged. Their empowerment was not challenged, so naturally they were, they let the Niseis get the benefit of everything that came their way. So they forfeited any empowerment as parents to give to their children because they, what? Spoke English. They were the Americans and they were not. For you have to understand, even if they wanted to be American, the law did not allow them to be American. And why can I say that? It's because when they were allowed to be Americans, they were the largest group that became naturalized in the '50s after the Walter-McCarran Act.

TI: Yeah, so, what happened was, Japanese, or almost all Asian Americans were denied the ability to become naturalized citizens until about 1952, '53.

YN: Right.

TI: With the McCarran-Walter Act.

YN: Right.

TI: But I'm curious, in terms of the family life, how did that change when you went to Puyallup? I mean, did you still eat together as a family?

YN: No more family life. That, that is the most, most, should I say, the striking thing that disintegrated our community. Children ate with children, the, everybody, the Isseis ate with Isseis, or the... you see. And everything was segmentated like it was good times. You're always with your friends. So many people wanna say it was good times, and I'm saying, "Don't listen to that story, listen to what was not being said." The, the breakup of the traditional family is what created the Japanese American so much of who they are in America, is we, we lost that segment of four or five years, and we didn't recover because we got free, we all scattered. We were gypsies of America.

TI: So during that period after the war, just resettling.

YN: Because resettlement for a, one that sits in prison is better, they have a place to go. When we came out, there was no place to go.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.