<Begin Segment 27>

TI: Let's go back to Garfield High School. So you went to middle school -- well, before we go there, what did your parents do? How difficult was it for your parents to reestablish themselves?

YN: They came back, they had no dreams that they're going to be presidents and corporate managers of anything. They knew there was no jobs of immense pay, all the wealth that was accumulated during the war, they would not be a part of. Their expectation was just to have a job. My mother was a beautiful lady; she became a domestic, cleaning the homes of the community of the wealth of the city. My father went back and (...) got back a job he had when he left (before the war), being a sack sorter, walking from Eighteenth and Yesler down to First and Lander. They all started as pioneers (paving the way) for the Niseis and the Sanseis to come. For the sake of the children, they gave up vacations, they gave up all for the embarrassment that they had failed in America. For because they couldn't be Americans, that's what happened to their children. And the burden of that was on their shoulders. Now, I wish I could say that's factual; I want to tell you I'm only surmising.

TI: Well, do you recall -- I mean, you mentioned earlier how the Isseis were able to become naturalized citizens in the '50s. Did your parents do that, and do you --

YN: Absolutely.

TI: Do you remember them doing that?

YN: I know now why they did it. No one has studied the uniqueness of why they did it. I'm going to say not because I studied it, I'm telling you from my gut. When one is denied anything, and said, "You're not good enough to be," when the time comes, they do what other people had been given the freedom may not do. When you are denied the fragileness of freedom, you are given a tremendous inner desire to prove them wrong. I think that is the story of the 442. I am certain if they (were not questionable marginal Americans), they would have all the hesitancies and (questions) just like anybody else (...).

TI: That's interesting. So because citizenship was denied to your parents, when it was available they, they leaped at the opportunity. And the same thing with the 442, because they were denied...

YN: Their rights.

TI: ...the rights, and the, in some ways, the ability to serve in the army. When that was opened up to them, many of them also took that...

YN: (But) it was abnormal, and it's glorified (with) "model Americanism" and we became the model of a "quiet American." I have no (other) comment.

TI: That's good.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.