<Begin Segment 17>

TI: So you eventually finished your studies at Marquette. Where did you do your internship?

JY: In St. Louis.

TI: And how did you chose St. Louis?

JY: I was denied internships in Milwaukee. All the hospitals I applied to had one reason or another that they didn't want someone of Japanese descent in the, serving as an intern. Patient might refuse treatment or something. So City Hospital in St. Louis is a big municipal hospital, and I guess that type of restriction didn't apply there.

TI: So you're going to go to St. Louis, but you make a little side trip. Because at this point, your family had been removed from the L.A. area and were now being incarcerated at the Jerome, Arkansas, camp. So tell me about that, tell me about your visit.

JY: Well, I knew we had to have permission to go to the camp, and I made the appropriate application and they granted it to me. And the train I got on was informed to stop at an unscheduled stop near Jerome, and I was, there was a army detachment there to take, when I got off the train to take me to the camp, it was in the middle of the night, and this army detachment had jeeps there and a little detachment took me to the camp.

TI: Did that seem a little intimidating? Here it was dark, and you're the only one getting off this train, and you have all these military people to escort you to the camp.

JY: It was a unique experience, I guess. So this is one of those days you remember clearly.

TI: And what did you find when you got to Jerome?

JY: First we traveled through an unlighted, dark area, and then we see the camp lights appear, then we go through the barbed, the entrance gate, and they took me directly to another enclosure within camp that was surrounded by barbed wires. They were informed to take me there. And it happened to be the hospital grounds where my father was hospitalized.

TI: So, okay, so you go through the first set of barbed wires, which is the main camp, and then you go through another set which was now the camp hospital, where your father was hospitalized. Did you know your father was hospitalized?

JY: No, I didn't know that.

TI: So why was he hospitalized?

JY: He was assaulted by somebody, apparently some young Niseis, young men in the camp.

TI: So he was assaulted by young Niseis in camp. Why was he assaulted?

JY: Well, apparently word was out, it was a fairly tumultuous period because the government wanted the statement from each camp inmate about their loyalty to the United States and various other questions, related questions. And they knew my father had always encouraged, not encouraged, but he always had the opinion that going to the armed service would perhaps ensure our stay here after the war was over. And some unknown anonymous person had called me and asked me to tell my father to not be involved in that kind of discussions, otherwise he would be under the ground.

TI: When did you get this call?

JY: A few months earlier.

TI: So this was when you were at Marquette.

JY: Yes, Marquette. The person didn't identify himself.

TI: And what did you do when you got that phone call?

JY: It was far from me to... I would never tell my father what to do. That wasn't in our makeup at all.

TI: Well, especially since you were already enlisted.

JY: Not that, just that he could make his own decision what he wanted to do.

TI: Yeah, I'm curious, in camp, did your father continue being a minister, did he have, like, services?

JY: Yes, oh, yes, of course.

TI: And so during his sermons, did he talk about his decision?

JY: I don't know what he said. I would think it more in discussion if some young men came to him. For example, it's a small neighborhood church, but in the chapel of the church, there's a plaque of about 150 of the members that went to the armed forces. That's from this little church, which meant virtually every kid in the neighborhood signed up for the service.

TI: Well, which, again, kind of makes sense in that from a very early age, your dad promoted programs like the Boy Scouts and really helped the Niseis in particular assimilate into American society, so it would seem to fall along. So let me recap here a little bit. So what we've been talking about is about this time in camps, there was distributed a "loyalty questionnaire." And in particular there were two questions that asked men, in particular, if they were willing to serve in the U.S. Army. And the second question which was controversial was to forswear any allegiance to the emperor of Japan.

JY: At the same time they were, had started this recruiting for a segregated unit.

TI: Right, and that happened, actually, a few months after this. But there was talk about...

JY: Yeah, that was already known that this was coming up.

TI: Right, so that was gonna happen. And so men were confronted with that question, do they answer it "yes-yes," which means that they would serve and that they forswear any allegiance, that their allegiance was with the United States, or do they answer in a different way. And your father was of the opinion that people should answer "yes-yes" because their loyalty should be to the United States. But there were, it sounds like, Nisei men, younger, who disagreed with that, and they were the ones who beat your father up.

JY: Possibly, yeah.

TI: So what was your reaction when you saw your father in a hospital bed?

JY: Well, he immediately told me, "Don't worry, I'm okay." He wiggled his toes no problem.

TI: So wiggled his toes, how badly beaten was he?

JY: Well, he, I think his face was swollen, and he had bruises on his body that incapacitated him.

TI: That must have been a shock to you, to come through and not sure what you're gonna see in this camp, brought to the hospital, and then seeing your father in this condition.

JY: On the other hand, it didn't surprise me that this kind of thing would happen. There must have been tremendous turmoil in the camp, just being in there itself. No, I wasn't really that surprised.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.