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TI: I want to move on to, after several months, the government came out and had adults fill out what we call the "loyalty questionnaire."

HH: Yes.

TI: And in this questionnaire there were two questions in particular, I think they were number 27 and 28, which people were asked to kind of indicate their loyalty to the United States. And this was administered to all the camps. But I wanted to find out what it was like in Tule Lake when they handed out this questionnaire, and what the discussions were and how did people feel about that.

HH: The newspapers, camp newspapers, were actually not independent as far as editors, editorial and everything else had to be screened by the administration. But we had a prior kind of information that this questionnaire is going to be, loyalty-type questionnaire would be coming, but we didn't know how it was going to be worded. But we did have, being in the newspaper, that we did have a prior information. So it wasn't quite a surprise for us, but we had to be the one to, paper, both for Minidoka and all the camps had a camp paper.

TI: So at Tule Lake, the Tulean --

HH: Tulean Dispatch.

TI: So did you have to write about it, or did you just...

HH: No, no, we had to print whatever the administration...

TI: And so do you recall what the administration had you print about the questionnaire?

HH: I can't really remember too much of wording and such, but we did have to emphasize the fact that everybody has to appear to answer the question. And I think the questionnaire, I think we had to go to the certain area, I don't know if it was the project administration area which was fenced off, right adjoining, but anybody just couldn't go into the project administration area.

TI: Oh, so people, so they had to go into this sort of fenced-off area, to go there to read the questionnaire, fill it out, and sign it?

HH: Yes.

TI: Oh, so they didn't have the opportunity to really just read it and think about it for a while? They had to go there and do it right then?

HH: Yes. Well, before we get to there, they had an internal security man by the evacuees, and then also some sort of rule, like each block had block manager. And the block manager administered, points for the block managers were able to meet together in the administration area and everything, get instructions and whatever. So they were the ones that had to be... so some of the block managers had a hard job, really, because they looked like they were siding with the administration in a way.

TI: I see. So every block had a block manager, all the block managers would meet with the administration, the administration would pretty much tell them what to do and what to say, and so some people may have viewed them as just being very pro-administration, or just like the lackeys of the administration, which made it hard for them.

HH: Yes. So whatever newspaper articles come from the administration, really, we had to stress the fact that block managers would be the more central group that would be involved with any kind of instructions or ruling or whatever, internal security.

<End Segment 45> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.