<Begin Segment 12>

TI: I want to sort of talk about outside of school, what activities did you do, besides your, in your sort of home life?

ET: Yeah, in Seattle, I think it's, probably judo and baseball. And I loved anything that my dad did, like fishing and things like that. He did a lot of salmon fishing in those days.

TI: Now, when you played baseball, did you play with Kibei or Nisei?

ET: I played the Kibei first, and we were, we were in probably the... I think easily we could have won the championship in any of those league that we played. I cannot remember. Then some of us were picked by some of the other teams. I played with little upper-class, and I didn't have, I didn't have good records of anything like that, but that didn't interest me. It's just that I got to play with these people.

TI: Now, why did you want to move from a team that was mostly Kibei to a team that was more Nisei?

ET: I don't think I had much control. Around that time, if a Nisei wanted me and they called me, and, "Would you play?" and it was okay with anybody to do that, Kibeis didn't object too much about it. So I played with them very shortly, but I had such a busy schedule at the store, and so I couldn't play all of 'em. And I had an uncle that wouldn't let me borrow a truck when I needed it to go to Yakima or places like that, so...

TI: I'm wondering, during this period of time, Japan was even more of a military power, and I think at this point they were, they fought Russia and then they were in China. Did you guys talk about that in terms of what was happening in Japan?

ET: I read more because of the fact that I, I think the family used to take Japanese paper from Japan, and number of magazines, periodicals that tells about, shows the pictures of people. And it was, my feeling was, well, maybe it's a good thing I'm in United States. But the biggest surprise was Pearl Harbor. Now Pearl Harbor, why can they do that, over 300,000 Japanese in this country, and you sacrifice them?

TI: Yeah, did you ever, I guess, suspect or think that Japan would go to war with the United States?

ET: No. I think it's the biggest surprise. I said, you know, it's a wonder they hang around that time. It's obvious that Japan has no chance at all. Why are they starting a war, especially what would happen to the over 300,000 Japanese here? None of 'em knew about this thing.

TI: Oh, so you think by Japan attacking the United States, in some ways they betrayed the 300,000 that were here.

ET: Oh, yeah, completely. And it betrayed me a lot.

TI: 'Cause, because this made, would make your life a lot harder, or it just...

ET: Well, yeah. I think not too many people maybe felt that way, but yeah, I think that's when I...

TI: So explain this. Were you angry or when you say "betrayed," how did you feel towards?

ET: Oh, I, angry again. Yeah, I was... now, my, when I wanted to go back to Japan, I wasn't thinking about Japan would ever go and fight against the United States. And so somehow, act of God, whatever, that I didn't have to do that. But at the same time, what they're thinking about us, maybe we don't mean anything to them. That kind of disappointed me, and then United States took my citizenship away, and all the more I thought maybe we have a fight of our own to, you know, stay alive and try to be recognized.

TI: And I'm sorry, you said the United States took away your citizenship. What do you, what do you mean by that?

ET: Well, we were classified as 4-Cs, "enemy alien."

TI: Okay, so "enemy aliens," when, okay. But technically you, now, you still had your U.S. citizenship, they just took away your --

ET: No, they took, no, that thing is completely taken away.

TI: Wasn't that --

ET: You, you lost... well, that's because of an act of Congress, but at the same time, it's on the record as we didn't have citizenship for what, about three weeks or something like that.

TI: Okay, so when you were classified as "enemy alien," 4-C. That's your draft status.

ET: So that kind of made me mad, so we didn't know just exactly what we were. And then I heard some of the things that Mike and the JACL was doing --

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.