<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Well, you were saying that around fifteen, you came back to Seattle.

ET: Yeah.

TI: So what, why did you come back to Seattle?

ET: Because I think my father was sick, he had a first stroke when he was about... about forty, forty-two, forty-three years old. And then he thought that I should learn about the family business and things like that. So best I will come back, but not Henry. Henry was left in Japan.

TI: So how did you feel when you heard that you were going back to Seattle? What do you remember about that?

ET: Well, you know, I was real happy, but I got sent to immigration, immigration station. And four days I didn't hear from my family, and it was torturing. And there were seven other people in my, kind of a cell, and they were all Chinese. And you know, I never felt in danger, except one guy was trying to protect me for that, and, but they were talking Chinese so I didn't understand that. And I spoke just enough English at the time, and this Japanese interpreter was giving the wrong answers to these things. And I said, "You know, I think I want to get out of here and go back to Japan." I really had become... on the fourth day, I finally said, "Hey, send me back, I don't want to stay here anymore. I don't know why you're keeping me here." And so I was a handful.

TI: And so do you recall where the immigration station, was this the Seattle immigration...

ET: Yeah, same one.

TI: And your, your parents couldn't get in to, to talk with you?

ET: No. It was absolutely shocking, because I had a normal life as a young boy, and here I was thrown into absolutely the same as jail.

TI: So did they not, did they understand that you were a U.S. citizen?

ET: Oh, yeah.

TI: But even then, they had --

ET: But even then, then I found out that other people, Kibeis, gone through the same thing, too. Some of 'em stayed a month. I said, "How can you stay in a place like that for one month?"

TI: Well, eventually you were released.

ET: Well, the fourth day, I really made a... I mean, I'm just insisting I don't want this place. Like the Chinese were there, some of 'em were there for a couple of years. Nobody knows about that place, but there was some article in the paper the other day, through the North American Post, that they were looking at that thing now, it's probably keep as a historical thing. It's the worst history of the United States as far as I'm concerned. So, you know, I was very, very disappointed with that treatment, and it was so, you know, full of smells of gasoline all around me, and I could not believe that I'd breathe all that air. And it's just same as what went on in a jail. They get you up and then send me to a, the rooftop and do a little exercise and come back, and absolutely the food was not fit for a human being.

TI: And so when you said you kind of made a ruckus to get out of there, what did you do? What kind of things did --

ET: Well, only thing I did say was, talked to this interpreter first. I said, "Would you tell them that I do not want to stay in the United States? I want to go back to Japan." My family wouldn't talk to me and everything else. Well, they didn't have any way to talk to me. It's just that bad. Why we keep that like a secret from the rest of the world? But I'm just, didn't mean to say to anybody, in fact, this is the first time that I'm saying it. But then I think we should know that we have this kind of thing in the United States, which is not right.

TI: So do you think this is, the same things are happening today in the United States?

ET: I don't know, I don't know. It could be, and if that's the case, I think we should do anything to change that.

TI: But it's interesting, because you were saying, you mentioned earlier, the immigration building in Seattle, they're decommissioning that. So...

ET: That's right, that's what I heard.

TI: And so they're talking about either making it a historical landmark, and in your sense, they should just get rid of that place.

ET: Oh, get rid of it, yeah.

TI: 'Cause it's just a blight on history.

ET: Yeah, I think it's a dark mark in our, not only history, but our society.

TI: Well, after you finally got out, what, what was that like?

ET: I didn't speak to anybody -- [laughs] -- for probably a week or so.

TI: Why -- because you were so mad?

ET: Oh, yeah. I was furiously mad. I still wanted to go back. I think that's when Mrs. Moriguchi might have helped me to realize that, "You're okay now," after that. She went through the same thing, George went through the same thing.

TI: Oh, so people like George and Mrs. Moriguchi, because they had gone through kind of a similar experience, they explained to you that it happened to other people and that now everything was going to be okay.

ET: Yeah, it was kind of shocking to me at the time, why didn't anybody told me about these things? And, but there was certainly a, I felt, anti-Japanese feeling in the United States, which I didn't realize was that bad.

TI: Now, were there particular things that the immigration officers did? I mean, is it the way they questioned or the conditions? I mean, you talked about how bad the conditions were.

ET: I don't remember anything about the immigration officers; I just felt like I was treated like a prisoner. And I don't know why they did that.

TI: Well, so in that week you're not talking to anyone, what were people saying about you?

ET: Well, I thought, they thought I was a very quiet boy. [Laughs] And then they want to... but of course, I was not quiet.

TI: Well, how about your language at that point, in terms of English? What was that like?

ET: Well, it's pretty immature, maybe. But I understood almost everything that anybody spoke. I learned to express myself a little better by the time I went to high school. I only went to high school less than three years, and well, I earned my honor society during high school. Then college I did pretty well, too.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.