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Title: Gene Akutsu Interview II
Narrator: Gene Akutsu
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: April 17, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-agene-03-0010

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TI: Well, so at this point, your other interview goes into more detail about your trial, McNeil Island, all those things, so I'm not going to cover that. I'm now going to jump postwar, so after you returned from McNeil back to Seattle, I just wanted to, and actually even jumping to decades after. Because during this whole time period, the Japanese American Citizens League, during the war, tried to persuade draft resisters to not resist and to actually be inducted into the army. And then afterwards, pretty much turned a cold shoulder when draft resisters asked the JACL to help them, they would refuse, they wouldn't help. And it wasn't until 2002, May 2002, that the JACL acknowledged that they had made a mistake in how they treated draft resisters back during the war, and they had a ceremony in San Francisco in 2002 where they acknowledged the resisters of conscience. You were able to attend that ceremony, and I want you to sort of describe sort of the sequence of events on the day of the event, how did it all happen? I'm curious to get your perceptions of that.

GA: The JACL had gotten together each year at a meeting to decide whether they should apologize or not, and I guess consecutive three years or so, that was turned down, refused, and the JACL was adjourned. But the last one in, what's that, 2002, the person who represented as the president of the JACL happened to be a Sansei, the third generation. And he pushed and pushed and got this through. There were people who had, were diehard, definitely said, "These 'no-no' people, I am not gonna give any apologies to," and unfortunately, they probably wound up going to the grave with that idea in their head. But....

TI: And just to clarify, when you said "those 'no-nos,'" they're really talking about the draft resisters, not the ones who went to Tule Lake.

GA: At that time, we were referred all as "no-no." (Narr. note: Anybody who refused to go into the service, the Heart Mountain boys excluded, were considered disloyal and included with the 'no-no boys.')

TI: Okay, so what's interesting, so there was a lot of confusion in the words or the terminology that they would confuse those men who said, "no-no," went to Tule Lake, with those who resisted the draft, and the draft resisters, they would sometimes confuse the two.

GA: Yes. In fact, the Heart Mountain refusal, the group, they were, the JACL and the other people thought that it was because they wanted their citizenship back. But us up in the north, the "no-yes" group, were all grouped together as "no-no" and we were grouped together with the Tule Lake people, and they were pretty diehard "no-no," where many of 'em probably repatriated to Japan and all that, and also said that if they, would they participate in the war against us if you're over in Japan, and they must have had, said "yes."

TI: So I'm curious, so when you think of the JACL and, say, some of the veteran groups, you have these two distinct groups. You have the ones who say, the group that went to Tule Lake, some of them even trained thinking that they would go back to Japan and fight against the United States, so they were very, some of them were pro-Japan, and perhaps thought their loyalties were more to Japan, and then you have a group of men who perhaps they might have said "no-yes," or even "yes-yes," but decided to resist the draft because they felt that it was wrong to be drafted out of a concentration camp. So you have these two different groups, they're sometimes confused. Who do you think the JACL and the vets opposed? Was it both groups, or was it one group and they just confused the two, do you have a sense about that?

GA: I think at that time, during '43, '44, anybody who refused, without asking any questions, they would say they are no good, "no-no," unpatriotic, disloyal and whatever. Let me get you back to, a few minutes ago where you said that these people would, who had said they will repatriate to Japan and serve in the Japanese army, I think many of 'em were so peeved, so mad and disgusted that they said anything just to agitate the government. Not that they were real disloyal, but just to let the government know that they didn't like what was going on. And to gain attention of the government so that they would pay attention, that's what, I think, was a lot of it. And people, the Caucasians over here took it as, "Oh, they're real disloyal." So that's why they were labeled.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.