<Begin Segment 7>

TI: Well, the other thing I wanted to mention, I mean, to make it more confusing for you and your family, your father in this time period, September of '43, was at that point at Santa Fe, the internment camp, the Department of Justice internment camp. And there was, there were opportunities, and I think your family considered this, of possibly moving to Crystal City, because there, there was a family internment camp where families could join, say, their fathers and live together as a family unit, but still in a Department of Justice internment camp, so it'd be higher security than the concentration camps at Minidoka and places like that. Do you recall any discussions about possibly going to Crystal City?

GA: Yeah. The news got around to us that we may not see our (dad) for a long time, and the only way we can get together soon is to get together and make an application for Crystal City. And so I believe they did, my mother made application for us to go to Crystal City so that our family would be together. But not knowing that that was the plan of the government to send all these families to Japan, that was their intention, and how they got the family together. So a number of them were sent to, back to Japan, or not to Japan, on the first, I think, first and only ship that they had, and they wound up going to Japan sometime in '43. And there's detailed story about how they made it over, I don't know. They hit different, they didn't go directly to Japan but went here and there as they made their way towards Japan, and eventually they wound up going to, I guess, the original Japan that they were scheduled to arrive.

TI: When you say the government sent these families from Crystal City to Japan on this ship and this journey, was it with the family's, because the families want to do this, or do you think it was, they were sent against their will from Crystal City? Do you have a sense about that?

GA: (I don't know). Our family was assuming that the family will be brought together, not to be sent anywhere (but interned there for the duration of the war). Well, we were not a hostage, but that's what we wound up being. Just like a lot of the Japanese that were in Brazil, Chile, and all along the Western Hemisphere, the U.S. gathered 'em all up, brought 'em in, and they wanted to use them as well as us as hostage. So whenever they exchange the prisoners of war, that (the inmates) will be sent over to Japan (in exchange).

TI: And when you say you were, as a hostage, did you feel like, 'cause you never went to Crystal City, or your family...

GA: No.

TI: ...did you feel like you were potentially hostages while you were at Minidoka? Or is this just, you thought, more the Crystal City families who were part of that hostage exchange program?

GA: Well, it was very obvious that we were held in Minidoka as... I guess you might say hostage. They didn't trust us to go out to relocate anywhere. (Our family was on stop order, and restricted from relocating).

TI: So let me sort of summarize some of this, because we just talked about three different types of camps that would hold families. We had Hunt, Idaho, or Minidoka, where most families were held, most Japanese American families were held in camps like this, so there were ten WRA camp, nine were like Minidoka. Then at the end of 1943, Tule Lake was set up as a segregation camp, and those individuals and families who were viewed as perhaps less loyal were then sent to Tule Lake, and so it was then called a segregation camp, but you also have another camp for families like Crystal City, an internment camp, that held generally "enemy aliens" viewed as perhaps more dangerous, of which your father was in that category, where families could join them, and this was perhaps of the three camps, the highest security. So there were these three, and you mentioned earlier there would be, like, Japanese Peruvians also there that were actually kidnapped from Peru and brought to places like Crystal City. So you get three different camps that, in some ways, you were impacted by, possibly you could have gone to Crystal City. Was there any discussion by your mother, your brother or you about possibly going to Tule Lake during this time period, or the chances of going to Tule Lake?

GA: No. The main thing was that we wanted the family to get together, not being exported or anything like that, and we want the family together again because my dad was already gone close to two years in hopes of him getting released to come to Hunt, why, that was getting very slim. That's the reason why my mother made application, I believe, to go to Crystal City.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.