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TI: So today is Friday, April 17, 2009, we're in the Densho studio, Seattle, Washington. On camera is Dana Hoshide, and I'm the interviewer, Tom Ikeda. Later on, Lori Bannai is going to join us, in about an hour, so she'll be here. And we're interviewing Don Tamaki. And this is for our digital collection, it's a life history. And so Don, I'm going to just start at the very beginning for you. Can you tell me the name that was given to you at birth?

DT: Donald K. Tamaki.

TI: And the K, does that stand for something?

DT: It doesn't stand for anything, and I've asked my parents about it and they said, well, it could stand for my grandfather, whose name was Kameichi, but that means "number one turtle" in Japanese. [Laughs] So I think they just shortened it up to an initial. And they said, well, it was like Harry S. Truman. "S" didn't stand for anything, so I had a "K" and that was the end of that.

TI: Good. So when and where were you born?

DT: I was born in Oakland, May 26, 1951, at Kaiser Hospital.

TI: And before we get into your childhood, let's talk a little bit about your parents. And let's start with your mother. Can you tell me a little bit about your mom's family and where they grew up and things like that?

DT: My mother's family grew up in Oakland. They, like all Japanese Americans, or most of them, the Issei immigrated at the turn of the century, the late 1800s or early 1900s. And my grandparents, who had, my grandfather never had met, he was dead by the time I came around. But my grandmother's side came from Gifu Prefecture as immigrants, and settled in Oakland.

TI: Do you know why your grandfather came to the United States, why he left Japan?

DT: Well it was for economic opportunity. But beyond that, I don't know the details. Japan at that time was having a difficult time. And my grandfather came here pretty much without skills, and then had schooling to become a tailor. And I think he may have gotten that schooling in New York or somewhere on the East Coast. So these pioneers that probably didn't speak much English...

TI: Well, that's a little unusual to go to the East Coast to get that kind of training.

DT: Yeah, I think that's what he did. And then settled back. So they had a little tailor shop near Oakland Chinatown in Oakland, and they lived over that, they rented, and they lived in that little apartment over the tailor shop, and that's where my mother grew up.

TI: And the names of your grandparents?

DT: Yamashita. So my grandmother was Tomi Yamashita, and, gee, my grandfather, what was his name? It escapes me right now.

TI: Okay, and how many kids did they have?

DT: They had six children. So my mother was one of a number of siblings. Was she number three? She must have been number three, yeah, three in line, or number four.

TI: And so they grew up in Oakland, your grandparents were tailors, but then you mentioned your grandfather... well, he died before you came. Okay, so... and then during the war, what happened to your mom's family?

DT: So they were, let's see, December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. And like in all other West Coast cities, the Secret Service and the FBI swept through those communities in Oakland and San Francisco. And from the stories that they told me, of course, everybody was scared, and this was a very besieged population. And at that time, there was a drumbeat of war and hostilities with Japan leading up to the war anyway. So I think this was already a minority that was already under intense pressure to begin with. And so after the Secret Service, FBI swept through the community and arrested community leaders, following that were the executive orders leading up to the rounding up and putting them in Tanforan Racetrack, which was a local assembly center in the Bay Area. And so the common experience of either burying or burning anything connected to Japan, my family did engage in that also.

TI: And for your, so for your mother's family, were there any, like, particular stories that she told about this time that stood out in terms of the event, experience?

DT: Well, I think she must have been in her early twenties when this happened, so she definitely was conscious of everything around her. She had gone to Cal Berkeley and gotten her degree there. And, but they were pretty -- all of the Japanese Americans were pretty much cloistered in segregated communities. But they completely felt that they were American citizens. And so I think there was a sense of fear and outrage that this thing was actually happening to them. I don't think they were, they could believe it. And there was, she says that people came around and they wanted to buy their property, household goods, because people couldn't take that with them. There were churches that were willing to store their property. But I think there was a deep sense of loss and upheaval. And my grandfather probably, I think he had died before then, so he didn't have to go through that process. So it was my, my mother and her siblings and my grandmother that ultimately, they went into Tanforan Racetrack.

TI: Now, before they went to Tanforan, there was something, I was reading, I think it was your father's testimony during the hearings. And he mentioned his mother-in-law getting a note slipped underneath the door of their tailor shop. Do you recall that?

DT: You know, I don't offhand, I don't. And I should re-read his testimony.

TI: Yeah, it was interesting, just essentially this note was saying, "Get out, we don't want you."

DT: Oh, yeah, right.

TI: And that was something that... so from Tanforan, then from Tanforan, where did your mom's family go?

DT: Topaz.

TI: And how about your mother? When, where did she go after Topaz?

DT: She... she met my father, and so they fell in love. It was like love at first sight, at least the way they told me. And they got special permission -- this is probably after a year, about a year of being interned -- to get married in Fillmore, which is a little town just outside the camp. And then, by then, if you could demonstrate that you could be employable, you can get out. And by then, my father was drafted.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.