<Begin Segment 2>

TI: So after you returned to Tule Lake, this was, I think, around the time when in all ten WRA camps, they circulated a questionnaire, a "loyalty questionnaire."

TO: Right.

TI: And I wanted to get your sense in terms of when that happened at Tule Lake, what your reaction was.

TO: Well, as you probably heard, Tule Lake was one of the real controversial camps, you know, there was rioting and things like that. And my particular family, it was a real stressful time because my older half brothers and sisters were all educated in Japan, and therefore they had different feelings than what we did. And they were older, so they were much more mature. They look after 'em, this is not, illegally were put into camps. And then my younger of the three siblings of the oldest half brothers and sisters, Takumi, he was drafted into the army just before the war broke out, and he was in Fort Lewis ready to take basic training, of course, when the war broke out. And being a Kibei, they kicked him out. So he was all the more violently against signing that "loyalty oath." And my oldest brother Shigeru, he somehow felt that he was still the head of the family because he was the oldest brother. And he was trying to convince my father and my mother, he dictated to them that they should stay with them because me and my sister, we had already made up our mind that we were going to sign that "loyalty oath" and do whatever. Of course, we were told -- I'm not sure whether we were told that we'd have to stay in Tule Lake or what the... I guess probably at the time we signed the "loyalty oath," we didn't know what was going to happen. Ultimately, we found out that we were going to be transferred out. And my father, he was not really sure which way to go. But my mother said, no, she was going to go with her children, me and my siblings. So my father figured, well, he better go, too.

TI: So going back to the discussion between Shigeru, who was thinking of, had a different viewpoint than you did, do you recall what the discussion was? Whether it was by answering a certain way that they wanted to go back to Japan, or whether it was just answering the questionnaire not knowing what was going to happen?

TO: If I recall, it was not knowing what could happen. But it was, you know, the confrontation between him and my, Shigeru was pretty, pretty violent. We actually didn't have fisticuffs, but, you know, it was almost physical, that there was no way that I was going to stay there, that I was not going to sign that "loyalty oath." He was just the opposite. And so ultimately we left Tule Lake, and we were moved on to Heart Mountain. We wanted to go to Minidoka, but by that time, Minidoka was all filled up and my father couldn't travel right away, so we ended up in Heart Mountain.

TI: And so when you said you had this disagreement with your older half-brother Shigeru, so he was about twenty years older than you?

TO: Yeah, at least that much.

TI: And you were, I guess, a teenager, probably sixteen, seventeen?

TO: I was probably seventeen.

TI: Seventeen, so he's in his thirties. And when you say... do you recall, kind of, the points that you tried to get across to him, why your parents should stay or stay with you versus going with him?

TO: I don't recall getting my parents involved too much. It was just a personal thing for me and my older sister, we both decided that we're Americans and we should be loyal to our country. And they, of course, felt violently different.

TI: Okay, so I get this. So he was trying to convince you to answer the questionnaire different than the way you wanted to.

TO: Absolutely.

TI: And that was the argument.

TO: And he said, "You're crazy to be signing that 'loyalty oath,'" that type of thing. And then we felt differently. So it kind of broke up the family at that time.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.