<Begin Segment 3>

TI: And when you think of your family, this discussion or argument was going on, how about the rest of the camp? Did you get a sense that similar discussions were going on?

TO: Oh, yes. For some reason, and I didn't know this 'til later, I had no idea what was going on the other camps, of course. But it seemed like for some reason, the people in Tule Lake, especially the Californians, were a little different than us northerners in the Pacific Northwest. And I didn't know why or what the situation was, why, but any event, there were more -- I think there was maybe some, there's quite a few immigrants, or inmates from the San Pedro area in Tule Lake. They seemed to be kind of the, if you might want to call them "rabble rousers." So there was a lot of groups that were going around. And, of course, they were the ones that were opposed to signing the "loyalty oath." The rest of us, we just kept quiet, you know. We didn't want to get beat up or whatever might happen to us, so we just kept quiet.

TI: Now, did you ever feel threatened by these groups?

TO: No, no. The person that I felt threatened by was Shigeru. [Laughs] He was older than I was.

TI: Now, was Shigeru part of these other groups? Did you note that he maybe went to these meetings and spoke out or anything like that?

TO: I'm really not sure. But Takumi, the youngest one, of course, he was married about then, already married. But he, after we left Tule Lake, he was put in, he was taken out of camp and put into a federal prison. So he must have did -- and I really don't know what he did to do that, but it must have been something that wasn't acceptable to the WRA or whoever was in charge of that.

TI: So do you recall where he went? When you say federal prison...

TO: I really don't know. But later on -- this was after we left camp, and I was already in the army by then. And so my sister-in-law asked me to write a letter to the attorney general saying I was in the army and my brother shouldn't be there. I did write the letter, I don't know if it did any good, but anyway, I did do that. And eventually he was released and he went back to Tule Lake to be with his wife.

TI: So I'm wondering if it was federal prison or some of them went to the Santa Fe Department of Justice camp, which was a federal internment camp, whether it was that.

TO: I don't really know.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.