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MA: It seems like later on you've done quite a bit of research about, more about the sort of political historical context about your family's imprisonment.

IK: Right. I always had that interest. When I was teaching in the valley, and this was one of the Pearl Harbor anniversary dates. And at the time, I don't know if it was my Japanese class. No, no, no, it was B-11 Honors. At that time we had B and A. And so it was B-11 Honors English, and it was first period. The student body president, who was a former student of mine a couple years before, came on the PA system, you know, they make their announcements. But he came on and said, "December 7, 1941," and then went into this Pearl Harbor thing. And I had some Sansei students in the class, very few, because Monroe was still highly, majority white still. And so anyway, when that was done -- I have to digress after I tell you this story -- it really upset me. And so even though that was the English period, I spent the whole time talking about the injustice, the loss of liberty, no due process, I went through the whole thing. And I did it really because these were what I call "smart kids." They were the kids who really could understand, and also would even have interest in things like that. And I remember that one of the boys sitting in front said, "Oh, we thought it was for your protection," and that's what they're always taught, right? But my point was, "You know, look around you. A lot of your classmates have the face." And it's really insensitive to do announcements that could affect their self-confidence, their sense of guilt or whatever. I don't know if they did, 'cause they're Sansei kids. Because I said, "Okay, if we're going to do Remember Pearl Harbor, then how about Remember the Alamo and all the other remembers?" I said, "It's really not very sensitive at all." So anyway, the kids told the boy who was student body president, he came to apologize to me. And I said, "I'm not mad at you," I said, but I do question really, maybe the administration really didn't look to see what the announcements would be, I have no idea. I didn't really follow up on that.

Now, going back to the cause of that, kind of that anger, when I was in the sixth grade -- this was in Torrance -- remember, I went to school in Torrance all the way through high school graduation. I was in the sixth grade, there was one other JA girl, her name was June, and our desks were kind of, I think, just facing each other. I don't know if it was a circle or facing each other, but she was right there and I'm right here. And Mrs. Dean, the sixth grade teacher, said to the class on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, that she wanted everybody to stand up and "share what the Japs had done to their families." And June and I were just like this, and her face was really pink. But we're grinning, I guess because we couldn't, who were we gonna get angry at? And that was a typical reaction, I think. It's not like now, where my daughter would have stood up and said, "What do you think you're doing?" or whatever. It wasn't that way. We were all behaving in that same way. I don't recall anybody ever speaking out in anger in my classes. There weren't too many of us anyway. So that's what stayed with me from my sixth grade until that happened when I was teaching, and then that announcement came on, and I was really upset.

MA: When you talked to the class about the camps and what had happened, did you sense that they kind of got it?

IK: Uh-huh, they did. I didn't detect any skepticism or like, "You guys, what did you do?" There wasn't that at all.

MA: Was this the first time a lot of them had heard about the internment?

IK: Well, this was the eleventh grade, and at that point, there wasn't that mandate yet in the state. I don't really know if there was even a paragraph. There may have been. I think there may have been mention, but yet, even now, of course, that time is glossed over because it's like, we don't have time, and also, the teachers are really not that qualified even if they go to these teacher trainings. They're really not qualified after a couple of sessions. And they -- so I always think that those kids that were with me that day when we spent the whole hour, I did most of the talking, naturally, because they really couldn't contribute much more than comments like, "Oh, we thought it was for your protection." So I'm hoping, okay, now maybe they know now that there was something else that was wrong.

I know that a couple of years around that time, I had gone to Japan on a teacher's, it was a Fulbright summer program in '64. And at that time, when we went to Hiroshima, I picked up the brochure that they have with all the black and white photos and everything. And I think it was maybe '65, '66, somewhere around there, one of the history teachers came to ask for -- I guess he knew, or the kids maybe told him. So he came and asked if he could borrow that when he goes over that period. And I said, "Oh, sure, of course." I was really happy that someone would want to share the other side of the picture. Well, this same teacher, one day, one of my Sansei students came into the classroom and she was upset. She was a junior at that time -- that makes sense, eleventh grade, so that would have been probably that time. She says, "Ms. Kato, Mr. Thomas said that the Japanese were cannibals, and that they ate the -- " I guess they must have been like the Norwegian sailors or something. And I said, "What?" And so anyway, I thought, "I'm not gonna go accuse somebody of distortions." So I called my USC Japanese language and history teacher and I said, "Tell me, did this ever happen in history?" And he says, "No, of course not." I said, "Okay, I just want to make sure that I'm not speaking out of turn." So the next day, we both had the same conference period. So I was walking towards the social studies building and I saw him. I said, "Mr. Thomas," and then I went and I proceeded to tell him what Arlene had told me. And I said, "Where did you get that information?" And he says, "It's in a book, I read it." And I said, "Well, you know, I'd like to see the book, because that's totally, totally not historically true." And then he said, "Well," he says, "they put them in cages," they would capture the sailors or whatever. He said, "They would put them in cages, and then no one ever saw them again, so what do you think?" or something like that. And I thought, "Oh my god, that's a big leap." I mean, maybe they killed them, which still is not good, but then to say they ate them, you know. So I thought, "Oh, my goodness." And he says, ("I'll find,") and then we're walking along, we get to kind of where the office is. Opens the door and walks in, and slams the door shut. And I'm standing in the hallway going, "Oh, my god." He never did find the book, naturally. But what amazed me is several years later... by this point, I was in the adult division because my kids were born, so maybe five or six years had passed. And he wrote me a letter and asked if he could borrow the book. [Laughs] I said, "Oh, my god, did he get it or not?" you know, that Hiroshima book, he wanted to borrow that Hiroshima book. He's telling me that he sent a dollar to Japan and never got a book. And I went, "Oh, well, god, I don't think it paid for postage. [Laughs] So I just ignored him. But, see, those things were constantly going on. So thank goodness there have been in-services and stuff. And yet I remember when we were doing teacher trainings through the historical society in the nineties, teachers said, "Oh, my god, I never heard about this."

MA: So although there's been progress, there's still a lot to be done, right?

IK: Oh, but you figure it's just a drop in the bucket. Because all these young teachers that come along... [interruption]. But if they didn't take history, because you don't have to always, they just became a teacher without knowing, really, any multicultural stuff, not just our history, but everybody else's.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.