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SF: You mentioned that sometimes people went back to Japan and so forth. Did you go back to Japan at all?

AH: I went back to Japan twice before the war. Once when I was quite young and then once in about, I think it was about '39, when I had, I had a sister who was born at our previous visit to Japan. And at that time, the American immigration laws would not allow her to be, to come to this country, even though she was my sister. And so she was left there. And a couple who had no children asked to take care of her. And by, it was, 1939, I think it was, she got ill, just, just in senior high school, and passed away. So that was the reason we went back to Japan. And at that time, Japan was at war in Manchuria. And every young male was being conscripted. And all my relatives told me to just, "Get out -- get out of Japan and go back to America."

LH: You mean to say even though you were an American citizen, that they could have...

AH: Didn't matter, didn't matter because I think we had dual citizenship. The, all the Japanese gave their children, I think, dual citizenship. So I came back by myself. And of course, after the war, or prior to the war, many of the dual citizenships were cancelled. But the parents, our parents, had attachment to Japan because that's the only country that they had. And so, I think that's the reason they chose to make their children citizens of Japan also.

LH: Being that you had a way to see two countries, how did it affect, affect how you thought of the two? Could you compare them?

AH: Well, the first time, I can't remember too well. But the second time I went back, I felt like a foreigner, and yet suddenly, here I was surrounded by all Japanese, familiar places and I really felt at home. Because until then I associated only Nihonjins in the Japanese community in this country. But aside from that I didn't like the conditions that they had to live in. And I would much prefer this country. But I still remember that feeling of, somehow or other, it felt expanded, that you were a part, a wholehearted part of the community.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.