<Begin Segment 21>

TI: When you were in the 1800, you were interviewed by a intelligence officer who asked a question, asked, "If Japan invaded the United States, which side would you fight for?" Do you remember that question?

CS: Yeah.

TI: How did you answer that?

CS: Oh, I told him, "I'll fight for whichever side is defending the camps." I said, "That's all we have left," and I says, "If the Japanese army came into the United States and were heading toward the camps," I said, "I can't picture the guards shooting at them and defending us. I can just picture (them machine gunning) all our inmates and all the local populations going into the camp and massacring them," you know. So I said, "I'm going to fight for whichever side is defending the camp," because that's all we have.

TI: And the camps you're talking about are the concentration camps, the camps where Japanese Americans were being...

CS: Manzanar and all those ten camps.

TI: What was the reaction of the officer when you said that?

CS: I don't think he liked it, 'cause he didn't clear me. I still stayed in the 1800. [Laughs] They expected a hundred percent loyalty, I guess, even shooting our own people.

TI: That was, I mean, it was an interesting answer. I wouldn't have expected it either. Had you been thinking about that, were you prepared?

CS: Oh, it was common sense to me. I said, that's when I said, no, in that letter I wrote, "I don't want to go overseas," the, what do you call it, civil liberties over here, "and if necessary, I'll die fighting for defending the camps."

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.