<Begin Segment 23>

BT: Well, so what was your recollection of all of the turmoil going on in Tule Lake?

FS: Tule Lake?

BT: Yeah, after segregation.

FS: You know, I was told by this guy... what the hell was his name? Anyway, he was a Kibei, and I met him in Heart Mountain -- oh, Seibo Ochi. And he told me that Tule Lake, there's a lot of funny people, lot of groups, they're changing names: Sokoku Hoshidan, Kinkyo, all kinds of different groups. And you don't know which group is doing what. They're all trying to rise on top of each other.

BT: These are the pro-Japan groups you're talking about.

FS: Yeah, yeah. So he told me, he said, "Don't mess with 'em. Whatever your dad do, well, you have to do it because he's your father. So if he puts you into this, just go along. You're not going to attend this stuff." But he said, "Don't get involved, or you're gonna be like, end up in, getting hit on the head."

BT: Well, to go back a little bit, you were in Tule Lake during martial law, right?

FS: Yeah.

BT: And do you recall your barracks being searched or the camp getting shut down?

FS: I remember the guards going around, army, army people. But you know those, the, Yamane's problem? He had problem in the, certain area?

BT: Oh, when he was...

FS: Farm problem and they had this problem. A lot of that was away from us. It didn't come to our locality.

BT: Because you were in the far end of the camp, right? And you were not in the motor pool area during the time...

FS: No, that was way over here. So we didn't hear a lot of the news because none of the people in our area was involved here. People that was involved here was all the Kibei people, troublemakers. Lot of Manzanar people, and people like Yamane Tokio.

BT: Well, you were living in the group where a lot of the Manzanar people were.

FS: No. They were opposite.

BT: Oh.

FS: Way like this.

BT: And so did you hear about the Jerome people?

FS: Jerome?

BT: Yeah, from Jerome.

FS: Well, what were they doing?

BT: There were several of the pro-Japan groups.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.