<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Okay, so let's talk about leaving San Francisco.

SY: Okay, well, before, just before, we had to move in with another family in Japantown, and the family was real nice. And so what we did was we, I went to a different elementary school where there was a lot of Japanese, so I felt real comfortable being among a lot of Japanese, although I felt comfortable in Fremont, too, but I felt that I was set back because I felt that when you transfer to a new school, boy, these Japanese kids are smart, intelligent, and I felt real retarded because I thought, gee, I can never catch up to these kids. But anyway, there was a time in May, they said, okay, we would meet at the Buchanan YMCA on Buchanan Street in Japantown. So we went there, we got our ID card, and, like everybody else, they did the same, they went to Tanforan racetrack, and eventually they went from there to Topaz or Tule Lake. Well, we were expecting to do the same, went on a bus, took us to the train station, and of course we're excited, boy, we get to go on a train. So, as we went by, we could see Tanforan, so we thought that the train was gonna go and backtrack, and let us off, because in those days the freight train had priority, because this is war time. But the train kept going faster and faster and faster, and the rumors started, especially the elderly people. "We're to going to go to a place like Sahara Desert, southern California." So a lot of the ladies, elderly ladies, had these funny-looking hats, they opened it up, so it'd be like a protection from the sun. I don't know why, the older, elderly people, they wore their suit, which is extremely stupid because it's so hot. And so we did land in Pomona, and, but all the way down, I remember my mother saying, "We're going by San Maria." I says, "Make sure, don't breathe too hard because they have a polio epidemic," I don't know whether it's true or not, but polio was a most fearful, dreaded disease because you become invalid, you can't walk and so forth.

And so we landed in Pomona, and I was bored because the military police was searching all of the suitcases and going through piece by piece, and so I told my parents, I said, "I wanna look around," and no sooner did I vacate that premise, maybe twenty steps, about fifteen, twenty kids came after me. And the reason for that is five hundred fifty Bay Area folks were on this train, because Tanforan was overcrowded, so we landed in Pomona assembly camp not knowing why, at that time. So I had a few friends, the Yamoto family, the Miharas, the Yoshimura and our family, among other people, but these are my friends, the other people we didn't know. And so a young boy my age, or maybe a little older, said, "Hey, you're from 'Frisco." Well, I never heard the term 'Frisco. I want to be polite. I was not permitted to wear Levi's, we wore nice, clean white shirts, so we stood out like a sore thumb because most of these people from San Jose or Yakima or Los Angeles area, so guys like myself stood out like a sore thumb. He says -- so I answer very politely, "No, I'm really from San Francisco," I thought I was making points. Well, that really made me look bad. Another guy says, "No, you're from Fog City." I thought, Fog City? "No, I'm really from San Francisco," I thought Fog City was a city. Well, all of a sudden, I thought, well, maybe I should go to the restroom, try to get away from these guys. So I nonchalantly made up a story, I says, you know, some of these guys are kicking me, the little ones are kicking me, punching me and so forth, and I said, and I lied, I said, "You know, I don't mind fighting one at a time," I said, "but to fight all fifteen, sixteen of you, it's ridiculous." And so the leader came up to me and says, "Yeah, you're right, you're taking me on," and I thought, oh, me and my big mouth again. So he took me into the shower stall and I say, "Hey, look, you know, we're both gonna get dirty." I was thinking about my white, clean shirt and my clean pants and so forth, and he looked down and he said, "You know, you're right." So they escorted me to a vacant barrack way away, and I thought, oh, this is stupid, I could yell bloody murder and nobody will hear me, I could get killed. And so they lock the door, and all these guys are outside making sure I couldn't escape from the window. You couldn't open the windows anyway, I don't know, but they're all lookin'. And we go in the middle of the room and I notice how hot it was, I'm not used to this weather. So he grabs me by the shirt and twisted it, and I notice how strong he was, and he says, "Do you know how to do judo?" And I relaxed and I said, "No." Well, it turned out that my, the Horishige that lives in New York, he's older than I am, he was living with us because he came from Japan, well, he was from Seattle, parents died, went to Japan, and he came back in 1939, lived with us. So he used to practice judo on me, he never -- and so when this guy was doing a koshinage, or a hip roll, he was going "one, two" and then he was ready to throw. Well, I knew exactly what he was going to do, I grabbed his head and went down, if he turned left, I went the opposite way, and I knew exactly what to do. So all this time he pretended he was death, dead, he pretended he couldn't breathe, and it seemed like it was eternity, I was trying to preserve my life and I wasn't gonna let go, I wasn't trying to be a tough guy, I just wanted to get from being beaten up. And finally he whispered real slowly and lightly, he says, "I give up." I said, "Sure," I let go. He jumped down, says, "You give up?" I said sure, 'cause I was worried about the other fourteen guys outside. Well, all throughout my assembly camp, Pomona, and Heart Mountain, whenever I saw the guy, although he was husky, weighed more, even though I was afraid of him, I stick out my chest and I pretended, you know, "You don't scare me," but that was all a pretense, that was a good act. And I think he respected me because of the fact that he thought I was wiry and strong, but I let him think that I was strong, but that's a way to protect yourself, you know.

TI: But you were strong in that you stood up to him and that whole group.

SY: Well, it was, I had no choice. I wasn't trying to pretend that I was strong and tough, I just was trying to get out of it with the hopes that they'd say, "Go home, go back to your parents." So I met with my friends like Akira, the people I knew, and we were walking around the premise at Pomona, and we watched these elderly people carve beautiful birds and one of the things I had never seen in any of the artifacts, they used to make little hearts with toothbrush (handles).

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.