Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Harry K. Yoshikawa Interview
Narrator: Harry K. Yoshikawa
Interviewer: Martha Nakagawa
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: April 14, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-yharry-01-0022

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MN: So once you got to the prison camp, you got debriefed. What does it mean to be debriefed?

HY: Well, they issue you a bunk, they issue you clothes, you know, take your old clothes out. You can't have it anymore, yeah.

MN: What kind of clothes did they give you?

HY: They give us a uniform, you know, yeah. Blue uniform, prison uniform. Then they give you a number, 4173, I guess my number was. And they never call your name, they call you by the number if they want you.

MN: Was there other Nisei draft resisters already at Tucson?

HY: Yeah, yeah. First one was Bill Nakasaki from, I think he was from Arizona.

MN: Osu?

HY: Osu, Bill Nagasaki from Terminal Island. The first one was Gordon, Gordon Hirabayashi. He was the first one there.

MN: Was he still there when you got there?

HY: No, no. He, I think he got six months, I think. Then they released him and they went back to Washington with no escort or nothing, now. And from Washington, they say, "Go however you want, you go to Tucson," they told him. It took him two weeks to, you know, reach Tucson. He slept in that outside one, and one night, the ants got him, you know. [Laughs] Yeah.

MN: How about the Topaz group?

HY: Oh, they came later. Yeah, one was Sab and Ken and Joe... Sab, Joe, Ken... I think Tak, I think, is another brother.

MN: So when you were there, there was Bill Nagasaki from Poston?

HY: He was the first one there. And the first group of the Amache group were there. The first group. We're the second group.

MN: And then, and then later the Topaz, Central Utah group camp.

HY: Yeah, the Topaz group came, and then the Colorado group came, yeah.

MN: How about people like you? You were a "voluntary evacuee excludee." Were there other draft resisters like you?

HY: Well, like I told you, the Ishimoto brothers, Ishimoto brothers.

MN: So including them and you, it was three?

HY: Including who?

MN: The two Ishimoto brothers and yourself?

HY: No. There was three Ishimoto brothers and one brother-in-law there.

MN: That were like you?

HY: Uh-huh.

MN: So --

HY: I knew them, I knew all of them. Because we met the, when I went to Colorado, we saw a caravan and I met 'em there, see. I knew, I knew one of 'em from here already from Wilmington. He lived not too far away from me.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.