Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Hitoshi "Hank" Naito Interview
Narrator: Hitoshi "Hank" Naito
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: June 11, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-nhitoshi-01-0024

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TI: And so all these Niseis, similar to you, had to renounce their citizenship?

HN: Yes, right. Yes. But one of them I know personally, I'm not gonna name him, but he was one of the guys who said "yes-yes," but he wanted his mother -- it was a single parent family -- mother says, "We are going back to Japan." So he had to renounce his citizenship, but he did renounce his citizenship because he was the eldest in the family, he had the responsibility to take care of the siblings, younger, much younger. So, although he said "yes-yes," ready to go to volunteer, he renounced his citizenship to stay with the family. But that was the only guy I remember doing that.

TI: Now what was, what was the thinking, in terms of... I know some Niseis legally had dual citizenship, Japanese and American, but not all of them did. And so there were, I'm sure there were some Niseis who essentially by renouncing their U.S. citizenship were individuals without a country.

HN: Yeah, without a country.

TI: Like in your case, did you have dual citizenship?

HN: Yeah, my folks, I learned that later, but in them days, old days, folks would just report the birth and it got on the family register.

TI: Okay, so you had dual citizenship --

HN: I didn't know that, either.

TI: -- but there must have been some who knew that they didn't, and so what were they thinking? They were literally...

HN: Well, they were... as young as we were, but we were sarcastically remarking, living here in Bismarck, it seemed like being an "enemy alien," you get a better treatment than being Americans. Because it is true, because the "enemy alien" had the, were under the Geneva Convention oversight, by the Swiss government, or the Spanish --

TI: The Spanish, right.

HN: It wasn't for the, like, the Tule Lake, there were nobody to oversee the legality of the movement. The government itself was breaking the law. We used to make sarcastic... "Oh, hell, maybe being an alien, 'enemy alien' is a better way of getting better treatment."

TI: Because, ironically, you're being treated as a prisoner of war would be, which was better than what U.S. citizens were being treated in the camps.

HN: Were treated, yeah, that's right. It's really ironic.

TI: So tell me --

HN: Nobody told me, you know. Unless you experience that, like in Bismarck, you would never be able to make that observation.

TI: Right, because if you, all your experience was, say, at Heart Mountain or Tule Lake, that's all you know. But then you went to Bismarck to see how a prisoner of war would be treated, and that was better than the U.S. citizens.

HN: Yes. Food were better, swimming pool, indoor swimming pool. Can you imagine? [Laughs]

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.