<Begin Segment 6>

JG: I want to just take a step back a little bit to your parents and just talking about their experiences with their family. What did you know, growing up, about the, the wartime incarceration?

GF: Nothing.

JG: You... did they ever talk to you about it?

GF: No.

JG: So at what point did you learn anything about it?

GF: School.

JG: Okay.

GF: Yeah. Never talked about it, never complained. I think they just moved on with their lives. My father, at the time that the Executive Order came down, was in the second year at UC Berkeley, and so he had to leave Berkeley and came down, gathered his family and, as I mentioned, went to Santa Anita. That's where he met my mom. And then they were, they were relocated to Heart Mountain, and when he was at Heart Mountain some time they told the school age, college age internees that they could leave to finish their college education, so my father left and went to Oberlin College in Ohio and got his degree there, where he was pre-med. And as soon as he graduated Oberlin, he got his draft notice and he got drafted into the U.S. Army. And so, because he spoke Japanese -- I don't think he spoke it fluently, but I think he understood it enough, spoke it enough -- he went into the Military Intelligence Service, so of course, as we, we talked about it, it was a segregated army back there, and then Japanese would either go to the 442nd in Europe or they would go into the MIS in the Pacific Theater, so he went into the MIS.

JG: What was your mother doing at this time?

GF: My mother, at that time, also was allowed to leave Topaz, and she went to Hamline University in Minnesota and graduated there as a med tech, so she practiced as a med tech.

JG: And at what point did your, either of your parents return to California?

GF: I think... my mother, I have no idea. I do know that my aunt lived in Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, so of course she would've been in camp with my mother and -- oh, no, wait, wait, wait. My aunt didn't, wasn't in Japan. My uncle was the only one. Excuse me. I had mentioned that my mother's siblings, two of 'em, were sent to Japan. Just, I think it was just my uncle, 'cause my aunt was in Utah, so she had to have gone to camp. See, so a lot of that history, it's, it's pretty fuzzy to me.

JG: That's okay, though, 'cause you're piecing it together. It's a really fascinating history.

GF: Now that I'm thinking about it I'm piecing it together, but I do know my uncle was stuck there during the war, 'cause they would talk about how he was beaten and, and teased because he was an American, American-born Japanese.

JG: Did he remain there after the war?

GF: No. At some point he came, came back.

JG: Did, did anyone... I mean, did you ever speak to him about his experiences?

GF: No, I didn't. I didn't. I would speak to him all the time, but never about his experiences, and it's funny, none of my family ever really complained about their experiences.

JG: So your parents, they go, they leave the camps and they go to school.

GF: Yes, my father gets drafted. He does his basic, I think, I think it was at Camp Savage, and then he goes through the Japanese language school, and then after that he gets shipped overseas, but right when he gets shipped overseas we drop the bomb and so the war ends. So instead of having to go to fight in the Pacific, in one of the islands, he ends up being part of the occupational forces in Japan, in Tokyo. And so at that point, I understand he calls my mother over. Now, were they married then? I'm not sure. Did they get married in Japan? I don't know. But I do know that my sister was born in Japan in 1949, so my father stayed in Japan with the occupational forces 'til '49, and I think at some point he was discharged and then still worked for the government as a U.S. citizen.

JG: Did you ever talk to your father about this time?

GF: You know, a few things about how... so he almost killed his friend, because they were driving the jeep and he, he was drunk and turn, made a turn and his friend was gone. And another time they were kinda drunk and they hit some guy carrying those honey, you know honey buckets are? Got all over the jeep and... well it hit, didn't hit the car, the guy, but the honey buckets. But things like that, and they would, he and his best friend would go to, in the beginning, would go out to the bars and you're, I guess you're not supposed to really fraternize and mingle with the population, but they would just put on their civvies and the MPs would come in, look in, "Oh, they're all Japanese," they walk away. [Laughs]

JG: That's funny.

GF: Yeah.

JG: Did he ever tell you what it was like for the Japanese people who were rebuilding their lives?

GF: No. No, not at all. And I, in retrospect, I wish I had asked him a lot of this. There's so many questions, if he were alive today, I would have for him. Question people are, like you're asking me, people ask me, about the mortuary. What happened to the original owner of the mortuary? Who are the other two people who owned the mortuary with my great-grandfather and why did they leave? Why did it all of a sudden just become Fukui? And a lot of that I don't know. And when did it become Fukui? But somewhere down the line, the other two are out of the picture and it's just my great-grandfather.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.