<Begin Segment 24>

TI: So now I want to try to understand, how did this experience change you or change your thoughts about what was going on? 'Cause you mentioned before earlier, you weren't... I mean, you're Block 11, you seemed like you guys were pretty much on your own, not worrying about things.

FS: Yeah.

TI: Now you get sent to the stockade, picked up, put in the stockade. You were there for a little more than a month. How did that experience change you?

FS: It didn't change much, because I was in there four and a half months.

TI: Oh, four and a half months.

FS: Yeah, four and a half months, then I, when I came out they still treated me, all the guys in the block, they treated me just as much as when I was in, when I was there. Because I think, I was looking for something to do or work, so they wanted, the guy, a manager of a magazine stand, he said, "Come work for me over here." So it was in the same block, and then so I started working in a magazine stand until, until we left camp.

TI: And I'm wondering, because you were put in the stockade, from what you've said, really for doing nothing wrong, and you're there for four and a half months under pretty harsh conditions. Did that change, or maybe made you more bitter or anything, in terms of the administration, what they were doing? Anything like that?

FS: Well, I think that, that more or less made me... well, the renouncing the citizen, maybe that's what happened to me at that time, because thrown in a stockade without no, no trial, no nothing and not, I'm not doing anything bad. So I said what, what the heck am I doing here for? Maybe that's why I renounced my citizen.

TI: Okay, so yeah, after you're released from the stockade, then there was this time period when they, they, for Niseis, U.S. citizens, they had this time period when you could renounce your citizenship, and so you decide to renounce your citizenship, and, and this, you think, may have been caused by your experiences in the stockade. So tell me how you went about, what you can remember in terms of the steps to renounce your citizenship? Do you remember how that happened?

FS: I couldn't remember that.

TI: Do you remember, like, an interview or a time when someone asked you questions about it?

FS: You got me. I'm not sure if they did, if I did talk to them. I'm not sure about that.

TI: How about remember talking to your mother or your friends about your decision to renounce?

FS: No, I think by that time, by that time maybe my mother was out. I'm not sure. Because only, only people that were left in our block was all the young guys. All the parents was gone already. So maybe that's what happened. I'm not sure.

TI: And then was it pretty common for the Niseis that you knew, were they also renouncing their citizenship?

FS: I'm pretty sure they did. Especially in our block. I mean, I don't know about everybody else.

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