<Begin Segment 25>

TI: Okay, so after you renounced your citizenship, you sign the papers and it goes through, then what happened? What happened next?

FS: Well, we couldn't get out right away, anyway. And then when they started releasing us, I just wondered where I was gonna go. Then I, my mother wrote me a letter saying Los Angeles, so that's, that's the only reason I came to Los Angeles.

TI: Now, was there ever any thinking on your part that part of renouncing your citizenship would be to go to Japan, that you would perhaps go to Japan after the war was over?

FS: At that time maybe I, I thought maybe if I did I might get shipped back. That I'm not sure. But then when I heard that Hiroshima got bombed, atom bomb, I said no, I don't want to go back. I don't want to go back to Japan. So that's, that's what changed my mind right away, I think.

TI: And so you get a letter from your, your mother, who had resettled in Los Angeles and she's saying come, come to Los Angeles.

FS: Yeah.

TI: So how, how was it that you were able to go to Los Angeles? Was it something that they said, "Now you can go," and you just left? Or...

FS: I think, that time, we, mostly all of us in the block, we got released at that time, so that's how we got out, I would, I would say. The only thing I could remember about that.

TI: So at this point you are literally a man without a country, 'cause you...

FS: Yeah. Right.

TI: And so how does that work? You're, you're not a U.S. citizen, you weren't born in Japan, you're Nisei, so what, what happens next? I mean, how do, how do you get your citizenship back?

FS: Well, we got it through a guy name Wayne Collins. Collins. I think we all did, got our citizen back through him. It wasn't right away, until we got back to L.A. and all that. It was after that when we got it back.

TI: Do you recall any meetings with Mr. Collins? About --

FS: No, I don't remember that.

TI: Do you remember any part of the process, like what kind of documentation you had to find or anything like that?

FS: No. I don't remember that, either.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.