<Begin Segment 20>

TI: When you say your, your brother was a cop, so that's internal security?

HU: Internal security, yeah.

TI: And how, how did that, how was that viewed by, you mentioned earlier the, the, you said the Kibeis who were questioning making the camouflage and that's in terms of, "Why you helping the U.S.?"

HU: Yeah.

TI: When your brother became, like, internal security, did that also --

HU: No, that, it didn't affect that until the "riot." When they had the riot, I remember that morning, the riot, I think it was December 6th, I believe, My brother came home early. He was on a day shift, he come early, I asked him (why). He says there's gonna be trouble and so everybody, we just took off, and that's the day of the riot. That's when, well, (...) little before that there was a Tajima, I think it was Tajima and Slocum, they went to Salt Lake City JACL meeting and lot of people didn't like the idea of, that was favoritism, they were being special privileged, and then by that time JACL has, had become sort of unpopular. I think it originated back in, what, 1927 where a handful of Nisies met at San Francisco and that was sort of the beginning of the, that later became the JACL. And originally they wanted the Nisei, the purpose was to get the Nisei into the American mainstream, but then by the time the war started there was rumors saying that -- by that time I think the headquarters was in Salt Lake City, they didn't understand the condition in the West Coast -- there was rumor, there were allegations that the JACL had, had intervened in the relocation where, where at one time the government was thinking of putting all the aliens in camp and JACL intervened -- this is just allegation, rumor -- that they intervened and they said if they're gonna put the Isseis in there, why not put all the Niseis in there, too, because they wouldn't be able to support themselves. (Narr. note: Tokutaro Nishimura was adopted by the Slocum family of North Dakota. He was better known as "Tokie Slocum."

TI: So, yeah, so the JACL took a very cooperative stance with the government.

HU: Right.

TI: And so inside Manzanar there was this friction between sort of the JACL group with, with others.

HU: Right.

TI: And, and so your brother knew there was gonna be trouble that day. He was in internal security.

HU: Yeah.

TI: So he came home early?

HU: Yeah, he came home early. He, yes.

TI: Knowing that there was gonna be trouble.

HU: They just left their job, and so, so that day, I don't know, some say there was about fifteen hundred, two thousand people got together and some went after Tajima and some went after Slocum and rest of 'em went to, to the -- well, before that, when Tajima and Slocum came back Ueno and his friends beat up Tajima and Tajima went to the administration and they arrested Ueno and put into jail in Independence, I believe, and there was some complaints, so they moved him back to the Manzanar, into the police station. And that's, that's when they started, tried to release Ueno from the prison, so that's when my brother and the Nisei cops just walked off the job because they didn't want to be, if they stayed they had to hold Ueno in prison and they would be called inu. Inu is one of the lowest things you could think of that you could be called at that particular time.

TI: And so who was gonna, who was going to hold Ueno, if, if the security people left, who was left there?

HU: [Laughs] Nobody except the police chief. There was only one hakujin guy and that was the police chief, so they sent in the military police. So they had, so when this mob went there they had these military police guarding the station there and then they started, people started throwing rocks and things and then somebody started the truck and then just let the truck go toward the MPs and the leader fired the shot or something and then the rest of the guys took that as a signal to fire, so they just fired into the crowd. And that, I remember that night, it was in the evening, after, after supper, and everybody was saying, "Hey, there's gonna be trouble. There's gonna be some, somebody's gonna beat somebody up." And when you're a teenager, when, if you hear somebody's gonna get beat up, hey, you got to be there. And so it was getting cold, so I went into my barrack to get my jacket and that's when my mother stopped me and says, "No, you cannot go there," and that stopped me, but my friends went there. There was a guy who was a neighbor back home, Charlie Sakihara, and he was there. He got shot in the hips. He was one of the seventeen guys that, among the seventeen casualties there.

TI: And so it was, I'm sorry, your mother or brother who stopped you?

HU: My mother. My mother.

TI: Your mother stopped you, 'cause she knew there was gonna be trouble and so she, she kept you inside.

HU: Yeah, so, so everybody knew it was gonna be trouble. All you heard about was the word inu, they were going after the inu, they would beat up the inu, they would kill the inu, that kind of stuff.

TI: Now, did your brother ever give you more insights in terms of the conflict from internal security standpoint, in terms of the troubles and who you had to kind of watch out for, things like that?

HU: Yeah, by that time we were living separately on different end of the barracks, so I hardly even talked to him, so there was no communication at all.

TI: Okay. And after the riot, what was the, what, the tenor of the camp? I mean, what was the atmosphere like?

HU: It's just like any other day. I didn't, I didn't see anything different. But there was, there was, "Did you know that Charlie got hit?" and that kind of stuff. That's about it.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.