<Begin Segment 14>

TI: When you were at Santa Anita, how old were you at this point?

MY: I went in seventeen years old. On April 7th, that was the first day of incarceration.

TI: Okay, and so that was, you turned seventeen?

MY: I was seventeen. I turned eighteen April 14th, one week later. I went in on the 7th, one week later it's 14th, which is my birthday.

TI: I see.

MY: And my birthday is eighteen. I'm eighteen years old. At that point I had to sign up for selective service. Like an American good citizen, I signed up for selective service.

TI: So this is, while you were essentially incarcerated, you...

MY: That was the first week at Santa Anita.

TI: And how do you sign up for selective service in Santa Anita?

MY: Well, when you're eighteen you're following a national law, and so I went up to administration, said I have to sign up for selective service since my birthday. So somehow they managed me to get into Arcadia to sign up for selective service, because that's where my home office is, was at that point.

TI: So I'm curious, I'm guessing the government would have, what's the right word, would have understood if you had not registered for selective service under the circumstances. What were you thinking? Were you doing it because that was something you were supposed to do, or were you actually making a statement in terms of, of wanting to be a supportive American? What, why did you do it?

MY: It was the logical thing to do, legal thing to do, ethical thing to do. When you're eighteen everybody signs up for selective service, end of question.

TI: So there's no ironies attached to it, the fact that --

MY: There was no irony attached.

TI: -- that even though you were a U.S. citizen...

MY: "Enemy alien."

TI: But you were, you're probably, you're a good student, so you realize, well, as a U.S. citizen you probably were due, you should've had the right of due process and none of that was being given.

MY: There was no due process involved in signing up for selective service.

TI: Right, but there was no --

MY: There was no due process in being sent to camp, yes, which nobody at that point fought or brought up, but for signing up for selective service, it's a normal, natural thing to do for an eighteen year old.

BT: Well, and you had especially prepared for this by renouncing your Japanese citizenship, right?

MY: Well, yes and no. Yes, I had to do it. No, in that I wasn't aware, that was not an issue in signing up for selective service, that I had renounced my Japanese citizenship. Because essentially my thinking after 1931, returning to America, was I was a normal American kid.

TI: Okay. I'm guessing at Santa Anita you're probably one of the first ones, though, to make that --

MY: I beg your pardon?

TI: Probably at Santa Anita you're probably one of the first ones to make the request to register for the selective service.

MY: Probably, being one week after being in camp. Although the camp had been open for some time; we were not the first ones into Santa Anita. But for me, certain issues came out of that situation in that I had been sent to camp as a non citizen and I thought going into selective service, crew man, being on the crew team you had to be healthy, strong, and I thought I'd be going into the army right away. And waiting for my classification, which eventually came, which was something we, none of us were aware of at that point, 4-C. And we exchanged, what the hell is 4-C? And nobody knew at that point, but within short time it was enemy alien, but at that point, one week after I went in on April 14th, nobody knew that, including me. Here for me, within short period of four months, for the second time I'm a non alien, "enemy alien," in other words, and so that, I think, started certain things going through my head. Nothing clarified, congealed yet, but something is wrong in Denmark here.

TI: Right, yeah, this whole issue of how does the government view you. I mean, it's sort of like, are you a citizen or a non citizen?

MY: It wasn't even that clear.

TI: Yeah, no, I realize.

MY: Something was rotten in Denmark.

TI: Yeah, and talking with you, this is the value of, I think, oral history is I, you see the ambiguity, the grayness of a lot of this, so it's really interesting. So any other memories of Santa Anita before we go to the next --

MY: Long lines, long lines, long lines. For food, but a lot for shots.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.