<Begin Segment 9>

TI: So any stories from that time?

MY: No, there's no incident that I recall from that time to evacuation. Well yes, in December, somewhere in December, as I recall, Al, my brother, and I talked about the fact that there's a war and that our two citizenship countries were at war, and what to do about it. and I suppose we must've talked a couple times until we both decided, I think we can't straddle the fence here.

TI: Okay, before you tell that story, so explain to me how, or why you had dual citizenship. So you had your U.S. citizenship because you were born in San Francisco.

MY: Yeah.

TI: Tell me about the Japanese citizenship.

MY: Well, all three brothers were registered with the Japanese consulate at the time of our birth, which meant our name, Yamanaka Kunitake in my case, was placed in the koseki in my father's village. I guess that automatically made me a Japanese.

TI: This was something that your parents did actively? I mean, it wasn't something that happened.

MY: This was done in 1924 and six years earlier.

TI: So by then placing your name, that became a Japanese citizen. Because not all Niseis have dual citizenship, so it's something that --

MY: No, not all Nisei. My parents desire was essentially what the classical immigrant was, to make money and go back to Japan. In my parents' case this was always, not a dream, but something they looked... not only did they look forward to doing it, but they planned by sending money to Japan, fixing the family house, sending money to my grandparents, so the relationship was always of such nature, it was in preparation for going back to Japan. So registering our name with the Japanese consulate was part of that plan. And so when my brother decided to go to Japan that also fitted in with my parents' plan beautifully. Also, I forgot to mention, the beginning of 1941, late '40, late '40, 1941, my sister, Toshiko, was sent to Japan, ostensibly for her Japanese education.

TI: Okay, so you had two siblings, your younger sister and oldest brother were in Japan when the war broke out. So you and your older brother, Albert, decided to renounce your Japanese citizenship. What did your parents think? Because here, you just talked about how they had been thinking and planning to eventually go back to Japan and had registered you as a Japanese citizen, and Albert, and now the two of you were going to take that away.

MY: The act of renouncing the Japanese citizenship was, if anything, pleasing to my parents in that they realized that we were taking an ethical stance in this situation. It was the ethical stance, more important than throwing away my Japanese citizenship, that a moral stance was such that we knew exactly where we stood.

TI: Good, okay. So you and your brother renounced your citizenship. Now, was that a difficult thing to do? What did you have to do to renounce your citizenship?

MY: Sign a piece of paper, just like anything else with the government. [Laughs] You sign the piece of paper and that's it.

TI: So you'd go down to the Japanese consulate and fill out...

MY: I don't remember the procedure, but you saw the results of it.

TI: Yeah, I saw that piece of paper. You're right, it's just a form that you sign.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.