<Begin Segment 12>

LH: So Manzanar, the Bainbridge Island group went to Manzanar. And where was your father at this point? He was still in...

FK: My father was still in Missoula.

LH: Missoula.

FK: Yeah, yeah.

LH: When did he rejoin the family?

FK: I think he must have join, joined the family just before they were trying to make everybody sign the... the questionnaire with the two loyalty oath questions, because I remember my mother talking about those questions and how my father refused to sign yes to them.

LH: And why would that have been?

FK: Well I've always... literally thought that hard about why he didn't want to sign his. But when I think back on it, I'm thinking, here he was, taken away from his family with probably what he thought was no reason at all. And I, I found the papers where he petitioned to be, get out of Missoula and join us. And I'm thinking he was probably bitter at that time, pretty bitter at that time. Here he was being asked to, if he would be willing to serve in the U.S. Army, and if he would disavow any allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. And, and I'm thinking... now I'm thinking, "If someone threw you into jail unjustly and without giving you hearing or anything... I mean, would you feel good about that? And would you feel good about saying, 'Yeah, I really love my country, and I really love what's going on, and I'm willing to forgive whatever happened to me'?" And I'm thinking, knowing my father and how the type of person he was, he probably wasn't feeling really too good about that. So, he was refusing to sign "yes."

And my mother told me the story of how she pleaded with him to sign yes. She said, "You know, what would you do in Japan?" She knew, at that time, if you didn't sign yes and you couldn't prove you were a citizen that they were going to send you off (to) someplace else and maybe exchange you for Caucasian people that were trapped in Japan. She said, she was saying to him, "What would you do in Japan? You can't write Japanese, you can't read Japanese, you know, what would you do there?" And she, she ended up saying, "I'd rather hang myself than go to Japan." And my dad was so angry with all this frustration that he said, "Go ahead."

LH: Oh my.

FK: So, so and, and she's telling the story, and I'm going oh yeah, oh gee, that, that just, just kind of...

LH: That's quite a threat and quite a reaction.

FK: Yes. And when I think about it now, I can think of how frustrated my father must have felt about the situation. I think what eventually happened was that... some other people talked my father into signing yes. And I think he thought about what the consequences were going to be, and finally ended up signing yes. So I know, they said that Reverend Andrews from the Baptist Church was one of the people that talked to him and talked him into signing yes. But I feel like if he hadn't signed yes my whole life would be a lot different than it is now. And I probably, I may not even be here, I may be in Japan. So I'm glad he did sign yes, but I'm, I'm beginning more and more to understand why he was so frustrated and not wanting to sign yes.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.