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TI: There's another incident that happened when you're at Amache. It was really a friend of yours and a memo that he saw when he's at Amache. Can you describe that?

MT: In 1945, summer, it was actually after the summer, after school was out, a friend of mine, Satoshi Hayashi, and we used to call him Heishi, we wanted to go down to certain areas in the administration building, but he had to drop by to another building to do some things, so I said, "I'll wait for you outside." So he went inside and suddenly he comes out with this document and he says, "Min, look at this." So I said, "What is it?" So I read it, and it was a white paper on how a document, in 1945, how the whole evacuation thing happened, why did they evacuate all the Japanese from the West Coast. And as I read that thing it was just tremendous, really, but incidents in there, clearly I remember those things happening, so it wasn't as if it's all made up. What it said, it was that when the war started, this group of, a farmers' association in Northern California knew that John L., then General John L. DeWitt was unstable and that the army had decided that this was his last post and they want to retire him. So they said, "Hey, this is an opportunity. We're gonna start sending him, giving him false rumors about the Japanese." So they, "and then get him to remove all Japanese from the West Coast so we can get hold of the farms." Japanese, I think they had about sixty percent of the truck farms of the United States, of the West Coast. "So now we can get a hold of those things and we can make the money." And then, and it talked about the first thing, when the war started General DeWitt said, "I have everything in hand, everything is calm. It's gonna be, everything is okay, and be calm." And then slowly it started getting worse and worse, worse. And they were quoting him on that. Finally to the point where -- I'm paraphrasing it -- "Once a Jap always a Jap, regardless of where you were born." And that's how it deteriorated. And, and he had, working with Colonel Bendetsen, started the evacuation plans and fought against it, and as opposed to Hawaii, they fought against evacuation, so, which was much more vulnerable than West Coast. And so these farmers would, and as the farmers did it, then the other businessmen started saying, "Hey, here's my chance, too." And they would jump on the bandwagon, and using the prejudice that the populace had toward Japanese to pressure on the politicians and have the politicians set up a motion to get us out of there, including the Attorney, Governor Olsen and the Attorney General...

TI: Warren? Was it Earl Warren?

MT: Earl Warren, yeah. He was one of the instigators, and the mayor of Los Angeles and all these politicians joined in and, and were pushing to get rid of us. Part of the problem, really, for the Issei farmers was they didn't know anything else. That was their livelihood. They didn't know anything else, so they kept planting the crops and they were nurturing, they were doing, continue on as if nothing had happened because that's the only thing they knew. So when they were evacuated the person took over the farm, harvest the crop, made all the money.

TI: So going back to this memo, I mean, do you recall, you said a white paper, like who wrote it or where...

MT: I don't remember that, the name of the person, the author of the thing, but I do remember that it was a copy, 'cause it was on onion skin with carbon on it, so you know that it was a copy of some original document. It was lying on this desk and my, my friend happened to see it and saw the headline on the thing, so he read it and then he snuck it out to me. And unfortunately we don't have copiers in those days and so we had to take it back or else they'll know that it was missing and then we'd be, really been in trouble.

TI: But was the sense, was it, like, an internal WRA document?

MT: Yeah. Yes, it was.

TI: Kind of an analysis of what happened and how it happened?

MT: Yes, how did this whole thing, how did it start, is what it was.

TI: Okay.

MT: And unfortunately, I have never been able to find it again. I've asked a lot of scholars at UCLA and other places that if they ever saw that document and they say they never have seen it. And I'm sure they destroyed it. They would have destroyed, they didn't want that around. Particularly if it got in the hands of someone like DeWitt or any, Bendetsen or any of those people. They wouldn't want those things around. Or any of the businesspeople or all of the farmers' association, 'cause the accusations are all there. And so, course, what I thought it was, although I didn't know about the unstableness of General DeWitt, everything came together for me and I became very, very angry. And interesting thing that happened to me was that I was so angry, and I was a, I was a senior patrol leader in our Boy Scout troop, and I decided that I'm not gonna study, I'm not gonna go to the Boy Scout thing, and I told my mother, I said, "What's the --" I told her about this document. I told her, "What's the use of studying? What's the use of getting good grades and going to college? They're not gonna give us any work. They're prejudiced against us. Now they're gonna, all they're gonna do, I'll be a clerk in a fruit stand or I'll become a, have to work in a farm or something, so why, why study? There's no use to it." And, and my mother said, "Oh, no, no, don't worry. Things will be, get better after the war. Things are not like that." She says, "Don't worry about it. Don't, don't do that. You should continue studying." And I'm mad; I don't want to study anymore. And then it was Boy Scout meeting, so I'd said, "Well, I'm not even going to the Boy Scout meeting." But I couldn't stay hanging around because my mother would find out I wasn't at the Boy Scout meeting, I didn't go. So I went to the block furthest away, 60, furthest away from my block, and we had some friends over there that were not in the Boy Scouts, met some friends over there. Suddenly, who comes to 60? My mother. I never knew how she found out I was there. I don't know how she found out, but she suddenly -- I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell my brother, 'cause he went to the Boy Scout meeting. I don't think I told him. Anyway, she shows up and says, and she used psychology on me. She said, "Oh, Minoru, did you forget today's your Boy Scout meeting?" Instead of reprimanding me, she said that. And I said, oh no, she's really, really worried about me, isn't she? So I went to Boy Scout meeting.

TI: So through all that, she was always watching and just...

MT: She always felt that I was, I was a wayward son that she had to watch carefully. She always worried about me. When I became, had some successes and stuff she was just amazed. She was always worried about me. There was a time when I quit school, when I was not doing well and I quit school. I wasn't doing well because I wasn't studying. That's what... and I quit school and she was really, my sister told my brother in law that I was really, she was really, really worried about me.

TI: This was after the war, at UCLA you're talking about?

MT: At UCLA, yeah.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.