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SY: And where did that feeling of not feeling comfortable around white people, can you sort of trace that back to camp?

PS: Camp I think and growing up during the war, all the racism during the war.

SY: So you remember that?

PS: Oh, yeah, it surrounded you. If you're at war with a country, all the propaganda is towards the enemy. I thought about it, to cause people to want to kill some other people, you have to motivate people. You can't look at people and say, "Hey, these people are like us, so go out and kill them," you have to make them hateful. You have to make them subhuman so you can pull the trigger and kill this person and think you're doing the right thing for your country. And so with that going, and I happened to be the same race as the enemy, so much so that they put me in a concentration camp, it was hard to feel good about being who I was and hard to feel comfortable around people who had... who are programming in this way. Ideally, theoretically I knew better, that they're probably, okay and yet that feeling existed and still to this day exists to a certain extent. I think it's... I was a counselor, I was trained as a high school counselor and I did a little... you had to take courses and learn about human behavior, and the term I think is neuroticism. You're neurotic if you are living today as if condition exists today as they existed in the past. That's what it is, I'm not living in... those people who discriminated against me, those people who had the negative feelings towards Japanese, they're gone or... I don't have to deal with them anymore and yet those tapes exist in my mind that still haunt me. So I've had to deal with it and being part of a religious group that at least has it's ideals getting along and loving everyone and yet having exposure to being able to be myself and be who I am as Japanese, it's been tricky. It's been difficult to look at myself as an American, being loyal to this country, being in the army for two years. I signed on the dotted line. If they sent me over there to die for this country I would have done it. That was my duty as an American citizen. And yet on the other hand being conflicted having this country turn its back on me and throw all this racist stuff at me, it was difficult for me to feel good about being who I was as an American and as a Japanese person. And I had to really dig it, looking around and seeing that I'm okay being both. And it's kind of hard to explain to people but part of maturing I think has allowed me to look back and take a good look at where I've come from.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.